Education is about progress, not exam results.
Category: education – Page 182
Reimagining Education in the Exponential Age
The future of humanity will be radically different than what we see today. As Ray Kurzweil put it, “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).” We’ll have the potential to live on Mars, connect our minds to machines, and access an abundance of resources.
But is our youth prepared to live in such a world? Are we equipping them with the skills and values necessary to be adaptable, innovative, and purpose-driven in such a world?
Our traditional, industrial-era educational models are simply outdated. What is required is not an incremental change in education, but rather an entire overhaul of the current system. It will take creative imagination to develop new models for 21st-century education.
Australia gets Women in STEM Ambassador in astrophysicist professor
The federal government has announced the appointment of Australia’s first Women in STEM Ambassador, with Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith charged with overseeing the country’s attempt to diversify its science, technology, engineering, and mathematics sectors.
An astrophysicist professor, Harvey-Smith will specifically advocate for girls and women in STEM education and careers, aiming also to raise awareness in the male-dominated industry and drive cultural and social change for gender equity.
SEE: The state of women in computer science: An investigative report [PDF download] (TechRepublic cover story)
China legalizes Xinjiang ‘re-education camps’ after denying they exist
Authorities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region appear to have officially legalized so-called re-education camps for people accused of religious extremism, a little more than a month after denying such centers exist.
The Xinjiang government on Tuesday revised a local law to encourage “vocational skill education training centers” to “carry out anti-extremist ideological education.”
Human rights organizations have long alleged the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs — a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim minority native to Xinjiang — in such centers as part of an effort to enforce patriotism and loyalty to Beijing in the region.
Vacuum Tube to Transistor to Integrated Circuit [Documentary]
This video is the culmination of documentaries from the vacuum tube, transistor and integrated circuit eras of computing.
[0:40–20:55] — Vacuum Tube Documentary
[20:55–30:00] — Transistor Documentary
[30:00–59:18] — Integrated Circuit Documentary.
A Secret Algorithm That Could Ruin Your Life
It is important to know why a program does what it does. This is not a mystery, technology is a tool and that tool is only as good as the human who created it.
You always have to know why a program, makes the decisions that it makes. No program or Algorithm will be perfect, that is the main issue that Lisa Haven brings forward. You also have to make sure of the reason for the error whether it is innocent or intentional or even criminal.
That is the problem when you blindly allow technology to rule the day. Anyone from an old-school management upbringing will tell you, never to allow technology to govern your decisions on its own. You always have to know why, where, and how on your decisions.
It is important to get this kind of technology right. Everyone wants a shortcut, instead of doing the hard work to ensure that information being put forward is correct.
A Man Of 3 Worlds: The Russian-American Billionaire Giving Millions To U.S. and U.K. Universities
Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born and Russian-raised billionaire businessman with a net worth of $17.9 billion, says he has given away $500 million to charity so far, mostly to world-renowned universities like Oxford, Harvard, Stanford and Yale. When asked why he favors donating to higher education institutions, he explains shrewdly that for him, conducting philanthropy is like running a business.
Len Blavatnik, who made his first billions in Russia, credits much of his success to his academic parents and to his education. He’s given hundreds of millions to universities mostly in America and England.
Humanities and scientific explanation: the need for change
For too long, presentations of science for the general public, and education in schools, has suggested that science wields a sort of hegemonic power, as if its terms and methods gradually replace and make redundant all other discourse; the only reason it has not yet completed its conquest is that the world is complicated—but it is only a matter of time…