Learning Ecosystems

To fight teacher shortages, some states are looking to community colleges to train a new generation of educators [Retka]

On 10/09/2022, in career development, community colleges, education, higher education, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

To fight teacher shortages, some states are looking to community colleges to train a new generation of educators — from hechingerreport.org by Janelle Retka
In Washington and a handful of other states, would-be teachers can now earn their degrees from community colleges, part of an effort to help diversify the profession

Excerpt:

Community college-based teaching programs like this are rare, but growing. They can dramatically cut the cost and raise the convenience of earning a teaching degree, while making a job in education accessible to a wider diversity of people.

In Washington, nine community colleges offer education degrees. Nationally, Community College Baccalaureate Association data indicates just six other states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico — offer baccalaureate degrees related to K-12 education. (Two other states, Texas and Wyoming, offer early childhood education degrees.)

The expansion comes at a good time: Teacher shortages have worsened in the past decade, and fewer undergraduates are going into teacher training programs.

Addendum on 10/10/22:

A dwindling number of new U.S. college graduates have a degree in education — from pewresearch.org by Katherine Schaeffer

What researchers learned about online higher education during the pandemic — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Its massive expansion created a worldwide laboratory to finally assess how well it works

Excerpts:

Now the results of this experiment are starting to come in. They suggest that online higher education may work better than pre-pandemic research showed, and that it is evolving decisively toward a combination of in-person and online, or “blended,” classes.
…
“Initially when we were doing that research it was always on the class or the course level and very rarely were you able to see how online education worked across programs and across institutions,” never mind across the world, said Michael Brown, assistant professor of higher education and student affairs at the Iowa State University School of Education.

By last year, more than half of all faculty said they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they wanted to combine online with face-to-face instruction, a Bay View Analytics survey found. A Harvard University task force found that 82 percent of faculty there were interested in adding digital tools they adopted while teaching remotely to their in-person classes.
…
“It’s going to take years for us to really be able to see, out of the things coming out of the pandemic, what works well, what works well in some settings and what works well for some students and not for others,” Hart said.

Also from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus, see:

Momentum builds for helping students adapt to college by nixing freshman grades
Critics deride ‘un-grading’ as coddling, say it risks creating ‘snowflake’ students

Struggling small colleges are joining the ‘sharing economy’ — teaming up to share courses and majors [Marcus]

On 10/09/2022, in colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, curriculum, education technology, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, Michigan, streams of content, student-related, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Struggling small colleges are joining the ‘sharing economy’ — teaming up to share courses and majors — from by hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Faced with declining enrollment, colleges find ways to add in-demand courses and attract reluctant students

Excerpt:

“I couldn’t say no to getting the degree I wanted from a smaller school instead of at a big university where you’re looking at 200 students in a class,” said Smith, now an Adrian sophomore.

Adrian is among a fast-growing number of mostly small, liberal arts colleges that are adding explicitly career-focused programs through a little-noticed innovation called course sharing.

It’s a sort of Amazon Prime approach to higher education that lets majors in the humanities and other disciplines, without leaving their home campuses, “stream” classes, often taught by star faculty from top universities, in fields such as coding.

“You get an Adrian degree, you have an Adrian experience, you play your sport,” said Ryan Boyd, another Adrian student who through course sharing was able to add a minor in computer science to his business management major. “But you get to take courses from Michigan and Harvard.”

From DSC:
As a person who enjoys peering into the future, I often wondered what the place of consortiums would be within higher education. Would organizations share content with each other? This article is along those lines. I will continue to pulse-check that area.

Returnships are the new internships for adults [Shell]

On 10/09/2022, in adult learning, Alternatives, career development, parents/guardians, participation, reinvent, skills, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Returnships are the new internships for adults — from synchronybank.com by Adam Shell

Excerpt:

What Is a Returnship?
Returnships are essentially internships for adults looking to re-enter the workforce after being away from the typical 9-to-5 grind for a year or more. They are job-learning opportunities that can be hugely lucrative for women—such as moms who took a job hiatus—but can also be utilized by anyone returning to the workforce or looking for a career switch-up.

“Since I got the opportunity at Audible, everything has changed for me for the better,” Gutgutia says. “I really felt a spark in my life.” In February, Gutgutia landed a full-time job at Audible as a quality assurance engineer after completing the returnship program.

Artificial Intelligence in Video Production [Anderson]

On 10/09/2022, in 21st century, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, creativity, design, digital storytelling, digital video, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, graphics, media/film, storytelling, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence in Video Production — from provideocoalition.com by Iain Anderson

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence has promised so much for so long, and in many ways, it’s been less than perfect. Siri doesn’t quite understand what you’re asking; Google Translate can’t yet seamlessly bridge the gap between languages, and navigation software still doesn’t always offer an accurate route. But it’s getting pretty good. While a variety of AI-based technologies have been improving steadily over the past several years, it’s the recent giant strides made in image generation that’s potentially groundbreaking for post production professionals. Here, I’ll take you through the ideas behind the tech, along with specific examples of how modern, smart technology will change your post workflow tomorrow, or could today.

Also relevant/see:

Google’s newest AI generator creates HD video from text prompts — from arstechnica.com by Benj Edwards
Not to be outdone by Meta, Google’s AI generator can output 1280×768 HD video at 24 fps.
Google demos two new text-to-video AI systems, focusing on quality and length — from theverge.com by James Vincent

Isaiah 55:6 & Micah:8 6

On 10/09/2022, in faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, parents/guardians, relationships, religion, society, youth, by Daniel Christian

Isaiah 55:6 — from biblegateway.com

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.

Micah 6:8 — from biblegateway.com

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Why text-to-speech tools might have a place in your classroom with Dr. Kirsten Kohlmeyer – Easy TeTech Podcast 183 — from classtechtips.com by Monica Burns

Excerpt:

In this episode, Assistive Technology Director, Dr. Kirsten Kohlmeyer, joins to discuss the power of accessibility and text-to-speech tools in classroom environments. You’ll also hear plenty of digital resources to check out for text-to-speech options, audiobooks, and more!

Assistive tools can provide:

Text-to-speech
Definitions/vocabularies
Ability to level the Lexile level of a reading
Capability to declutter a website
More chances to read to learn something new
and more

Speaking of tools, also see:

Best online tools for creating interactive maps for students and teachers — from educatorstechnology.com by Med Kharbach, PhD

Best Venn Diagram Makers for Non-designers — from educatorstechnology.com by Med Kharbach, PhD

Nikolas Badminton – Elevate Festival 2022 Keynote [futurist.com]

On 10/09/2022, in Africa, business, Canada, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, ideas, legislatures / government / legal, society, story, storytelling, strategy, United States, by Daniel Christian

Nikolas Badminton – Elevate Festival 2022 Keynote — futurist.com by Nikolas Badminton

Excerpts/words/phrases:

Shifting from “What is?” to “What if? (i.e., paradigm shifts)
Megatrends
Potential futures
Signals of change
Scenarios
Trajectories
Think about the good as well as the bad
Telling stories
Black swans/elephants
Making your organization more profitable and resilient

Tearing the ‘paper ceiling’: McKinsey supports effort driving upward mobility for millions of workers [mckinsey.com]

On 10/09/2022, in Alternatives, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, skills, society, technology (general), trends, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Tearing the ‘paper ceiling’: McKinsey supports effort driving upward mobility for millions of workers — from mckinsey.com

Excerpt:

September 23, 2022There’s a hidden talent pool that most employers overlook—the more than 70 million workers in the US who are STARs, or workers ‘skilled through alternative routes.’ Whether through community college, workforce training, bootcamp or certificate programs, military service, or on-the-job learning, STARs have the skills for higher-wage jobs but often find themselves blocked from consideration.

This week, nonprofit Opportunity@Work and the Ad Council have launched a nationwide campaign to ‘Tear the Paper Ceiling’ and encourage employers to change hiring practices. McKinsey is providing pro bono support to the effort through data and analytics tools that enable recruiters to recognize STARs and their skills.

“While companies scramble to find talent amid a perceived skills gap, many of their job postings have needlessly excluded half of the workers in the country who have the skills for higher-wage work,” says Byron Auguste, founder of Opportunity@Work and a former senior partner at McKinsey. “Companies like the ones we’re proud to call partners in this effort—and those we hope will join—can lead the way by tapping into skilled talent from a far wider range of backgrounds.”

There are lots of reasons why someone might not begin or complete a degree that have nothing to do with their intrinsic abilities or potential. We know there are better ways to screen for talent and now we have the research and tools to back that up.

Carolyn Pierce, McKinsey partner

Also from McKinsey, see:

Latest McKinsey tech outlook identifies 14 key trends for business leaders

Excerpt:

October 4, 2022 The McKinsey Technology Council—a global group of over 100 scientists, entrepreneurs, researchers, and business leaders—has published its second annual Technology Trends Outlook. By assessing metrics of innovation, interest, investment, and adoption, the council has prioritized and synthesized 40 technologies into 14 leading trends.

Following on from last year, applied AI once again earned the highest score for innovation in the report. Sustainability, meanwhile, emerged as a major catalyst for tech around the world, with clean energy and sustainable consumption drawing the highest investment from private-equity and venture-capital firms. And five new trends were added to this year’s edition: industrializing machine learning, Web3, immersive-reality technologies, the future of mobility, and the future of space.

In this post, McKinsey senior partner Lareina Yee, expert partner Roger Roberts, and McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui share their thoughts about what the findings may mean for leaders over the next few years.

Radar Trends to Watch: October 2022 [Loukides]

On 10/09/2022, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, computer science, copyright/ownership/NFTs, cryptocurrencies, data related items, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, innovation, internet, Natural Language Processing (NLP), NVIDIA, platforms, social media, technology (general), trends, by Daniel Christian

Radar Trends to Watch: October 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Machine Learning, Metaverse, Web3, and More

Excerpt:

September was a busy month. In addition to continued fascination over art generation with DALL-E and friends, and the questions they pose for intellectual property, we see interesting things happening with machine learning for low-powered processors: using attention, mechanisms, along with a new microcontroller that can run for a week on a single AA battery. In other parts of the technical universe, “platform engineering” has been proposed as an alternative to both DevOps and SRE. We’ve seen demonstrations of SQL injection-like attacks against GPT-3; and companies including Starbucks, Chipotle, and Universal Studios are offering NFT-based loyalty programs. (In addition to a Chipotle’s steak grilling demo in the Metaverse.)

Also relevant/see:

General AI News — from essentials.news

Disabled Americans Reap Remote-Work Reward in Record Employment [Smith]

On 10/05/2022, in accessibility / UDL, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), career development, health, neurodivergent/special needs, society, sociology, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Disabled Americans Reap Remote-Work Reward in Record Employment — from bloomberg.com by Molly Smith
Adults with disabilities have rarely been employed in such high numbers

Excerpt:

Anardi is part of the second-largest minority group in the US — adults with disabilities. The 42.5 million disabled Americans make up 13% of the civilian population, compared with the nearly 19% that is Hispanic and the almost 12% that’s African American, according to 2021 Census data released on Sept. 15. After suffering some of the worst job losses during the initial phase of the pandemic, people with disabilities are now benefiting from the remote-work trend it triggered. Advocates hope they will continue to reap such rewards, even as companies demand that employees return to the office.

8 Ways to Use QR Codes in Higher Education Classrooms — from er.educause.edu by Tolulope (Tolu) Noah

Excerpt:

QR codes open up a world of possibility in the higher education setting. They provide a quick and easy way for students to access instructional materials, and they complement the design of more interactive and engaging learning experiences.

From DSC:
QR codes can bridge the physical world with the digital world — which is something about to take an exponential leap as more AR and MR-based hardware and software solutions hit the marketplace in the near future.

Two neighboring states — Oregon and California — have recently come to different conclusions on whether to license paralegals to provide some legal services.

On 10/04/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), change, changing business models, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, policy, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

Utah’s reforms offer model for serving low-income and indigent people, report suggests — from abajournal.com by Matt Reynolds

Excerpt:

The Utah model of reform allowing nonlawyers to offer legal services could be “critical” to serving people who can’t afford them, according to a Stanford Law School study published Tuesday.

The 59-page report by the school’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession offers an early look at how regulatory changes in Arizona and Utah have impacted the delivery of legal services. It also examined who is being served by innovations in those states.

Also relevant, see this upcoming webinar:

Two neighboring states — Oregon and California — have recently come to different conclusions on whether to license paralegals to provide some legal services.

In July, the Oregon Supreme Court, with the support of the Oregon State Bar’s Board of Governors, approved a proposal to allow licensed paralegals to provide limited legal services in family law and landlord/tenant cases — two areas of law with large numbers of self-represented litigants. In August, the California legislature, after opposition from some lawyers’ groups, prohibited the State Bar of California from implementing, or even proposing, any loosening of existing restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law before 2025, effectively killing a proposal to permit licensing of paraprofessionals to provide limited legal services.

This webinar will explore how and why Oregon and California reached conflicting results and identify lessons learned from both experiences.

Register >>

Also relevant/see:

IAALS Panel Explores Alternative Paths to Legal Licensure — from iaals.du.edu

Redesigning Legal: Redesigning How We License New Lawyers from IAALS on Vimeo.

Also see the following items from Natalie Anne Knowlton (@natalalleycat) on Twitter

A new study shows that Utah and Arizona’s ongoing experiments with loosening attorney regulations are offering lawyers “a host of new opportunities to extend their reach” without triggering an increase in consumer complaints. By @JgreeneJenna https://t.co/IWfpvl8o5G pic.twitter.com/85ruA2K1DN

— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) October 4, 2022

“They may call it innovation; I call it shifting the profits of the legal industry to nonlawyers” – Stephen Younger via @ABAJournal https://t.co/lobRhQonu4

— Natalie Anne Knowlton (@natalalleycat) September 30, 2022

A $500 Million International Project Will Create the Most Detailed Map of the Brain Ever [Gent]

On 10/04/2022, in biology, Daniel S. Christian, faith, memory, research, by Daniel Christian

A $500 Million International Project Will Create the Most Detailed Map of the Brain Ever — from singularityhub.com by Edd Gent

Excerpt:

That’s why the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative has just announced $500 million in funding over five years for an effort to characterize and map neuronal and other types of cells across the entire human brain. The project will be spearheaded by the Allen Institute in Seattle, but involves collaborations across 17 other institutions in the US, Europe, and Japan.

“These awards will enable researchers to explore the multifaceted characteristics of the more than 200 billion neurons and non-neuronal cells in the human brain at unprecedented detail and scale,” John Ngai, director of the NIH BRAIN Initiative, said in a statement.

From DSC:
The LORD does awesome work. I wonder how many of these scientists and researchers will become believers while doing this project.

Proverbs 27:1

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

OpenAI Says DALL-E Is Generating Over 2 Million Images a Day—and That’s Just Table Stakes [Dorrier]

On 10/04/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, design, digital video, disruption, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, graphics, media/film, open courseware and systems, vendors, by Daniel Christian

OpenAI Says DALL-E Is Generating Over 2 Million Images a Day—and That’s Just Table Stakes — from singularityhub.com by Jason Dorrier

Excerpt:

The venerable stock image site, Getty, boasts a catalog of 80 million images. Shutterstock, a rival of Getty, offers 415 million images. It took a few decades to build up these prodigious libraries.

Now, it seems we’ll have to redefine prodigious. In a blog post last week, OpenAI said its machine learning algorithm, DALL-E 2, is generating over two million images a day. At that pace, its output would equal Getty and Shutterstock combined in eight months. The algorithm is producing almost as many images daily as the entire collection of free image site Unsplash.

And that was before OpenAI opened DALL-E 2 to everyone.

Here’s a look at what DALL·E 2 can do. ???

Want to see more? Follow along on Instagram: https://t.co/eKejIFxWdn

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 6, 2022

From DSC:
Further on down that Tweet is this example image — wow!
.

.

On the video side of things, also relevant/see:

Meta’s new text-to-video AI generator is like DALL-E for video — from theverge.com by James Vincent
Just type a description and the AI generates matching footage

A sample video generated by Meta’s new AI text-to-video model, Make-A-Video. The text prompt used to create the video was “a teddy bear painting a portrait.” Image: Meta

From DSC:
Hmmm…I wonder…how might these emerging technologies impact copyrights, intellectual property, and/or other types of legal matters and areas?

Learning Ecosystems

To fight teacher shortages, some states are looking to community colleges to train a new generation of educators [Retka]

Returnships are the new internships for adults [Shell]

Isaiah 55:6 & Micah:8 6

Nikolas Badminton – Elevate Festival 2022 Keynote [futurist.com]

Disabled Americans Reap Remote-Work Reward in Record Employment [Smith]

8 Ways to Use QR Codes in Higher Education Classrooms [Noah]

Two neighboring states — Oregon and California — have recently come to different conclusions on whether to license paralegals to provide some legal services.

A $500 Million International Project Will Create the Most Detailed Map of the Brain Ever [Gent]

Greetings!

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