From DSC: As I’ve long stated on the Learning from the Living [Class]Room vision, we are heading toward a new AI-empowered learning platform — where humans play a critically important role in making this new learning ecosystem work.
Along these lines, I ran into this site out on X/Twitter. We’ll see how this unfolds, but it will be an interesting space to watch.
From DSC: This future learning platform will also focus on developing skills and competencies. Along those lines, see:
Scale for Skills-First— from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain An ed-tech giant’s ambitious moves into digital credentialing and learner records.
A Digital Canvas for Skills
Instructure was a player in the skills and credentials space before its recent acquisition of Parchment, a digital transcript company. But that $800M move made many observers wonder if Instructure can develop digital records of skills that learners, colleges, and employers might actually use broadly.
…
Ultimately, he says, the CLR approach will allow students to bring these various learning types into a coherent format for employers.
Instructure seeks a leadership role in working with other organizations to establish common standards for credentials and learner records, to help create consistency. The company collaborates closely with 1EdTech. And last month it helped launch the 1EdTech TrustEd Microcredential Coalition, which aims to increase quality and trust in digital credentials.
It’s an era many instructors would like to put behind them: black boxes on Zoom screens, muffled discussions behind masks, students struggling to stay engaged. But how much more challenging would teaching during the pandemic have been if colleges did not have experts on staff to help with the transition? On many campuses, teaching-center directors, instructional designers, educational technologists, and others worked alongside professors to explore learning-management systems, master video technology, and rethink what and how they teach.
A new book out this month, Higher Education Beyond Covid: New Teaching Paradigms and Promise, explores this period through the stories of campus teaching and learning centers. Their experiences reflect successes and failures, and what higher education could learn as it plans for the future.
As usual, our readers were full of suggestions. Kathryn Schild, the lead instructional designer in faculty development and instructional support at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, shared a guide she’s compiled on holding asynchronous discussions, which includes a section on difficult topics.
In an email, Schild also pulled out a few ideas she thought were particularly relevant to Le’s question, including:
Set the ground rules as a class. One way to do this is to share your draft rules in a collaborative document and ask students to annotate it and add suggestions.
Plan to hold fewer difficult discussions than in a face-to-face class, and work on quality over quantity. This could include multiweek discussions, where you spiral through the same issue with fresh perspectives as the class learns new approaches.
Start with relationship-building interactions in the first few weeks, such as introductions, low-stakes group assignments, or peer feedback, etc.
Inspired by my recent Review: Shure MV7 dynamic hybrid studio microphone – near, far and beyond, Beaker Films of Fairfield, Connecticut, US has developed and deployed a first batch of 10 kits to capture remote conversations from different locations worldwide. Beaker Films is frequently contracted to record remote interviews or testimonials from medical professionals. For this project, Beaker Films’ clients wanted consistent, high quality audio and video, but with 3 additional challenges: they preferred to have no visible microphone in the shot, they needed a teleprompter function and the whole kit needed to be as simple as possible for non-technical guests.
West Suffolk College in the UK has opened its Extended Reality Lab (XR Lab), the facilities comprise of four distinct areas: an Immersion Lab, a Collaboration Theatre, a Green Room, and a Conference Room. The project was designed by architects WindsorPatania for Eastern Colleges Group.
Systems integrator CJP Broadcast Service Solutions, has won a tender to build a virtual production environment for Solent University in the UK.
The new facilities, converted from an existing studio space, will provide students on the film production courses with outstanding opportunities to develop their creative output.
My hypothesis and research suggest that as bar associations and the ABA begin to recognize the on-going systemic issues of high-cost legal education, growing legal deserts (where no lawyer serves a given population), on-going and pervasive access to justice issues, and a public that is already weary of the legal system – alternative options that are already in play might become more supported.
What might that look like?
The combination of AI-assisted education with traditional legal apprenticeships has the potential to create a rich, flexible, and engaging learning environment. Here are three scenarios that might illustrate what such a combination could look like:
Scenario One – Personalized Curriculum Development
Scenario Two – On-Demand Tutoring and Mentoring
Scenario Three – AI-assisted Peer Networks and Collaborative Learning:
We know that there are challenges – a threat to human jobs, the potential implications for cyber security and data theft, or perhaps even an existential threat to humanity as a whole. But we certainly don’t yet have a full understanding of all of the implications. In fact, a World Economic Forum report recently stated that organizations “may currently underappreciate AI-related risks,” with just four percent of leaders considering the risk level to be “significant.”
A survey carried out by analysts Baker McKenzie concluded that many C-level leaders are over-confident in their assessments of organizational preparedness in relation to AI. In particular, it exposed concerns about the potential implications of biased data when used to make HR decisions.
AI & lawyer training: How law firms can embrace hybrid learning & development — thomsonreuters.com A big part of law firms’ successful adaptation to the increased use of ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI, may depend upon how firmly they embrace online learning & development tools designed for hybrid work environments
Excerpt:
As law firms move forward in using of advanced artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI, their success may hinge upon how they approach lawyer training and development and what tools they enlist for the process.
One of the tools that some law firms use to deliver a new, multi-modal learning environment is an online, video-based learning platform, Hotshot, that delivers more than 250 on-demand courses on corporate, litigation, and business skills.
Ian Nelson, co-founder of Hotshot, says he has seen a dramatic change in how law firms are approaching learning & development (L&D) in the decade or so that Hotshot has been active. He believes the biggest change is that 10 years ago, firms hadn’t yet embraced the need to focus on training and development.
From DSC: Heads up law schools. Are you seeing/hearing this!?
Are we moving more towards a lifelong learning model within law schools?
If not, shouldn’t we be doing that?
Are LLM programs expanding quickly enough? Is more needed?
This week I spent a few days at the ASU/GSV conference and ran into 7,000 educators, entrepreneurs, and corporate training people who had gone CRAZY for AI.
No, I’m not kidding. This community, which makes up people like training managers, community college leaders, educators, and policymakers is absolutely freaked out about ChatGPT, Large Language Models, and all sorts of issues with AI. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge fan of this. But the frenzy is unprecedented: this is bigger than the excitement at the launch of the i-Phone.
Second, the L&D market is about to get disrupted like never before. I had two interactive sessions with about 200 L&D leaders and I essentially heard the same thing over and over. What is going to happen to our jobs when these Generative AI tools start automatically building content, assessments, teaching guides, rubrics, videos, and simulations in seconds?
The answer is pretty clear: you’re going to get disrupted. I’m not saying that L&D teams need to worry about their careers, but it’s very clear to me they’re going to have to swim upstream in a big hurry. As with all new technologies, it’s time for learning leaders to get to know these tools, understand how they work, and start to experiment with them as fast as you can.
Speaking of the ASU+GSV Summit, see this posting from Michael Moe:
Last week, the 14th annual ASU+GSV Summit hosted over 7,000 leaders from 70+ companies well as over 900 of the world’s most innovative EdTech companies. Below are some of our favorite speeches from this year’s Summit…
High-quality tutoring is one of the most effective educational interventions we have – but we need both humans and technology for it to work. In a standing-room-only session, GSE Professor Susanna Loeb, a faculty lead at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, spoke alongside school district superintendents on the value of high-impact tutoring. The most important factors in effective tutoring, she said, are (1) the tutor has data on specific areas where the student needs support, (2) the tutor has high-quality materials and training, and (3) there is a positive, trusting relationship between the tutor and student. New technologies, including AI, can make the first and second elements much easier – but they will never be able to replace human adults in the relational piece, which is crucial to student engagement and motivation.
ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Google’s Bard—AI is infiltrating the lives of billions.
The 1% who understand it will run the world.
Here’s a list of key terms to jumpstart your learning:
Being “good at prompting” is a temporary state of affairs.The current AI systems are already very good at figuring out your intent, and they are getting better. Prompting is not going to be that important for that much longer. In fact, it already isn’t in GPT-4 and Bing. If you want to do something with AI, just ask it to help you do the thing. “I want to write a novel, what do you need to know to help me?” will get you surprisingly far.
…
The best way to use AI systems is not to craft the perfect prompt, but rather to use it interactively. Try asking for something. Then ask the AI to modify or adjust its output. Work with the AI, rather than trying to issue a single command that does everything you want. The more you experiment, the better off you are. Just use the AI a lot, and it will make a big difference – a lesson my class learned as they worked with the AI to create essays.
From DSC: Agreed –> “Being “good at prompting” is a temporary state of affairs.” The User Interfaces that are/will be appearing will help greatly in this regard.
From DSC: Bizarre…at least for me in late April of 2023:
FaceTiming live with AI… This app came across the @ElunaAI Discord and I was very impressed with its responsiveness, natural expression and language, etc…
Feels like the beginning of another massive wave in consumer AI products.
The rise of AI-generated music has ignited legal and ethical debates, with record labels invoking copyright law to remove AI-generated songs from platforms like YouTube.
Tech companies like Google face a conundrum: should they take down AI-generated content, and if so, on what grounds?
Some artists, like Grimes, are embracing the change, proposing new revenue-sharing models and utilizing blockchain-based smart contracts for royalties.
The future of AI-generated music presents both challenges and opportunities, with the potential to create new platforms and genres, democratize the industry, and redefine artist compensation.
The Need for AI PD — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang Educators need training on how to effectively incorporate artificial intelligence into their teaching practice, says Lance Key, an award-winning educator.
“School never was fun for me,” he says, hoping that as an educator he could change that with his students. “I wanted to make learning fun.” This ‘learning should be fun’ philosophy is at the heart of the approach he advises educators take when it comes to AI.
At its 11th annual conference in 2023, educational company Coursera announced it is adding ChatGPT-powered interactive ed tech tools to its learning platform, including a generative AI coach for students and an AI course-building tool for teachers. It will also add machine learning-powered translation, expanded VR immersive learning experiences, and more.
Coursera Coach will give learners a ChatGPT virtual coach to answer questions, give feedback, summarize video lectures and other materials, give career advice, and prepare them for job interviews. This feature will be available in the coming months.
From DSC: Yes…it will be very interesting to see how tools and platforms interact from this time forth. The term “integration” will take a massive step forward, at least in my mind.
It’s not sexy, but I feel like Sal Khan’s recent video introducing his Academy’s GPT-fueled AI tutor augurs the future of the teaching profession — and not just at Khan Academy.
…
The tutor is already fully capable of offering personalized feedback, hints and suggestions for just about any topic for which there are already clearly established answers — from solving math equations with parentheses to digesting John Locke’s political philosophy.
…
But now we’ve entered a new chapter — dare I say, a Technological Singularity (20 years early) — one in which Chat-GPT in particular, and the daily flood of AI tools more generally, has changed the nature of the teacher/student relationship even more irrevocably than before.
As a result, from this day forward, the job of a teacher REALLY needs to stop being about transmission.
So what should it start being instead?
… In which case, the future of teaching is not about transmission, but it is about the other trans- words: transmedia exploration, transdisciplinary weaving, transcultural understanding, and, yes, personal and societal transformation.
ChatGPT is Everywhere — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie Love it or hate it, academics can’t ignore the already pervasive technology.
Excerpt:
Many academics see these tools as a danger to authentic learning, fearing that students will take shortcuts to avoid the difficulty of coming up with original ideas, organizing their thoughts, or demonstrating their knowledge. Ask ChatGPT to write a few paragraphs, for example, on how Jean Piaget’s theories on childhood development apply to our age of anxiety and it can do that.
Other professors are enthusiastic, or at least intrigued, by the possibility of incorporating generative AI into academic life. Those same tools can help students — and professors — brainstorm, kick-start an essay, explain a confusing idea, and smooth out awkward first drafts. Equally important, these faculty members argue, is their responsibility to prepare students for a world in which these technologies will be incorporated into everyday life, helping to produce everything from a professional email to a legal contract.
“Artificial-intelligence tools present the greatest creative disruption to learning that we’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Sarah Eaton, associate professor of education at the University of Calgary
The use of artificial intelligence tools does not automatically constitute academic dishonesty. It depends how the tools are used. For example, apps such as ChatGPT can be used to help reluctant writers generate a rough draft that they can then revise and update.
Used in this way, the technology can help students learn. The text can also be used to help students learn the skills of fact-checking and critical thinking, since the outputs from ChatGPT often contain factual errors.
When students use tools or other people to complete homework on their behalf, that is considered a form of academic dishonesty because the students are no longer learning the material themselves. The key point is that it is the students, and not the technology, that is to blame when students choose to have someone – or something – do their homework for them.
There is a difference between using technology to help students learn or to help them cheat. The same technology can be used for both purposes.
From DSC: These couple of sentences…
In the age of post-plagiarism, humans use artificial intelligence apps to enhance and elevate creative outputs as a normal part of everyday life. We will soon be unable to detect where the human written text ends and where the robot writing begins, as the outputs of both become intertwined and indistinguishable.
…reminded me of what’s been happening within the filmmaking world for years (i.e., such as in Star Wars, Jurrasic Park, and many others). It’s often hard to tell what’s real and what’s been generated by a computer.
Best Document Cameras for Teachers — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards Get the best document camera for teachers to make the classroom more digitally immersive
.
The Tech & Learning Awards of Excellence: Best of 2022 celebrate educational technology from the last 12 months that has excelled in supporting teachers, students, and education professionals in the classroom, for professional development, or general management of education resources and learning. Nominated products are divided into three categories: Primary, Secondary, or Higher Education.
A learning ecosystem is composed of people, tools, technologies, content, processes, culture, strategies, and any other resource that helps one learn. Learning ecosystems can be at an individual level as well as at an organizational level.
Some example components:
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) such as faculty, staff, teachers, trainers, parents, coaches, directors, and others
Fellow employees
L&D/Training professionals
Managers
Instructional Designers
Librarians
Consultants
Types of learning
Active learning
Adult learning
PreK-12 education
Training/corporate learning
Vocational learning
Experiential learning
Competency-based learning
Self-directed learning (i.e., heutagogy)
Mobile learning
Online learning
Face-to-face-based learning
Hybrid/blended learning
Hyflex-based learning
Game-based learning
XR-based learning (AR, MR, and VR)
Informal learning
Formal learning
Lifelong learning
Microlearning
Personalized/customized learning
Play-based learning
Cloud-based learning apps
Coaching & mentoring
Peer feedback
Job aids/performance tools and other on-demand content
Websites
Conferences
Professional development
Professional organizations
Social networking
Social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook/Meta, other
Communities of practice
Artificial Intelligence (AI) — including ChatGPT, learning agents, learner profiles,
Real Ways Professionals Can Use ChatGPT to Improve Job Performance
Let’s dive into some real examples of how professionals across sales, marketing, product management, project management, recruiting, and teaching can take advantage of this new tool and leverage it for even more impact in their careers.
Teachers and ChatGPT
Help with grading and feedback on student work.
Example prompt: “Tell me every grammar rule that’s been violated in this student’s essay: [paste in essay]”
Create personalized learning materials.
Example prompt: “Help me explain photosynthesis to a 10th grade student in a way similar to sports.”
Generate lesson plans and activities.
Example prompt: “Create an activity for 50 students that revolves around how to learn the different colors of the rainbow.” or “Generate a lesson plan for a high school English class on the theme of identity and self-discovery, suitable for a 45-minute class period.”
Write fake essays several reading levels below your class, then print them out, and have your students review and edit the AI’s work to make it better.
Example prompt: “Generate a 5th grade level short essay about Maya Angelou and her work.”
Providing one-on-one support to students. Example prompt: “How can I best empower an introverted student in my classroom during reading time?”
From DSC: I haven’t tried these prompts. Rather I post this because I’m excited about the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help people teach and to help people to learn.
We can now type in text to get graphics and artwork.
We can now type in text to get videos.
There are several tools to give us transcripts of what was said during a presentation.
We can search videos for spoken words and/or for words listed within slides within a presentation.
Allie Miller’s posting on LinkedIn (see below) pointed these things out as well — along with several other things.
This raises some ideas/questions for me:
What might the ramifications be in our learning ecosystems for these types of functionalities? What affordances are forthcoming? For example, a teacher, professor, or trainer could quickly produce several types of media from the same presentation.
What’s said in a videoconference or a webinar can already be captured, translated, and transcribed.
Or what’s said in a virtual courtroom, or in a telehealth-based appointment. Or perhaps, what we currently think of as a smart/connected TV will give us these functionalities as well.
How might this type of thing impact storytelling?
Will this help someone who prefers to soak in information via the spoken word, or via a podcast, or via a video?
What does this mean for Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and/or Virtual Reality (VR) types of devices?
Will this kind of thing be standard in the next version of the Internet (Web3)?
Will this help people with special needs — and way beyond accessibility-related needs?
The search for TV’s next killer app
TV makers have some reason to celebrate these days: Streaming has officially surpassed cable and broadcast as the most popular form of TV consumption; smart TVs are increasingly replacing external streaming devices; and the makers of these TVs have largely figured out how to turn those one-time purchases into recurring revenue streams, thanks to ad-supported services.
… What TV makers need is a new killer app. Consumer electronics companies have for some time toyed with the idea of using TV for all kinds of additional purposes, including gaming, smart home functionality and fitness. Ad-supported video took priority over those use cases over the past few years, but now, TV brands need new ways to differentiate their devices.
Turning the TV into the most useful screen in the house holds a lot of promise for the industry. To truly embrace this trend, TV makers might have to take some bold bets and be willing to push the envelope on what’s possible in the living room.
From DSC: What if smart TVs’ new killer app was a next-generation learning-related platform? Could smart TVs deliver more blended/hybrid learning? Hyflex-based learning? .
.
Or what if smart TVs had to do with delivering telehealth-based apps? Or telelegal/virtual courts-based apps?
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)