OLDaily

You Can Now Get Your Whole Genome Sequenced for Less Than an iPhone
Emily Mullin, Medium, OneZero, 2019/07/09

Because there was never a scam in education technology that was left untried, let me predict here that sometime over the next decade or so a startup will proclaim that it can use full genome scans to assist, support, or otherwise supplement education programmes. Meanwhile, ever-quick to jump on a straw man, the learning styles sceptics will be the first to proclaim that there is no link between a student's genome and direct instruction methods. You heard it here first.

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Researchers at Udacity develop AI that can generate lecture videos from audio narration
Kyle Wiggers, Venture Beat, 2019/07/09

In a world where deepfakes videos are a real thing, it's not surprising to read that researchers have developed software that can create a video lecture from an audio narration (though one wonders: why?). In an arXiv preprint (9 page PDF) researchers Byung-Hak Kim and Varun Ganapathi "present LumièreNet, a simple, modular, and completely deep-learning based architecture that synthesizes high quality, full-pose headshot lecture videos from instructor’s new audio narration of any length." This article summarizes the paper. 

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New push to spread e-learning to remote Arab villages
Gulf News, 2019/07/09

According to this article, "Through offline solutions, the (Madrasa) platform provides 5,000 free Arabised videos in general science, math, biology, chemistry and physics to students from kindergarten to grade 12 without internet access." The plan is to "distribute the offline solutions, ranging from Madrasa tablet, WiFi hotspot device, Madrasa flash memory (USB) and Madrasa Smart Bag, as part of its programmes and projects in areas it oversees and covers." You can also view the learning materials on Madrasa's online platform (the videos themselves are on YouTube).

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Future Skills Centre looks at scaling up best practices for Canada’s workforce
Anqi Shen, University Affairs, 2019/07/09

This is an update on the progress of Canada's Future Skills Centre, awarded last February to Ryerson University in partnership with Blueprint and the Conference Board of Canada. One initiative already underway is the Future Skills Innovation Network (FUSION) of six Canadian universities (Carleton, Simon Fraser, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Concordia and Memorial). A full list of projects is available here. Finally, Pedro Barata (pictured), previously an SVP with Toronto's United Way, was named executive director last Wednesday. 

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Boosting Degree Completion With Blockchain
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2019/07/09

The easiest and most obvious use case for blockchain in education is blockchain-based credentials. This article discuses one such project being undertaken by Arisonza State University. "Arizona State has completed the “first big chunk of work” -- providing the tool to view student data such as transfer date, grades, projected graduation, etc." The danger, though, is that each university system will develop its own credentials blockchain and that we'll have dozens of different ways of doing it. "Creating a universal system for reverse transfer, and more broadly student data, would be monumental, said Moreau. But it would mean that colleges would have to give up some autonomy on how they collect and share data."

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