2025 College Hopes & Worries Survey Report — from princetonreview.com
We surveyed 9,317 college applicants and parents about their dream schools and their biggest college admission and financial aid challenges.
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On 03/05/2025,
in ethics, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, morals/values, relationships, religion, society,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
Two of our small groups at church have been watching The Chosen. The discussions have been deep and valuable. The series gives us a clear picture of the cultural things that were going on when Jesus Christ came into our world, in the flesh. We have grown closer to the LORD and to each other. If you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend this professionally done video series. The LORD’s fingerprints are all over it!
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Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Praise to the God of All Comfort
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
On 02/26/2025,
in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), content development, aggregation, repositories, education, education technology, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, hearts -- matters of the heart, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, NVIDIA, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, project-based learning, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
Nvidia helps launch AI platform for teaching American Sign Language — from venturebeat.com by Dean Takahashi; via Claire Zau
Nvidia has unveiled a new AI platform for teaching people how to use American Sign Language to help bridge communication gaps.
The Signs platform is creating a validated dataset for sign language learners and developers of ASL-based AI applications.
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Nvidia, the American Society for Deaf Children and creative agency Hello Monday are helping close this gap with Signs, an interactive web platform built to support ASL learning and the development of accessible AI applications.
Using Gen AI to Design, Implement, and Assess PBL — from gettingsmart.com by David Ross
Key Points
- Generative AI can significantly reduce the time and effort required in designing PBL by providing tools for research, brainstorming, and organization.
- AI tools can assist educators in managing project implementation and assessment, providing formative feedback and organizing resources efficiently.
I usually conclude blogs with some pithy words, but this time I’ll turn the microphone over to Rachel Harcrow, a high school English/Language Arts teacher at Young Women’s College Prep Charter School of Rochester, NY: “After years of struggling to call myself a PBL practitioner, I finally feel comfortable saying I am, thanks to the power of Gen AI,” Harcrow told me. “Initial ideas now turn into fully fledged high-quality project plans in minutes that I can refine, giving me the space and energy to focus on what truly matters: My students.”
AI Resources for District Leaders — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule
Educational leaders aiming to effectively integrate generative AI into their schools should consider several key resources
To truly harness the transformative power of generative AI in education, district leaders must navigate a landscape rich with resources and opportunities. By delving into state and national guidelines, exploring successful case studies, utilizing innovative planning tools, and engaging in professional development, educational leaders can craft robust implementation plans. These plans can then assist in integrating AI seamlessly into their schools and elevate the learning experience to new heights.
Anthropic brings ‘extended thinking’ to Claude, which can solves complex physics problems with 96.5% accuracy — from rdworldonline.com by Brian Buntz
Anthropic, a favorite frontier AI lab among many coders and genAI power users has unveiled Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its first “hybrid reasoning” AI model. It is capable of both near-instant answers and in-depth, step-by-step reasoning within a single system.
Users can toggle an extended thinking mode where the model self-reflects before answering, considerably improving performance on complex tasks like math, physics and coding. In early testing by the author, the model largely succeeded in creating lines of Python (related to unsupervised learning) that were close to 1,000 lines long that ran without error on the first or second try, including the unsupervised machine learning task shown below:
New Tools. Old Complaints. Why AI Won’t Kill Education or Fix it — from coolcatteacher.com by Vicki Davis; via Stephen Downes
AI won’t kill education. But will it kill learning? The challenge isn’t AI itself—it’s whether students can still think for themselves when the answers are always one click away.
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Wait. Before you go, let me ask you one thing.
AI has opportunities to help learning. But it also won’t fix it. The real question isn’t whether students can use AI—but whether they’re still learning without it.
Whether the learning is happening between the ears.
And so much of what we teach in schools isn’t the answers on a test. It answers questions like “What is my purpose in life?” “How do I make friends?” and “How can I help my team be stronger.” Questions that aren’t asked on a test but are essential to living a good life. These questions aren’t answered between the ears but within the heart.
That, my friends, is what teaching has always been about.
The heart.
And the heart of the matter is we have new challenges, but these are old complaints. Complaints since the beginning of time and teaching. And in those days, you didn’t need kids just to be able to talk about how to build a fire, they had to make one themselves. Their lives depend on it.
And these days, we need to build another kind of fire. A fire that sparks the joy of learning. The joy of the opportunities that await us sparked by some of the most powerful tools ever invented. Kids need to not be able to just talk about making a difference, they need to know how to build a better world tomorrow. Our lives depend on it.
How Debating Skills Can Help Us In The Fight Against AI — from adigaskell.org by Adi Gaskell
Debating skills have a range of benefits in the workplace, from helping to improve our communication to bolstering our critical thinking skills. Research from the University of Mississippi suggests it might also help us in the battle with AI in the workplace.
We can often assume that debate teaches us nothing more than how to argue our point, but in order to do this, we have to understand both our own take on a subject and that of our opponent. This allows us to see both sides of any issue we happen to be debating.
“Even though AI has offered a shortcut through the writing process, it actually still is important to be able to write and speak and think on your own,” the researchers explain. “That’s what the focus of this research is: how debate engenders those aspects of being able to write and speak and study and research on your own.”
On 02/25/2025,
in Access to Justice (A2J), career development, credentialing, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, society, training / L&D, United States, workplace,
by Daniel Christian
Frontline Justice — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Campaign seeks to create training standards and certification for a new type of legal job.
Democratizing Legal Help
Most Americans struggle with a legal problem at some point, whether it’s a dispute with a landlord or a challenge accessing public benefits. Yet low-income people typically can’t afford a lawyer, and more than 90% fail to get enough help with their civil legal problems.
To expand access to high-quality legal assistance, the nonprofit Frontline Justice is leading a campaign to develop a new type of job role—frontline legal helpers. As part of that effort, a recently launched task force is working on standards and credentialing for training these workers.
The Big Idea: Community justice workers won’t be lawyers. In fact, the campaign’s leaders say lawyer-only solutions don’t scale, and that focusing on lawyers can exclude people who are closest to the problems of unmet legal needs.
Also relevant/see:
On 02/20/2025,
in Emotion, engagement / engaging students, morals/values, participation, relationships, society,
by Daniel Christian
On 01/28/2025,
in ethics, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, relationships, religion, society,
by Daniel Christian
Proverbs 17:3
“The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.”
Proverbs 17:9
“Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.”
Proverbs 17:15
“Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the Lord detests them both.”
Psalms 28:7-9
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever.”
Psalms 30:8-10
“To you, Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy: “What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me; Lord, be my help.””
On 01/22/2025,
in ethics, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, morals/values, relationships, religion, society,
by Daniel Christian
12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
A psalm. For giving grateful praise.
1 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his[a];
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
On 01/21/2025,
in Amazon, business, career development, collaboration, communications, community colleges, higher education, instructional design, leadership, learning ecosystem, skills, society, strategy, United States, vendors, vision/possibilities,
by Daniel Christian
A Community College’s Guide to Building Strong Partnerships — from eddesignlab.org
This November 2024 guidebook offers higher education practitioners actionable strategies for building and sustaining partnerships that both meet regional needs and support students, families, and communities. This work was based on the design and delivery of dual enrollment pathways as part of the Lab’s Designers in Residence 2.0: Accelerating Pathways project.
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The practices and case studies shared here are informed by higher education leaders across six community colleges as part of the Lab’s Designers in Residence program.
We have organized the guidebook based on core elements of a strong partnerships strategy, alongside how to establish a strong foundation and sustain and maintain the partnerships you’ve built. Through our research, we’ve identified four key elements of strong partnerships:
+ Communication and collaboration
+ Shared vision
+ Adaptive and responsive
+ Action-oriented
You will find guiding questions, tools, and case studies within each of the four elements.
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Also from The Education Design Lab:
- Skills Validation Guidebook: 10 Steps to Design a High-Quality Skills Validator
The Skills Validation Guidebook (October 2024) aims to inform + empower designers of skill validators, such as educators, instructional designers, and hiring managers, to support stakeholders in the skills-based ecosystem.