AI Thinking for Cloud Education Platform with Personalized Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) thinking is a framework beyond procedural thinking and based on cognitive and adaptation to automatically learn deep and wide rules and semantics from experiments. This paper presents Cloud-eLab, an open and interactive cloud-based learning platform for AI Thinking, aiming to inspire i) Deep and Wide learning, ii) Cognitive and Adaptation learning concepts for education. It has been successfully used in various machine learning courses in practice, and has the expandability to support more AI modules. In this paper, we describe the block diagram of the proposed AI Thinking education platform, and provide two education application scenarios for unfolding Deep and Wide learning as well as Cognitive and Adaptation learning concepts. Cloud-eLab education platform will deliver personalized content for each student with flexibility to repeat the experiments at their own pace which allow the learner to be in control of the whole learning process

A tale of two modes : initial reflections on an innovative MOOC

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are offered by many universities, with hundreds thousands of people worldwide having registered for one or more of the many available courses. Despite the potential that has been claimed for these courses to transform education, in practice the majority are deeply conservative in maintaining the educational status quo. Lacking innovative pedagogic foundation and with the need for approaches that scale, many courses rely heavily on very traditional methods such as mini-lectures and quizzes. In particular, learner support is proving to be insufficient for many participants. This paper reports initial results and experience from developing and presenting a MOOC which provides both “traditional” and supported modes. We present the motivation and objectives for the course, discuss initial results and reflect on lessons learned in the process

Home: “People as Place”

Crises of climate breakdown, ocean acidification, mass extinction, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation demand global transformation. Direct and clinical social workers are on the front lines of responses to the social consequences of these crises. They have critical skills needed for socially and environmentally sustainable solutions to these problems. Yet for the most part, direct and clinical social workers are not engaged in environmental action and do not see their work as “environmental social work.” Micro-level workers need information and resources in order to integrate environmental health in practice, and particularly tools which center the needs of the people they serve. The Home podcast series is geared to respond to these needs in an accessible format. Home seeks to engage a notoriously busy group of people by combining storytelling, theory, interviews with practicing direct and clinical social workers, resources for assessment and intervention, and shareable educational materials in an accessible format. Its goal is to inspire direct and clinical social workers to integrate an ecosocial worldview in practice while providing them with information and tools to do so

Towards evaluation design for smart city development

Smart city developments integrate digital, human, and physical systems in the built environment. With growing urbanization and widespread developments, identifying suitable evaluation methodologies is important. Case-study research across five UK cities - Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough - revealed that city evaluation approaches were principally project-focused with city-level evaluation plans at early stages. Key challenges centred on selecting suitable evaluation methodologies to evidence urban value and outcomes, addressing city authority requirements. Recommendations for evaluation design draw on urban studies and measurement frameworks, capitalizing on big data opportunities and developing appropriate, valid, credible integrative approaches across projects, programmes and city-level developments

Big Data Now, 2015 Edition

Now in its fifth year, O’Reilly’s annual Big Data Now report recaps the trends, tools, applications, and forecasts we’ve talked about over the past year. For 2015, we’ve included a collection of blog posts, authored by leading thinkers and experts in the field, that reflect a unique set of themes we’ve identified as gaining significant attention and traction. Our list of 2015 topics include: Data-driven cultures Data science Data pipelines Big data architecture and infrastructure The Internet of Things and real time Applications of big data Security, ethics, and governance Is your organization on the right track? Get a hold of this free report now and stay in tune with the latest significant developments in big data