.

Per Donald Taylor this morning:

The results of this year’s L&D Global Sentiment Survey are now live online!

They are unlike anything else I’ve seen in the 11-history of the Survey.

Over 3,000 people from nearly 100 countries shared their views, and you can see my summary of them on LinkedIn:


 

 

K-12 students learned a lot last year, but they’re still missing too much school — from npr.org by Cory Turner and  Sequoia Carrillo

1. Students are starting to make up for missed learning
From spring 2022 to spring 2023, students made important learning gains, making up for about one-third of the learning they had missed in math and a quarter of the learning they had missed in reading during the pandemic.

2. Despite that progress, very few states are back to pre-pandemic learning levels


The Results Are In: Parents Favor School Choice — from realcleareducation.com by Hanna Skandera; via GSV

Parents want a choice when it comes to their children’s education.

A new report published by The National School Choice Awareness Foundation reveals that 72% of parents considered new schools for their children in 2023 — a massive 35% increase from 2022. Additionally, more than 70% of parents in nearly every state support the implementation of school choice policies.

This momentum has caught the attention of state legislatures across the country.


Why Doesn’t Every Office Building Have A Microschool? — from fee.org by Kerry McDonald; via GSV
“We are breaking down walls between communities and classrooms,” said Revolution School founder, Gina Moore.

Today, intrepid educators continue to try to make change within the traditional schooling system, but increasingly entrepreneurial teachers and parents are working outside the system to create innovative, accessible K-12 learning models that push beyond the four walls of a conventional classroom—literally and figuratively.

One such program is Revolution School, a private, accredited high school located in a downtown office building in Philadelphia that draws students from more than 25 zip codes across the city.

Revolution School focuses on meaningful internships where students, known as “Rev-terns,” partner with local businesses to learn workplace skills and gain valuable experience. Students also take advantage of dual enrollment opportunities at the nearby Community College of Philadelphia, accumulating college credits while being mentored by Revolution School teachers.


PROOF POINTS: Tracking student data falls short in combating absenteeism at school — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
A post-pandemic study of an early warning system indicated that family income makes a difference

Chronic absenteeism has surged across the country since the pandemic, with more than one out of four students missing at least 18 days of school a year. That’s more than three lost weeks of instruction a year for more than 10 million school children. An even higher percentage of poor students, more than one out of three, are chronically absent.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, calls chronic absenteeism – not learning loss – “the greatest challenge for public schools.” At a Feb. 8, 2024 panel discussion, Malkus said, “It’s the primary problem because until we do something about that, academic recovery from the pandemic, which is significant, is a pipe dream.”

 

“AI native” Gen Zers are comfortable on the cutting edge — from axios.com by Jennifer A. Kingson; via The Rundown AI

When it comes to generative AI at school and work, Gen Z says: Bring it on.

Why it matters: While some workers are fearful or ambivalent about how ChatGPT, DALL-E and their ilk will affect their jobs, many college students and newly minted grads think it can give them a career edge.

  • So-called “AI natives” who are studying the technology in school may have a leg up on older “digital natives” — the same way that “digital native” millennials smugly bested their “digital immigrant” elders.

 

 

Top 6 Use Cases of Generative AI in Education in 2024 — from research.aimultiple.com by Cem Dilmegani

Use cases included:

  1. Personalized Lessons
  2. Course Design
  3. Content Creation for Courses
  4. Data Privacy Protection for Analytical Models
  5. Restoring Old Learning Materials
  6. Tutoring

The Next Phase of AI in Education at the U.S. Department of Education — from medium.com by Office of Ed Tech

Why are we doing this work?
Over the past two years, the U.S. Department of Education has been committed to maintaining an ongoing conversation with educators, students, researchers, developers — and the educational community at large — related to the continuous progress of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development and its implications for teaching and learning.

Many educators are seeking resources clarifying what AI is and how it will impact their work and their students. Similarly, developers of educational technology (“edtech”) products seek guidance on what guardrails exist that can support their efforts. After the release of our May 2023 report Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learningwe heard the desire for more.


2024 EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study — from library.educause.edu by Jenay Robert

Moving from reaction to action, higher education stakeholders are currently exploring the opportunities afforded by AI for teaching, learning, and work while maintaining a sense of caution for the vast array of risks AI-powered technologies pose. To aid in these efforts, we present this inaugural EDUCAUSE AI Landscape Study, in which we summarize the higher education community’s current sentiments and experiences related to strategic planning and readiness, policies and procedures, workforce, and the future of AI in higher education.


AI Update for K-16 Administrators: More People Need to Step-Up and Take the AI Bull By the Horns — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard
AI capabilities are way beyond what most schools are aware of, and they will transform education and society over the next few years.

Educational administrators should not worry about every AI development, but should, instead focus on the big picture, as those big picture changes will change the entire world and the educational system.

AI and related technologies (robotics, synthetic biology, and brain-computer interfaces) will continue to impact society and the entire educational system over the next 10 years. This impact on the system will be greater than anything that has happened over the last 100 years, including COVID-19, as COVID-19 eventually ended and the disruptive force of these technologies will only continue to develop.

AI is the bull in the China Shop, redefining the world and the educational system. Students writing a paper with AI is barely a poke in the educational world relative to what is starting to happen (active AI teachers and tutors; AI assessment; AI glasses; immersive learning environments; young students able to start their own business with AI tools; AIs replacing and changing jobs; deep voice and video fakes; intelligence leveling; individualized instruction; interactive and highly intelligent computers; computers that can act autonomously; and more).


 

 

How This College Dropout Raised $29 Million for His Online Education Platform and Landed the Biggest Investor of All — Shaq — from entrepreneur.com by Dan Bova; via GSV
Campus founder Tade Oyerinde and investor Shaquille O’Neal discuss the debt-free mission of the online community college.

Key Takeaways

  • Campus offers two-year associate degrees with tuition costs that allow many students to go for free.
  • The online community college has garnered $29 million in investment.
  • Shaq says the company met his criteria for investment: a passionate founder, a mission to change lives and a solid exit strategy.

Colleges Were Already Bracing for an ‘Enrollment Cliff.’ Now There Might Be a Second One. — from chronicle.com by Dan Bauman; via GSV

[In addition to the decline of high school graduates starting in 2025] In recent months, however, the Census has updated its forecasts — instead of rebounding at some point in the mid-2030s, the number of 18-year-olds is now projected to contract after cresting at around 4.2 million people in 2033, shrinking to around 3.8 million by 2039. After that, the Bureau doesn’t anticipate the population of 18-year-olds will exceed 4 million people in any year this century.


How this Vietnam vet started a college program at a desert prison — from opencampusmedia.org; an essay by James “Sneaky” White as told to Charlotte West.

James “Sneaky” White, 80, spent nearly four decades incarcerated in California. His nickname “Sneaky” comes from his days as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. While he was incarcerated, he helped create a college program that has since graduated more than 1,500 men. In this “as told to” story, he shares how he started a college program for veterans at a desert prison.


Virtual Forum – On Demand
Starting a Program for Incarcerated Students — from chronicle.com by Charles B. Adams, Ruth Delaney, and Laura Massa; via Goldie Blumenstyk

Does your institution have programming in place for incarcerated students? Thanks to new federal assistance, students in many prisons can now take college courses for credit. While colleges are interested in starting or expanding programs to serve those students, they often have no idea how to do so.


 

Digital Learning Pulse Survey Reveals Higher-Ed Unprepared for Expected Impact of AI — from prnewswire.com by Cengage
Research illustrates that while GenAI could ease ongoing challenges in education, just 1 in 5 say their school is ready

WASHINGTONFeb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — While three-quarters of higher-education trustees (83%), faculty (81%) and administrators (76%) agree that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will noticeably change their institutions in the next five years, community college trustees are more optimistic than their community college counterparts, with (37%) saying their organization is prepared for the change coming compared to just 16% of faculty and 11% of administrator respondents.

Those findings are from the 2023-2024 Digital Learning Pulse Survey conducted by Cengage and Bay View Analytics with support from the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), College Pulse and the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) to understand the attitudes and concerns of higher education instructors and leadership.

From DSC:
It takes time to understand what a given technology brings to the table…let alone a slew of emerging technologies under the artificial intelligence (AI) umbrella. It’s hard enough when the technology is fairly well established and not changing all the time. But its extremely difficult when significant change occurs almost daily. 

The limited staff within the teaching & learning centers out there need time to research and learn about the relevant technologies and how to apply those techs to instructional design. The already stretched thin faculty members need time to learn about those techs as well — and if and how they want to apply them. It takes time and research and effort.

Provosts, deans, presidents, and such need time to learn things as well.

Bottom line: We need to have realistic expectations here.


AI Adoption in Corporate L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
Where we are, and the importance of use cases in enabling change

At the end of last year, O’Reilly Media published a comprehensive report on the adoption and impact of generative AI within enterprises.

The headline of the report is that we’ve never seen a technology adopted in enterprise as fast as generative AI. As of November 2023, two-thirds (67%) of survey respondents reported that their companies are using generative AI.

However, the vast majority of AI adopters in enterprise are still in the early stages; they’re experimenting at the edges, rather than making larger-scale, strategic decisions on how to leverage AI to accelerate our progress towards org goals and visions.

The single biggest hurdle to AI adoption in large corporates is a lack of appropriate use cases.

 

It’s Time to Launch a National Initiative to Create the New American High School — from the74million.org by Robin Lake; via GSV
Robin Lake: We must start thinking, talking and acting bigger when it comes to preparing teens for both college and career.

The blueprint design of a chair that you would often see in a high school classroom


One State Rolled Out a Promising Child Care Model. Now Others Are Replicating It. — from edsurge.com by Emily Tate Sullivan

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Last month, business leaders and child care advocates from a handful of states convened on Zoom. Representing Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, they had come together to discuss a new child care model, called “Tri-Share,” that has gained traction across the country, including in their respective regions.

The cost-sharing model, in which the state government, the employer and the employee each pay for one-third of the cost of child care, first launched in 2021 in Michigan, where it is furthest along. But it has become so popular that other states, including New York, North Carolina and Kentucky, have already secured funding for their own adaptations of the program.

Also relevant/see:


Road Scholars: When These Families Travel, School Comes Along for the Ride — from the74million.org by Linda Jacobson; via Matthew Tower
‘It’s not just a pandemic thing,’ one industry expert said about the growing number of families ‘roadschooling’ across the country.


Using Technology for Students in Special Education: What the Feds Want Schools to Know — from edweek.org by Alyson Klein

But this is the first time the department has released guidance on how assistive technology relates to the special education law. That’s partly because schools have come to rely so much more on technology for teaching and learning, Wright-Gallo said.

The guidance, released last month, is aimed at parents, specialists who provide services to babies and toddlers at risk of developmental delays, special educators, general educators, school and district leaders, technology specialists and directors, and state education officials, Wright-Gallo said.


Guiding and Connecting the Homeschooling Community — from michaelbhorn.substack.com by Michael B. Horn
How ‘Teach Your Kids’ is Empowering Parents to Take Charge of their Students’ Educations

More and more parents are taking charge of their children’s education through homeschooling.  Manisha Snoyer’s podcast and online homeschooling community, Teach Your Kids, is seeking to empower parents with the guidance, tools, and network they need to thrive as educators for their children. She joined the Future of Education to discuss her work, dispel misconceptions about homeschooling, and consider the future of this growing trend. I was intrigued to explore her observations that, through modularity, families can pull apart socialization, childcare, and the learning itself to make the benefits of homeschooling much more accessible. As always, subscribers can listen to the audio, watch the video, or read the transcript.


Can Career Learning Bring America’s Young People Back to School? — from realcleareducation.com by Taylor Maag

School absenteeism sky-rocketed post-pandemic: 6.5 million more students missed at least 10% or more of the 2021-22 school year than in 2017-18. This means 14.7 million students were chronically absent even after schools reopened from the pandemic. While preliminary data shows that absentee rates slightly decreased in the 2022-23 school year, truancy remains a serious concern for our nation’s K-12 system.

If we want to get students back in the classroom and avoid poor outcomes for our nation’s young people, U.S. leaders must rethink how we operate K-12 education. One potential solution is reinventing high school to ensure every young person is exposed to the world of work through career-oriented education and learning. An analysis of international cross-section data found that nations enrolling a large proportion of students in vocational or career-focused programs have significantly higher school attendance rates and higher completion rates than those that don’t.


My child with ADHD is being disciplined at school for things they can’t control. What can I do? — from understood.org by Julian Saavedra, MA
Is your child with ADHD being disciplined at school more and more? Get expert advice on how to manage school discipline. Learn the steps to better advocate for your child.

Also relevant/see:

  • What can I do if my child’s teacher takes recess away? — from understood.org By Kristin J. Carothers, PhD
    School can be extra hard for kids with ADHD when teachers take recess away. An expert weighs in on how you can work with teachers to find a solution.
  • For teachers: What to expect in an IEP meeting — from understood.org by Amanda Morin
    You’re not alone in having questions about IEP meetings. If you’re not a special education teacher, you may not have a lot of training around the IEP process.  Here are some of the basics:
 

The 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Reveals the Most Magnificent Animal Behavior — from thisiscolossal.com by Grace Ebert and Co.


The Sony World Photography Awards 2024 Celebrate Childhood Joy and Fiery Festivities — from thisiscolossal.com by Grace Ebert and Co.


In Drew Simms’s Short Film, Yellowstone National Park’s Gentle Giants Hunker Down in Subzero Temperatures — from thisiscolossal.com by Kate Mothes and Drew Simms

From DSC:
Check out this beautiful short film. It’s incredibly well done!


 

Healthcare High Schools — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Bloomberg and hospitals back dual-enrollment path from K-12 to high-demand jobs.

More career exploration in high school is needed to help Americans make better-informed choices about their education and job options, experts agree. And serious, employer-backed efforts to tighten connections between school and work are likely to emerge first in healthcare, given the industry’s severe staffing woes.

A new $250M investment by Bloomberg Philanthropies could be an important step in this direction. The money will seed the creation of healthcare-focused high schools in 10 U.S. locations, with a plan to enroll 6K students who will graduate directly from the early-college high schools into high-demand healthcare jobs that pay family-sustaining wages.


Microschools Take Center Stage with New Opportunities for Learning for 2024 — from the74million.org by Andrew Campanella
Campanella: More than 27,000 schools and organizations are celebrating National School Choice Week. Yours can, too

Last year, the landscape of K-12 education transformed as a record-breaking 20 states expanded school choice options. However, that is not the only school choice story to come out of 2023. As the nation steps into 2024, a fresh emphasis on innovation has emerged, along with new options for families. This is particularly true within the realm of microschooling.

Microschooling is an education model that is small by design — typically with 15 or fewer students of varying ages per class. It fosters a personalized and community-centric approach to learning that is especially effective in addressing the unique educational needs of diverse student populations. Programs like Education Savings Accounts are helping to fuel these microschools.


My Students Can’t Meet Academic Standards Because the School Model No Longer Fits Them — from edsurge.com by Sachin Pandya

Large classes create more distractions for students who struggle to focus, and they inevitably get less attention and support as there are more students for teachers to work with. High numbers of students make it more difficult to plan for individual needs and force teachers to teach to an imaginary middle. A rigid schedule makes it easy to schedule adults and services, but it is a challenge for kids who need time to get engaged and prefer to keep working at a challenge once they are locked in.

Now that I know what can engage and motivate these students, I can imagine creating more opportunities that allow them to harness their talents and grow their skills and knowledge. But we’re already a third of the way through the school year, and my curriculum requires me to teach certain topics for certain lengths of time, which doesn’t leave room for many of the types of experiences these kids need. Soon, June will come and I’ll pass them along to the next teacher, who won’t know what I know and will need another four months to learn it, wasting valuable time in these students’ educations.

From DSC:
We need teachers and professors to be able to contribute to learners’ records. Each student can review and decide whether they want to allow access to other teachers– or even to employers. Educators could insert what they’ve found to work with a particular student, what passions/interests that student has, or what to avoid (if possible). For example, has this student undergone some trauma, and therefore trauma-informed teaching should be employed. 

IEPs could be a part of learners’ records/profiles. The teams working on implementing these IEP’s could share important, searchable information.


The State of Washington Embraces AI for Public Schools — from synthedia.substack.com by Bret Kinsella; via Tom Barrett
Educational institutions may be warming up to generative AI

Washington state issued new guidelines for K-12 public schools last week based on the principle of “embracing a human-centered approach to AI,” which also embraces the use of AI in the education process. The state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, commented in a letter accompanying the new guidelines:

 

Your guide to AI: February 2024 — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich & Alex Chalmers

Areas covered include:

  • Policy
  • The (geo)politics of AI
  • Hardware
  • Big tech start-ups
  • Research
  • Startups
  • Exits

=



Text-to-Video with Google’s Lumiere



Amazon announces Rufus, a new generative AI-powered conversational shopping experience — from aboutamazon.com by Rajiv Mehta

Rufus is an expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s product catalog and information from across the web to answer customer questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons, make recommendations based on this context, and facilitate product discovery in the same Amazon shopping experience customers use regularly.

Launching [2/1/24] in beta to a small subset of customers in Amazon’s mobile app, Rufus will progressively roll out to additional U.S. customers in the coming weeks.

 

The Teaching and Learning Workforce in Higher Education, 2024 — from library.educause.edu by Nicole Muscanell


Opinion: Higher-Ed Trends to Watch in 2024 — from govtech.com by Jim A. Jorstad
If the recent past is any indication, higher education this year is likely to see financial stress, online learning, a crisis of faith in leadership, emerging tech such as AI and VR, cybersecurity threats, and a desperate need for skilled IT staff.

 “We’re in the early stages of creating a new paradigm for personalized assessment and learning; it’s critical for moving the field forward … It’s supporting teachers in the classroom to personalize their teaching by using AI to provide feedback for individual learners and pointing in the direction where students can go.”


PROOF POINTS: Most college kids are taking at least one class online, even long after campuses reopened — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
Shift to online classes and degrees is a response to declining enrollment

The pandemic not only disrupted education temporarily; it also triggered permanent changes. One that is quietly taking place at colleges and universities is a major, expedited shift to online learning. Even after campuses reopened and the health threat diminished, colleges and universities continued to offer more online courses and added more online degrees and programs. Some brick-and-mortar schools even switched to online only.


College Affordability Helped Drive Rise in State Support for Higher Ed — from chronicle.com by Sonel Cutler

State support for higher education saw a significant jump this year, rising more than 10 percent from 2023 — even though the share of that money provided by the federal government dropped 50 percent.

That’s according to the annual Grapevine report released Thursday by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO. The data reflect a continued upward trajectory for state investment in higher education, with a 36.5-percent increase in support nationally over the last five years, not adjusted for inflation.


 

 

Augment teaching with AI – this teacher has it sussed… — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Emphasis (emphasis DSC):

You’re a teacher who wants to integrate AI into your teaching. What do you do? I often get asked how should I start with AI in my school or University. This, I think, is one answer.

Continuity with teaching
One school has got this exactly right in my opinion. Meredith Joy Morris has implemented ChatGPT into the teaching process. The teacher does their thing and the chatbot picks up where the teacher stops, augmenting and scaling the teaching and learning process, passing the baton to the learners who carry on. This gives the learner a more personalised experience, encouraging independent learning by using the undoubted engagement that 1:1 dialogue provides.

There’s no way any teacher can provide this carry on support with even a handful of students, never mind a class of 30 or a course with 100. Teaching here is ‘extended’ and ‘scaled’ by AI. The feedback from the students was extremely positive.


Reflections on Teaching in the AI Age — from by Jeffrey Watson

The transition which AI forces me to make is no longer to evaluate writings, but to evaluate writers. I am accustomed to grading essays impersonally with an objective rubric, treating the text as distinct from the author and commenting only on the features of the text. I need to transition to evaluating students a bit more holistically, as philosophers – to follow along with them in the early stages of the writing process, to ask them to present their ideas orally in conversation or in front of their peers, to push them to develop the intellectual virtues that they will need if they are not going to be mastered by the algorithms seeking to manipulate them. That’s the sort of development I’ve meant to encourage all along, not paragraph construction and citation formatting. If my grading practices incentivize outsourcing to a machine intelligence, I need to change my grading practices.


4 AI Imperatives for Higher Education in 2024 — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

[Bryan Alexander] There’s a crying need for faculty and staff professional development about generative AI. The topic is complicated and fast moving. Already the people I know who are seriously offering such support are massively overscheduled. Digital materials are popular. Books are lagging but will gradually surface. I hope we see more academics lead more professional development offerings.

For an academic institution to take emerging AI seriously it might have to set up a new body. Present organizational nodes are not necessarily a good fit.


A Technologist Spent Years Building an AI Chatbot Tutor. He Decided It Can’t Be Done. — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young
Is there a better metaphor than ‘tutor’ for what generative AI can do to help students and teachers?

When Satya Nitta worked at IBM, he and a team of colleagues took on a bold assignment: Use the latest in artificial intelligence to build a new kind of personal digital tutor.

This was before ChatGPT existed, and fewer people were talking about the wonders of AI. But Nitta was working with what was perhaps the highest-profile AI system at the time, IBM’s Watson. That AI tool had pulled off some big wins, including beating humans on the Jeopardy quiz show in 2011.

Nitta says he was optimistic that Watson could power a generalized tutor, but he knew the task would be extremely difficult. “I remember telling IBM top brass that this is going to be a 25-year journey,” he recently told EdSurge.


Teachers stan AI in education–but need more support — from eschoolnews.com by Laura Ascione

What are the advantages of AI in education?
Canva’s study found 78 percent of teachers are interested in using AI education tools, but their experience with the technology remains limited, with 93 percent indicating they know “a little” or “nothing” about it – though this lack of experience hasn’t stopped teachers quickly discovering and considering its benefits:

  • 60 percent of teachers agree it has given them ideas to boost student productivity
  • 59 percent of teachers agree it has cultivated more ways for their students to be creative
  • 56 percent of teachers agree it has made their lives easier

When looking at the ways teachers are already using generative artificial intelligence, the most common uses were:

  • Creating teaching materials (43 percent)
  • Collaborative creativity/co-creation (39 percent)
  • Translating text (36 percent)
  • Brainstorming and generating ideas (35 percent)

The next grand challenge for AI — from ted.com by Jim Fan


The State of Washington Embraces AI for Public Schools — from synthedia.substack.com by Bret Kinsella; via Tom Barrett
Educational institutions may be warming up to generative AI

Washington state issued new guidelines for K-12 public schools last week based on the principle of “embracing a human-centered approach to AI,” which also embraces the use of AI in the education process. The state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, commented in a letter accompanying the new guidelines:


New education features to help teachers save time and support students — from by Shantanu Sinha

Giving educators time back to invest in themselves and their students
Boost productivity and creativity with Duet AI: Educators can get fresh ideas and save time using generative AI across Workspace apps. With Duet AI, they can get help drafting lesson plans in Docs, creating images in Slides, building project plans in Sheets and more — all with control over their data.

 

From DSC:
How does this sentence hit you? I read it in a fictional book recently and it gave me pause.

…we don’t have a justice system in this country. We have a legal system.


Innovative New Project Launches to Increase Access to Justice for the Overlooked Middle Class — from iaals.du.edu by Kelsey Montague

An important addition to the national access to justice landscape, the Above the Line Network (ATLN) has launched today to tackle the daunting challenges that middle-class Americans face when seeking legal help that doesn’t break the bank. While most organized access to justice efforts rightly focus on low-income and poor people who are especially vulnerable, we can never achieve our nation’s ideal of equal justice for all when middle-class people—who make up more than 50% of the nation’s population— and small businesses struggle to find quality, affordable legal services. They are “above the line” of income eligibility for the free legal aid reserved for the poorest Americans, but they also struggle to find quality and affordable legal services in the current legal market.


Top legal tech trends for businesses to watch in 2024 — from verdict.co.uk by

  • Data protection: a new regulator, more reforms and continued enforcement
  • Online reforms and increased regulation

2024 in-house legal outlook series: GCs, CLOs ready for hard decisions — from legaldive.com by Lyle Moran and Robert Freedman
Legal leaders look at practical generative AI use cases and get tough on outside counsel spend, among other priorities this year.

General counsel and chief legal officers will do more work in-house with the help of tech investments, especially as more legal tech companies add generative AI and other types of artificial intelligence capabilities to the tools they offer in-house teams. At the same time, legal leaders will be exploring ways to reduce outside counsel costs, in part by giving work to smaller firms and reserving the most complex work for the largest firms.


Politico Launches AI-generated Bill Summaries Available to Politico Pro Subscribers — from politico.com by Melissa Cooke; via The Neuron

ARLINGTON, Va. – POLITICO, today announced the launch of a new, innovative feature allowing POLITICO Pro users to quickly review an AI-generated summary of Federal bills, rapidly accessing critical legislative context while benefiting from the in-depth analysis and insights that subscribers rely upon. POLITICO Pro is the leading subscription policy intelligence platform.


Legaltech is revolutionizing the way lawyers work — from verdict.co.uk by
Legaltech focuses on increasing work efficiency by addressing important but low-value or high-volume work to provide more time for lawyers to work on tasks requiring a higher skill set.

For example, in February 2023, Allen & Overy launched its generative AI platform, integrating Harvey (based on GPT-4 technology by OpenAI), into its global practice to help its lawyers with drafting legal documentation. In December 2023, Allen & Overy also created an AI contract negotiation tool, ContractMatrix, in partnership with Harvey. The firm estimates that the tool saves around seven hours when negotiating a contract. When discussing these innovations, David Wakeling, Head of the Markets Innovation Group at Allen & Overy explained that the firm’s goal was to “disrupt the legal market before someone disrupts us.”


 

 

Hologram lecturers thrill students at trailblazing UK university — from theguardian.com by Rachel Hall

Prof Vikki Locke and Prof Gary Burnett try out the hologram technology. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Any university lecturer will tell you that luring students to a morning lecture is an uphill struggle. But even the most hungover fresher would surely be enticed by a physics lesson from Albert Einstein or a design masterclass from Coco Chanel.

This could soon be the reality for British students, as some universities start to beam in guest lecturers from around the globe using the same holographic technology that is used to bring dead or retired singers back to the stage.

 

Denver middle schoolers can get a $1,000 debit card for extracurriculars in new experiment for school success — from coloradosun.com by Jennifer Brown
Middle school students in Denver Public Schools who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch are eligible to apply for debit cards loaded with $1,000 for sports, art and music activities

The offer — $1,000 on a restricted debit card that works at 127 organizations with after-school and summer programs — is called My Spark Denver, an experiment for Denver middle school students that organizers hope could one day expand to other age groups and other parts of the state.

The program is capped at 4,000 kids, and already, more than 1,000 have been approved. It’s first-come, first-served, and the only requirements are that the kids are in a Denver Public Schools middle school and that their family qualifies for free and reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian