Group items tagged

"Although massive open online courses (MOOCs) are seen to be, and are in fact designed to be, stand-alone online courses, their introduction to the higher education landscape has expanded the space of possibilities for blended course designs (those that combine online and face-to-face learning experiences). Instead of replacing courses at higher education institutions, could MOOCs enhance those courses? This paper reports one such exploration, in which a Stanford University Machine Learning MOOC was integrated into a graduate course in machine learning at Vanderbilt University during the Fall 2012 semester. The blended course design, which leveraged a MOOC course and platform for lecturing, grading, and discussion, enabled the Vanderbilt instructor to lead an overload course in a topic much desired by students. The study shows that while students regarded some elements of the course positively, they had concerns about the coupling of online and in-class components of this particular blended course design. Analysis of student and instructor reflections on the course suggests dimensions for characterizing blended course designs that incorporate MOOCs, either in whole or in part. Given the reported challenges in this case study of integrating a MOOC in its entirety in an on-campus course, the paper advocates for more complex forms of blended learning in which course materials are drawn from multiple MOOCs, as well as from other online sources."

"Smart machines are an emerging "super class" of technologies that perform a wide variety of work, both the physical and the intellectual kind, said Sondergaard. Machines, for instance, have been grading multiple choice for years, but now they are grading essays and unstructured text. This cognitive capability in software will extend to other areas, including financial analysis, medical diagnostics and data analytic jobs of all sorts, says Gartner."

"Machine translation is leaps and bounds faster and more effective than my old dictionary method, but it still falls short in accuracy, functionality and delivery. That won't be the case for long. A decade from now, I would predict, everyone reading this article will be able to converse in dozens of foreign languages, eliminating the very concept of a language barrier."

"When machines anticipate needs and wants and solve problems without consulting their owners, we will be living in the future. I believe the infrastructure, the revenue model, the customer base and the deep learning techniques are finally ready to enable entrepreneurs to seize the opportunity and build the future."

In Fall 2011, Stanford announced three, free massively open online courses, or MOOCs. Two of these courses, database and machine learning, corresponded to spring 2012 courses that I would be teaching at Vanderbilt University. I recognized that I could use the lecture materials from these classes to "flip" my own classes by having students view lectures before the class meeting, which then could be used for other learning activities.

After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the "alphabet song," and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word "Lion."

I have told her to name names. I'm not sure it'll have much of an impact, but just as the Reddit community now must deal with the increased scrutiny on its machinations and culture, I'd hope that a little more transparency and openness about academia's own culture will do it a lot of good.

"The two industrial giants aren't so much showing off as signalling transformation. Both firms are going through the most profound change in their corporate histories, attempting to switch from being makers of machines into fully digital businesses. GE's chief executive, Jeff Immelt, says the plan is to join the world's top ten software firms with sales of programs and services worth $15bn as early as 2020."

"The far greater danger is that of preparing today's students en masse for a repeat of life in the twentieth century, when homework was for the eyes of teachers only, where learning was delivered exclusively by an expert standing at the front of the room instead of sometimes constructed collaboratively by a network, and where students were taught to be effective but largely passive cogs in an industrial machine, rather than active and intelligent nodes in a networked learning society."

"Last fall, Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher "flipped" his graduate-level course on machine learning. Instead of having his students read their textbook before class or watch lecture videos that he created, as is typical for a "flipped" classroom, Doug asked his students to prepare for class by taking another professor's course, a massive open online course (MOOC) offered by Stanford computer science professor Andrew Ng on the Coursera platform. Doug's students watched Professor Ng's lecture videos and completed quizzes and other assignments within the MOOC, then came to class to discuss that material with Doug along with additional readings that went beyond the MOOC material. When Andrew Ng's course ended, Doug's students spent the remaining weeks of the semester engaged in projects that required them to apply what they had learned throughout the course."

"If we can tap into the same network effects that drive the internet economy and bring it into the firm, we have the potential to build businesses that don't just benefit the bottom line but create a culture of participation and learning. And that's when we'll find that machines are far less adept at delivering the imagination, creativity, genuine insight, and emotional and moral intelligence that is uniquely human."

"Technology is evolving us, says Amber Case, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on "external brains" (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? Case offers surprising insight into our cyborg selves."

"Speaking of companies. Interestingly, language learning companies like Rosetta Stone, Alliance Française and Lingo Live are among the first adopters. So is MOOC behemoth Coursera offering a mix of free and paid tutoring sessions for its Machine Learning course. Notably there is a big group of language tutoring both from companies and private tutors in the Education & Career category, showing that this is still the easiest subject to bring online. Prices range from free over $5 to up to $25 per 30 minute session. Nevertheless other popular subjects like math are also widely offered. As Google Helpouts are built upon Google Hangouts features like screen sharing and document sharing, they also enable tutors to also teach topics that need more interaction or visual support."

"In two different tests, the NTM was asked to 1) learn to copy blocks of binary data and 2) learn to remember and sort lists of data. The results were compared with a more basic neural network, and it was found that the computer learned faster and produced longer blocks of data with fewer errors. Additionally, the computer's methods were found to be very similar to the code a human programmer would've written to make the computer complete such a task."

The Web is continually erasing its past. The Wayback Machine aims to preserve its tracks. Jill Lepore reports.

"Google is also ramping up its integration of AI into G Suite. For example, over 10 percent of Gmail replies are now "machine written and human accepted." Google Cloud CEO Dianne Greene recently commented that "We are now working to make it easy for you. We are incorporating AI into everything you do.""

"Speed and quality of iterative learning will be key. I call that high-speed, high-quality learning "Hyper-Learning." Hyper-Learning will require Human Excellence. Human Excellence requires both mastery of self and teaming excellence - the ability to have continual high-quality conversations that result in "collective flow" that enables the highest levels of human performance cognitively and emotionally."

"This symbiotic relationship between human teacher and computer seems to be the next frontier for education. No, cyborgs are not going to take over our classrooms. But in the very near future, teachers and AI computers may team up to provide stronger, better educational experiences for students at every level from primary school up to university."

"The Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. Uses include: data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and much more."

Documentation of Lab Golf, led by Ashley John Pigford. Video by Abir Zakzok, Hana Al Saadi, Maeda Al Haidar, as part of Lab Mike, led by Simone Muscolino, Jorell Legaspi and Jordan Gushwa.