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tech companies coalition sought

U.S. Policy on China May Move from ‘America First’ to America & Co.

A tech entrepreneur in the State Department is using network theory to counter Chinese pressure.

According to Krach, the Clean Network includes 180 telecom companies and 50 national governments that represent two-thirds of the world’s gross domestic product. Although that’s impressive, all countries aren’t equally committed.

The task of forming networks to counter China’s influence has been made easier by China itself, which has frightened and angered trading partners with its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, a newly belligerent pursuit of China’s national interests.

The Clean Network is to China what George Kennan’s “long telegram” [PDF] of 1946 was to the Soviet Union, wrote David Fidler, adjunct senior fellow for cybersecurity and global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a blog post in October.

But trade deals alone are not enough, says Martijn Rasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. For instance, they wouldn’t stop China from exporting its surveillance technology to countries such as Venezuela and Uganda, where it’s been used to target political activists, he says.

ed tech companies protections

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/23/916096008/justice-department-proposes-weakening-social-medias-legal-shield

Tech companies largely oppose paring Section 230’s protections, which they say have been essential to the development of the internet. Now with the election just weeks away, some warn that the legislation could make tech platforms reluctant to act on potentially harmful disinformation.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said Section 230 should be “revoked”, arguing that tech companies should be held to the same standards as media companies, which can be sued for printing falsehoods.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of the original authors of Section 230, accused the Trump administration of trying to intimidate tech companies.

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more on ed tech companies in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=tech+companies

ed tech companies

Investment continues to flow to ed tech, with $803 million injected during the first six months of the year, according to the industry news website EdSurge. But half of that went to just six companies, including the celebrity tutorial provider MasterClass, the online learning platform Udemy and the school and college review site Niche.

From the outside, the ed-tech sector may appear as if “there’s a bonanza and it’s like the dot-com boom again and everybody’s printing money,” said Michael Hansen, CEO of the K-12 and higher education digital learning provider Cengage. “That is not the case.”

Even if they want to buy more ed-tech tools, meanwhile, schools and colleges are short on cash. Expenses for measures to deal with Covid-19 are up, while budgets are expected to be down.

Analysts and industry insiders now expect a wave of acquisitions as already-dominant brands like these seek to corner even more of the market by snatching up smaller players that provide services they don’t.

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Tech-based contact tracing could put schools in murky privacy territory

https://www.educationdive.com/news/tech-based-contact-tracing-could-put-schools-in-murky-privacy-territory/584881/

  • A white paper from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) suggests the use of contact tracing technology by schools could erode student privacy and may not be effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus.

Despite the pandemic, schools still must conform to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and other laws governing student privacy. Districts can disclose information to public health officials, for example, but information can’t be released to the general public without written consent from parents.

The Safely Reopen Schools mobile app is one tool available for automating contact tracing. The idea is that if two mobile phones are close enough to connect via Bluetooth, the phone owners are close enough to transmit the virus. The app includes daily health check-ins and educational notifications, but no personal information is exchanged between the phones, and the app won’t disclose who tested positive.

Colleges are also using apps to help trace and track students’ exposure to coronavirus. In August, 20,000 participants from the University of Alabama at Birmingham were asked to test the GuideSafe mobile app, which will alert them if they’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. The app determines the proximity of two people through cell phone signal strength. If someone reports they contracted the virus, an alert will be sent to anyone who has been within six feet of them for at least 15 minutes over the previous two weeks.

Critics of the technology claim these apps aren’t actually capable of contract tracing and could undermine manual efforts to do so.

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more on ed tech in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=educational+technology

technology tyranny

WHY TECHNOLOGY FAVORS TYRANNY

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/

Artificial intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we don’t take steps to stop it.

liberal democracy and free-market economics might become obsolete.

The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but feared they were losing their economic worth.

artificial intelligence is different from the old machines. In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in manual skills. Now they are beginning to compete with us in cognitive skills. And we don’t know of any third kind of skill—beyond the manual and the cognitive—in which humans will always have an edge.

Israel is a leader in the field of surveillance technology, and has created in the occupied West Bank a working prototype for a total-surveillance regime.

The conflict between democracy and dictatorship is actually a conflict between two different data-processing systems. AI may swing the advantage toward the latter.

As we rely more on Google for answers, our ability to locate information independently diminishes. Already today, “truth” is defined by the top results of a Google search.

The race to accumulate data is already on, and is currently headed by giants such as Google and Facebook and, in China, Baidu and Tencent. So far, many of these companies have acted as “attention merchants”—they capture our attention by providing us with free information, services, and entertainment, and then they resell our attention to advertisers.
We aren’t their customers—we are their product.

Nationalization of data by governments could offer one solution; it would certainly curb the power of big corporations. But history suggests that we are not necessarily better off in the hands of overmighty governments.

Edtech going global

The Next Wave of Edtech Will Be Very, Very Big — and Global

https://www-edsurge-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2021-07-30-the-next-wave-of-edtech-will-be-very-very-big-and-global

India’s Byju’s

Few companies have tackled the full range of learners since the days when Pearson was touted as the world’s largest learning company. Those that do, however, are increasingly huge (like PowerSchool, which had an IPO this week) and work across international borders.

Chinese education giants, including TAL and New Oriental.

The meteoric rise of Chinese edtech companies has dimmed recently as the Chinese government shifted regulations around online tutoring, in an effort to “protect students’ right to rest, improve the quality of school education and reduce the burden on parents.”

Acquisitions and partnerships are a cornerstone of Byju’s early learning programs: It bought Palo Alto-based Osmo in 2019, which combines digital learning with manipulatives, an approach the companies call “phygital.” For instance: Using a tablet’s camera and Osmo’s artificial intelligence software, the system tracks what a child is doing on a (physical) worksheet and responds accordingly to right and wrong answers. “It’s almost like having a teacher looking over you,
My note: this can be come disastrous when combined with the China’s “social credit” system.

By contrast, Byju’s FutureSchool (launched in the U.S. this past spring) aims to offer one-to-one tutoring sessions starting with coding (based in part on WhiteHat Jr., which it acquired in August 2020) and eventually including music, fine arts and English to students in the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Indonesia and others. The company has recruited 11,000 teachers in India to staff the sessions

In mid-July, Byju’s bought California-based reading platform Epic for $500 million. That product opens up a path for Byju’s to schools. Epic offers a digital library of more than 40,000 books for students ages 12 and under. Consumers pay about $80 a year for the library. It’s free to schools. Epic says that more than 1 million teachers in 90 percent of U.S. elementary schools have signed up for accounts.

That raises provocative questions for U.S. educators. Among them:

  • How will products originally developed for the consumer market fit the needs of schools, particularly those that serve disadvantaged students?
  • Will there be more development dollars poured into products that appeal to consumers—and less into products that consumers typically skip (say, middle school civics or history curriculum?)
  • How much of an investment will giants such as Byju’s put into researching the effectiveness of its products? In the past most consumers have been less concerned than professional educators about the “research” behind the learning products they buy. Currently Gokulnath says the company most closely tracks metrics such as “engagement” (how much time students spend on the product) and “renewals” (how many customers reup after a year’s use of the product.)
  • How will products designed for home users influence parents considering whether to continue to school at home in the wake of viral pandemics?

Antitrust Bill Big Tech

On Thursday, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, along with four other Democratic Senators, unveiled a major change to antitrust law that would dramatically affect the biggest tech companies. The biggest change is that the law would shift the burden of proof when considering whether an acquisition or merger is anticompetitive.

Verizon and Unity Tech

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-unity-partner-5g-mec-gaming-enterprise

  • Verizon and Unity partner to enable new digital experiences ranging from entertainment applications to enterprise toolkits using 5G, mobile edge compute (MEC) and real-time 3D technology.
  • 5G Ultra Wideband and MEC will be a game changer for real-time 3D entertainment content by offering faster speeds, higher bandwidth and ultra low-latency for industries like gaming, retail, sports and more.
  • The companies will also explore how 5G and MEC can enhance real-time 3D enterprise experiences, transforming the way businesses design, build and operate in a real-time economy.

2020 Immersive Learning Technology

2020 Immersive Learning Technology

https://www.jff.org/what-we-do/impact-stories/jfflabs-acceleration/2020-immersive-learning-technology/

2020-Immersion-012420 per Mark Gill’s finding

Technology is rapidly changing how we learn and grow. More and more, tools and platforms that make use of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and extended reality (ER)—collectively known as immersive learning technology—are moving from the niche world of Silicon Valley into retail stores, warehouses, factory floors, classrooms as well as corporate education and training programs. The value is clear: these immersive learning tools help companies, training providers, and educators train workers better, faster, and more efficiently. Of course, the impact doesn’t stop at the bottom line. Immersive learning presents an opportunity to reliably train employees for situations that are expensive to support, challenging to replicate, and even dangerous. And it can be done efficiently, safely, and with better learning outcomes.

1 in every 3 small and mid-size businesses in the U.S. is expected to be piloting a VR employee training program by 2021, seeing their new hires reach full productivity 50% faster as a result.1

The worldwide AR and VR market size is forecast to grow nearly 7.7 times between 2018 and 2022.

14 million AR and VR devices are expected to be sold in 2019

By 2023, enterprise VR hardware and software revenue is expected to jump 587% to $5.5 billion, up from an estimated $800 million in 2018.

Virtual Reality VR  A computer-generated experience that simulates reality. VR may include visual, auditory, or tactile experiences.

Augmented Reality AR A live experience of a physical space, where computer-enhanced visualizations, sounds, or tactile experiences overlay the real-world environment.

Mixed Reality MR A blend of virtual experiences and the real world where virtual and augmented experiences are presented simultaneously

Extended Reality ER  An immersive experience involving interactions with the real world, virtual reality, augmented reality, as well as other machines or computers adding content to the experience.

Soft Skills Technical Skills Immersive learning technologies can help people develop human skills, such as empathy, customer service, improving diversity and inclusion, and other areas

Technical Skills.  Immersive learning technologies enable workers to learn through simulated experiences, providing the opportunity for risk-free repetition of complex or dangerous technical tasks.

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more on immersive learning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=immersive+learning

10 years in ed tech

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-12-31-when-education-giants-stumbled-and-data-ruled

The tools that have delivered are specific, targeted solutions that are easy to use and provide teachers and students delight. Simple solutions, like Read 180, which helps accelerate learning for struggling students, still deliver 20 years later, now under Houghton Mifflin Harcourt instead of Scholastic. Accelerated Reader, a product that started more than 30 years ago, still motivates kids to read.

Companies that aim to provide student data in a usable fashion, like Schoology, still provide value.

the promise of data in education is still proving itself. It has taken awhile, but we’re getting to a point where data is more actionable. Renaissance just acquired Schoolzilla, which was launched in 2011, for this reason.

When it comes to devices, many kids today have access to iPads or Chromebooks. Although one-to-one computing hasn’t been as transformational as some predicted in 2010, we’ve certainly seen a huge shift

Most of these [textbook providers] companies tried to re-platform every unique product into one monolithic model, but the promise didn’t pan out—the products proved clunky and hard to use

Predictions that educators would want more assessment data to drive instruction have proven true. https://www.renaissance.com/

The prediction that digital reading would be simple and easy to implement has also proven true.

Virtual reality hasn’t panned out yet.

The rise of gaming in education was another prediction that has largely faded.

started to solve the challenge of data interoperability and portability.

Alongside that, privacy and data responsibility are still a problem

The role of the teacher, however, is still critical. Rather than take over responsibility for educating students, technology’s role should be—and increasingly is—to put multiple options into educators’ hands to easily solve different types of challenges for individual students.

 

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more on technology for the last decade
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2020/01/02/100-tech-debacles-of-the-decade/

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