Resilient Teaching During Times of Change with Dr. Rebecca Quintana, University of Michigan

The pandemic has accelerated the global need for online learning. In the short term, educators mitigated disruption of campus closures by moving their courses, assessments, and even graduation ceremonies online.  In many educational settings, the focus has shifted to adaptability—how can we design courses that withstand all kinds of changes, including a pandemic? It has […]
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China Plans Online Payment Rules That May Hit Ant, Tencent

hackingbear writes: People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said on Wednesday that any non-bank payment company with half of the market in online transactions or two entities with a combined two-thirds share could be subject to antitrust probes, potentially dealing another blow to financial technology giant Ant Group Co. and its biggest rival Tencent Holdings Ltd. Ant’s Alipay accounts…

Sci-Hub: Scientists, Academics, Teachers & Students Protest Blocking Lawsuit

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Torrent Freak: On December 21, 2020, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, filed a lawsuit hoping to have the court compel Indian ISPs to block both Sci-Hub and Libgen. Accusing the platforms of blatantly infringing their rights on a massive scale, the publishers said that due to the defiant nature of the platforms, ISP…

Assigning Homework Exacerbates Class Divides, Researchers Find

“Education scholars say that math homework as it’s currently assigned reinforces class divides in society and needs to change for good,” according to Motherboard — citing a new working paper from education scholars:
Status-reinforcing processes, or ones that fortify pre-existing divides, are a dime a dozen in education. Standardized testing, creating honors and AP tracks, and grouping students based on perceived ability…

Coursera Comes Together with Disney and Pixar to Inspire Learners to Explore Their Passions and Achieve New Goals

By Stephanie Hale, Director of Brand, Coursera New course from the University of Michigan and exclusive course collections explore themes from the upcoming Disney and Pixar movie, “Soul” During times of change and uncertainty, we find joy and purpose in the world around us—in the moments that reveal the beauty of the human spirit. Time […]
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In Rural ‘Dead Zones,’ School Comes On a Flash Drive

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Shekinah and Orlandria Lennon were sitting at their kitchen table this fall, taking online classes, when video of their teachers and fellow students suddenly froze on their laptop screens. The wireless antenna on the roof had stopped working, and it could not be fixed. Desperate for a solution, their mother…

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.”…

Schools Clamored for Seesaw’s App. That Was Good News, and Bad News.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The first requests that upended Seesaw, a popular classroom app, came in January from teachers and education officials abroad. Their schools were shutting down because of the coronavirus, and they urgently wanted the app adjusted for remote learning. The company figured it could do that with a single short hackathon project. “We were so naive,”…

Group Files ‘Largest FOIA of All Time’

Reclaim the Records — a group of activist genealogists, historians, journalists, teachers — has filed what may be the largest Freedom Of Information Act Request of all time. The group wants the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to release billions of digital images and their associated metadata to the public. From a report: NARA is a government agency that preserves…