Dons Set E-Learning Standards for Schools and Universities | The Observer (Kampala)

Photo: Moses Talemwa

Moses Talemwa, Observer Education Editor set out to find out why the improved technology has not changed teaching outcomes.  
 

Education Minister Jessica Alupo inspecting pupils in a computer lab at Nakasero PS. Initiatives at e-learning remain a challenge in the sector.

For years now, computer scientists have repeatedly stressed that the technology to improve learning exists in all forms. From computer sets to improved software to online forms of communication, the technology has evolved to improve how learners are taught their information.

Last month, the district education officer in Wakiso, Frederick Kinobe Kiyingi, issued a directive calling for the banning of mobile phones in schools. However, the directive has irritated several experts in e-learning.

Kiyingi specifically warned teachers, who spend much of the official teaching hours on WhatsApp as well as surfing the internet, that they run the risk of being fired from work.

"There is time for everything... . the time for WhatsApp and surfing internet as well as time for teaching pupils," Kinobe advised, as he set up a taskforce to end the vice.

"Government and parents pay teachers to teach their children, not to indulge in WhatsApp and surfing the internet."

However, Kiyingi's view is not necessarily well appreciated among experts on e-learning. One of them, Dr Paul Birevu Muyinda, the dean of the school of Distance and Lifelong Learning at Makerere University believes that Kiyingi has failed to appreciate how smart phones benefits education.

Dr Muyinda, an e-learning expert, argues that Kiyingi's attitude is typical in the civil service, and is behind the challenges in effecting modern teaching methods in schools.

“Most civil servants are comfortable with the traditional system of teaching, mostly using the blackboard, which is why teachers see no need to innovate and make learning easier,” Muyinda said.

“We need policymakers to be convinced that integrating IT resources will improve learning in the long run.”

EMERGING TRENDS

Muyinda argues that most teachers are not IT-savvy, but even those are easily discouraged from using this knowledge in their teaching.

"Many teachers ask themselves why they should struggle to put up a powerpoint presentation for students if they are not going to be appreciated for it - yet it takes a lot of their time to prepare," he adds.

He believes that this argument also prevents those without the knowledge from seeking it, thinking that if the traditional systems have worked well, there is no need to change.

"These teachers know that they have always gotten away with dictating notes to their students in the same way for a long time; so, there is no need for one to consider e-mailing the notes and reserving vital class time for discussion of the subject matter."

At Kampala International University (KIU), the deputy vice chancellor for Research Innovation and Extension, Dr George Nasinyama, agrees.

"The future of learning in Uganda is not where a teacher stands in front of the blackboard, holds a piece of chalk and dictates to learners what they must know. The future is online," Dr Nasinyama adds.

He cites KIU's experience where changes in learning are already taking shape. The university is installing most of its learning modules (courses) onto an internet portal, to make them accessible to learners and reserve lecture room interactions between students and lecturers for discussion of already-studied material.

"Students will be able to log onto our secure internet platform, which will enable them to access the learning modules [lessons] - some will come with tools such as videos or reading materials," he added.

Makerere University is also moving into the same direction. Since the beginning of this year, preparatory work is already in high gear to transform Dr Muyinda's department into the Institute of Open, Distance and E-Learning, to manage the migration of all learning at Makerere onto online platforms in three years.

"The university council is using the institute to drive e-learning at Makerere, by initially holding trainings for staff in the various colleges to understand online facilitations in their various areas," he explains.

The institute has been mandated to train 40 staff, with 20 of them already undergoing the one-year diploma in online pedagogy at the institute, under funding from the Norwegian government. The remaining 20 staff will join later this year and this, Dr Muyinda believes, will resolve several other problems.

"For instance, teachers are not being trained on ICT in education, but after this, it will be a foundation course for all students, making it possible for them to put into practice what they have learnt, when they graduate."

Read more... 

Source: The Observer (Kampala) 

E-Learning Industry Being Disrupted By New Website that Streamlines Training and Localization Materials

"Voice over casting website The Voice Realm launches new service to help localization professionals find and hire voice actors that specialize in e-learning modules"

E-learning is one of the fastest growing sectors of the voice over industry, with the market valued at approximately $100 billion. Individual companies can spend tens of thousands of dollars in recording services for training, induction and onboarding videos. These costs are reportedly being cut by up to 70% with the advent of online recording services such as the newly launched E-learning Voice Talent Website. 

The Voice Realm - Easy Online Voice Casting 

The site lists a roster of over 3,000 professionals with their own studios and editing services, which streamlines the process when compared to hiring a studio, engineer and going through an agent to book the voice actor.

Another use of bilingual voice talent is through audio localization, which is when a company has their audio recordings translated and recorded into multiple languages in an effort to expand into new regions and markets. The website features native-speakers, female and male voice over talent who have the expertise in recording long form recordings.

E-learning Voice Talent is powered by the extensive resources of the voice casting website, The Voice Realm, meaning they can deliver high-volume projects within tight deadlines and with uniform standards of quality.

The site also allows anyone to audition voice over talent for free to ensure they are the perfect fit and sound for the project before any commitments are made. Previously this process would require the services of a casting director and could take weeks to complete. Now an e-learning course of 10 hours can be recorded and delivered within a few days and bring costs down to 30% off traditional pricing.

The new website also offers 24/7 customer support via a live agent chat, and personal project managers.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.e-learningvoicetalent.com

About E-LearningVoiceTalent.com:

E-LearningVoiceTalent.com is a portal of The Voice Realm casting company that lists more than 3,000 voice professionals that allows anyone to audition and hire voice talent for a large range of applications. The company was launched in 2012 and is now one of the biggest voice over websites in the world. 

Source: PRNewswire (press release) and The Voice Realm Channel (YouTube)

MIT Creates New AI To Detect Attacks | Sci-Tech Today

A new artificial intelligence platform developed by MIT and PatternEx can identify up to 85 percent of cyberattacks, according to a new research paper. 

Dubbed AI2, the platform is said to be significantly better at predicting cyberattacks than similar systems because it continuously incorporates new input provided by human experts. 

Photo: Al screenshot and photo of Ignacio Arnaldo, via PatternEx

“Today’s security systems usually fall into one of two categories: man or machine," Adam Conner-Simon from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) wrote in a post on the MIT News site.

"So-called ‘analyst-driven solutions’ rely on rules created by human experts and therefore miss any attacks that don’t match the rules," he said. "Meanwhile, today’s machine-learning approaches rely on ‘anomaly detection,’ which tends to trigger false positives that both create distrust of the system and end up having to be investigated by humans, anyway.” The MIT and PatternEx platform attempts to merge those two approaches. 

AI²: an AI-driven predictive cybersecurity platform


Note: Take a look at  their work in a paper titled, AI2: Training a big data machine to defend PDF.

An Automated Analyst

AI2 predicts attacks by combing through data and detecting suspicious activity by clustering it into meaningful patterns using unsupervised machine learning, according to researchers at MIT. It then presents the activity to human analysts who confirm which events are actual attacks. AI2 then incorporates that feedback into its models for the next set of data.

“You can think about the system as an automated analyst,” said CSAIL research scientist Kalyan Veeramachaneni, who developed AI2 with Ignacio Arnaldo (pictured above), a chief data scientist at PatternEx and a former CSAIL postdoctoral associate. “It continuously generates new models that it can refine in as little as a few hours, meaning it can improve its detection rates significantly and rapidly.” Veeramachaneni presented a paper about the system at last week’s IEEE International Conference on Big Data Security in New York City.

Machine learning algorithms typically rely on the work of many individuals helping to “teach” them how to identify the relevant data. But the advanced technical nature of threat analysis makes it difficult for anyone who isn’t an expert in data security to contribute. With such experts in high demand and with little time to spare to pore over mountains of data, finding less labor-intensive ways to develop security algorithms has been crucial. 
Read more...

Source: Sci-Tech Today and MITCSAIL Channel (YouTube)

Can Physicists Ever Prove the Multiverse Is Real? | Smithsonian.com

Follow on Twitter as @ScolesSarah

"Astronomers are arguing about whether they can trust this untested—and potentially untestable—idea." insist Sarah Scoles.

A representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.77 billion years. The far left depicts the earliest moment we can now probe, when a period of "inflation" produced a burst of exponential growth in the universe. 
 (NASA / WMAP Science Team

The universe began as a Big Bang and almost immediately began to expand faster than the speed of light in a growth spurt called “inflation.” This sudden stretching smoothed out the cosmos, smearing matter and radiation equally across it like ketchup and mustard on a hamburger bun.

That expansion stopped after just a fraction of a second. But according to an idea called the “inflationary multiverse,” it continues—just not in our universe where we could see it. And as it does, it spawns other universes. And even when it stops in those spaces, it continues in still others. This “eternal inflation” would have created an infinite number of other universes.

Together, these cosmic islands form what scientists call a “multiverse.” On each of these islands, the physical fundamentals of that universe—like the charges and masses of electrons and protons and the way space expands—could be different.

Cosmologists mostly study this inflationary version of the multiverse, but the strange scenario can takes other forms, as well. Imagine, for example, that the cosmos is infinite. Then the part of it that we can see—the visible universe—is just one of an uncountable number of other, same-sized universes that add together to make a multiverse. Another version, called the “Many Worlds Interpretation,” comes from quantum mechanics. Here, every time a physical particle, such as an electron, has multiple options, it takes all of them—each in a different, newly spawned universe.

But all of those other universes might be beyond our scientific reach. A universe contains, by definition, all of the stuff anyone inside can see, detect or probe. And because the multiverse is unreachable, physically and philosophically, astronomers may not be able to find out—for sure—if it exists at all.

Determining whether or not we live on one of many islands, though, isn’t just a quest for pure knowledge about the nature of the cosmos. If the multiverse exists, the life-hosting capability of our particular universe isn’t such a mystery: An infinite number of less hospitable universes also exist. The composition of ours, then, would just be a happy coincidence. But we won’t know that until scientists can validate the multiverse. And how they will do that, and if it even possible to do that, remains an open question.

Null results

This uncertainty presents a problem. In science, researchers try to explain how nature works using predictions that they formally call hypotheses. Colloquially, both they and the public sometimes call these ideas “theories.” Scientists especially gravitate toward this usage when their idea deals with a wide-ranging set of circumstances or explains something fundamental to how physics operates. And what could be more wide-ranging and fundamental than the multiverse?

For an idea to technically move from hypothesis to theory, though, scientists have to test their predictions and then analyze the results to see whether their initial guess is supported or disproved by the data. If the idea gains enough consistent support and describes nature accurately and reliably, it gets promoted to an official theory.

As physicists spelunk deeper into the heart of reality, their hypotheses—like the multiverse—become harder and harder, and maybe even impossible, to test. Without the ability to prove or disprove their ideas, there’s no way for scientists to know how well a theory actually represents reality. It’s like meeting a potential date on the internet: While they may look good on digital paper, you can’t know if their profile represents their actual self until you meet in person. And if you never meet in person, they could be catfishing you. And so could the multiverse.

Physicists are now debating whether that problem moves ideas like the multiverse from physics to metaphysics, from the world of science to that of philosophy.

What the heck is a Multiverse?  


Show-me state

Some theoretical physicists say their field needs more cold, hard evidence and worry about where the lack of proof leads. “It is easy to write theories,” says Carlo Rovelli of the Center for Theoretical Physics in Luminy, France. Here, Rovelli is using the word colloquially, to talk about hypothetical explanations of how the universe, fundamentally, works. “It is hard to write theories that survive the proof of reality,” he continues. “Few survive. By means of this filter, we have been able to develop modern science, a technological society, to cure illness, to feed billions. All this works thanks to a simple idea: Do not trust your fancies. Keep only the ideas that can be tested. If we stop doing so, we go back to the style of thinking of the Middle Ages.”

He and cosmologists George Ellis of the University of Cape Town and Joseph Silk of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore worry that because no one can currently prove ideas like the multiverse right or wrong, scientists can simply continue along their intellectual paths without knowing whether their walks are anything but random. “Theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any,” Ellis and Silk noted in a Nature editorial in December 2014.

It’s not that physicists don’t want to test their wildest ideas. Rovelli says that many of his colleagues thought that with the exponential advance of technology—and a lot of time sitting in rooms thinking—they would be able to validate them by now. “I think that many physicists have not found a way of proving their theories, as they had hoped, and therefore they are gasping,” says Rovelli.

“Physics advances in two manners,” he says. Either physicists see something they don’t understand and develop a new hypothesis to explain it, or they expand on existing hypotheses that are in good working order. “Today many physicists are wasting time following a third way: trying to guess arbitrarily,” says Rovelli. “This has never worked in the past and is not working now.”

The multiverse might be one of those arbitrary guesses. Rovelli is not opposed to the idea itself but to its purely drawing-board existence. “I see no reason for rejecting a priori the idea that there is more in nature than the portion of spacetime we see,” says Rovelli. “But I haven't seen any convincing evidence so far.”
Read more...

Source: Smithsonian and Fermilab Channel (YouTube)

How Teaching A Math Problem To A Child Can Help Solve Climate Change | Huffington Post

Follow on Twitter as @Sylviabongo

Sylvia Bongo Ondimba, Philanthropist and the First Lady of Gabon notes, "World leaders achieved something extraordinary last December at COP21 in Paris; a binding agreement, which will be signed this week in New York, that unites all countries in a shared duty to fight climate change."

But in the weeks before the Summit, there were doubts and skepticism. We had seen it all before - political leaders with high hopes leaving without an agreement. Even though the world recognized there is a problem, it seemed like our understanding of how to fix it is divided. So why would this time be any different?

Fortunately, in December political heads came to a miraculous agreement at COP21. However there was also recognition that a political solution can only go so far. Fighting climate change requires all of us, citizens, businesses and charities to make changes, large and small, to our daily lives.  

An African proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child. I want to say it takes the world to save the earth. Hence, it is my strong belief that to fight climate change, we must bring about a behavioural transformation for this generation and the next. We need to kick-start this at the basic level: education.

Education is the most powerful tool we have to do this. I always dreamed of an innovative, green school as a model for Africa, that could help promote the whole region’s sustainable development as 
well as equal opportunity and meritocracy.

This is the philosophy behind Ecole Ruban Vert, a school which I founded in my home country of Gabon.

Sustainability is at the very core of the school - and we take a very different approach to equipping our students with the skills they need for the future.

Respect and understanding for the environment is instilled at the earliest opportunity as a value and an attitude not in standalone classes but integrated through every aspect of the physical surroundings and curriculum.

For example, in math classes we do not teach children how to calculate the area of an abstract square, but the area of habitat which an Elephant in Gabon needs to survive. The basic equation is the same, but green relationships become ingrained in each student who learns this. Something that is built upon in every subject as they progress through the years.

Read more...

Source: Huffington Post

KAIST president: internationalisation still a 'challenge' in South Korea | Times Higher Education

Follow on Twitter as @elliebothwell

"Sung-Mo Kang says the university has increased its support to international staff and students but it is still difficult to recruit from overseas." according to Ellie Bothwell, International and rankings reporter at Times Higher Education and THE World University Rankings.

Photograph of KAIST across Gapcheon in Daejeon, South Korea.
Photo: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said the institution’s focus on English-language courses and the introduction of social events for international staff and students has helped make the campus more attractive to those from overseas, but internationalisation is still a "challenge" across the country.

Photo: Sung-Mo Kang

Sung-Mo Kang said that 85 per cent of courses at KAIST are taught in English, while a programme called KAI (Korea Advanced Institute) Plus hosts events for overseas scholars and students. He added that the institution has also upped its financial support for students from developing countries, as part of a drive to recruit more international students.

“Foreign students are our best ambassadors as they are the ones that can encourage other people to come to KAIST,” he told Times Higher Education.

Despite these improvements, he said that recruiting international students and staff is a “challenge”, as Koreans “feel much more comfortable talking in Korean languages rather than in English” and international schools in the country are usually expensive and faith-based, which can put off overseas scholars with children.

“Korea is relatively new in this area compared to Hong Kong or Singapore,” he added. “When foreigners use English, Korean people, including KAIST students, are not quite used to it.

“We [are trying] to become a more international organisation but in order to do so more people need to be able to communicate in English. For instance, there needs to be more road signs in English. This is not just an issue for KAIST but for many other Korean universities.”
 
Last month, THE reported a study based on interviews with foreign staff at Yonsei University in South Korea, which suggested that some overseas academics feel disempowered and usually leave a few years after being recruited.
Read more... 

Source: Times Higher Education (THE)

Philosophy major gets new concentration | The Daily Pennsylvanian

The Daily Pennsylvanian - Staff - JinAh Kim inform, "Students considering the philosophy major have a new concentration option to take into account." 
 

Photo: The Daily Pennsylvanian

Philosophy majors already have the option of concentrating in Humanistic Philosophy or Philosophy of Science, both of which require 16 credits instead of the 12 required for the General Philosophy major, eight of which must be taken within the Philosophy department. Starting next semester, they will also have the option of concentrating in Political and Moral Philosophy. The new concentration will also require 16 credits, but 12 of them must be taken within the department.

The Political and Moral Philosophy concentration was created to reflect the makeup and research interests of the faculty in Penn’s philosophy department. Seven primary faculty specialize in political or moral philosophy; most departments of Penn’s size would only have two or three at most.

“I came here in 1985, and I was the only person teaching moral, political or legal philosophy,” Samuel Freeman, Graduate Chair of the department, said. “Gradually, in part because of [the Philosophy, Politics and Economics major], and because philosophy courses play a role in PPE requirements … and PPE has been such a success, the deans gave us additional appointments in political philosophy and moral philosophy.”

Freeman founded the interdepartmental PPE major, which has grown to be one of the more popular majors within the College. Despite their similar focus on political philosophy, both Freeman and Undergraduate Chair Kok-Chor Tan emphasized that the new concentration and the PPE major were meant to be significantly different.

“You have to do core philosophy classes in logic and metaphysics and history of philosophy, which aren’t requirements for PPE — this is basically a philosophy degree with a specialization in moral and political philosophy,” Tan said. “PPE is a great program, but it’s an interdisciplinary program and [is] designed as such.”

The heavy emphasis on philosophy and theory is reflected in the requirement that students take 12 courses within the higher department, which is higher than either of the other two concentrations. While this may help differentiate the concentration from PPE, it may also discourage students who are also interested in political philosophy.

College sophomore Hunter Pearl is studying political science with a minor in philosophy, but the new concentration, though aligned with his interests, isn't enticing enough for him to switch over. He's said it would also be too much to try to do both majors. 

“I definitely like philosophy, but I don’t know that I’d be so interested in having to fill all the requirements for a second major,” he said. 

He added that he chose to study political science instead of PPE or philosophy in part because of the simpler course requirements.

College junior Sophia Elliot also chose to study political science, despite her interest in political philosophy.

Elliot said that the “amorphous” nature of philosophy had made her wary of choosing the subject as a major, but that she feels that a concentration in more applied philosophy like political philosophy or ethics would be more useful in pursuing a career. While she is not considering the concentration due to the extensive course requirements that would make a second major difficult, she said she believes that it will be a valuable option for students.
Read more... 

Source: The Daily Pennsylvanian

Career opportunities in Actuarial Science | The Sangai Express

Ranjan K Baruah, career mentor summarizes, "We are aware of insurance or investing money for the future. We are also aware of different corporations or companies offering different insurance for individuals." 
 

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A word associated with investment is actuary and there is a term called actuarial science. Actuarial Science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risks in insurance and finance industries. Dictionary meaning of actuary is a person who compiles and analyses statistics and uses them to calculate insurance risks and premiums.

It means a person skilled in determining the present effects of future contingent events or in finance modelling and risk analysis in different areas of insurance, or calculating the value of life interests and insurance risks, or designing and pricing of policies, working out the benefits recommending rates relating to insurance business, annuities, insurance and pension rates on the basis of empirically based tables and includes a statistician engaged in such technology, taxation, employees’ benefits and such other risk management and investments.

Actuaries are experts in assessing the financial impact of tomorrow’s uncertain events. A student after passing senior secondary, graduate, post graduate, Engineer, MBA, CA, ICWA, etc with sound knowledge in Mathematics & Statistics may appear for the exam conducted by Institute of Actuaries of India.  

Apart from academic qualification aspirant must love logic and problem solving; good communication skill and excellent business awareness. Institute of Actuaries of India is a statutory body established under The Actuaries Act 2006 (35 of 2006) for regulation of profession of Actuaries in India.
Read more...

Source: The Sangai Express

How politicians poisoned statistics | Financial Times

Follow on Twitter as @TimHarford

Tim Harford, author of ‘The Undercover Economist Strikes Back’ insist, "How our faith in numbers has been corroded by politics and spin."

We have more data — and the tools to analyse and share them — than ever before. So why is the truth so hard to pin down?

In January 2015, a few months before the British general election, a proud newspaper resigned itself to the view that little good could come from the use of statistics by politicians. An editorial in the Guardian argued that in a campaign that would be “the most fact-blitzed in history”, numerical claims would settle no arguments and persuade no voters. Not only were numbers useless for winning power, it added, they were useless for wielding it, too. Numbers could tell us little. “The project of replacing a clash of ideas with a policy calculus was always dubious,” concluded the newspaper. “Anyone still hankering for it should admit their number’s up.”

This statistical capitulation was a dismaying read for anyone still wedded to the idea — apparently a quaint one — that gathering statistical information might help us understand and improve our world. But the Guardian’s cynicism can hardly be a surprise. It is a natural response to the rise of “statistical bullshit” — the casual slinging around of numbers not because they are true, or false, but to sell a message...

The idea that a graph could change the world seems hard to imagine today. Cynicism has set in about statistics. Many journalists draw no distinction between a systematic review of peer-reviewed evidence and a survey whipped up in an afternoon to sell biscuits or package holidays: it’s all described as “new research”. Politicians treat statistics not as the foundation of their argument but as decoration — “spray-on evidence” is the phrase used by jaded civil servants. But a freshly painted policy without foundations will not last long before the cracks show through.

The Rose Diagram that Florence Nightingale produced in 1857

“Politicians need to remember: there is a real world and you want to try to change it,” says Will Moy, the director of Full Fact. “At some stage you need to engage with the real world — and that is where the statistics come in handy.”


That should be no problem, because it has never been easier to gather and analyse informative statistics. Nightingale and Farr could not have imagined the data that modern medical researchers have at their fingertips. The gold standard of statistical evidence is the randomised controlled trial, because using a randomly chosen control group protects against biased or optimistic interpretations of the evidence. Hundreds of thousands of such trials have been published, most of them within the past 25 years. In non-medical areas such as education, development aid and prison reform, randomised trials are rapidly catching on: thousands have been conducted. The British government, too, has been supporting policy trials — for example, the Education Endowment Foundation, set up with £125m of government funds just five years ago, has already backed more than 100 evaluations of educational approaches in English schools. It favours randomised trials wherever possible.

Florence Nightingale

The frustrating thing is that politicians seem quite happy to ignore evidence — even when they have helped to support the researchers who produced it. For example, when the chancellor George Osborne announced in his budget last month that all English schools were to become academies, making them independent of the local government, he did so on the basis of faith alone. The Sutton Trust, an educational charity which funds numerous research projects, warned that on the question of whether academies had fulfilled their original mission of improving failing schools in poorer areas, “our evidence suggests a mixed picture”. Researchers at the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance had a blunter description of Osborne’s new policy: “a non-evidence based shot in the dark”.

This should be no surprise. Politicians typically use statistics like a stage magician uses smoke and mirrors. Over time, they can come to view numbers with contempt. Voters and journalists will do likewise. No wonder the Guardian gave up on the idea that political arguments might be settled by anything so mundane as evidence. The spin-doctors have poisoned the statistical well.
Read more... 

Messy:
The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

 

Look out for Harford's forthcoming book, Messy, a big idea book about the genuine benefits of being messy: at home, at work, in the classroom, and beyond.

Publisher: Riverhead Books (October 4, 2016).

Source: Financial Times

This summit is remodeling the ed conference by Laura Devaney, Director of News, K-12 and Higher Education.

Follow on Twitter as @eSN_Laura

Laura Devaney reports, "In this week's news, an innovative summit shakes up the traditional stagnant ed conference format; gender bias in STEM education; bracing for the IoT smart campus; and important data use tips for leaders."

Catch up on the most compelling higher-ed news stories you may have missed this week.   

Each Friday, Laura Devaney will be bringing you a recap of some of the most interesting and thought-provoking news developments that occurred over the week. 

I can’t fit all of our news stories here, though, so feel free to visit eCampusNews.com and read up on other news you may have missed.

Photo: eCampus News

In this week’s news:

Unconventional Innovation Summit aims to reinvent the stagnant conference
In what could be considered a remodel of the education conference to reflect the disruptive change occurring throughout K-12 and higher education, ASU GSV’s Innovation Summit—now in its seventh year—will host a diverse mix of educators, corporate executives, public officials, education entrepreneurs, and foundation officials.
Read more...

The IoT smart school is coming
As the Internet of Things impacts education, IT leaders are envisioning uber-connected schools and campuses.
Read more...
 
Researchers tackle gender bias in STEM education
A collaborative research project between Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab and the School of Computer Science, called the HEAR ME project, is hoping to identify how students themselves feel about STEM education’s importance, and how they think gender bias could, or already does, impact them.
Read more...
 
4 essential tips for institutional leaders using data
A new report identifies how high-level institutional leaders successfully implement data best practices.
Read more... 

Additional resources
Ramping up learning engagement | eSchool News

Source: eCampus News