Microsoft’s 2020 Hour of Code Lesson Doubles As Unconscious Bias Training

theodp writes: What if we could build a better world through code?”, begins the just-released teaser video for Microsoft’s 2020 Hour of Code: A Minecraft Tale of Two Villages . “Help us bring two villages together through the power of code! […] You will experience empathy and compassion for your neighbor while embracing the diversity that makes us all uniquely special.”…

Curiosity takes selfie with ‘Mary Anning’ on the red planet

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has a new selfie. This latest is from a location named “Mary Anning,” after a 19th-century English paleontologist whose discovery of marine-reptile fossils were ignored for generations because of her gender and class. The rover has been at the site since this past July, taking and analyzing drill samples. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-11-curiosity-selfie-mary-anning-red.html…

Diverse Representation: Learner Impacts and Strategies in Online Courses

By: Ji Su Lee and Eli Fogle, Coursera Teaching and Learning team Many learners are new to online learning. It can be an isolating environment without the in-person opportunities to connect with the instructor and other learners.  Creating an environment where learners can succeed includes many factors, and key among them is for students to […]
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Privacy Investigation Finds 5 Million Shoppers’ Images Collected At Malls Across Canada

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CTV News: Without customers’ knowledge, more than five million images of Canadian shoppers’ were collected through facial recognition software used by Cadillac Fairview, a parent company of malls across the country, according to an investigation by privacy officials. The federal privacy commissioner reported Thursday that Cadillac Fairview contravened federal and provincial privacy laws by…

Should Colleges Do Admissions Without Standardized Tests?

America’s not-for-profit College Board is a membership organization of 6,000 educational institutions that creates and administers tests used by college admissions offices. But it “operates as a near monopoly” with tests “which have a stranglehold on their student-customers…an organization under serious strain, run by an elitist, tone-deaf chief executive,” according to a new article shared by long-term Slashdot reader theodp: The…

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specializtion from DeepLearning.AI: Q&A with Sharon Zhou

Sharon Zhou is the instructor for the new Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization by DeepLearning.AI. This intermediate-level, three-course Specialization helps learners develop deep learning techniques to build powerful GANs models. Sharon is a CS PhD candidate at Stanford University, advised by Andrew Ng. Sharon’s work in AI spans from the theoretical to the applied — […]
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Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization from DeepLearning.AI: Q&A with Sharon Zhou

Sharon Zhou is the instructor for the new Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Specialization by DeepLearning.AI. This intermediate-level, three-course Specialization helps learners develop deep learning techniques to build powerful GANs models. Sharon is a CS PhD candidate at Stanford University, advised by Andrew Ng. Sharon’s work in AI spans from the theoretical to the applied — […]
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Apparent Racial Bias Found in Twitter Photo Algorithm

An algorithm Twitter uses to decide how photos are cropped in people’s timelines appears to be automatically electing to display the faces of white people over people with darker skin pigmentation. From a report: The apparent bias was discovered in recent days by Twitter users posting photos on the social media platform. A Twitter spokesperson said the company plans to reevaluate…

Star Trek To Welcome First Transgender and Non-Binary Characters

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Sci-fi franchise Star Trek is set to introduce its first transgender and non-binary characters. The characters are to appear in the third series of Star Trek: Discovery, producers said on Wednesday. The trans character, Gray, will be played by trans actor Ian Alexander, and likewise non-binary Adira will be portrayed by Blu del Barrio….