From DSC:
Our family uses AT&T for our smartphones and for our Internet access. What I would really like from AT&T is to be able to speak into an app — either located on a smartphone or have their routers morph into Alexa-type of devices — to be able to speak to what I want my router to do:

“Turn off Internet access tonight from 9pm until 6am tomorrow morning.”
“Only allow Internet access for parents’ accounts.”
“Upgrade my bandwidth for the next 2 hours.”

Upon startup, the app would ask whether I wanted to setup any “admin” types of accounts…and, if so, would recognize that voice/those voices as having authority and control over the device.

Would you use this type of interface? I know I would!

P.S. I’d like to be able to speak to our
thermostat in that sort of way as well.

 

 

The Future of Leadership Development — from hbr.org by Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas

Excerpt:

The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need leadership skills and organizational capabilities different from those that helped them succeed in the past. There is also a growing recognition that leadership development should not be restricted to the few who are in or close to the C-suite. With the proliferation of collaborative problem-solving platforms and digital “adhocracies” that emphasize individual initiative, employees across the board are increasingly expected to make consequential decisions that align with corporate strategy and culture. It’s important, therefore, that they be equipped with the relevant technical, relational, and communication skills.

The good news is that the growing assortment of online courses, social and interactive platforms, and learning tools from both traditional institutions and upstarts—which make up what we call the “personal learning cloud” (PLC)—offers a solution. Organizations can select components from the PLC and tailor them to the needs and behaviors of individuals and teams. The PLC is flexible and immediately accessible, and it enables employees to pick up skills in the context in which they must be used. In effect, it’s a 21st-century form of on-the-job learning.

In this article we describe the evolution of leadership development, the dynamics behind the changes, and ways to manage the emerging PLC for the good of both the firm and the individual.

 

From DSC:
What they describe as a “personal learning cloud (PLC),” I call pieces of a Learning Ecosystem:

  • “…the growing assortment of online courses
  • social and interactive platforms
  • learning tools from both traditional institutions and upstarts”

 

 

 

Police across the US are training crime-predicting AIs on falsified data — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao
A new report shows how supposedly objective systems can perpetuate corrupt policing practices.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Despite the disturbing findings, the city entered a secret partnership only a year later with data-mining firm Palantir to deploy a predictive policing system. The system used historical data, including arrest records and electronic police reports, to forecast crime and help shape public safety strategies, according to company and city government materials. At no point did those materials suggest any effort to clean or amend the data to address the violations revealed by the DOJ. In all likelihood, the corrupted data was fed directly into the system, reinforcing the department’s discriminatory practices.


But new research suggests it’s not just New Orleans that has trained these systems with “dirty data.” In a paper released today, to be published in the NYU Law Review, researchers at the AI Now Institute, a research center that studies the social impact of artificial intelligence, found the problem to be pervasive among the jurisdictions it studied. This has significant implications for the efficacy of predictive policing and other algorithms used in the criminal justice system.

“Your system is only as good as the data that you use to train it on,” says Kate Crawford, cofounder and co-director of AI Now and an author on the study.

 

How AI is enhancing wearables — from techopedia.com by Claudio Butticev
Takeaway: Wearable devices have been helping people for years now, but the addition of AI to these wearables is giving them capabilities beyond anything seen before.

Excerpt:

Restoring Lost Sight and Hearing – Is That Really Possible?
People with sight or hearing loss must face a lot of challenges every day to perform many basic activities. From crossing the street to ordering food on the phone, even the simplest chore can quickly become a struggle. Things may change for these struggling with sight or hearing loss, however, as some companies have started developing machine learning-based systems to help the blind and visually impaired find their way across cities, and the deaf and hearing impaired enjoy some good music.

German AI company AiServe combined computer vision and wearable hardware (camera, microphone and earphones) with AI and location services to design a system that is able to acquire data over time to help people navigate through neighborhoods and city blocks. Sort of like a car navigation system, but in a much more adaptable form which can “learn how to walk like a human” by identifying all the visual cues needed to avoid common obstacles such as light posts, curbs, benches and parked cars.

 

From DSC:
So once again we see the pluses and minuses of a given emerging technology. In fact, most technologies can be used for good or for ill. But I’m left with asking the following questions:

  • As citizens, what do we do if we don’t like a direction that’s being taken on a given technology or on a given set of technologies? Or on a particular feature, use, process, or development involved with an emerging technology?

One other reflection here…it’s the combination of some of these emerging technologies that will be really interesting to see what happens in the future…again, for good or for ill. 

The question is:
How can we weigh in?

 

Also relevant/see:

AI Now Report 2018 — from ainowinstitute.org, December 2018

Excerpt:

University AI programs should expand beyond computer science and engineering disciplines. AI began as an interdisciplinary field, but over the decades has narrowed to become a technical discipline. With the increasing application of AI systems to social domains, it needs to expand its disciplinary orientation. That means centering forms of expertise from the social and humanistic disciplines. AI efforts that genuinely wish to address social implications cannot stay solely within computer science and engineering departments, where faculty and students are not trained to research the social world. Expanding the disciplinary orientation of AI research will ensure deeper attention to social contexts, and more focus on potential hazards when these systems are applied to human populations.

 

Furthermore, it is long overdue for technology companies to directly address the cultures of exclusion and discrimination in the workplace. The lack of diversity and ongoing tactics of harassment, exclusion, and unequal pay are not only deeply harmful to employees in these companies but also impacts the AI products they release, producing tools that perpetuate bias and discrimination.

The current structure within which AI development and deployment occurs works against meaningfully addressing these pressing issues. Those in a position to profit are incentivized to accelerate the development and application of systems without taking the time to build diverse teams, create safety guardrails, or test for disparate impacts. Those most exposed to harm from 42 these systems commonly lack the financial means and access to accountability mechanisms that would allow for redress or legal appeals. 233 This is why we are arguing for greater funding for public litigation, labor organizing, and community participation as more AI and algorithmic systems shift the balance of power across many institutions and workplaces.

 

Also relevant/see:

 

 

Is Blockchain Ready for Prime Time in Education? — from er.educause.edu by Wayne Skipper

Excerpt:

This is not to say that using blockchains to store educational records is in itself a poor use of the technology. Instead, what is needed is an open technology ecosystem that combines public blockchains, private blockchains, and off-chain storage, combining the strengths of each technology to create a decentralized storage mechanism whose verification incentives are not tied to currency markets. This approach offers all the benefits of blockchain-powered record verification without the worry that external economic factors or new technologies might render education records corruptible—and without the need to trust in the continued existence of any single technology company.

In early 2018, Concentric Sky and partners BrightHive and the DXtera Institute proposed such a blockchain ecosystem, called EdRec. EdRec is a learner-centric, open standards approach to learning record storage “on the blockchain,” with self-sovereignty of learner data as its key design principle. The project’s goal is to create a privacy-focused open technology standard that any company can implement in their products.

The proposal was a winner of the US Department of Education’s Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem Challenge, and since then, the project has begun to attract numerous institutions and large employers that see the value of a vendor-independent, machine-readable lifelong learning profile based on open technology standards.

 

 

Our elevator pitch: Your “permanent” educational record has never been truly yours. Wouldn’t you want to control it, control access as you progress from one transition to the next, and optimize it for your desired success? We’re rewriting the rules of the game for personal education data by empowering learners with control of their own permanent education record across institutions, applications, and platforms.

From concentricsky.com

 

Also see:

 



From DSC:
I’ve been hoping for this for a while now…

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Google and Microsoft warn that AI may do dumb things — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Alphabet likes to position itself as a leader in AI research, but it was six months behind rival Microsoft in warning investors about the technology’s ethical risks. The AI disclosure in Google’s latest filing reads like a trimmed down version of much fuller language Microsoft put in its most recent annual SEC report, filed last August:

“AI algorithms may be flawed. Datasets may be insufficient or contain biased information. Inappropriate or controversial data practices by Microsoft or others could impair the acceptance of AI solutions. These deficiencies could undermine the decisions, predictions, or analysis AI applications produce, subjecting us to competitive harm, legal liability, and brand or reputational harm.”

 

Chinese company leaves Muslim-tracking facial recognition database exposed online — from by Catalin Cimpanu
Researcher finds one of the databases used to track Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang.

Excerpt:

One of the facial recognition databases that the Chinese government is using to track the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region has been left open on the internet for months, a Dutch security researcher told ZDNet.

The database belongs to a Chinese company named SenseNets, which according to its website provides video-based crowd analysis and facial recognition technology.

The user data wasn’t just benign usernames, but highly detailed and highly sensitive information that someone would usually find on an ID card, Gevers said. The researcher saw user profiles with information such as names, ID card numbers, ID card issue date, ID card expiration date, sex, nationality, home addresses, dates of birth, photos, and employer.

Some of the descriptive names associated with the “trackers” contained terms such as “mosque,” “hotel,” “police station,” “internet cafe,” “restaurant,” and other places where public cameras would normally be found.

 

From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I’m generally pro-technology. But especially focusing in on that last article, to me, privacy is key here. For which group of people from which nation is next? Will Country A next be tracking Christians? Will Country B be tracking people of a given sexual orientation? Will Country C be tracking people with some other characteristic?

Where does it end? Who gets to decide? What will be the costs of being tracked or being a person with whatever certain characteristic one’s government is tracking? What forums are there for combating technologies or features of technologies that we don’t like or want?

We need forums/channels for raising awareness and voting on these emerging technologies. We need informed legislators, senators, lawyers, citizens…we need new laws here…asap.

 

 

 

For the first time in its history, the Gerber spokesbaby is a child with Down syndrome — from cnn.com by Andrea Diaz

Excerpt:

(CNN) This cutie with a contagious smile is 18-month-old Lucas Warren and on (2/7/18) he made history: He’s the first child with Down syndrome to become Gerber’s “Spokesbaby of the year” in its 91-year history.

 

Meet the first Gerber Baby with Down syndrome

 

From DSC:
I just saw this item from last February… and I love it! 

 

 

 

C-Level View | Feature:
Technology Change: Closing the Knowledge Gap — A Q&A with Mary Grush & Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

Technology changes quickly. People change slowly. The rate of technology change often outpaces our ability to understand it.

It has caused a gap between what’s possible and what’s legal. For example, facial recognition seems to be starting to show up all around us — that’s what’s possible. But what’s legal?

The overarching questions are: What do we really want from these technologies? What kind of future do we want to live in?

Those law schools that expand their understanding of emerging technologies and lead the field in the exploration of related legal issues will achieve greater national prominence.

Daniel Christian

 

 

 

For a next gen learning platform: A Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities / educationally-related “apps” [Christian]

From DSC:
In a next generation learning system, it would be sharp/beneficial to have a Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities that you could turn on and off (at will) — as one component of your learning ecosystem that could feature a setup located in your living room or office.

For example, put a Netflix-like interface to the apps out at eduappcenter.com (i.e., using a rolling interface at first, then going to a static page/listing of apps…again…similar to Netflix).

 

A Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities / educationally-related apps

 

 

 

From DSC:
For anyone out there who thinks that teaching and learning is easy and who agrees with the uninformed saying that goes “Those who can’t do…teach”…might I recommend a few potential to-do’s for you to try out…?

  1. Try teaching 30-35 students yourself for at least 4-6 weeks about a topic that you just found out that you’ll be teaching and one that you don’t know much about. (And see if you enjoy the process that some teachers sometimes have to go through…putting down the tracks right in front of the trains that are rapidly moving down the tracks right behind them.) Also, you must have at least one student in your class who requires an Individualized Education Program (IEP) as well as 4-5 students who constantly cause trouble and who don’t want to be in school at all.
    .
  2. Identify each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and learning preferences — and their Zone of Proximal Development — then customize the learning that each of your 30-35 learners receives (with the goal of keeping each student moving forward at their most appropriate pace, while staying encouraged and yet appropriately challenged).
    .
  3. Attend Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings and work with other IEP team members to significantly contribute to the appropriate student’s (or students’) teaching and learning environment(s). For a real challenge, at least one of those students will be someone who is struggling, but is very much hanging in there — someone who is “right in the middle of the pack,” so to speak. (My guess is that if you did this, you would never think of teaching, nor teachers, nor other specialists in quite the same way again. My guess is that you would develop a whole new appreciation for how complex teaching and learning really is.)

Regarding that last item about at least one of your students requiring an IEP, here are some questions that might come up:

  • What specialized services are needed this year?
  • What do the teachers need to know about this student’s cognitive processing/executive functioning?
  • How has the student been doing with the specialized services and teaching and learning strategies that have been attempted since the last IEP meeting? 
  • If their scores are going down, how are you going to address that issue (especially given limited resources)?
  • How is the student’s motivation level doing? Is attending school still a positive experience? Or are things starting to become negative and/or downright painful for the student? Are they starting to get bummed out about having to come to school?
  • How are they relating with and collaborating with other students? If poorly, how are you going to address that issue? How are you going to handle group-related projects (especially after reading all of those articles that assert which skills the workplace values these days)?
  • What do you do with grades and assessments? Do you treat the student differently and give them higher grades to keep them encouraged? But if you do that, will your school system back you up on that or will someone come down hard on you for doing that? Or, perhaps you will find yourself struggling internally — trying to figure out what grades are really for and wondering if they are helpful in the first place. In fact, you might find yourself wondering if grades aren’t really just a mechanism for ranking and comparing individuals, schools, and even entire school systems (which, as we know, impacts property values)? 
  • What do grades really produce — game players or (lifelong) learners? It won’t surprise you to know that I would argue that the former is what gets “produced.”  Grades don’t really produce as many learners as they do game-players (i.e., students who know the minimum amount of work that they need to do and still get that all important A).

So, as you can hopefully see here, learning is messy. It’s rarely black and white…there’s a lot of gray out there and a lot of things to consider. It’s not a one-size fits all. And teaching others well is certainly NOT easy to do! 

RELEVANT IDEAS:

While I’m thinking about related ideas here…wouldn’t it be great if EVERY. SINGLE. STUDENT. could have their own IEP and their own TEAM of specialists — people who care about their learning?

What if each student could have their own cloud-based learner profile — a portion of which would be a series of VoiceThreads per student, per period of time (or per mastering a particular topic or area)?  Such VoiceThreads could include multimedia-based comments, insights, and recommendations for how the student is doing and how they best learn. Through the years, those teams of people — people who care about that student’s learning — could help that student identify their:

  • strengths
  • weaknesses
  • passions/interests
  • their optimal learning strategies and preferences
  • potential careers

The students could periodically review such feedback.

 

 

For every single student, we could build a history of feedback, helpful suggestions, 
and recommendations via audio, video, text, graphics, etc.

 

 

When the future comes to West Michigan, will we be ready?


 

UIX: When the future comes to West Michigan, will we be ready? — from rapidgrowthmedia.com by Matthew Russell

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

“Here in the United States, if we were to personify things a bit, it’s almost like society is anxiously calling out to an older sibling (i.e., emerging technologies), ‘Heh! Wait up!!!'” Christian says. “This trend has numerous ramifications.”

Out of those ramifications, Christian names three main points that society will have to address to fully understand, make use of, and make practical, future technologies.

  1. The need for the legal/legislative side of the world to close the gap between what’s possible and what’s legal
  2. The need for lifelong learning and to reinvent oneself
  3. The need to make pulse-checking/futurism an essential tool in the toolbox of every member of the workforce today and in the future

 

When the future comes to West Michigan, will we be ready?

Photos by Adam Bird

 

From DSC:
The key thing that I was trying to relay in my contribution towards Matthew’s helpful article was that we are now on an exponential trajectory of technological change. This trend has ramifications for numerous societies around the globe, and it involves the legal realm as well. Hopefully, all of us in the workforce are coming to realize our need to be constantly pulse-checking the relevant landscapes around us. To help make that happen, each of us needs to be tapping into the appropriate “streams of content” that are relevant to our careers so that our knowledgebases are as up-to-date as possible. We’re all into lifelong learning now, right?

Along these lines, increasingly there is a need for futurism to hit the mainstream. That is, when the world is moving at 120+mph, the skills and methods that futurists follow must be better taught and understood, or many people will be broadsided by the changes brought about by emerging technologies. We need to better pulse-check the relevant landscapes, anticipate the oncoming changes, develop potential scenarios, and then design the strategies to respond to those potential scenarios.

 

 

Amazon has 10,000 employees dedicated to Alexa — here are some of the areas they’re working on — from businessinsider.com by Avery Hartmans

Summary (emphasis DSC):

  • Amazon’s vice president of Alexa, Steve Rabuchin, has confirmed that yes, there really are 10,000 Amazon employees working on Alexa and the Echo.
  • Those employees are focused on things like machine learning and making Alexa more knowledgeable.
  • Some employees are working on giving Alexa a personality, too.

 

 

From DSC:
How might this trend impact learning spaces? For example, I am interested in using voice to intuitively “drive” smart classroom control systems:

  • “Alexa, turn on the projector”
  • “Alexa, dim the lights by 50%”
  • “Alexa, open Canvas and launch my Constitutional Law I class”

 

 

 

AI surveillance goes to school — from axios.com by Kaveh Waddell

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A new breed of intelligent video surveillance is being installed in schools around the country — tech that follows people around campus and detects unusual behaviors.

Why it matters: This new phase in campus surveillance responds to high-profile school shootings like the one in Parkland, Florida, last February. School administrators are now reaching for security tech that keeps a constant, increasingly sophisticated eye on halls and classrooms. One drawback: a major blow to student privacy.

Background: Schools are experimenting wildly with technology in order to secure students, deploying facial recognition, license plate readers, microphones for gunshot detection and even patrol robots.

 

From DSC:
Based upon my experiences of attending a variety of public schools, I can’t help but think that this is truly a sad day indeed for the United States of America. This bumbs me out big time. Progress? No…I don’t think so. In fact, this situation is sad (and expensive) on multiple levels, and even dangerous on other levels (i.e., in regards to stalkers/hackers).

 

 

From DSC:
In this posting, I discussed an idea for a new TV show — a program that would be both entertaining and educational. So I suppose that this posting is a Part II along those same lines. 

The program that came to my mind at that time was a program that would focus on significant topics and issues within American society — offered up in a debate/presentation style format.

I had envisioned that you could have different individuals, groups, or organizations discuss the pros and cons of an issue or topic. The show would provide contact information for helpful resources, groups, organizations, legislators, etc. These contacts would be for learning more about a subject or getting involved with finding a solution for that problem.

OR

…as I revist that idea today…perhaps the show could feature humans versus an artificial intelligence such as IBM’s Project Debater:

 

 

Project Debater is the first AI system that can debate humans on complex topics. Project Debater digests massive texts, constructs a well-structured speech on a given topic, delivers it with clarity and purpose, and rebuts its opponent. Eventually, Project Debater will help people reason by providing compelling, evidence-based arguments and limiting the influence of emotion, bias, or ambiguity.

 

 

 

From DSC:
Below is a graphic from an article by Jane Hart that’s entitled, “A seamless working and learning environment“- to me, it’s another good example/graphic of a learning ecosystem. This one happens to belong to an organization, but each of us has our own learning ecosystem as well.

 

Another good example/graphic of a learning ecosystem

 

 

Futures thinking enters the mainstream — from thefuturesschool.com

Excerpts:

Organizations and society are beginning to acknowledge the incredible benefits of foresight. Even if these leaders and their organizations aren’t well-versed in all of the tools and lingo of futures thinking, more people are demanding that “we do things differently.” The momentum is building, and we believe 2019 could be another pivotal year for foresight!

Brands are Looking to Futurists to Foresee Trends and Anticipate Disruption”– Companies are realizing that traditional short-term strategic planning process will not uphold in the 21st century landscape. Instead, they are turning to futurists or Strategic Foresight methods to ensure their brands don’t become “obsolete.”

 

From DSC:
This reminds me of a slide that I created back in January 2017 where I mentioned that surveying the relevant landscapes is increasingly becoming a skill that our students should have:

 

 

I have it that all of us need to be pulse-checking the environments around us in order to spot emerging trends and potential future scenarios. We need to develop plans to address those potential scenarios ahead of time…so we can reduce the chances of getting broadsided.

 

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian