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Another neat presentation by Steve Wheeler bringing together research and development in a vivid, visual format
Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a âconversational chatbot of a specific personâ created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points â including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isnât the only platform struggling with its algorithm â YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups â 18.8 percentage points â is the widest itâs been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.
Actually, I must protest, this is neither neat nor new; this is a talk that many, many folks have been doing for 4 or 5 years now at least, high-level hand waving at best. I should probably just follow the old advice of not saying anything if I’ve nothing nice to say, but I am increasingly irked by how much credit supposed “thought leaders” are given for talks like this, that amount to not very much.
I must say that while an increasing number of educators (who make good use of “ambient awareness” through their PLN and personal reflection on change in education) have seen more than one presentation of this type over the past few years, there is STILL a significant portion of educators who need to hear/see this. The 20th century teaching/learning paradigm is still alive and well in too many cases, IMHO. This is why I applaud those who initiate and dessiminate presentations of this nature. I call this “positive redudancy”, helping education to move closer to its tipping point. This point will comprise of all the intrinsic personal reflection of one’s practices and paradigms for teaching and learning, transformed in order to reflect today’s realities, challenges and necessary skills to make this world a better place. Bring these compelling presentations on, I will “vector” this out in my networks đ
Spell-check: *reduNdancy*:-/
Interesting comments above. Can sort of sympathise with both. I suppose in some ways the problem lies in me linking to the presentation out of the context in which it is delivered. Of course, such presentations can be just “high level hand waving.” The important issue is whether or not they connect with educators in stimulating debate and changes in practice.
Personally I have grown weary of the keynote ‘circuit’ which can seem very high of presentation but limited in terms of engagement with ideas. And that is why I have questioned the forms in which we organise our exchange of ideas and in particular how we structure conferences, seminars and workshops. That such social gatherings are important I have no doubt. Yet all to often they do seem to be a repeating of exhortation to change with too little creativity or vision in who such change might come about. And yet as Jaques says there is still a proportion of educators who have yet to come into contact with such ideas. And for that reason alone “positive redundancy” may not be such a bad idea. But this makes still more critical the way in which such ideas are presented and the exchange between researchers and practitioners.