The ripple effect of AlphaGo’s triumph in 2016 has been growing ever since. The comprehensive defeat of world Go champion Lee Sedol by Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence application signified that the promise of AI – first widely publicised by DeepBlue’s defeat of then world chess champion Garry Kasparov two decades earlier – was set to […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
AI education must help students see inside the black box
Are we all part time now?
Being a part-time doctoral researcher is hard. Part-timers are generally already in work, professionals, “mature”, doing the doctorate to upgrade quals and/or further an interest. There’s a lot of part-time in my field of education, and in other areas like law, nursing, social work, business. Part-timers often self-fund. Getting the doctorate done part-time generally takes […] … learn more→
Will COVID-19 be the death of summer vacation?
Will schools make up lost time this summer? This should be decided by each school district in conjunction with state education agencies. A blanket approach is not the best option, nor an assumption that every school district, even within a state, is addressing the needs of all students in the same manner through online learning. […] … learn more→
Learning styles are fake news
Before “fake news”, we used to think that demonstrating the falsity of a claim consigned it to irrelevance for all but a delusional fringe. But perhaps it is time to accept that myths persist and mutate as malignantly as viruses. Academic research can have its own myths. Education research certainly does. Perhaps the most pervasive […] … learn more→
Going back to school to deal with hard times? For-profit schools could make things even harder
During recessions or times of high unemployment, there tends to be an increase in the number of people who enroll in college. Due to the economic fallout from COVID-19, it is expected many people are likely to return to college once again. Indeed, a survey from March found that one-third of American workers felt that if they lost their […] … learn more→
Critical thinking and communication will be more necessary than ever post-pandemic
When the government call went out to academics to join the Covid Expert Database – a resource for parliamentarians – it was retweeted by some colleagues under the headline “NB they want Arts and Humanities academics too”. That this fact had to be foregrounded is a depressing reminder of how entrenched debates about the relevance […] … learn more→
Students without access to distance education: the pandemic reveals great inequalities
Given the unstoppable advance of COVID-19 and its worldwide expansion, one of the first measures fell directly on the classrooms. From one day to the next, the approximately 10 million students in Spain, according to data from the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training , stayed at home. And along with that educational lock, the first doubts arose, […] … learn more→
Researching Covid-19 must not become a feeding frenzy for opportunists
“If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call?!” Or, more aptly, if you want to protect your neighbourhood from, what would you definitely need? I think that any solution must include a well-tested alarm system to call attention, a sizeable group of expert firemen, and a whole lot of water. I suppose […] … learn more→
Children: critical thinking, an innate quality, to sharpen from an early age
The call for more critical thinking often hides a very pessimistic view of our mental capacities. We would be irreparably the prey of our “biases”, these influences which escape all control and make us act in an irrational way. And so we would be generally ready to believe everything. Thus, the critical spirit would be an ideal often […] … learn more→
Forget old screen ‘time’ rules during coronavirus. Here’s what you should focus on instead
COVID-19 has left parents grappling with the challenges of online learning, entertainment and work. It’s natural the amount of time children spend using screens will now increase. But that’s OK. Screen time recommendations we’ve enforced for so long no longer apply to our situation. There are ways to make the best of kids’ increased use […] … learn more→
