American students have changed their majors — from bloomberg.com by Justin Fox
Health professions are in, education and the humanities are out. Here are some reasons for the shift.
American students have changed their majors — from bloomberg.com by Justin Fox
Health professions are in, education and the humanities are out. Here are some reasons for the shift.
From DSC:
First of all, an article:
The four definitive use cases for AR and VR in retail — from forbes.com by Nikki Baird
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
AR is the go-to engagement method of choice when it comes to product and category exploration. A label on a product on a shelf can only do so much to convey product and brand information, vs. AR, which can easily tap into a wealth of digital information online and bring it to life as an overlay on a product or on the label itself.
From DSC:
Applying this concept to the academic world…what might this mean for a student in a chemistry class who has a mobile device and/or a pair of smart goggles on and is working with an Erlenmeyer flask? A burette? A Bunsen burner?
Along these lines...what if all of those confused students — like *I* was struggling through chem lab — could see how an experiment was *supposed to be done!?*
That is, if there’s only 30 minutes of lab time left, the professor or TA could “flip a switch” to turn on the AR cloud within the laboratory space to allow those struggling students to see how to do their experiment.
I can’t tell you how many times I was just trying to get through the lab — not knowing what I was doing, and getting zero help from any professor or TA. I hardly learned a thing that stuck with me…except the names of a few devices and the abbreviations of a few chemicals. For the most part, it was a waste of money. How many students experience this as well and feel like I did?
Will the terms “blended learning” and/or “hybrid learning” take on whole new dimensions with the onset of AR, MR, and VR-related learning experiences?
#IntelligentTutoring #IntelligentSystems #LearningExperiences
#AR #VR #MR #XR #ARCloud #AssistiveTechnologies
#Chemistry #BlendedLearning #HybridLearning #DigitalLearning
Also see:
“It is conceivable that we’re going to be moving into a world without screens, a world where [glasses are] your screen. You don’t need any more form factor than [that].”
(AT&T CEO)
Summary of the #LrnSciChat on 19 February 2019 on
Dual Coding in Learning and Teaching. — from wakelet.com
Dual coding is simply combining verbal and visual information to enrich the learning experience.
Dr. C. Kuepper-Tetzel
Also see the posters out at The Learning Scientists website.
6 key trends to 21st century teaching — from edsurge.com
Excerpt:
It’s popular these days to complain that college teaching hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. And sure, it’s possible to find some professors on any campus holding yellowed lecture notes, or clinging to dusty chalk. But the reality is that the internet and digital technologies have already brought profound changes to instructional styles and tools in higher education.
So what are the new teaching approaches catching on at today’s campuses? And what are the broader cultural changes around college teaching?
We set out to answer those questions over the past year, with a series of articles and interviews exploring what teaching in the 21st century looks like. Some show the nuances of the challenges of teaching with technology by telling stories of innovative professors, including how a water agency official who teaches an online community college course got started in creating open educational resources when her class was incorporated into a zero-cost textbook degree program. Others dive into research on the culture of teaching, like a talk with an anthropologist studying how professors react to (and sometimes resist) research on teaching practices.
Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work — from weforum.org
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution impacts skills, tasks and jobs, there is growing concern that both job displacement and talent shortages will impact business dynamism and societal cohesion. A proactive and strategic effort is needed on the part of all relevant stakeholders to manage reskilling and upskilling to mitigate against both job losses and talent shortages.
Through the Preparing for the Future of Work project, the World Economic Forum provides a platform for designing and implementing intra-industry collaboration on the future of work, working closely with the public sector, unions and educators. The output of the project’s first phase of work, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, highlighted an innovative method to identify viable and desirable job transition pathways for disrupted workers. This second report, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work extends our previous research to assess the business case for reskilling and establish its magnitude for different stakeholders. It also outlines a roadmap for selected industries to address specific challenges and opportunities related to the transformation of their workforce.
See the PDF file / report here.
Tiny microbots fold like origami to travel through the human body — from digitaltrends.com by Georgina Torbet
Excerpt:
Tiny robots modeled after bacteria could be used to deliver drugs to hard to reach areas of the human body. Scientists at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have developed what they call elastic microbots that can change shape depending on their environment.
Training the workforce of the future: Education in America will need to adapt to prepare students for the next generation of jobs – including ‘data trash engineer’ and ‘head of machine personality design’ –– from dailymail.co.uk by Valerie Bauman
Excerpts:
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Forecast 5.0 – The Future of Learning: Navigating the Future of Learning — from knowledgeworks.org by Katherine Prince, Jason Swanson, and Katie King
Discover how current trends could impact learning ten years from now and consider ways to shape a future where all students can thrive.
Intelligent Machines: One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future — from technologyreview.com by Will Knight
Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world.
Excerpts:
Yoshua Bengio is a grand master of modern artificial intelligence.
Alongside Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun, Bengio is famous for championing a technique known as deep learning that in recent years has gone from an academic curiosity to one of the most powerful technologies on the planet.
Deep learning involves feeding data to large neural networks that crudely simulate the human brain, and it has proved incredibly powerful and effective for all sorts of practical tasks, from voice recognition and image classification to controlling self-driving cars and automating business decisions.
Bengio has resisted the lure of any big tech company. While Hinton and LeCun joined Google and Facebook, respectively, he remains a full-time professor at the University of Montreal. (He did, however, cofound Element AI in 2016, and it has built a very successful business helping big companies explore the commercial applications of AI research.)
Bengio met with MIT Technology Review’s senior editor for AI, Will Knight, at an MIT event recently.
What do you make of the idea that there’s an AI race between different countries?
I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s the right way to do it.
We could collectively participate in a race, but as a scientist and somebody who wants to think about the common good, I think we’re better off thinking about how to both build smarter machines and make sure AI is used for the well-being of as many people as possible.
EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies — from technologyreview.com by Antonio Regalado
A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.
Excerpt:
When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present.
It was the invention of a powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.
Now, it appears it may already be happening.
Where some see a new form of medicine that eliminates genetic disease, others see a slippery slope to enhancements, designer babies, and a new form of eugenics.
Combining retrieval, spacing, and feedback boosts STEM learning — from retrievalpractice.org
Punchline:
Scientists demonstrated that when college students used a quizzing program that combined retrieval practice, spacing, and feedback, exam performance increased by nearly a letter grade.
—-
Abstract
The most effective educational interventions often face significant barriers to widespread implementation because they are highly specific, resource intense, and/or comprehensive. We argue for an alternative approach to improving education: leveraging technology and cognitive science to develop interventions that generalize, scale, and can be easily implemented within any curriculum. In a classroom experiment, we investigated whether three simple, but powerful principles from cognitive science could be combined to improve learning. Although implementation of these principles only required a few small changes to standard practice in a college engineering course, it significantly increased student performance on exams. Our findings highlight the potential for developing inexpensive, yet effective educational interventions that can be implemented worldwide.
…
In summary, the combination of spaced retrieval practice and required feedback viewing had a powerful effect on student learning of complex engineering material. Of course, the principles from cognitive science could have been applied without the use of technology. However, our belief is that advances in technology and ideas from machine learning have the potential to exponentially increase the effectiveness and impact of these principles. Automation is an important benefit, but technology also can provide a personalized learning experience for a rapidly growing, diverse body of students who have different knowledge and academic backgrounds. Through the use of data mining, algorithms, and experimentation, technology can help us understand how best to implement these principles for individual learners while also producing new discoveries about how people learn. Finally, technology facilitates access. Even if an intervention has a small effect size, it can still have a substantial impact if broadly implemented. For example, aspirin has a small effect on preventing heart attacks and strokes when taken regularly, but its impact is large because it is cheap and widely available. The synergy of cognitive science, machine learning, and technology has the potential to produce inexpensive, but powerful learning tools that generalize, scale, and can be easily implemented worldwide.
Keywords: Education. Technology. Retrieval practice. Spacing. Feedback. Transfer of learning.
Augmented Reality In Healthcare Will Be Revolutionary — from medicalfuturist.com
Excerpts:
1) Augmented reality can save lives through showing defibrillators nearby
2) Google Glass might help new mothers struggling with breastfeeding
3) Patients can describe their symptoms better through augmented reality
4) Nurses can find veins easier with augmented reality
5) Motivating runners through zombies
6) Pharma companies can provide more innovative drug information
7) Augmented reality can assist surgeons in the OR
8) Google’s digital contact lens can transform how we look at the world
How is AI used in healthcare – 5 powerful real-world examples that show the latest advances — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr
Excerpts:
1) AI-assisted robotic surgery
2) Virtual nursing assistants
3) Aid clinical judgment or diagnosis
4) Workflow and administrative tasks
5) Image analysis
Summary: A Manager’s guide to Augmented Reality. — from twnkls.com by Prof. Michael Porter
Excerpt:
The full read can be found at the bottom of this page. But we summarized for you the 4 key take-aways:
What’s so great about VR? Virtually everything — from virtuallyinspired.org
Excerpt:
No doubt about it. Virtual reality isn’t just for gamers and gadget geeks anymore. In fact, as the technology gets better and cheaper, VR is the wave of the future when it comes to creating a truly memorable and effective learning experience – and for good reason.
Multiple Learning Attributes. To begin with, it empowers us to create any number of safely immersive virtual learning environments that feel and respond much as they would in real life, as students engage and explore, interact with and manipulate objects within these worlds. Imagine teleporting your students to re-enact historic battles; explore outer space; or travel the inner workings of the human body. What’s more, using sophisticated controls, they can actually “practice” complex procedures like cardiac surgery, or master difficult concepts, such as the molecular properties of brain cells.
Likewise, VR gives new meaning to the term “field trip,” by enabling students to virtually experience first-hand some of the world’s great museums, natural wonders and notable landmarks. You can also embed 360-degree objects within the virtual classroom to support course content, much as Drexel University Online is doing after assembling its one-of-a-kind VRtifacts+ repository. And you can use it to live-stream events, guest lectures and campus tours, in addition to hosting virtual community spaces where learners can meet and connect in a seemingly “real” environment.
The Modern Alternative Learning Resource: Time To Drop The Ban On Phones In Schools? — from vrfocus.com by Robert Currie
Robert Currie discusses the mobile phone’s role in education, and how thanks in part to AR and VR it should now be considered a top tool.
Benefits of Virtual Reality in Education — from invisible.toys
The AVR Platform and Classroom 3.0 Showcased at EduTECH Asia 2018 — from eonreality.com
Excerpt:
At EduTECH Asia 2018 this week in Singapore, EON Reality spent two full days speaking, promoting, and demonstrating the latest updates to the AVR Platform to the thousands of education and technology professionals in attendance.
With a focus on how the AVR Platform can best be used in the education world, EON Reality’s discussion, ‘Augmented and Virtual Reality in Education: The Shift to Classroom 3.0,’ highlighted Wednesday’s offerings with a full presentation and hands-on demos of the new tools in Creator AVR. Over the course of both days, visitors filled the EON Reality booth to get their own one-on-one experience of Creator AVR, Virtual Trainer, and the ways in which AR Assist can help out in the classroom.
The AVR Platform’s three products are the fundamental tools of EON Reality’s Classroom 3.0 vision for the Immersed Flipped Classrooms of the future. With Creator AVR — a SaaS-based learning and content creation solution — leading the way, the AVR Platform empowers Classroom 3.0 by providing teachers and educators of all types with the tools needed to create Augmented and Virtual Reality learning modules.
Bringing Asian educators from all over the continent together, EON Reality’s presence at EduTECH showed just how significantly Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality can elevate the overall educational experience going forward. After two full days of demonstrations, EON Reality introduced the AVR Platform to approximately 1500 teachers, school administration officials, and other decision-makers in Asia’s education industry.
As the AVR Platform expands to educational markets around the world, EON Reality’s revolutionary spin on traditional learning branches into new cultures and nations. With local Singaporean educational institutions like Temasek Polytechnic already onboard, the EduTECH Asia 2018 conference marked the continued spread of Classroom 3.0 and the AVR Platform on both a regional and global level.
New Virtual 3D Microscope Lab Program Offered for Online Students by Oregon State University — from virtuallyinspired.org
OSU solves degree completion issue for online biology students
Excerpt:
“We had to create an alternative that gives students the foundational experience of being in a lab where they can maneuver a microscope’s settings and adjust the images just as they would in a face-to-face environment,” said Shannon Riggs, the Ecampus director of course development and training.
Multimedia developers mounted a camera on top of an actual microscope and took pictures of what was on the slides. Using 3D modeling software, the photos were interweaved to create 3D animation. Using game development software enabled students to adjust lighting, zoom and manipulate the images, just like in a traditional laboratory. The images were programmed to create a virtual simulation.
The final product is “an interactive web application that utilizes a custom 3D microscope and incorporates animation and real-life slide photos,” according to Victor Yee, an Ecampus assistant director of course development and training.
Also see:
AI can’t replace doctors. But it can make them better. — from technologyreview.com by Rahul Parikh; via Maree Conway
A machine can collate environmental data, genetic data, and patient history way better than I can.
Excerpts:
But for physicians like me in primary care, managing 1,500 to 2,000 patients, AI presents an opportunity. I went to medical school to connect with people and make a difference. Today I often feel like an overpaid bookkeeper instead, taking in information and spitting it back to patients, prescribing drugs and adjusting doses, ordering tests. But AI in the exam room opens up the chance to recapture the art of medicine. It could let me get to know my patients better, learn how a disease uniquely affects them, and give me time to coach them toward a better outcome.
…
AI might also help to manage asthma flares. For many patients, asthma gets worse as air pollution levels rise, as happened this past summer when brush fires swept through Northern California. AI could let us take environmental information and respond proactively.
…
Not long ago, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, I saw a colorful picture drawn by a child in crayon. It portrayed her pediatrician, eyes glued to the computer, while she sat on the exam table, looking wide-eyed. I hope that AI will soon allow me to turn my attention back to that little girl.
Rahul Parikh is a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay area.