From DSC:
Though we aren’t quite there yet, the pieces continue to come together to build a next generation learning platform that will help people reinvent themselves quickly, efficiently, constantly, and cost-effectively.
From DSC:
Along these lines, we’ll likely see more bots and virtual legal assistants that we will be able to ask questions of.
#A2J #AccessToJustice #legal #lawyers #society #legaltech #bots #videoconferencing #AI #bots #VirtualAssistants
Along these lines, also see:
Innovative and inspired: How this US law school is improving access to justice — from studyinternational.com
Excerpt:
Though court and other government websites in the US provide legal information, knowing what to search for and understanding legal jargon can be difficult for lay people.
Spot, software that is being developed at the LIT Lab, aims to fix this.
“You know you have a housing problem. But very few people think about their housing problems in terms of something like constructive eviction,” explains David Colarusso, who heads the LIT Lab. “The idea is to have the tool be able to spot those issues based upon people’s own language.”
Developed by Colarusso and students, Spot uses a machine-based algorithm to understand legal queries posed by lay persons. With Spot, entering a question in plain English like “My apartment is so moldy I can’t stay there anymore. Is there anything I can do?” brings up search results that would direct users to the right legal issue. In this case, the query is highly likely to be related to a housing issue or, more specifically, to the legal term “constructive eviction.”
Lastly, here’s an excerpt from INSIGHT: What’s ‘Innovative’ in BigLaw? It’s More Than the Latest Tech Tools — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Ryan Steadman and Mark Brennan
Top Innovation Factors for Success
Before revving the engines in the innovation process, the safety check comes first. Successful innovation requires a deliberate, holistic approach that takes into consideration people, process, and technology. Firms and vendors that listen and learn before implementing significant change will stand apart from competitors—and help ensure long-term success.
This former Apple designer is taking on Amazon’s Twitch with $146 million and Fox’s backing — from fastcompany.com by Jeff Beer
Caffeine founder and CEO Ben Keighran talks about why live streaming is much more than gaming—it’s the future of TV.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Live-streaming startup Caffeine, started by former Apple designer Ben Keighran, is emerging out of a two-year beta today and aims to overtake Amazon’s Twitch and Microsoft’s Mixer as the world’s leading live broadcasting platform. The official release version features a completely new design for its website and iOS and Android apps that combines editorial, algorithmic, and social connections to make it easier to discover live broadcasting from gamers, entertainers, and athletes, as well as create your own interactive broadcasts featuring live television content.
Twitch is the undisputed king of live-streamed gaming, but Keighran is betting that Caffeine’s more diverse focus to go beyond gaming—into entertainment and sports—will make it a more attractive place for both viewers and creators.
Keighran says another technological difference between Caffeine and Twitch is in its ease of use and quickness. “In just a couple of clicks, you can stream Red Bull 24/7 and be the commentator, you can stream Fortnite in one click, you can create an entertainment stream and talk about the new sneaker you just got, and you can do that all in one place,” he says. “And it’s all in real-time—there’s no delay in the video, whereas on Twitch, there’s up to a 60-second delay.”
From DSC:
Hmmm… social interaction. New platforms for streaming live content. Ability to comment and ask questions (i.e., audience interactions). Interactive chats.
Can we add learning-related experiences to the audiences and applications here?
A somewhat related item:
Using technology to inspire creativity boosts student outcomes — from thejournal.com by Sara Friedman
Transformative technology uses include using tablets or computers to create multimedia projects, conduct research and analyze information.
Teachers’ use of creativity in learning was determined how many times students were allowing to:
Kansas City high schools add real-world learning — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark
Excerpt:
The good news is that more young people are graduating from high school than ever. The bad news? High school is often less relevant to them and their futures than ever.
The largest effort to make high school more valuable—to young people and their communities— is underway in the six-county two-state Kansas City metro area.
About 60 schools in 15 districts from Kansas and Missouri are spending this school year investigating ways they can make high school more valuable to young people by incorporating more real-world learning.
From DSC:
I know that by the end of his junior year, our son was so tired of having information crammed down his throat. He viewed so much of the content of his courses as irrelevant and unimportant. This year, he is immersed in what he wants to do — acting. And now he is soooooo much more motivated to learn and to grow now that he is able to pursue his passion.
DIY Mindset Reshaping Education — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Excerpt:
A do-it-yourself mindset is changing the face of education worldwide, according to new survey results. Learners are “patching together” their education from a “menu of options,” including self-teaching, short courses and bootcamps, and they believe that self-service instruction will become even more prevalent for lifelong learning. In the United Sates specifically, 84 percent of people said learning would become even more self-service the older they get.
Among those who have needed to reskill in the last two years to continue doing their jobs, 42 percent found information online and taught themselves and 41 percent took a course or training offered by their employers, a professional association or bootcamp, compared to just 28 percent who pursued a professional certification program, 25 percent who enrolled in a university-level degree program or 12 percent who did nothing.
If people had to learn something new for their career quickly, they said they would be more likely turn to a short training program (47 percent), followed by access to a free resource such as YouTube, Lynda.com or Khan Academy (33 percent). A smaller share (20 percent) would head to an accredited university or college.
From DSC:
This is why the prediction from Thomas Frey carries weight and why I’ve been tracking a new learning platform for the 21st century. Given:
…there needs to be a new, up-to-date, highly responsive, inexpensive learning-related platform for the 21st century. I call this learning platform of the future, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.” And while it requires subject matter experts / humans in significant ways, AI and other technologies will be embedded throughout such a platform.
“I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.
— source
Addendum on 9/18/19:
For $400 per course, students will be able to gain access to course videos that are cinematically filmed and taught by “some of the brightest minds in academia.” Outlier.org students will also have access to problem sets, one-on-one tutoring and assessments proctored through artificial intelligence.
Screen Mirroring, Screencasting and Screen Sharing in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Derek Rice
Digital learning platforms let students and professors interact through shared videos and documents.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Active learning, collaboration, personalization, flexibility and two-way communication are the main factors driving today’s modern classroom design.
Among the technologies being brought to bear in academic settings are those that enable screen mirroring, screencasting and screen sharing, often collectively referred to as wireless presentation solutions.
These technologies are often supported by a device and app that allow users, both students and professors, to easily share content on a larger screen in a classroom.
“The next best thing to a one-to-one conversation is to be able to share what the students create, as part of the homework or class activity, or communicate using media to provide video evidence of class activities and enhance and build out reading, writing, speaking, listening, language and other skills,” says Michael Volpe, marketing manager for IOGEAR.
China has started a grand experiment in AI education. It could reshape how the world learns. — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao
In recent years, the country has rushed to pursue “intelligent education.” Now its billion-dollar ed-tech companies are planning to export their vision overseas.
Excerpt:
Zhou Yi was terrible at math. He risked never getting into college. Then a company called Squirrel AI came to his middle school in Hangzhou, China, promising personalized tutoring. He had tried tutoring services before, but this one was different: instead of a human teacher, an AI algorithm would curate his lessons. The 13-year-old decided to give it a try. By the end of the semester, his test scores had risen from 50% to 62.5%. Two years later, he scored an 85% on his final middle school exam.
“I used to think math was terrifying,” he says. “But through tutoring, I realized it really isn’t that hard. It helped me take the first step down a different path.”
The strategy has fueled mind-boggling growth. In the five years since it was founded, the company has opened 2,000 learning centers in 200 cities and registered over a million students—equal to New York City’s entire public school system. It plans to expand to 2,000 more centers domestically within a year. To date, the company has also raised over $180 million in funding. At the end of last year, it gained unicorn status, surpassing $1 billion in valuation.
From DSC:
In reviewing some of the learning spaces I ran across out at inventionlandinstitute.com/innovation-labs…
…I wondered…why can’t more learning spaces look like this!?!
Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale — from philonedtech.com by Clay Shirky
[This was a guest post by Clay Shirky that grew out of a conversation that Clay and Phil had about IPEDS enrollment data. Most of the graphs are provided by Phil.]
Excerpts:
Were half a dozen institutions to dominate the online learning landscape with no end to their expansion, or shift what Americans seek in a college degree, that would indeed be one of the greatest transformations in the history of American higher education. The available data, however, casts doubt on that idea.
Though much of the conversation around mega-universities is speculative, we already know what a mega-university actually looks like, one much larger than any university today. It looks like the University of Phoenix, or rather it looked like Phoenix at the beginning of this decade, when it had 470,000 students, the majority of whom took some or all of their classes online. Phoenix back then was six times the size of the next-largest school, Kaplan, with 78,000 students, and nearly five times the size of any university operating today.
From that high-water mark, Phoenix has lost an average of 40,000 students every year of this decade.
From DSC:
First of all, I greatly appreciate both Clay’s and Phil’s thought leadership and their respective contributions to education and learning through the years. I value their perspectives and their work. Clay and Phil offer up a great article here — one worth your time to read.
The article made me reflect on what I’ve been building upon and tracking for the last decade — a next generation ***PLATFORM*** that I believe will represent a powerful piece of a global learning ecosystem. I call this vision, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.” Though the artificial intelligence-backed platform that I’m envisioning doesn’t yet fully exist — this new era and type of learning-based platform ARE coming. The emerging signs, technologies, trends — and “fingerprints”of it, if you will — are beginning to develop all over the place.
Such a platform will:
…
Below are some quotes that I want to comment on:
Not nothing, but not the kind of environment that will produce an educational Amazon either, especially since the top 30 actually shrank by 0.2% a year.
Instead of an “Amazon vs. the rest” dynamic, online education is turning into something much more widely adopted, where the biggest schools are simply the upper end of a continuum, not so different from their competitors, and not worth treating as members of a separate category.
Since the founding of William and Mary, the country’s second college, higher education in the U.S. hasn’t been a winner-take-all market, and it isn’t one today. We are not entering a world where the largest university operates at outsized scale, we’re leaving that world;
From DSC:
I don’t see us leaving that world at all…but that’s not my main reflection here. Instead, I’m not focusing on how large the mega-universities will become. When I speak of a forthcoming Walmart of Education or Amazon of Education, what I have in mind is a platform…not one particular organization.
Consider that the vast majority of Amazon’s revenues come from products that other organizations produce. They are a platform, if you will. And in the world of platforms (i.e., software), it IS a winner take all market.
Bill Gates reflects on this as well in this recent article from The Verge:
“In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets.
So it’s all about a forthcoming platform — or platforms. (It could be more than one platform. Consider Apple. Consider Microsoft. Consider Google. Consider Facebook.)
But then the question becomes…would a large amount of universities (and other types of organizations) be willing to offer up their courses on a platform? Well, consider what’s ALREADY happening with FutureLearn:
Finally…one more excerpt from Clay’s article:
Eventually the new ideas lose their power to shock, and end up being widely copied. Institutional transformation starts as heresy and ends as a section in the faculty handbook.
From DSC:
This is a great point. Reminds me of this tweet from Fred Steube (and I added a piece about Western Telegraph):
Why would anyone need a telephone when we already have the telegraph? [Western Telegraph] https://t.co/s6Rm67NAB0
— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) May 23, 2019
Some things to reflect upon…for sure.
Choice -> Ownership -> Empowerment -> Deeper Learning — from AJ Juliani
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Students continue to fall into the same trap year after year with traditional schooling. They rarely have a chance to choose their learning path in school, and routinely treat school like a “job” instead of the most valuable learning experience they will ever have…
By the time students get to high school, over 83% are stressed out, [and] 67% say they are bored half the time, and many learn to “play the game of school” worrying about what will happen to them if they do not get a particular grade and get into a specific college.
What we end up with are students who are never given a chance to explore their own interests in school, who end up confused about what they want to do with their future because they continue to march down a path that has been chosen for them for 12 years. Many of these students end up getting jobs in fields they think are “safe” or “practical” but don’t have a personal connection or interest to the work they are doing.
Choice in what content our students consume, what activities they take on in and out of school, what assessments they take, and choice in their purpose for learning.
Choice drives student ownership of their learning, which kicks engagement into high-gear, and ultimately leads to learning that is intrinsic and powerful and deep.
From DSC:
Our son has become a game-player. He knows just what he needs to get that A. No more, nor less. He doesn’t care about learning. And he is tired of getting information crammed down his throat. Information he doesn’t care about…at all. Since 10th grade, he has become disengaged.
Next year (for his senior year of H.S.), he is heading to studying what he wants to study — acting. Although it will be very difficult, I think he will blossom. He will become fully engaged…because he’s doing what he chooses to do.
Belief in Learning Styles Myth May Be Detrimental — from apa.org
Many people believe learning styles predict academic and career success, study finds
Excerpts:
WASHINGTON — Many people, including educators, believe learning styles are set at birth and predict both academic and career success even though there is no scientific evidence to support this common myth, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
…
Previous surveys in the United States and other industrialized countries across the world have shown that 80% to 95% of people believe in learning styles. It’s difficult to say how that myth became so widespread, Nancekivell said.
Also see:
From DSC:
While I’ve heard and read through the years that there isn’t support for learning styles — and I’ve come to adopt that perspective as well due to what I’ve read, such as the items listed above — I do think that each of us has our learning preferences (as the debunker club mentioned as well). That is, how we prefer to learn about a new subject:
Along these lines…in my mind, offering learning in multiple media and in multiple ways maximizes the enjoyment of learning by a group of people. And now that we’re all into lifelong learning, the enjoyment of learning has notched waaay up in importance in my book. The more we enjoy learning, the more we enjoy life (and vice versa).
In fact, I’m getting closer to the point of putting enjoyment of learning over grades in terms of importance. Grades are a way to compare people/school systems/colleges/universities/etcetera…they are the currency of our current systems…and they are used to “incentivize” students. But such systems and methods often produce game players, not learners.
Coursera raises $103 million to prepare online learners for the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ — from venturebeat.com by Paul Sawers
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Founded in 2012, Coursera is one of a number of well-funded MOOCs — massive open online courses — to emerge. Coursera partners with universities and other educational institutions to deliver online courses to 40 million students, covering subjects like technology, business, science, and even autonomous cars.
…
“The fourth industrial revolution, marked by advancements in automation and artificial intelligence, is dramatically reshaping our lives, businesses, and jobs,” noted Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. “Coursera is at the forefront of preparing individuals, companies, and governments to meet that challenge head-on and turn this disruption into opportunity. The additional funding gives us the resources and flexibility to further expand internationally and to accelerate the development of a learning platform that currently serves 40 million learners, 1,800 businesses, and over 150 top universities.”