Major Companies Are Expanding Into Space. We Need a New Space Treaty
DC: Is this a topic for law schools now!?! I hadn’t lumped this in with #emergingtechnologies such as #AI #AR #IoT #blockchain & more, but perhaps I should start doing that…? https://t.co/5Ex5WdTjq1
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) July 26, 2021
The College Program Attracting — and Retaining — Black Male Teachers — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig
Excerpt:
When the initiative started two decades ago, people “really didn’t believe that we would be successful at being able to attract a 17- or 18-year-old Black male to become a second or third grade teacher,” says Roy Jones, a provost-distinguished professor at Clemson and the executive director of Call Me MISTER.
And yet, the program has graduated about 300 African American men from college education departments in South Carolina, more than doubling the number of Black men teaching in elementary and middle schools in the state.
No, it doesn’t need to be a Zoom — from wired.com by Chris Stokel-Walker
We’re wasting hours of our lives on inefficient video calls. Here’s how to decide when you should jump on a Zoom – and when not to
Excerpt:
Academic research has pinpointed four reasons why we’re growing sick of video calls. For one thing, we’re engaged in an unnaturally large amount of eye contact, which can prove exhausting, according to Jeremy Bailenson professor at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. We’re also stressed out by being confronted with our own face for hours on end (even if you can’t stop staring at it). Bailenson compares it to be followed around with a mirror all day.
From DSC:
What comes to my mind here is that videoconferencing — and meeting in general — requires mental work — and thus energy. Why? Because, as I mentioned in this posting, we are constantly processing auditory and visual channels.
From DSC:
So having to process auditory and visual information hour after hour takes major energy! And some presentations/presenters require a lot more energy than others.
For College Finances, There’s No ‘Return to Normal’ — from chronicle.com by Mark S. LeClair
The critical problems facing higher education won’t end with the pandemic.
Excerpt:
Higher ed is in trouble. It faces a demographic crunch in 2026, when smaller high-school graduating classes will mean greater competition for students. That will lead to tuition discounting and underenrolled classes for many colleges. And yet that demographic crisis is only one of many significant challenges the sector faces. As noted by Forbes in its annual review of college and university financials, approximately 20 percent of all institutions now warrant a “D” ranking (its lowest). Many are under serious financial strain and may not survive.
The Forbes financial analyses have been warning of a worsening situation for years. The added stresses from the Covid-19 pandemic will further aggravate the untenable circumstances facing hundreds of institutions. There is now a very short window within which we must carry out significant reforms.
Nalukai Academy: Harvesting Hawai’i’s Next Generation of Leaders — from gettingsmart.com by Ashley Ranan
Excerpt:
Nalukai’s program curriculum includes 5 areas of interest:
Also see:
Growth Mindset Leadership & The Pygmalion Effect — from by Trevor Ragan and the Learning Lab; featuring Robert Rosenthal, Christine Rubie-Davies, and Michael Merznich. With thanks to Chris Church, Tenured Professor and prior Associate Dean of Academic Programs at the WMU-Cooley Law School
Our mindsets impact others more than we realize. As leaders, we can use this to improve the learning environment.
Excerpt:
We know that our individual mindsets (growth mindset & fixed mindset) can impact our capacity to grow. But how do our mindsets impact others?
Renowned researcher, Robert Rosenthal outlines his work and shows how our expectations can have a huge impact on the performance and development of the people around us.
Christine Rubie-Davies from the University of Auckland shows us how teacher expectations play a role in student development.
From DSC:
I highly recommend that all professors, teachers and student teachers, trainers — and even those supervising others — check this piece out! Nice work Trevor & Company! Below are some snapshots from this presentation.
Microsoft President Warns of Orwell’s 1984 ‘Coming to Pass’ in 2024 — from interestingengineering.com by Chris Young
Microsoft’s Brad Smith warned we may be caught up in a losing race with artificial intelligence.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The surveillance-state dystopia portrayed in George Orwell’s 1984 could “come to pass in 2024” if governments don’t do enough to protect the public against artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft president Brad Smith warned in an interview for the BBC’s investigative documentary series Panorama.
During the interview, Smith warned of China’s increasing AI prowess and the fact that we may be caught up in a losing race with the technology itself.
“If we don’t enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead, and it’s going to be very difficult to catch up,” Smith stated.
From DSC:
This is a major heads up to all those in the legal/legislative realm — especially the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Bar Associations across the country! The ABA needs to realize they have to up their game and get with the incredibly fast pace of the twenty-first century. If that doesn’t occur, we and future generations will pay the price. Two thoughts come to my mind in regards to the ABA and for the law schools out there:
Step 1: Allow 100% online-based JD programs all the time, from here on out.
Step 2: Encourage massive new program development within all law schools to help future lawyers, judges, legislative reps, & others build up more emerging technology expertise & the ramifications thereof.
Google’s plan to make search more sentient — from vox.com by Rebecca Heilweil
Google announces new search features every year, but this time feels different.
Excerpt:
At the keynote speech of its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google revealed a suite of ways the company is moving forward with artificial intelligence. These advancements show Google increasingly trying to build AI-powered tools that seem more sentient and that are better at perceiving how humans actually communicate and think. They seem powerful, too.
Two of the biggest AI announcements from Google involve natural language processing and search.
…
Google also revealed a number of AI-powered improvements to its Maps platform that are designed to yield more helpful results and directions.
Google’s plans to bring AI to education make its dominance in classrooms more alarming — from fastcompany.com by Ben Williamson
The tech giant has expressed an ambition to transform education with artificial intelligence, raising fresh ethical questions.
Struggling to Get a Job? Artificial Intelligence Could Be the Reason Why — from newsweek.com by Lydia Veljanovski; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for the resource
Excerpt:
Except that isn’t always the case. In many instances, instead of your application being tossed aside by a HR professional, it is actually artificial intelligence that is the barrier to entry. While this isn’t a problem in itself—AI can reduce workflow by rapidly filtering applicants—the issue is that within these systems lies the possibility of bias.
It is illegal in the U.S. for employers to discriminate against a job applicant because of their race, color, sex, religion, disability, national origin, age (40 or older) or genetic information. However, these AI hiring tools are often inadvertently doing just that, and there are no federal laws in the U.S. to stop this from happening.
These Indian edtech companies are shaping the future of AI & robotics — from analyticsinsight.net by Apoorva Komarraju May 25, 2021
Excerpt:
As edtech companies have taken a lead by digitizing education for the modern era, they have taken the stance to set up Atal Tinkering Labs in schools along with other services necessary for the budding ‘kidpreneurs’. With the availability of these services, students can experience 21st-century technologies like IoT, 3D printing, AI, and Robotics.
Researchers develop machine-learning model that accurately predicts diabetes, study says — from ctvnews.ca by Christy Somos
Excerpt:
TORONTO — Canadian researchers have developed a machine-learning model that accurately predicts diabetes in a population using routinely collected health data, a new study says.
The study, published in the JAMA Network Open journal, tested new machine-learning technology on routinely collected health data that examined the entire population of Ontario. The study was run by the ICES not-for-profit data research institute.
Using linked administrative health data from Ontario from 2006 to 2016, researchers created a validated algorithm by training the model on information taken from nearly 1.7 million patients.
Project Guideline: Enabling Those with Low Vision to Run Independently — from ai.googleblog.com by Xuan Yang; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for the resource
Excerpt:
For the 285 million people around the world living with blindness or low vision, exercising independently can be challenging. Earlier this year, we announced Project Guideline, an early-stage research project, developed in partnership with Guiding Eyes for the Blind, that uses machine learning to guide runners through a variety of environments that have been marked with a painted line. Using only a phone running Guideline technology and a pair of headphones, Guiding Eyes for the Blind CEO Thomas Panek was able to run independently for the first time in decades and complete an unassisted 5K in New York City’s Central Park.
Deepfake Maps Could Really Mess With Your Sense of the World — from wired.com by Will Knight
Researchers applied AI techniques to make portions of Seattle look more like Beijing. Such imagery could mislead governments or spread misinformation online.
Student Experiences Learning with Technology in the Pandemic — from educause.edu
Excerpts:
However, as most institutions pivoted to remote learning as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020, we also pivoted to conduct a special fall 2020 study to gain insights on the student experience during what has been an exceptional time of disruption. In this report, we share results from the study related to student experiences with technology in the for-credit courses they were taking in fall 2020 in which they felt they were learning the most. Specifically, we asked students to think about their best course—the one in which they learned the most—and tell us about the learning environments and modalities of those courses, as well as instructors’ uses of technology in, the organizational and design features of, and the most and least effective uses of technology they experienced in those courses.1
Steps You Can Take
Institutional leaders should consider the following steps as they continue to respond to the most immediate needs of students and plan for a post-pandemic future.
The best student experiences were the ones that were focused on student learning experiences and did so from a position of empathy, care, and flexibility. If we learn one thing from higher education’s pandemic year it’s that higher education needs to invest in promoting caring, student-centered, and adaptive pedagogies.
Michigan appeals to former teachers as districts face ‘dire’ shortage — from mlive.com by Kayla Miller
Kindergarten teacher Melissa Sanborn instructs students…Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020 at Cook Elementary School in Grand Blanc. (Jake May | MLive.com) Jake May | MLive.comExcerpt:
Looking ahead to August, Beecher Community School District is expecting to be short about a quarter of their needed teaching staff for the 2021-22 school year.
The Flint-area district is one of many schools across Michigan fighting to keep educators in classrooms amid a statewide teacher shortage. The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) is now appealing to former teachers to get recertified and back to work.
…
David Crim, spokesperson for the Michigan Education Association, said multiple factors are keeping people from pursuing teaching and forcing young teachers to leave the profession.
“There’s no respect for teachers, no respect for the profession and poor compensation,” Crim said. “We have the perfect storm.”
From DSC:
It feels like there are major changes occurring throughout the K-12 learning ecosystems out there. It will be interesting to see what shakes out from this period of disruption.
By the way, those with little respect for teachers clearly have never taught themselves. Teaching is a very difficult profession. You try providing personalized learning to 25-30+ students at a time. Once you begin to scratch the surface, you’re retiring. We need to continue to try to share our knowledge, learnings, effective pedagogies/research, growth, tools, contacts, and more to help the next generation of teachers, students, administrators, and leaders.
Personally, I would like to see teachers have far more agency themselves. Don’t straight jacket them so much with standardized testing every ___ weeks/months. And allow more choice and control for the students (where possible). And allow the damn trains to slow down and/or vary their pace — allow them to stop if necessary for a student or a group of students.
I don’t see real personalized learning occurring until more technologies get involved/integrated into the classrooms out there — things like learner preferences, cloud-based learner profiles, AI and more.
States and School Systems Can Act Now to Dismantle Silos Between High School, College, and Career — from crpe.org by Georgia Heyward, Sarah McCann, & Betheny Gross | May 2021
We offer four ways states can engage K–12:
Per Flower Darby (via Becky Supiano at The Chronicle): What if every department-meeting agenda blocked off just 10 minutes to talk about teaching? That simple move, Darby thinks, could go a long way toward changing the campus culture around teaching.
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) May 20, 2021
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is this Thursday, May 20, 2021
Help us celebrate the tenth Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments.
Also see:
Part I: How do I measure accessibility maturity and compliance? — from abilitynet.org.uk by Alistair McNaught
When you ask adults to recall their most memorable and enjoyable learning experiences it nearly always comes back to relationships – a fun teacher, an inspiring lecturer, a lively community. Such human interactions neatly illustrate the difference between maturity and compliance.
A “mature relationship” sounds a lot more attractive than a “compliant” one. Yet many institutions are offering compliance to disabled learners rather than mature relationships.
The lenses we use are:
Part II: Accessibility maturity in education — from abilitynet.org.uk by Alistair McNaught
Excerpt:
In this article we explore the “Drivers” lens. What is driving your change? The need to be compliant and tick off the boxes? Or a desire to be digitally inclusive, ensuring every student can be as confident, independent and productive as possible?
Part III: Broaden accessibility responsibility beyond learning teams — from abilitynet.org.uk by Alistair McNaught
Excerpt:
At the upper levels of maturity, the confidence and competence of a wide body of staff will mean the organisation moves beyond micromanagement of accessibility. Accessibility may be mandatory but a wide range of templates will be available. Even better, many staff will have enough understanding to create their own accessible content and courses without needing a template. At this level, the following lines of evidence will be available:
Part IV: Coming soon.
Learn about the Accessibility Maturity Model for Higher and Further Education that AbilityNet and McNaught Consultancy have developed based on Alistair McNaught’s existing model. See here and here.
Some example snapshots:
Articles of the month — from the Penn Carey Law School (specifically their “Future of the Profession Initiative’s Monthly Newsletter, May 2021)
Addendum on 5/6/21:
Faculty and Staff Often Don’t Trust One Another. How Do We Fix That? — from chronicle.com by Jenae Cohn
Three ways to bridge divisions as academe prepares for the post-pandemic era.
Excerpts:
One of the few welcome outcomes of Covid-19, and higher education’s rapid move to remote instruction, is that many faculty members are more aware than ever of who the staff members are and what we do.
As Lee Skallerup Bessette wrote in October, staff members — anyone working on a college campus who is not a professor or an administrator — have been on the front lines during the pandemic: “We are the face that faculty members see when they have questions, concerns, or struggles with the technology they have been asked to use. We are the face that students see when they have questions, concerns, or struggles related to distance learning or on-campus policies and procedures.”
Yet however much academics and administrators have been turning to us for help now, they still rarely involve and entrust staff members with campus decision-making around teaching, curriculum development, and research.
…
It behooves every college and university to consider what authentic collaboration between the staff and the faculty might look like. How? Here are three concrete steps in that direction.
.
Step 1: Offer incentives for faculty-staff partnerships.
Step 2: Rethink hierarchical traditions.
Step 3: Create shared experiences.
From DSC:
Although I was an Adjunct Professor for over 5 years and have worked alongside faculty members for 20 years, the majority of my work and efforts have mainly been on the staff side of the house. So I appreciate The Chronicle hosting this article and I thank Jenae for writing it. It’s an important topic.
If traditional institutions of higher education are going to survive, there needs to be much broader governance, a much greater use of teams to create and deliver learning experiences, and a much stronger culture of innovating and experimenting with new ideas. At the end of the day, I think that the following two things will be the deciding factors on whether a particular institution survives, merges, shrinks, or closes its doors altogether:
Also see:
