Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"The groundwork for machine learning was laid down in the middle of last century. But increasingly powerful computers - harnessed to algorithms refined over the past decade - are driving an explosion of applications in everything from medical physics to materials, as Marric Stephens discovers When your bank calls to ask about a suspiciously large purchase made on your credit card at a strange time, it's unlikely that a kindly member of staff has personally been combing through your account. Instead, it's more likely that a machine has learned what sort of behaviours to associate with criminal activity - and that it's spotted something unexpected on your statement. Silently and efficiently, the bank's computer has been using algorithms to watch over your account for signs of theft. Monitoring credit cards in this way is an example of "machine learning" - the process by which a computer system, trained on a given set of examples, develops the ability to perform a task flexibly and autonomously. As a subset of the more general field of artificial intelligence (AI), machine-learning techniques can be applied wherever there are large and complex data sets that can be mined for associations between inputs and outputs. In the case of your bank, the algorithm will have analysed a vast pool of both legitimate and illegitimate transactions to produce an output ("suspected fraud") from a given input ("high-value order placed at 3 a.m."). But machine learning isn't just used in finance. It's being applied in many other fields too, from healthcare and transport to the criminal-justice system. Indeed, Ge Wang - a biomedical engineer from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US who is one of those pioneering its use in medical imaging - believes that when it comes to machine learning, we're on the cusp of a revolution."

"iPhone 5 Called ""Gadget off the Year"" by Time Magazine, Apple's iPhone 5 (from $199 on 2-year AT&T, Sprint or Verizon plan) is a serious piece of hardware. Along with its powerful new A6 chip, iPhone 5 works on 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks for wireless speeds that rivals your home's broadband connection. iPhone 5 also has improved cameras: an eight-megapixel iSight rear-facing camera (3264 x 2448 pixels) and front-facing FaceTime camera with 720p HD quality for video calling. Samsung Galaxy S III The Samsung Galaxy S III (from $149 on 2-year plan with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon) is a true smartphone in every sense of the word -- and we're not even referring to its stunning 4.8-inch display, fast LTE speeds or versatile Android operating system. the Galaxy S III's front-facing camera knows when you're looking at the screen, so it'll give you the bright display you seek, but if your eyes look away it'll dim itself to preserve its battery. It also knows when you want to talk: if you're messaging with someone and want to call them, simply lift the smartphone to your ear and it'll dial for you. Nokia Lumia 920 As the flagship Windows Phone 8 device, Nokia's Lumia 920 (from $99.99 on 2-year AT&T plan), has a lot to offer, including a colorful Start screen with ""live tiles""; familiar Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote; and a People hub that aggregates all your contacts into one page per person (so you don't need to close, say Outlook, to see what that friend is up to on Facebook or Twitter). HTC Droid DNA and HTC One X+ A pair of Android-powered HTC devices are also worthy of ""best of 2012"" nods: the HTC Droid DNA ($149.99 on 2-year Verizon Wireless plan) and HTC One X+ ($199.99 on 2-year AT&T plan). Protected by Corning's uber-durable Gorilla Glass 2 technology, the Droid DNA's 5-inch 1080p HD screen was built for video, games, ebooks and web browsing. Integrated Beats Audio - an

For educators, parents and learners Carol Dweck's research on the benefits of a Growth Mindset is naturally appealing. Those who have a growth mindset achieve better results than those who don't, are more resilient and accept challenge willingly. After two years of incorporating a growth mindset philosophy we are finding that the reality of shifting a student's disposition away from a fixed mindset and then maintaining a growth mindset is significantly more complex than at first imagined.

"For educators, parents and learners Carol Dweck's research on the benefits of a Growth Mindset is naturally appealing. Those who have a growth mindset achieve better results than those who don't, are more resilient and accept challenge willingly. In response schools have embraced the notion and classroom walls are adorned with posters identifying the characteristics of growth versus fixed mindsets. Teachers make efforts to shift their students towards a growth mindset and parents consider how they may assist in the process. After two years of incorporating a growth mindset philosophy we are finding that the reality of shifting a student's disposition away from a fixed mindset and then maintaining a growth mindset is significantly more complex than at first imagined. Numerous forces and influences play a role and progress is unlikely to match a linear curve. Where schools have made steps in the right direction, is in raising awareness of the two mindsets. In this regard the placement of posters and discussion around the role that our mindset has in our learning are steps in the right direction. Demonising the fixed mindset is perhaps an unnecessary step and our students may be better served by understanding that we all have times when we fall into a fixed mindset. Education of how we may recognise such times and apply strategies of mindfulness and metacognition would avoid shifting already vulnerable learners on to the circle of shame. Awareness is however far form the end of the journey towards reaping the benefits of a Growth Mindset."

" Apple has long touted its device's assistive technology as a powerful tool for the educational development of physically and mentally disabled children. The iPad's touch screen makes it easier to manipulate than more traditional educational tools. For children with autism, "the iPad is not a toy, but a tool that works best when there is a 'team effort' between parents and therapists encouraging its proper use," said Marc Reisner, co-founder of Reach for the APPs. "Our goal is to provide schools with iPads so they can reach every child on the autistic spectrum." Reach for the APPs built their site with an initial donation from Managed Digital. Now, they're seeking out donations of money and/or iPads from both individuals and corporations to propel the program forward. According to reports from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1-in-88 children have some form of autism, up 78 percent from just a decade ago. The demand for augmentative communications devices is growing. But the schools can't meet the demand, so the children are losing valuable time during critical developmental years. Lois Brady, a speech language pathologist and assistive technology specialist, said apps can help develop fine-motor skills, which will in turn make functions like writing and manipulating small objects easier for the students. "I have spent years working with the most challenging students that are considered profoundly disabled," she said. "And I have seen some small miracles when I introduce the iPad into our therapy, as the children have made huge gains in attention, focus, communication, language and literacy skills." Some experts also say that the iPad can lessen symptoms of autistic disorders, helping children deal with life's sensory overload. Brady will be contributing content to the Reach for the APPs website to inform therapists about the latest-and-greatest apps for children all over the autistim spectrum. Apps must be tailor

"One of my favorite films is The Emperor's Club, starring Kevin Kline as Mr. Hundert, the Western Civilization teacher at St. Benedict's Academy. In the film's opening scene, the headmaster of the school stands before the assembled student body explaining the meaning of the school motto, Finis Origine Pendet: The End Depends Upon the Beginning. "What you accomplish in life and the significance of your contribution," he counsels, "will depend largely on what you do here. How you begin determines what you will achieve." As the film unfolds, we see this poignant message revealed in the lives of the students. What they do at the school and the relationships they develop powerfully affect the kind of persons they become and the nature of the lives they eventually lead. In the end, we realize that Finis Origine Pendet is the film's central message. The same is true of professional learning for educators. What it accomplishes and the significance of its contribution depend largely on how it begins. This holds true not only for traditional forms of professional learning-seminars, study groups, workshops, conferences, mentoring, coaching, and so on-but also for "new" forms that include face-to-face or online professional learning communities, teacher exchanges, bug-in-the-ear coaching, data teams, individualized improvement plans, and unconferences. The effectiveness of any professional learning activity, regardless of its content, structure, or format, depends mainly on how well it is planned."

"GIS (Geographical Information Systems) is everywhere. From your smartphone to your tablet, location enabled devices are present in almost every household. With over 80% of all data having some type of spatial (or geographical) component, GIS and the principles of geographic data have relevancy everywhere. This course will introduce students to GIS and the principles of spatial data in their personal life as well as applications of GIS across various industries. Major components of the course include computer representation of geographic information, the basics of GIS databases, spatial analysis with GIS, and application areas of GIS. At the end of the course, students will have an understanding of elementary GIS theory and examples of GIS-based solutions in the world around them."

ollaboration Tools Collaborative learning is essentially people working together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central question or problem serves to organize and drive activities, and encourage application, analysis, and synthesis of course material. While the landscape of technology that can be used to support central activities of collaborative learning is vast and varied, it is often lumped together under a single label: "collaboration tools." Given this vast and distributed landscape of tools, the difficulty of finding one or a set of tools to meet your goals can be time intensive. We are here to help. For faculty who are interested in learning more, want to explore, or try out a tool, contact us to talk with an Eberly colleague in person.

"The Managing Complex Change model puts language to that which makes some schools successful while others struggle. The model looks at five components necessary to create a desired environment. These include vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan. If any one piece is missing the model indicates results schools will experience including change, confusion, anxiety, gradual change, frustration, and a false start. When thinking of successful schools such as Science Leadership Academy, The MET, The Island School, The iSchool, you will find they have all those components in place. On the other hand, when I hear teachers lamenting about their school failures, the model brings clarity to the fact that one or more of these components are missing. Below is the chart that lays this out. Following the chart, I'll take a look at what each missing component might look like in a school environment. As you read, consider which, if any are components, are missing at your school. save image Lack of Vision = Confusion When I hear exasperated teachers spinning their wheels, working so hard to get ready for all the various mandates and requirements, but never feeling a sense of accomplishment, it is clear there is not a tangible school vision that has been communicated. In some cases this is because what is being imposed does or can not reconcile with what the school wanted for their vision. Skill Deficit = Anxiety My heart goes out to those with a skill deficit. They are required to implement a curriculum they are not trained in using or being evaluated via measures with which they are not familiar. Or…they are put into a position they were not trained for or prepared to embrace. Social media provides a great medium for helping these teachers get up to speed, but when the outreach occurs, the anxiety is abundantly clear. Lack of Incentives = Gradual Change It is not unusual for innovative educators to feel like and be perceived as misfits. Islands onto their own

"Having a digital classroom means a few different things: 1. You have less stacks of paper 2. It is (generally) easier to keep track of student work 3. "The dog ate my homework" isn't a viable excuse anymore 4. Note taking needs to take a new form 5. You need another method of sharing work that doesn't involve handing papers from one person to another Clearly, number 5 on this list is the one that will cause you the most thought these days, unless your dog is into eating computers - and then you have a bigger problem on your hands. Lots of things need to be shared. Students need to hand in their work, teachers need to offer feedback on said work, students need to share their collaborative work, and teachers need to share classroom information and tools of all variety. Luckily, there are tons of different tools out there that can enable you to share nearly any type of file (from .doc/.docx and .ppt to .mov, .mp3/4 , .zip and more!). There's a lot of info out there on different cloud storage services - which are a great way to share files - but many of these are business focused and not as classroom friendly. We've put together a short list of some of our favorite methods of file sharing so that you, your colleagues, and your students can spend more time on the good stuff and less time trying to figure out how to get the information to one another."

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

"Like many kids of my generation growing up in India, I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton's novels. Many of her books were written as a series ("The Famous Five," "The Secret Seven" and "Five Find-Outers") and I recall wondering if the lives of characters overlapped in any way. Did a character from one series ever run into one from another, for example? I recall wondering the same thing in later years about P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle and Jeeves series. Today, in a world where communities real and imagined are digitally connected via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, we can reframe that question in terms of those common nodes (or friends) in those characters' social networks. As it turns out, network theory as an analytic technique, or what I'd call computational literary analysis, is not just a bona fide research endeavor. It's also a great example of how computational thinking (CT) is truly a cross-disciplinary skill that can be weaved to enrich learning in any subject (not just math and science, as is sometimes the assumption). In an earlier article on computational thinking, I offered teasers of how CT could be integrated into language arts and social studies, in addition to math and science. Here's a detailed treatment of one of those examples, drawn from the work of Franco Moretti's group on "Computational Criticism," which is part of the broader Digital Humanities initiative at Stanford. (See this New York Times profile for more on the work of this group)."

"Research around the way humans learn is booming these days. Consider viral brain-based teaching trends and explorations of how the act of teaching shapes kids' brains. Mariale Hardiman, vice dean of academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and and director of Johns Hopkins' Neuro-Education Initiative. But studying how the brain learns doesn't necessarily mean memorizing proteins and brain chemistry. Sometimes it's about empathy-or in the case of some of the latest research coming out of Johns Hopkins, it's about understanding how art plays a role in learning. One person who has closely watched, and even shaped, the coevolution of neurosciences with education is Mariale Hardiman, vice dean of academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Education. The education professor is also the co-founder and director of Johns Hopkins' Neuro-Education Initiative, a center that aims to bring together research on learning and neuroscience, teaching and education. EdSurge sat down with Hardiman recently to learn about the Initiative' recent findings around how injecting art into lessons across disciplines can boost memory and retention. (This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)"

"Habits of Mind are dispositions that are skillfully and mindfully employed by characteristically intelligent, successful people when they are confronted with problems, the solutions to which are not immediately apparent. When we draw upon these mental resources, the results are more powerful, of higher quality, and of greater significance than if we fail to employ those habits. Employing Habits of Mind requires a composite of many skills, attitudes cues, past experiences, and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of thinking over another, and therefore it implies choice making about which habit should be employed at which time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues in a situation signaling that it is an appropriate time and circumstance to employ this pattern. It requires a level of skillfulness to carry through the behaviors effectively over time. Finally, it leads individuals to reflect on, evaluate, modify, and carry forth their learnings to future applications. It implies goal setting for improved performance and making a commitment to continued self-modification. While there may be more, 16 characteristics of effective problem-solvers have been have been derived from studies of efficacious problem-solvers from many walks of life. (Costa and Kallick, 2009)."

"Recently, I've been thinking of the universal truths in teaching. Students should be first. Don't always start planning with a standard. Questions matter more than answers. Trust is a currency of a human classroom. So I thought I'd gather twelve of them to start with. The idea of "good teaching" is an idea we get at a variety of different ways, So then, here are some rules we might consider when making sense of this idea of what makes a teacher great."

"If "children grow into the intellectual life around them" (see L.S. Vygostky's Mind in Society), then what kind of intellectual life are we providing to the students in our classrooms and schools? Teachers all over the world have had to accept the compromise of focusing more on delivering prescribed curriculum than developing understanding - test-taking rather than learning. This, among other reasons, is why strategies focused on ingraining cultures of thinking have been such game changers in many of today's classrooms. One good example of this that I've worked with is the Cultures of Thinking Project, led by Ron Ritchhart as part of Harvard's Project Zero. The Cultures of Thinking Project focuses on two main ways of moving towards cultures of thinking: the eight cultural forces that act on a classroom, and documentation. Curious as to what that means? Continue reading for more."

"Prior to presenting Hour of Code lessons in my classroom, and eventually to my entire school, my knowledge of computer programming was limited to knowing it had something to do with ones and zeroes. I understood a lot of work went into constructing the digital world we now rely on, but what that work entailed was hazy at best. In fact, prior to Hour of Code, I didn't know the second week of December was Computer Science Education Week, which is when Hour of Code is held. It was all thanks to a buzz on Twitter that I first heard about Hour of Code's launch in 2013 and its simple, but powerful, mission: to expose children (and adults!) to one hour of computer science. After a trial run with my class the first year, I dove in headfirst and presented Hour of Code lessons in every class at my pre-kindergarten-through-second-grade school -- and with only a little prep, so can you!"

"December is one of the most exhausting months of the year for teachers. The days are shorter. The weather grows colder and (at least here in Oregon) wetter. Students are anxious - whether it's a buzzing excitement for vacation or a sense of dread that some kids feel in homes that are unsafe during the holidays. And teachers are tired. They're tired of redirecting behaviors and tired of the mid-year pressure of the test and simply tired of the sheer energy it takes to be a teacher. It's no wonder that so many teachers begin playing holiday movies around this time of year. They want to create a sense of fun and escape and enjoyment, and a motion picture promises exactly that. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's a part of creating a culture of joy. But for me, movies always fell flat. For my first few years, I showed a movie the day before the winter break. However, within minutes, kids were disengaged. They were passive. It wasn't special. My students could go home and watch a movie whenever they felt like it. It had me wondering . . . was there something that they could do in my class that they couldn't do anywhere else? Was this actually the chance to do something epic and make something memorable?"

"Gold mining has been an integral part of world conquest from the time of the explorers. Gold and silver drove the explorers and Conquistadores to decimate world populations and colonize foreign lands, bringing home vast amounts of wealth to nations during what became known as the Age of Imperialism. Europeans colonized all parts of the globe in search of gold, silver, and cash crops. Although the colonization of America started as a result of turbulence in Europe and the search for religious freedom, it wasn't long before people struck out in search of riches here, too. The fever started with the California Gold Rush at the end of the 1840's. Ten years later, gold was discovered in Colorado, and silver at Pike's Peak and Nevada. Now, everyone wants a piece of Alaska."

"What are the real benefits of a maker-centered approach to learning? It's often described as a way to incubate STEM skills or drive technical innovation - and it is probably both of these. But as a new report from Project Zero's Agency by Design concludes, the real value of maker education has more to do with building character than with building the next industrial revolution.  "

"On a sweltering day in late July, a group of 9th and 10th graders gather around an iPad inside of the otherwise empty International School of Science in Queens. They've just completed an assignment on the quadratic equation, and a team of three is showing off their project: a funny video they animated of themselves playing volleyball, with the arc of the ball graphing out a parabola. There's not a sheet of graph paper in sight. The app they are using is called ChoreoGraph, and it's part of a suite of apps collectively known as Noticing Tools, developed by the New York Hall of Science, that aim to leverage the way kids naturally play to teach math and science concepts. The goal is to solve one of the major issues facing educators today: getting more kids interested in STEM-science, technology, engineering and math-an area where the U.S. has consistently lagged behind other top countries."