James Webb telescope
categories: academic library, technology literacy
China online ed
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-12-10-in-china-online-degrees-on-hold-even-as-moocs-rise
With China muscling its way into the first ranks as a global power in science and technology—building vast new academic complexes, climbing to the top ranks of the world’s elite universities, surpassing the U.S. in PhD graduates in science and engineering, and on its way to outperforming all other nations in science and technology academic citations—I was puzzled to discover that China is on hold in offering online higher ed degrees.
To expand the nation’s technical talent pool, Chinese universities are upgrading their capacity to offer more up-to-date science and technology courses, with universities just beginning to introduce degrees in artificial intelligence, machine learning, software engineering and other advanced specialties. For China, the move is a departure from its centuries-old tradition of favoring literature and the liberal arts.
China has come a long way from cinema-style instruction to adopt more common digital learning practices, often closely following U.S. advances in online pedagogy, such as flipped classrooms and MOOCs.
Curiously, China’s reluctance to offer online degrees parallels the attitude toward online degrees in the Ivy League in the U.S.—both have embraced MOOCs while turning away from virtual degrees out of concern that remote degrees will damage their reputations.
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more on online ed in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+education
RadioLab
categories: academic library
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bombs-and-butterflies
https://eeb.msu.edu/news/this-week-on-radiolab-of-bombs-and-butterflies/
Cheek dimples
categories: academic library
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more on anthropology in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=anthropology
Metaverse and capitalism
The Metaverse as the new frontier of capitalism
https://medium.com/@connectingtotheworld/the-metaverse-as-the-new-frontier-of-capitalism-639c9494634
Baudrillard’s work from1981, Simulacra and Simulation
Geyh, Leebron, F., & Levy, A. (1998). Postmodern American fiction : a Norton anthology (First edition.). W.W. Norton & Company.
https://mnpals-scs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01MNPALS_SCS/qoo6di/alma990011637720104318
money and gaming are only the first of being completely pushed into a new all encompassing ‘reality’ of its own.
2021 also popularized the Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) — private property transferred to virtual reality. If on a first level a photo or film keep certain relation to the real, a NFT is a second level of dematerialization of our world and perceived ‘reality’. It simulates, in a virtual world (per se already a simulacrum), the simulacrum of an image/photo/video — and, as if magically, it acquires ‘value’ and it is deemed proprietary.
The future decade’s pressures are more and more on the deterioration of what is left of the real world — climate change, pandemics, automation of work, decreasing populations (first in the West, then in the rest of the world), and scarce resources. The work that produces material things were/are the first to be automated — first in agriculture, then manufacturing and now finally services. In such a decadent material world, continuous growth would not be possible anymore — but with virtual ones
There is never enough data.
super fast internet (5G), increasing data centers, quantum computing, health trackers on human bodies, machine-brain interfaces, internet of things… The goal is for the AI to know how to reproduce material things in a virtual setting.
The COVID-19 pandemic probably accelerated this ‘metaversing’ of reality in many years.
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more on metaverse in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=metaverse
cheaper internet for low-income Americans
A program for cheaper internet for low-income Americans launches today
The FCC extended assistance that started during the pandemic
There’s more funding on the way to close the digital divide in the US. The new $1 trillion infrastructure law includes $65 billion to boost broadband access. More than 30 million Americans live somewhere without adequate broadband infrastructure, according to a Biden administration fact sheet.
Socrates Gets Killed in the Metaverse
categories: Digital literacy, VR
https://learn.framevr.io/post/socrates-gets-killed-in-the-metaverse
my annotations here:
https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Flearn.framevr.io%2Fpost%2Fsocrates-gets-killed-in-the-metaverse%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dlinkedin&group=__world__
some of the implications of people spending significantly more time in immersive 3D environments that provide alternative “realities” to the physical world.
Finnish education in Australia
categories: academic library
Tik Tok concerns
Online Coaching
categories: learning, online learning
The Flourishing, Surprising, And Badly Needed Market For Online Coaching
The Flourishing, Surprising, And Badly Needed Market For Online Coaching
the billion dollar+ market for online coaching. It’s an amazingly successful, fast-growing space with four distinct categories.
- Coaching on-demand, driven by AI matching,
- Leadership development for all, democratizing coaches for everyone,
- Wellbeing, mental, and behavioral health – psychologists selected for you,
- General coaching for training – coaches for sales, service, tech, and other jobs.
The biggest players in this market today are BetterUp, Torch, CoachHub, SoundingBoard, Spring Health, and Lyra.