experimentation - Learning Ecosystems

Changed by Our Journey: Engaging Students through Simulive Learning — from er.educause.edu by Lisa Lenze and Megan Costello
In this article, an instructor explains how she took an alternative approach to teaching—simulive learning—and discusses the benefits that have extended to her in-person classrooms.

Excerpts:

Mustering courage, Costello devised a novel way to (1) share the course at times other than when it was regularly scheduled and (2) fully engage with her students in the chat channel during the scheduled class meeting time. Her solution, which she calls simulive learning, required her to record her lectures and watch them with her students. (Courageous, indeed!)

Below, Costello and I discuss what simulive learning looks like, how it works, and how Costello has taken her version of remote synchronous teaching forward into current semesters.

Megan Costello: I took a different approach to remote synchronous online learning at the start of the pandemic. Instead of using traditional videoconferencing software to hold class, I prerecorded, edited, and uploaded videos of my lectures to a streaming website. This website allowed me to specify a time and date to broadcast my lectures to my students. Because the lectures were already prepared, I could watch and participate in the chat with my students as we encountered the materials together during the scheduled class time. I drove conversations in chat, asked questions, and got students engaged as we covered materials for the day. The students had my full attention.

Professors Plan Summer AI Upskilling, With or Without Support — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
Academics seeking respite from the fire hose of AI information and hot takes launch summer workshops. But many of the grass-roots efforts fall short of meeting demand.

Excerpt:

In these summer faculty AI workshops, some plan to take their first tentative steps in redesigning assignments to recognize the AI-infused landscape. Others expect to evolve their in-progress teaching-with-AI practices. At some colleges, full-time staff will deliver the workshops or pay participants for professional development time. But some offerings are grassroots efforts delivered by faculty volunteers attended by participants on their own time. Even so, many worry that the efforts will fall short of meeting demand.

From DSC:
We aren’t used to this pace of change. It will take time for faculty members — as well as Instructional Designers, Instructional Technologists, Faculty Developers, Learning Experience Designers, Librarians, and others — to learn more about AI and its implications for teaching and learning. Faculty are learning. Staff are learning. Students are learning. Grace is needed. And faculty/staff modeling what it is to learn themselves is a good thing for students to see as well.

Also relevant/see:

It takes a village… Reflections on sustainable learning design — from The Educationalist (educationalist.substack.com) by Alexandra Mihai

Excerpts:

This can be done first and foremost through collaboration, bringing more people at the table, in a meaningful workflow, whereby they can make the best use of their expertise. Moreover, we need to take a step back and keep the big picture in mind, if we want to provide our students with a valuable experience.
…
This is all about creating and nurturing partnerships. Thinking in an inclusive way about who is at the table when we design our courses and our programmes and who we are currently missing. Generally speaking, the main actors involved should be: teaching staff, learning design professionals (under all their various names) and students. Yes, students. Although we are designing for their learning, they are all too often not part of the process.

In order to yield results, collaborative practice needs to be embedded in the institutional fabric, and this takes time. Building silos happens fast, breaking them is a long term process. Creating a culture of dialogue, with clear and replicable processes is key to making collaborative learning design work.

From DSC:
To me, Alexandra is addressing the topic of using teams to design, develop, and teach/offer courses. This is where a variety of skills and specialties can come together to produce an excellent learning experience. No one individual has all of the necessary skills — nor the necessary time. No way.

??

Webinars from Tom Barrett regarding AI for Education — a free webinar series

Webinar 6 replay
- Miriam Scott – Head of Digital Education at Hillbrook Anglican School, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
- Laura Bain – Head of Emerging Technologies and Innovation, Matthew Flinders Anglican College, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia.
- Nicole Dyson – Founder & CEO, Future Anything, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Webinar 5 replay
- In the fifth free webinar on AI for Education, I am joined by Dean Pearman, Head of Education at Beaconhills College and Tom Oliphant, Head of Technology and Enterprise at St John’s Grammar School. We explore questions about creativity, design and the new skills that are emerging. Join us to invest in your AI Literacy. Expand your toolset, broaden your understanding, and challenge your thinking.
Webinar 4 replay
- You are watching the fourth free webinar, a dialogue about AI for education with Sophie Fenton, Steve Brophy and hosted by Tom Barrett Building Blocks – key AI concepts to learn. Practical frameworks for navigating the challenges of AI for education. Be part of a dialogue on provocations about AI and human centred education, truth and identity.
Webinar 3 replay – Claire Amos and Philly Wintle
Webinar 2 replay – Gemma Rainger and Dr Nick Jackson
Webinar 1 replay – Chantelle Love, Pip Cleaves and Steve Brophy

Using ChatGPT in Math Lesson Planning — from edutopia.org by Kristen Moore
Artificial intelligence tools are useful beyond language arts classes. Math teachers can use them to save time and create interesting lessons.

Democratic Inputs to AI — from openai.com
Our nonprofit organization, OpenAI, Inc., is launching a program to award ten $100,000 grants to fund experiments in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules AI systems should follow, within the bounds defined by the law.

AI Canon — from a16z.com (Andreessen Horowitz) by Derrick Harris, Matt Bornstein, and Guido Appenzeller; via The Neuron newsletter

Excerpts:

Research in artificial intelligence is increasing at an exponential rate. It’s difficult for AI experts to keep up with everything new being published, and even harder for beginners to know where to start. So, in this post, we’re sharing a curated list of resources we’ve relied on to get smarter about modern AI. We call it the “AI Canon” because these papers, blog posts, courses, and guides have had an outsized impact on the field over the past several years.

Table of contents

A gentle introduction
Foundational learning
Tech deep dive
Practical guides to building with LLMs
Market analysis
Landmark research results

Generative AI hits Adobe Photoshop!

NVIDIA ACE for Games Sparks Life Into Virtual Characters With Generative AI

On 05/31/2023, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, Daniel S. Christian, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, future, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, multimedia, NVIDIA, by Daniel Christian

NVIDIA ACE for Games is a new foundry for intelligent in-game characters powered by generative AI. Developers of middleware, tools, and games can use NVIDIA ACE for Games to build and deploy customized speech, conversation, and animation AI models in their software and games.

From DSC:
I can’t wait to see this type of thing integrated into educational games/simulations/training.

“Intentional Teaching: Rethinking Teaching in an Age of AI” [Bruff, Lang, & Miller] + your almost daily AI update

On 05/25/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, digital audio, emerging technologies, Emotion, experimentation, hearts -- matters of the heart, multimedia, music, platforms, podcasting, society, sociology, by Daniel Christian

Intentional Teaching — from intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com by Derek Bruff
Rethinking Teaching in an Age of AI with James M. Lang and Michelle D. Miller

Excerpt:

In her 2022 book Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology, Michelle D. Miller writes about the “moral panics” that often happen in response to new technologies. In his 2013 book Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty, James M. Lang argues that the best way to reduce cheating is through better course design. What do these authors have to say about teaching in an age of generative AI tools like ChatGPT? Lots!

Governance of superintelligence — from openai.com
Now is a good time to start thinking about the governance of superintelligence—future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI.

OpenAI leaders propose international regulatory body for AI — from techcrunch.com by Devin Coldewey

Excerpt:

AI is developing rapidly enough and the dangers it may pose are clear enough that OpenAI’s leadership believes that the world needs an international regulatory body akin to that governing nuclear power — and fast. But not too fast. In a post to the company’s blog, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever explain that the pace of innovation in artificial intelligence is so fast that we can’t expect existing authorities to adequately rein in the technology. While there’s a certain quality of patting themselves on the back here, it’s clear to any impartial observer that the tech, most visibly in OpenAI’s explosively popular ChatGPT conversational agent, represents a unique threat as well as an invaluable asset.

OpenAI-backed robot startup beats Elon Musk’s Tesla, deploys AI-enabled robots in real world — from firstpost.com by Mehul Reuben Das; via The Rundown
A robotics startup backed by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT has beaten Elon Musk’s Tesla in the humanoid robots race, and has successfully deployed humanoid robots as security guards. Next, they will be deploying the robots in hospices and assisted living facilities

A robotics startup backed by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT has beaten Elon Musk’s Tesla in the humanoid robots race, and has successfully deployed humanoid robots as security guards. Next, they will be deploying the robots in hospices and assisted living facilities.

From DSC:
Hmmm…given the crisis of loneliness in the United States, I’m not sure that this type of thing is a good thing. But I’m sure there are those who would argue the other side of this.

Turn ideas into music with MusicLM — from blog.google
Experiment today by describing a musical idea and hearing it come to life.

Below comments/notes are from DSC (with thanks to Roberto Ferraro for this resource):
according to Dan Pink, intrinsic motivation is very powerful — much more powerful for many types of “messy/unclear” cognitive work (vs. clear, more mechanical types of work). What’s involved here according to Pink? Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Dan Pink makes his case in the video below. My question is:

If this is true, how might this be applied to education/training/lifelong learning?

From DSC (cont’d):

As Dan mentions, we each know this to be true. For example, for each of our kids, my wife and I introduced them to a variety of things — music, sports, art, etc. We kept waiting for them to discover which thing(s) that THEY wanted to pursue. Perhaps we’ll find out that this was the wrong thing to do. but according to Pink, it’s aligned with the type of energy and productivity that gets released when we pursue something that we want to pursue. Plus creativity flows in this type of setting.

Again, my thanks to Roberto Ferraro for resurfacing this item as his “One ‘must read’ for this week” item of his newsletter.

Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

“2023 Higher Education Trends” [Clark, Cluver, & Selingo] + many other HE-related items

On 05/24/2023, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, blended learning, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, curriculum, experimentation, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, history, hybrid learning, Hyflex learning, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, liberal arts, lifelong learning, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, parents, psychology, real-world assignments, reinvent, religion, skills, society, sociology, student-related, surviving, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Trend No. 3: The business model faces a full-scale transformation — from www2.deloitte.com by Cole Clark, Megan Cluver, and Jeffrey J. Selingo
The traditional business model of higher education is broken as institutions can no longer rely on rising tuition among traditional students as the primary driver of revenue.

Excerpt:

Yet the opportunities for colleges and universities that shift their business model to a more student-centric one, serving the needs of a wider diversity of learners at different stages of their lives and careers, are immense. Politicians and policymakers are looking for solutions to the demographic cliff facing the workforce and the need to upskill and reskill generations of workers in an economy where the half-life of skills is shrinking. This intersection of needs—higher education needs students; the economy needs skilled workers—means that colleges and universities, if they execute on the right set of strategies, could play a critical role in developing the workforce of the future. For many colleges, this shift will require a significant rethinking of mission and structure as many institutions weren’t designed for workforce development and many faculty don’t believe it’s their job to get students a job. But if a set of institutions prove successful on this front, they could in the process improve the public perception of higher education, potentially leading to more political and financial support for growing this evolving business model in the future.

Also see:

Trend No. 2: The value of the degree undergoes further questioning — from www2.deloitte.com by Cole Clark, Megan Cluver, and Jeffrey J. Selingo
The perceived value of higher education has fallen as the skills needed to keep up in a job constantly change and learners have better consumer information on outcomes.

Excerpt:

Higher education has yet to come to grips with the trade-offs that students and their families are increasingly weighing with regard to obtaining a four-year degree.
…
But the problem facing the vast majority of colleges and universities is that they are no longer perceived to be the best source for the skills employers are seeking. This is especially the case as traditional degrees are increasingly competing with a rising tide of microcredentials, industry-based certificates, and well-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

Trend No. 1: College enrollment reaches its peak — from www2.deloitte.com by Cole Clark, Megan Cluver, and Jeffrey J. Selingo
Enrollment rates in higher education have been declining in the United States over the years as other countries catch up.

Excerpt:

Higher education in the United States has only known growth for generations. But enrollment of traditional students has been falling for more than a decade, especially among men, putting pressure both on the enrollment pipeline and on the work ecosystem it feeds. Now the sector faces increased headwinds as other countries catch up with the aggregate number of college-educated adults, with China and India expected to surpass the United States as the front runners in educated populations within the next decade or so.

Plus the other trends listed here >>

Also related to higher education, see the following items:

Number of Colleges in Distress Is Up 70% From 2012 — from bloomberg.com by Nic Querolo (behind firewall)
More schools see falling enrollement and tuition revenue | Small private, public colleges most at risk, report show

About 75% of students want to attend college — but far fewer expect to actually go — from highereddive.com by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

There Is No Going Back: College Students Want a Live, Remote Option for In-Person Classes — from campustechnology.com by Eric Paljug

Excerpt:

Based on a survey of college students over the last three semesters, students understand that remotely attending a lecture via remote synchronous technology is less effective for them than attending in person, but they highly value the flexibility of this option of attending when they need it.

Future Prospects and Considerations for AR and VR in Higher Education Academic Technology — from er.educause.edu by Owen McGrath, Chris Hoffman and Shawna Dark
Imagining how the future might unfold, especially for emerging technologies like AR and VR, can help prepare for what does end up happening.

Black Community College Enrollment is Plummeting. How to Get Those Students Back — from the74million.org by Karen A. Stout & Francesca I. Carpenter
Stout & Carpenter: Schools need a new strategy to bolster access for learners of color who no longer see higher education as a viable pathway

As the Level Up coalition reports ,“the vast majority — 80% — of Black Americans believe that college is unaffordable.” This is not surprising given that Black families have fewer assets to pay for college and, as a result, incur significantly more student loan debt than their white or Latino peers. This is true even at the community college level. Only one-third of Black students are able to earn an associate degree without incurring debt.

Repairing Gen Ed | Colleges struggle to help students answer the question, ‘Why am I taking this class?’ — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
Students Are Disoriented by Gen Ed. So Colleges Are Trying to Fix It.

Excerpts:

Less than 30 percent of college graduates are working in a career closely related to their major, and the average worker has 12 jobs in their lifetime. That means, he says, that undergraduates must learn to be nimble and must build transferable skills. Why can’t those skills and ways of thinking be built into general education?
…
“Anyone paying attention to the nonacademic job market,” he writes, “will know that skills, rather than specific majors, are the predominant currency.”

Micro-credentials Survey. 2023 Trends and Insights. — from holoniq.com
HolonIQ’s 2023 global survey on micro-credentials

3 Keys to Making Microcredentials Valid for Learners, Schools, and Employers — from campustechnology.com by Dave McCool
To give credentials value in the workplace, the learning behind them must be sticky, visible, and scalable.

Positive Partnership: Creating Equity in Gateway Course Success — from insidehighered.com by Ashley Mowreader
The Gardner Institute’s Courses and Curricula in Urban Ecosystems initiative works alongside institutions to improve success in general education courses.

American faith in higher education is declining: one poll — from bryanalexander.org by Bryan Alexander

Excerpt:

The main takeaway is that our view of higher education’s value is souring. Fewer of us see post-secondary learning as worth the cost, and now a majority think college and university degrees are no longer worth it: “56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is a bad bet compared with 42% who retain faith in the credential.”
…
Again, this is all about one question in one poll with a small n. But it points to directions higher ed and its national setting are headed in, and we should think hard about how to respond.

Red Sox Turn Fenway Park into “Learning Lab” for Boston 6th Graders — from by Ira Stoll
“The key to unlock opportunity is education and hard work,” students are told at launch event

Students from the 6th grade at Nathan Hale School complete a “bingo challenge” as part of the Red Sox Hall of Fame stop on their guided tour of the Fenway Park Learning Lab.

Excerpt:

The six-stop tour has students learning history, geography, math, and science. Student visitors get baseball caps, t-shirts, and a backpack full of other souvenir items like baseball cards, binoculars, a calculator, and a pen. The most important piece of equipment may be a 40-page, seriously substantive workbook, developed with the Boston Public Schools, that students work their way through along the hourlong guided tour.

From DSC:
Very interesting.

Being a new teacher is hard. Having a good mentor can help — from npr.org by Cory Turner

Excerpt:

[Besides this article’s focus on mentorship]

In March, I reported a pair of stories from Jackson, Miss., where the school district is paying for unlicensed classroom aides to go back to school and get their master’s degrees.

In April, I told the story of a remarkable idea: A new high school in San Antonio dedicated entirely to training high-schoolers in the art and science of good teaching.

From DSC:
I would add a few more items:

Significantly reduce the impact of legislators on K-12. If they do vote on something that would impact schools, each legislator that votes on such legislation must first spend at least ___ week(s) observing in some of the schools that would be impacted before even starting to draft legislation and/or debate on the topic(s).
Instead, turn over more control and power to the students, teachers, K12 administrators, parents, and school boards.
Provide more choice, more control as each student can handle it.
Stop the one-size fits all system. Instead use AI-based systems to provide more personalized learning.
Develop more hybrid programs — but this time I’m talking mixing what we’ve known as public education with homeschooling and smaller learning pods. Let’s expand what’s included when we discuss “learning spaces.”
Strive for a love of learning — vs. competition and developing gameplayers
Support makerspaces, entrepreneurship, and experiments
Speaking of experiments, I would recommend developing more bold experiments outside of the current systems.

Along the lines of potential solutions/visions, see:

Why ‘System Transformation’ Is Likely A Pipe Dream — from michaelbhorn.substack.com by Michael Horn
But I’m for System Replacement

Excerpt:

Foremost among them is this: Despite all the fancy models and white papers around what are all the levers to pull in order to transform a system, system transformation almost never happens by changing the fundamental tenets of the system itself. Instead, it comes from replacing the system with a brand-new system.

To start to understand why, consider the complicated system in which public schools find themselves. As Thomas Arnett explained, they are one part of a vast value network of federal, state, and local regulators, voters and taxpayers, parents and students, teachers, administrators, unions, curriculum providers, school vendors, public infrastructure, higher education institutions, and more.

New ideas, programs, or entities that don’t fit into these processes, priorities, and cost structures are simply not plug-compatible into that value network. They consequently get rejected, tossed to the fringe, or altered to meet the needs of the existing actors in the value network.

Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI calls for US to regulate artificial intelligence — from bbc.com by James Clayton

Excerpt:

The creator of advanced chatbot ChatGPT has called on US lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, testified before a US Senate committee on Tuesday about the possibilities – and pitfalls – of the new technology. In a matter of months, several AI models have entered the market. Mr Altman said a new agency should be formed to license AI companies.

Also related to that item, see:
Why artificial intelligence developers say regulation is needed to keep AI in check — from pbs.org

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence was a focus on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Many believe AI could revolutionize, and perhaps upend, considerable aspects of our lives. At a Senate hearing, some said AI could be as momentous as the industrial revolution and others warned it’s akin to developing the atomic bomb. William Brangham discussed that with Gary Marcus, who was one of those who testified before the Senate.

We’re rolling out web browsing and Plugins to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week! Moving from alpha to beta, they allow ChatGPT to access the internet and to use 70+ third-party plugins. https://t.co/t4syFUj0fL pic.twitter.com/Mw9FMpKq91

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 12, 2023

Are you ready for the Age of Intelligence? — from linusekenstam.substack.com Linus Ekenstam
Let me walk you through my current thoughts on where we are, and where we are going.

From DSC:
I post this one to relay the exponential pace of change that Linus also thinks we’ve entered, and to present a knowledgeable person’s perspectives on the future.

Catastrophe / Eucatastrophe — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
We have more agency over the future of AI than we think.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Every organizational leader and manager has agency over what they decide to do with AI, just as every teacher and school administrator has agency over how AI will be used in their classrooms. So we need to be having very pragmatic discussions about AI, and we need to have them right now: What do we want our world to look like?

Also relevant/see:

That wasn’t Google I/O — it was Google AI — from technologyreview.com by Mat Honan
If you thought generative AI was a big deal last year, wait until you see what it looks like in products already used by billions.

Google is in trouble.

I got early ‘Alpha’ access to GPT-4 with browsing and ran some tests.

Here are 8 crazy things I found: pic.twitter.com/ndxKGSqlL0

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) May 7, 2023

What Higher Ed Gets Wrong About AI Chatbots — From the Student Perspective — from edsurge.com by Mary Jo Madda (Columnist)

I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT. — from chronicle.com by

Excerpt:

There’s a remarkable disconnect between how professors and administrators think students use generative AI on written work and how we actually use it. Many assume that if an essay is written with the help of ChatGPT, there will be some sort of evidence — it will have a distinctive “voice,” it won’t make very complex arguments, or it will be written in a way that AI-detection programs will pick up on. Those are dangerous misconceptions. In reality, it’s very easy to use AI to do the lion’s share of the thinking while still submitting work that looks like your own.

The common fear among teachers is that AI is actually writing our essays for us, but that isn’t what happens. You can hand ChatGPT a prompt and ask it for a finished product, but you’ll probably get an essay with a very general claim, middle-school-level sentence structure, and half as many words as you wanted. The more effective, and increasingly popular, strategy is to have the AI walk you through the writing process step by step.

.

?

From DSC:
The idea of personalized storytelling is highly intriguing to me. If you write a story for someone with their name and character in it, they will likely be even more engaged with the story/content. Our daughter recently did this with a substitute teacher, who she really wanted to thank before she left (for another assignment at another school). I thought it was very creative of her.

How Your Students are Using AI — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman

Excerpts:

Here’s are the five biggest lessons we’ve learned:

1. Many students are already embracing AI in their day to day study
2. Students need AI education, and fast.
3. Students have a preference for free or low-cost alternatives to often expensive, paid-for services
4. Students find value in personalised, dialogue-based learning experiences
5. Ed Tech companies will need to evolve in order to survive.
  .

Curricular Resources about AI for Teaching (CRAFT) — from craft.stanford.edu
A project from the Stanford Graduate School of Education

Excerpt:

We’re building resources to teach AI literacies for high school and college instructors and assembling them into a full curriculum that will be deployed in a course with the National Educational Equity Lab offered in Fall 2023.
.

AI video is getting insanely powerful.

Soon, you’ll be able to create a Hollywood-grade movie from your pocket.

Here’s the most breathtaking AI-generated videos I’ve seen:

— The AI Solopreneur (@aisolopreneur) May 11, 2023

ChatGPT has changed the world.

It does lack in some areas, but my favorite use case is leveraging it to teach me things twice as fast.

Here are the 10 best prompts to learn anything faster:

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) May 11, 2023

Why I’m Excited About ChatGPT — from insidehighered.com by Jennie Young
Here are 10 ways ChatGPT will be a boon to first-year writing instruction, Jennie Young writes.

Excerpt:

But from my perspective as a first-year writing program director, I’m excited about how this emerging technology will help students from all kinds of educational backgrounds learn and focus on higher-order thinking skills faster. Here are 10 reasons I’m excited about ChatGPT.

? stfu and take my money

This is the most impressive campaign I’ve seen from a mega brand so far using AI & StableDiffusion.

Would love a breakdown of how this was all done.

pic.twitter.com/H5ryW3owi4

— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) May 12, 2023

edX Debuts Two AI-Powered Learning Assistants Built on ChatGPT — from press.edx.org; with thanks to Matthew Tower for this resource
edX plugin launches in ChatGPT plugin store to give users access to content and course discovery
edX Xpert delivers AI-powered learning and customer support within the edX platform

Excerpt:

LANHAM, Md. – May 12, 2023 – edX, a leading global online learning platform from 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), today announced the debut of two AI-powered innovations: the new edX plugin for ChatGPT and edX Xpert, an AI-powered learning assistant on the edX platform. Both tools leverage the technology of AI research and deployment company OpenAI to deliver real-time academic support and course discovery to help learners achieve their goals.

Several announcements from Google I/O 2023

On 05/11/2023, in Adobe, art, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, design, emerging technologies, experimentation, Google, multimedia, new media literacies, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Google I/O 2023: Making AI more helpful for everyone — from by; with thanks to Barsee out at The AI Valley
Editor’s Note: Here is a summary of what we announced at Google I/O 2023. See all the announcements in our collection.

Keynote here:

100 things we announced at I/O 2023 — from blog.google by Molly McHugh-Johnson
A lot happened yesterday — here’s a recap.

Google partners with Adobe to bring art generation to Bard — from techcrunch.com by Kyle Wiggers

Excerpt:

Bard, Google’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is getting new generative AI capabilities courtesy of Adobe.

Adobe announced today that Firefly, its recently introduced collection of AI models for generating media content, is coming to Bard alongside Adobe’s free graphic design tool, Adobe Express. Firefly — currently in public beta — will become the “premier generative AI partner” for Bard, Adobe says, powering text-to-image capabilities.

Also relevant/see:

We are teaming up with @Google to add geolocation capabilities in @AdobeAero with Google’s ARCore (@GoogleARVR), enabling creators to seamlessly connect to real-world locations. Learn more here: https://t.co/NF7m8dHBYD pic.twitter.com/GUEh93B2RW

— Adobe Creative Cloud (@creativecloud) May 10, 2023

Google shifts from Cloud to AI

Here is the top threads from the last 12 hours

Get ready to strap on to the ?pic.twitter.com/zn1h6LqJ28

— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) May 11, 2023

OPINION: Post pandemic, it’s time for a bold overhaul of U.S. public education, starting now — from hechingerreport.org by William Hite and Kirsten Baesler
Personalized learning can restore public faith and meet the diverse needs of our nation’s students

Excerpt:

Across all socioeconomic and racial groups, Americans want an education system that goes beyond college preparation and delivers practical skills for every learner, based on their own needs, goals and vision for the future.

We believe that this can be achieved by making the future of learning more personalized, focused on the needs of individual learners, with success measured by progress and proficiency instead of point-in-time test scores.

Change is hard, but we expect our students to take risks and fail every day. We should ask no less of ourselves.

Introducing Teach AI — Empowering educators to teach w/ AI & about AI [ISTE & many others]

On 05/09/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, change, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, learning theories, library / librarians, lifelong learning, Microsoft, more voice more choice more control, online media, online tutoring, open courseware and systems, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, programming, research, skills, society, strategy, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, the downsides of technology, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

??

Also relevant/see:

“Work Shift: How AI Might Upend Pay” [Jo Constantz] + other AI-related postings

On 05/02/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Adobe, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning / Algorithms, assistive technologies, business, computer science, corporate / business world, design, experimentation, graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning agents, learning ecosystem, programming, by Daniel Christian

Work Shift: How AI Might Upend Pay — from bloomberg.com by Jo Constantz

Excerpt:

This all means that a time may be coming when companies need to compensate star employees for their input to AI tools rather than their just their output, which may not ultimately look much different from their AI-assisted colleagues.

“It wouldn’t be far-fetched for them to put even more of a premium on those people because now that kind of skill gets amplified and multiplied throughout the organization,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford professor and one of the study’s authors. “Now that top worker could change the whole organization.”

Of course, there’s a risk that companies won’t heed that advice. If AI levels performance, some executives may flatten the pay scale accordingly. Businesses would then potentially save on costs — but they would also risk losing their top performers, who wouldn’t be properly compensated for the true value of their contributions under this system.

US Supreme Court rejects computer scientist’s lawsuit over AI-generated inventions — from reuters.com by Blake Brittain

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON, April 24 – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s refusal to issue patents for inventions his artificial intelligence system created.

The justices turned away Thaler’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that patents can be issued only to human inventors and that his AI system could not be considered the legal creator of two inventions that he has said it generated.

Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
Hinton will be speaking at EmTech Digital on Wednesday.

Excerpt:

Geoffrey Hinton, a VP and engineering fellow at Google and a pioneer of deep learning who developed some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern AI, is leaving the company after 10 years, the New York Times reported today.

According to the Times, Hinton says he has new fears about the technology he helped usher in and wants to speak openly about them, and that a part of him now regrets his life’s work.

***

In the NYT today, Cade Metz implies that I left Google so that I could criticize Google. Actually, I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google. Google has acted very responsibly.

— Geoffrey Hinton (@geoffreyhinton) May 1, 2023

What Is Agent Assist? — from blogs.nvidia.com
Agent assist technology uses AI and machine learning to provide facts and make real-time suggestions that help human agents across retail, telecom and other industries conduct conversations with customers.

Excerpt:

Agent assist technology uses AI and machine learning to provide facts and make real-time suggestions that help human agents across telecom, retail and other industries conduct conversations with customers.

It can integrate with contact centers’ existing applications, provide faster onboarding for agents, improve the accuracy and efficiency of their responses, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

From DSC:
Is this type of thing going to provide a learning assistant/agent as well?

A chatbot that asks questions could help you spot when it makes no sense — from technologyreview.com by Melissa Heikkilä
Engaging our critical thinking is one way to stop getting fooled by lying AI.

Excerpt:

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard are excellent at crafting sentences that sound like human writing. But they often present falsehoods as facts and have inconsistent logic, and that can be hard to spot.

One way around this problem, a new study suggests, is to change the way the AI presents information. Getting users to engage more actively with the chatbot’s statements might help them think more critically about that content.

Stability AI releases DeepFloyd IF, a powerful text-to-image model that can smartly integrate text into images — from stability.ai

New AI Powered Denoise in PhotoShop — from jeadigitalmedia.org

In the most recent update, Adobe is now using AI to Denoise, Enhance and create Super Resolution or 2x the file size of the original photo. Click here to read Adobe’s post and below are photos of how I used the new AI Denoise on a photo. The big trick is that photos have to be shot in RAW.

Learning Ecosystems

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“Intentional Teaching: Rethinking Teaching in an Age of AI” [Bruff, Lang, & Miller] + your almost daily AI update

“CEO of OpenAI calls for US to regulate AI” [Clayton] + other AI-related items

Several announcements from Google I/O 2023

“Work Shift: How AI Might Upend Pay” [Jo Constantz] + other AI-related postings

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