Seven things to know about datacentre deployment in Africa | IDG Connect

Photo: Kathryn Cave

Check out this article about datacentre deployment in Africa by Kathryn Cave, Editor at IDG Connect.

Photo: IDG Connect

Datacentres are the foundation of the IT pyramid. A strong network of these allows organisations to deliver the other core pillars of IT: networks, servers and software. Yet the chronic lack of datacentres means the majority of African data [the figure 80% has been repeatedly bandied about but I haven’t found a source for it] is stored outside the continent.

These issues were discussed in depth as part of Invest in Datacentre Africa a bespoke summit collocated within Datacloud Europe 2017. This included panel discussions, roundtables and individual talks and the summary below was gleaned through the course of the day’s event.

Cost: There are several ways to mitigate financial constraints. The first is public private partnerships (which gets talked about a lot in African IT). The second is other strategic partnerships. The total cost of ownership can also be greatly reduced through co-investment in datacentres, suggests Frederic Bouchez, director of innovation and marketing at Etix. This is a model where the facility is not wholly owned by anyone but is 50/50 shared.

Cybercrime: “The minute you build a datacentre you become a target for cybercriminals,” suggests Peter Alfred-Adekeye, CEO and CTO at Multiven. He believes local factors can make this worse in Africa.

Unique market conditions: The physical aspects of building a datacentre anywhere in the world are relatively similar, says Ross Macdonald, principal at Etix Everywhere. The difficulty is understanding the local market. “We haven’t seen the large players in Africa even though everyone knows it is an opportunity [because it is so difficult],” he adds.

Datacentre skills: There is a lack of sustainable skills in the local space and Lee Smith, director of South African training company DS believes “governments don’t understand the datacentre market enough to do anything about it”.
Read more... 

Source: IDG Connect

IoT skills set to rise in importance | IDG Connect

Photo: Nicholas Fearn

"Technology revolutions come and go, but if there’s one that’s here to stay for the next few decades, it’s the Internet of Things. As an industry in its own right, IoT is set to take the world by storm and introduce a range of new possibilities." summarizes Nicholas Fearn, technology journalist from the Welsh valleys.

Photo: IDG Connect

According to IHS, the market will grow from 15.4 billion connected devices in 2015 to a staggering 30.7 billion in 2020. As well as the sheer number of devices growing, the industry will also generate massive amounts of revenue. A report from Zinnov Zones claims that spending on IoT products will reach 253 billion by 2021

When you take the numbers into account, it becomes clear that there’ll be a need for highly skilled people to develop these devices and ensure they’re always safe. Just to demonstrate, a study published in 2014 by VisionMobile found that the industry will need 4.5 million developers by 2020. The right training is fundamental to plugging the skills gap but what must this deliver in practice?

Training needs to be specific
Education is important in any industry, but where the Internet of Things is concerned, nothing is clear cut. The market covers a wide variety of areas, so when it comes to accessing training and academic courses, students need to have an idea of what they actually want to do in the future.

Craig Smith, director of IoT and analytics solutions of EMEA at multinational IT firm Tech Data, believes that a combination of education and practical experience is fundamental in shaping the IoT pros of the future. Practitioners and course leaders, he says, can help students achieve this and find the right routes for them. 

“Training and education always matter. Importantly for IoT, education, knowledge and technical skills are catalysts for innovation and getting more from technology. A lack of technical skills can result in all manner of issues, including unplanned downtime or loss of data,” he tells IDG Connect.

“Having the latest certifications is the best way for an IT professional to show employers and customers they have the skills and competence to use products correctly and optimally. IoT is very broad and covers many disciplines, which is why expert trainers can help students find the right courses for their journey to certification.”

Smith says that courses should be flexible and tailored to the needs of students. “The quality of the course is highly important—make sure it is the latest vendor-authorised course and delivered by certified instructors. Good training providers will offer a high degree of flexibility, with courses delivered on site, online or self-paced, depending upon the students’ preferred learning style,” he adds.
 
Avoiding an IoT skills gap
When a new technology trend emerges, it’s important for companies and IT professionals to readjust their skillsets. Otherwise, there’s the risk of falling behind the crowd. MRL Group, an employment agency based in Hove, has begun dedicating resources to placing people in IoT roles around the world.

Terry Hiscock, principal account manager at the firm, believes that a skills gap will open up if more isn’t done to target pupils when they are making their career decisions. “The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is increasing across almost every industry, as technology advances and we move towards an ever connected world,” he says.
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Source: IDG Connect

New bill funds broadband enhancements for MT schools | KTVH

"iPads, Kindles and laptops are great tools for classroom learning….but not if you can’t get online to use them." reports MTN News.
 

Photo: Woodman School

Governor Steve Bullock paid a visit to Woodman School outside of Lolo on Wednesday to celebrate a $2 million funding bill that will bring powerful broadband to Montana’s classrooms.

“Providing our students with access to high-quality digital learning helps set them up for success in our increasingly digital world,” said Governor Bullock in a statement Wednesday. “As a predominantly rural state, we need to work even harder to make sure that our students have the high-speed Internet that they need to flourish. This investment is the result of collaboration between state government, the service provider and school communities, and will bring us even closer to closing the connectivity gap in our state’s schools.”
Connectivity issues plague many of Montana’s rural schools and communities where teachers trying to use the internet for lessons or classroom projects are often frustrated when they can’t get online.

The money provided in House Bill 390 is a big piece of the puzzle to help schools pay for broadband infrastructure and take away a big challenge facing classrooms.  
Read more...

Source: KTVH

A fine balance between digital and traditional | Deccan Herald

Photo: Zishaan Hayath

"Technology has drastically changed the manner of imparting education" notes Zishaan Hayath, Co-founder of Toppr.com. 

Photo: Deccan Herald

For any nation, a sound education system is indispensable for its overall growth and development. And while India may have made many a stride in several other sectors, education still reels under many problems. However, with the advent of technology, things are slowly changing for the better and the wheels of progress seem to be moving in the right direction. Yet, it would be premature to think that digital education alone can solve the problems that plague the Indian education landscape. In a country where parents and even students have still not embraced technology to the fullest, only a seamless blend of technological and traditional pedagogical tools can create a palpable impact on the way education is consumed.

It is true that the adoption of technology is helping teachers expand beyond the conventional, text-based learning and engage students in other formats of education that they find appealing and captivating. Globally, digital education is creating a wave in transforming teaching and learning across continents. However, when it comes to India, we can notice that our education system still relies on traditional methods to a large extent; a trend that is here to stay for a while.
Comparison

As traditional teaching is often more cost-effective than its digital counterpart, it becomes suitable for schools in rural regions. Further, the face-to-face interaction between the teacher and student in the traditional format imbibes better discipline in students. Moreover, there is no additional burden on students to acquire any technical knowledge and they can instead focus more on the subject. All these aspects may make traditional learning the foremost way of imparting and acquiring knowledge in India. Yet, certain gaps, like the need for customised learning for students and the access to quality education in smaller cities, are being overcome with the advent and use of technology.

Technology has drastically changed the manner of imparting education and learning, through the massive amount of information available online on digital devices in the form of books, audio tutorials, images, video lectures, etc. Unlike the traditional norms which demand that children learn and progress at the same pace, digital learning tools available today understand that they are all unique, with different needs, strengths, weaknesses and learning abilities. That is why traditional learning methodologies are not sufficient to cater to them all. 
Read more...

Source: Deccan Herald

Community Colleges and Student Success: Models for Comprehensive Reform | EDUCAUSE Review

Substantially increasing community college completion rates requires comprehensive institutional reform with a focus on measureable student success, an intentional and cohesive package of programmatic components, and a culture of evidence.

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Photo: Thomas Bailey

"Over the last few decades, the importance of a college education has grown both for society and for individuals. This is reflected in the large earnings gap between individuals with a high school degree and those with a postsecondary credential." argues Thomas Bailey, Director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) and the George and Abby O'Neill Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

However, most students who start in community colleges never complete a degree or certificate. This constitutes a failure for those students to achieve their goals and represents a loss of potential earning power and economic growth and activity for the economy as a whole. Although students experience earnings gains by accumulating credits without graduating, they get a significant additional increase upon completing a credential.¹

The Growing Focus on College Completion  
Public higher education policy in the latter half of the 20th century was designed to open college to the large majority of the U.S. population. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (also known as the GI Bill), the California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960, the Higher Education Act of 1965 (which established the Pell Grant), and the rapid growth of community colleges were all designed to make college accessible for all students. They focused on reducing the cost of college to the student and, in the case of community colleges, established open-access, flexible, convenient colleges in reasonable proximity to a large majority of the population, especially including groups traditionally underrepresented in postsecondary education. At the same time, technology and the characteristics of work were also changing, resulting in increasing demand for a more educated workforce. These factors contributed to increases in college enrollment, such that by the turn of the century, over 75 percent of high school graduates had attended some postsecondary institution by their mid-twenties.²

But over the last twenty years, educators and policy makers have turned their attention to college completion. While progress on enrollment cast community college performance in a positive light, the more recent focus on completion yields a much more negative image. In 2000, the Department of Education began publishing three-year graduation rates for most colleges that tracked cohorts of first-time, full-time students who started in community college. Graduation rates for many colleges were in the single digits and teens. The overall three-year completion rate for community college students nationwide was 24 percent for the 2000 cohort and 20 percent for the 2010 cohort.³ Researchers, college representatives, and policy makers have criticized this rate as incomplete and misleading.⁴ But more comprehensive measures from the 1990s showed that less than 40 percent of entering community college students completed any degree or certificate from any college within six years.⁵

In response to low completion rates, educators, reformers, policy makers, and foundations called for a concerted effort to increase the number of individuals with college degrees and certificates—an effort that has come to be called the "completion agenda." The administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, Lumina Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation all called for ambitious increases in the number of college graduates by the middle of the 2020s.⁶ Many states set goals designed to contribute proportionately to the national goals.⁷ In addition, the federal government and multiple foundations funded extensive research and reform portfolios. 

Thomas Bailey writes in the conclusion, "This article articulates a comprehensive change model that includes a focus on measurable student success, an intentional and cohesive package of programmatic components, and a culture of evidence. All of these elements are clearly present in the three examples described in the previous section. In all of these cases, the colleges and districts are focused primarily on student completion, the underlying theories of change are based on combining programmatic practices that support and guide students throughout their college careers, and the institutions are committed to tracking student progress and using evidence on student progress and program effectiveness to improve graduation rates."

Narrowly targeted reforms that either treat too few people or are limited to one segment of the student experience have a limited effect on student completion. In contrast, the comprehensive models discussed here, as exemplified by the guided pathways model, are fundamentally based on the integration of a set of coordinated reforms.
Read more... 

Source: EDUCAUSE Review

Read this Free eBook - 233 Tips on Graphics and Visual Design | The eLearning Guild

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Take a closer peek at this complimentary eBook, 233 Tips on Graphics and Visual Design.

Strong visuals can do a lot to make the information you’re sharing easier for people to understand and remember. Thankfully, effective visual design in L&D is less about your fine art skills and more about understanding how information can best be conveyed visually, and how to use those approaches creatively in your own work. This eBook, 233 Tips on Graphics andVisual Design, contains design concepts and ideas that don’t just work in theory, but have real, practical application in the work we do on a regular basis.

It offers tips from the L&D community on:

• Getting started with design
• Finding inspiration
• Creating thoughtful user interfaces
• Using graphics, text, and layouts effectively
• Ensuring design consistency
• And more!

The tips are also targeted at the specific design challenges we face in our field, making this a fast way for you to get advice and develop the skills you need. Discover how you can enhance your content today!

Photo: Bianca Woods

Bianca Woods, Senior Manager of Programming, The eLearning Guild writes in the introduction,  "Whether you have years of experience with graphic design or you can’t draw a stick person to save your life, if you work in L&D, chances are good that visual design is an important part of the work you do—whether or not you were
formally trained in it."

But why all the fuss about design in the first place? Well, strong visuals can do a lot to make the information you’re sharing easier for people to understand and emember. Things like clear user interfaces that make content easier to explore, high-quality images that enhance content, infographics and graphs that simplify complex data, and clean layouts that ensure visuals don’t distract from content are just some examples of the wide range of design choices that can aid us in a vital part of our role: helping people understand and use information.

So enjoy this eBook, and remember—we can all be great designers!
Download the free eBook now 

Source: The eLearning Guild

Artificial Intelligence is beating humanity at its own games | VICE News

Photo: Ravi Somaiya

"Go is an ancient, aristocratic Chinese board game that’s reputed to have as many possible moves as there are atoms in the universe." summarizes Ravi Somaiya, Correspondent. 

Photo: VICE News

And Google recently trained an artificial intelligence computer to play against one of the best human players in the world. The computer won.


At Google’s Future of Go Summit, 19-year-old Chinese Go prodigy Ke Jie was defeated by the AI AlphaGo in a three-match series.

AI evangelists are happy with the win, but AI doomsayers are worried it’s coming for our jobs next. And China is just mad that an American company beat the world at a Chinese game.
Read more...

Source: VICE News

Elon Musk (and 350 Experts) Predict Exactly When Artificial Intelligence Will Overtake Human Intelligence | Inc.com

Photo:Kevin J. Ryan

"Given the speed at which researchers are advancing artificial intelligence, the question has become not if A.I. will become smarter than its human creators, but when?" says Kevin J. Ryan, Staff writer, Inc.

Photo: Getty Images

A team of researchers from Yale University and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute recently set off to determine the answer. During May and June of 2016, they polled hundreds of industry leaders and academics to get their predictions for when A.I. will hit certain milestones.
 
The findings, which the team published in a study last week: A.I. will be capable of performing any task as well or better than humans--otherwise known as high-level machine intelligence--by 2060 and will overtake all human jobs by 2136. Those results are based on the 352 experts who responded.
 
Monday night, Elon Musk, who's been a consistent A.I. fear monger, chimed in on Twitter.

The entrepreneur followed up his tweet with an ominous, "I hope I'm wrong." Musk has been a vocal critic of A.I. the past several years, painting nightmare scenarios in which it becomes weaponized or outsmarts humans and leads to their extinction. He co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit that aims to ensure A.I. is used for good, in 2015.
 
Musk's own firm, Tesla, is one of the companies leading the charge in creating self-driving vehicles. The trucking and taxi industries employ about 2 million Americans, all of whom could soon find their jobs obsolete should vehicles become fully autonomous.
 
The experts polled in the study predicted that A.I. would become better at driving trucks than humans in 2027. The surveys were completed before robotics startup Otto successfully sent a self-driving truck on a 120-mile journey in October.
 
A.I. will surpass humans in a number of other milestones, the experts suggested: translating languages (2024), writing high-school level essays (2026), and performing surgeries (2053). They estimated that it would be able to write a New York Times bestseller in 2049.
Read more...

Source: Inc.com

Students’ Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Five Ways to Break the Cycle | Faculty Focus - Teaching and Learning

Photo: Melissa Wehler, PhD

"Faculty are often confronted by the ghosts of educators past. In the writing intensive courses I teach, those ghosts usually manifest in one phrase: “I’m a bad writer.”" notes Dr. Melissa Wehler, serves as the Dean of Humanities and Sciences at Central Penn College.

Photo: Faculty Focus

This embarrassed confession bespeaks an educational experience fraught with negative beliefs and expectations, not just about their writing but about their ability to succeed in general. The phrase becomes an inescapable prophecy lurking in every writing assignment prompt. “I know I'm not going to do well on this assignment,” they explain to themselves, “I'm just not a good writer.” They do not seek help, ask questions, organize their notes, or create outlines and rough drafts of their essays because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. And of course, because they do not do these vital steps in the writing process, they receive poor grades—and the prophecy is fulfilled. From the front of the classroom, however, I can see the reality: the student is not a “bad” writer but merely under-practiced and under-prepared. But how can I help students to see it for themselves? How can I support students to move beyond negative past experiences and make positive ones? How can I empower students to break these cycles?
Read more... 

Source: Faculty Focus

Suggested Book of the Week 22

Photo: Bradley Efron

Photo: Trevor Hastie

Photo: Ervin Laszlo

Photo: Jim Willis

Check these books out below by Jim Willis, author of nine books on religion and spirituality, Ervin Laszlo, philosopher of science and systems theorist, Bradley Efron, Stanford University, California and Trevor Hastie, Stanford University, California.

Photo: GraphicStock.com

Supernatural Gods: Spiritual Mysteries, Psychic Experiences, and Scientific Truths

Supernatural Gods: 
Spiritual Mysteries, Psychic Experiences, and Scientific Truths

Dark Energy. Dark Matter. Entanglement Theory. Quantum Physics. Modern science estimates dark energy permeates roughly 68% of the universe. Dark matter makes up another 27%, leaving the "normal" matter visible to humans at less than 5% of the cosmos around us. String Theory and Membrane Theory both suggest that parallel dimensions very probably exist. Quantum Entanglement Theory shows two objects connected despite being large distances apart. What does the universe hold―and hide? Where do we come from and where are we headed? Can science explain psychic and supernatural phenomena?
Exploring the collision of science, the universe and the "supernatural" unknown, Supernatural Gods: Spiritual Mysteries, Psychic Experiences, and Scientific Truths by Jim Willis looks at the myths, stories, history, science and facts of healing energies, psychic connections, heavenly messengers, miracles, déjà vu, dreams, out-of-body experiences, and many other psychic phenomena beyond the limits of the five senses.

Surveying scientists and experts, it probes the physical existence of "gods" from other dimensions and realities. The past, present and future are investigated to glimpse at the truth of animal envoys, earth spirits, evolution, parallel universes, religious stories, mythological shape shifting superheroes, the origins of the agricultural revolution, alien visitors, dowsing, past life regression, channeling, intuition, meditation, shamanism, spiritualism, and much, much more. Also included are a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to the book’s usefulness.
Read more... 

The Immortal Mind: Science and the Continuity of Consciousness beyond the Brain 

The Immortal Mind:
Science and the Continuity of Consciousness
beyond the Brain

Scientific evidence for the continual presence of consciousness with or without connection to a living organism 

• Examines findings on the survival of consciousness beyond life, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, and reincarnation
• Explains how this correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics theories on superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices

• Reveals how consciousness manifests in living beings to continue its evolution

Evidence now points to consciousness existing beyond the brain, such as when the brain is temporarily incapacitated, as well as to the survival of consciousness after death. Conventional science prefers to dismiss these findings because they cannot be accommodated by a materialist view of reality. Spirituality and religion embrace the continuity of consciousness and ascribe it to a nonmaterial spirit or soul that is immortal. As such, spirituality/religion and science continually find conflict in their views. But what if there truly is no conflict?

Based on a new scientific paradigm in sync with experience-based spirituality, Ervin Laszlo and Anthony Peake explore how consciousness is continually present in the cosmos and can exist without connection to a living organism. They examine the rapidly growing body of scientific evidence supporting the continuity of consciousness, including near-death experiences, after-death communication, reincarnation, and neurosensory information received in altered states. They explain how the persistence of consciousness beyond the demise of the body means that, in essence, we are not mortal--we continue to exist even when our physical existence has come to an end. This correlates precisely with cutting-edge physics, which posits that things in our plane of time and space are not intrinsically real but are manifestations of a hidden dimension where they exist in the form of superstrings, information fields, and energy matrices.

With proof that consciousness is basic to the cosmos and immortal in its deeper, nonmanifest realm, Laszlo and Peake reveal the purpose of consciousness is to manifest in living beings in order to continuously evolve.
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Computer Age Statistical Inference - Algorithms, Evidence, and Data Science

Computer Age Statistical Inference
Algorithms, Evidence, and Data Science

The twenty-first century has seen a breathtaking expansion of statistical methodology, both in scope and in influence. 'Big data', 'data science', and 'machine learning' have become familiar terms in the news, as statistical methods are brought to bear upon the enormous data sets of modern science and commerce. How did we get here? And where are we going? This book takes us on an exhilarating journey through the revolution in data analysis following the introduction of electronic computation in the 1950s...
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Source: Ancient Origins and Cambridge University Press