Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” 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.
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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 – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – 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.
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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 – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s 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.
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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.
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Indeed. And only the so called ‘robust, serious, trustworthy… schooling societies’ haven’t got that yet!
In many countries (mostly the developing ones) where the robustness doesn’t match the budget, the platform has always been and will always be the open and free web. And what for some might be regarded as ‘weak’, for others is seen as powerful.
They use what they have at hand – what they can afford to take part in this world. They don’t want to be left behind, and I must say that in some cases they haven’t. They have used the web as a platform to land and launch themselves in a wider world. All it takes is willing and vision (and that can’t be used … is more about development of perception!!)
The longer we wait for the platform to arrive, the harder it will be to catch up with the pace of those who have realized this from the very beginning.
The tools/platforms are important as a basis, but not the essence of learning. And I would just like to remind us all that before we had access to these technological platforms we already learned. So what I am trying to say is that what’s important in learning are the actors – the people with whom the learning relationships are established and developed; the artefacts – because they also have an history attached to it and we can learn from them; and everything that surrounds the learning environment: the contexts.
The Tools on the www? There are tools galore. The www is a platform that reinvents itself daily.
Now…. in a Learning Seminar what I honestly would like to approach – had someone asked for my opinion, and I am well aware it hasn’t been the case 😉 – it’s how we transform this platform (think the word ‘platform’ gives people a sense of comfort and support) in an involving learning environment, with all the indispensable actors and characteristics attached to it. The word Platform comes to me as space; a learning environment, on the other hand, takes more than a place you can add yourself too. How many platforms have courses/modules created and with students added to it, but where the evidence of participation is inexistent…? [ it reminds me of school – just because my physical body is present in the classroom, does it mean I am there?].
A learning environment requires engagement by all parties involved, where communication, collaboration, feeling of community and care are regarded as vital to the activity of knowing…rather than the mere acquisition of knowledge.
And on that note, I just want to say that what would be nice to focus on is the people, the strategies, the policies that need to be in place for a learning environment to be constructed and personally adjustable in that big ‘platform’. Technology is important, but what is really important is how people learn, and that has still not changed. People learn with and from each other . That has also been the added value of ICT – reinvention of communication channels and learning relationships.