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To search this blog, try the Search Box on the right, or click on the Labels following each post entry
14 May, 2018
Beyond NAPLAN: MLC's test is called Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). It was developed in the United States, and is widely used in Canada, Singapore and the UAE. If that testing program is just part of teaching and learning - it happens often but without stress, without media attention, without pushing schools into this perverse competitive dynamic - then all the better for our kids and all the better for learning."
Labels:
Asia Connection,
Education,
ICT Capability
10 May, 2018
The Uber self-driving car that struck and killed a woman crossing a roadway in March appears to have seen the victim and her bicycle with the car’s multiple sensors. But the car — the car’s software algorithms — apparently determined she was not in the car’s path, or she wasn’t a danger to the car. In other words, the car’s sensors generated what the car considered a false positive.
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
research,
Robotics
07 May, 2018
Blockchain benefits: using cryptocurrencies for social good. PowerLedger is an Australian company that aims to use blockchain technology to create a peer-to-peer platform where individuals can trade, buy, and sell renewable energy. Another Australian company, Horizon State, has developed a way to use the blockchain to record a vote. Ethically Sourced Tuna Bubba Cook is the manager of a WWF project, Blockchain Supply Chain Traceability Project, that aims to curb illegal fishing and human rights abuses in the tuna industry.
School teachers and principals are "drowning in paperwork", costing them critical time for preparing classes and threatening their core job of educating children, research has found. A University of Sydney study of more than 18,000 public school teachers and principals across NSW found 97.3 per cent reported an increase in administration duties over the past five years. More than 95 per cent were spending more time on analysing and reporting data.
Labels:
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education
03 May, 2018
With Vista, some machines ran at a snail’s pace. There were issues with driver and software incompatibility, and Vista consumed lots of memory. Windows 8 brought an unpopular Metro interface and the Start button disappeared, to global dismay. These days, we don’t get complete new versions of Windows. Instead, Windows 10 is progressively updated. Last month’s update is the fifth major Windows 10 upgrade.
Labels:
History,
ICT Capability
30 April, 2018
Malcolm Turnbull backs Gonski report call to move from mass learning to tailored education. Too many Australian children are failing to reach their potential at school because of the restrictive nature of year-level progression, the report said.
Labels:
Education,
History,
Literacy,
Numeracy,
Sustainability
28 April, 2018
By design, Facebook often feels like a public forum rather than an advertising platform run by a corporation. Even Ted Cruz mistakenly told Zuckerberg that the law mandates Facebook be neutral, which isn't true. It’s Diamond and Silk’s First Amendment-granted right to speak untruths—and their followers have every right to spread them. Yet it’s Facebook’s role to determine just how much impact its users have, which they will do in whatever way is befitting to their bottom line. Facebook will never be the free expression forum we want it to be: It’s a private company, with algorithms that move in mysterious, often biased ways. Maybe it’s time we accepted that.
25 April, 2018
Telstra gave ABS mobile data to track Canberrans' locations. Privacy advocates have slammed the study and how the ABS had dealt with the data. Chair of Digital Rights Watch Tim Norton said the study was "irresponsible" by the ABS in light of controversy over the 2016 census. "The ABS received aggregate level telecommunications data from a telecommunications company to inform estimates of temporary populations. No individual information was provided to the ABS. Only aggregated counts of mobile telephone transactions were supplied in broad geographical areas," the ABS spokesman said.
The report noted that only five out of 37 universities required intermediate or advanced maths to get into a Bachelor of Science, while only one out of 34 institutions offering engineering degrees required advanced maths. n other words, a student who should be doing advanced or extension mathematics might pick the easier option because they’re more likely to excel at it. It’s thus more likely to contribute to a higher overall ATAR ranking, at the expense of necessary knowledge. A Mitchell Institute study released last month cast doubt on the relevance of the ATAR ranking, reporting that just one in four undergraduate students were admitted into university based on their ATAR results last year. Instead, universities are turning to aptitude tests, interviews, bonus point schemes, essays, portfolios and auditions to assess a candidate’s value.
23 April, 2018
The Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) - the world governing body for motorsport - reached out to Yamauchi and his team to collaborate and help develop a digital racing licence that could translate to a real-life racing licence, at the same time acknowledging Gran Turismo Sport as a legitimate type of motorsport. There are two FIA-certified Gran Turismo eSport tournaments set to take place in 2017. There is even further potential for winners of online tournaments to receive trophies alongside real-life race winners in F1, the World Endurance Championship and World Rally Championship.
04 April, 2018
A new teaching method, where explanations of a subject are delivered online at home and the usual homework becomes classwork, could be piloted in NSW high schools within two years. The inverted model of teaching, best exemplified by the teachings of maths ''super teacher'' Eddie Woo, is being trialled among 70 preservice teachers at Macquarie University
23 March, 2018
20 March, 2018
Maths illiteracy has led to Trump and Brexit: Eddie Woo. "Another part of the problem is the way the subject is taught. We move forward in lockstep fashion where, if you haven't gotten algebra in the two weeks I spend on it in year 7, you'll never learn it again. Next year, you'll still be trying to wrap your head around it but I'll have moved on.
22 February, 2018
13 February, 2018
06 February, 2018
When post-production meets AI and the tools become available to anyone, some scary things happen. I was reading about “deepfakes” where an original actor’s face can be replaced by another in motion video. The results are very convincing and will only get better, raising a plethora of legal and moral issues. In the near future, it may well be that you can only be sure what you are witnessing is “true” if you are physically present!
Labels:
3D,
Artificial Intelligence,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
Privacy,
Robotics
19 January, 2018
19 December, 2017
Software is Increasingly Complex. That Can Be Dangerous. The Apollo 11 moonshot was done with about 145,000 lines of code and a lot less computing power than your printer. Today’s Microsoft Windows contains some 50 million lines of code. A Boeing 787 runs on 7 million lines of code, but a modern car actually runs on 10-100 million lines of code. Google’s infrastructure is estimated to have 2 billion lines of code. It takes an army of programmers to build and maintain these systems, but it is increasingly harder to code and test every permutation of what machines and users might do.
A new patent filing from Sony highlights how the Japanese tech conglomerate may be using blockchain as part of an education platform. In August, Sony announced that it was working with IBM to build a suite of educational services, which would use the tech in part to secure student records and form part of a system for sharing that data between agreed-upon parties.
Labels:
Blockchain
24 November, 2017
21 November, 2017
Are computer science and computer programming the same thing? The answer is no. Think about it this way: computer science is the study of all things related to computers. That means understanding everything from hardware, chips, circuits, processors and storage, to programming languages and theory. “Computer science requires computer programming but it’s possible to learn how to program, and be good at it, without a foundation in computer science,” says engineering manager Stefania Sicurelli. She studied art, worked in animation, then learnt programming and computer science through web development boot camps. “Just like driving a car, you can make a computer do things without fully understanding what’s happening under the bonnet.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
Women in IT
UP to 500 jobs are expected to be created in South Australia over the next three years through a dedicated video game industry hub backed by $2 million in State Government funding. The funding announcement, made by Premier Jay Weatherill on Monday, comes after The Advertiser first revealed plans for an industry space to raise the profile and professionalism of SA’s gaming, animation and software development community.
Labels:
3D,
Critical + Creative Thinking,
Education,
Game,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career
Home to more than 70 businesses, including start-ups, and now attracting about 1000 workers and 6500 students annually, the site is being developed as a collaborative working and living space for students, researchers and businesses. German optical and optoelectronics firm Zeiss will move from Lonsdale to Tonsley in April next year, taking up the largest spot — about 4000sq m — under what’s known as the Main Assembly Building. Siemens, Signostics, Micro-X, Flinders University, TAFE SA, Zen Energy Systems, Radical Torque Solutions and the State Drill Core Reference Library are on site. Retail food outlets and cafes are also on site — but there is more room to grow. The growth has followed a $253 million investment commitment by the State Government to redevelop the automotive manufacturing site formerly used by Chrysler and Mitsubishi.
20 November, 2017
15 November, 2017
At WIRED's suggestion, Malik asked his wife to re-register her face to see what would happen. After Sherwani freshly programmed her face into the phone, it no longer allowed Ammar access. To further test it, Sherwani tried registering her face again a few hours later, to replicate the indoor, nighttime lighting conditions in which she first set up her iPhone X. The problem returned; Ammar unlocked the phone on his third try this time. It worked again on his sixth try. At that point, Malik says, the phone's AI seemed to learn Ammar's features, and he could consistently unlock it again and again.
Labels:
3D,
Artificial Intelligence,
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
Privacy
10 November, 2017
08 November, 2017
The world’s largest technology conference is under way in San Francisco, with 170,000 people descending on Dreamforce to hear from speakers including Michelle Obama and Ashton Kutcher — and Salesforce’s vision for the fourth industrial revolution.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
Social,
Sustainability,
Women in IT
01 November, 2017
Nvidia’s artificial intelligence can produce images of fake celebrities that look scarily real. As this technology improves, there are obvious potential benefits for companies in the creative industries. For example advertising, movies and video games could be seriously aided by the use of AI image production. Soon it might not be so clear if the pretty woman selling you shampoo is actually real or not. But on the flip side, it does raise questions about how such technology could be used in the era of fake news.
30 October, 2017
26 October, 2017
A COUPLE YEARS ago, Apple went on a shopping spree. It snatched up PrimeSense, maker of some of the best 3-D sensors on the market, as well Perceptio, Metaio, and Faceshift, companies that developed image recognition, augmented reality, and motion capture technology, respectively. It’s not unusual for Cupertino to buy other companies’ technology in order to bolster its own. But at the time, it was hard to know exactly what Apple planned to do with its haul. It wasn’t until last month, at the company’s annual talent show, that the culmination of years of acquisitions and research began to make sense: Apple was building the iPhone X.
Labels:
3D,
Graphic Design,
History,
ICT Capability
23 October, 2017
20 October, 2017
19 October, 2017
The extent of the Krack fallout remains to be seen. Security analysts say it’s a tricky vulnerability to take advantage of, and major platforms like iOS, macOS, and Windows are either unaffected or have already been patched. But given the millions of routers and other IoT devices that will likely never see a fix, the true cost of Krack could play out for years.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Sustainability
Pharmacy retailer Chemist Warehouse and Mexican food outlet Guzman y Gomez are the first retailers used to test Google parent Alphabet’s new drone delivery system being trialled this week in Australia. Alphabet’s research arm X (formerly Google X) says it is testing its drone delivery technology with households at Royalla in NSW, near the border with the ACT.
Labels:
ICT Capability,
Robotics
17 October, 2017
A newly-discovered security flaw affects virtually every Wi-Fi device, and could render your home network as readable to hackers as the free Wi-Fi at a coffee shop. Belgian Researcher Mathy Vanhoef has detailed a method of breaking WPA2, the security protocol used by the large majority of routers and devices to secure internet connections. By utilising the flaw, which Mr Vanhoef is calling KRACK (for Key Reinstallation Attack), malicious actors could potentially eavesdrop on the traffic of any access point they were physically near.
Labels:
Cybersafety
GitHub, which builds a product that rivals Australian golden child start-up Atlassian's Bitbucket software development platform, unveiled a suite of new features that will make the internet safer and software developers' lives less stressful at its GitHub Universe 2017 conference. Called the "dependency graph", it ensures that developers whose code is dependant on other, open source projects are given the chance to update their work immediately whenever a security breach, bug or performance issue is uncovered.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
Sustainability
Robots that battle inside the virtual world of RoboSumo are controlled by machine-learning software, not humans. Unlike computer characters in typical videogames, they weren’t pre-programmed to wrestle; instead they had to “learn” the sport by trial and error. The game was created by nonprofit research lab OpenAI, cofounded by Elon Musk, to show how forcing AI systems to compete can spur them to become more intelligent
Labels:
Artificial Intelligence,
Game,
research
The sight of Mr Zuckerberg using VR to survey the devastation of an island still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria may have been meant to convey Facebook's empathy with the victims. The fact that he was there in the form of a cartoon seemed to many the perfect visual metaphor for the gulf in understanding between Silicon Valley and the real world.
Team KAIST from South Korea emerged as the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) in Pomona, Calif., after its robot, an adaptable humanoid called DRC-HUBO, beat out 22 other robots from five different countries, winning the US $2 million grand prize. The robot’s “transformer” ability to switch back and forth from a walking biped to a wheeled machine proved key to its victory.
Labels:
Robotics
29 September, 2017
Nvidia’s CEO Declares Moore’s Law Dead. I’ve argued in the past Moore’s Law isn’t dead so much as its transformed. Rather than focusing strictly on increasing transistor counts and clock speeds, companies now focus on power efficiency and component integration. The explosion of specialized processors for handling AI and deep learning workloads is partly a reaction to the fact that CPUs don’t scale the way they used to.
26 September, 2017
25 September, 2017
Following a unanimous vote by the Chicago Public School Board of Education, computer science will become a graduation requirement for all high school students in what is the nation’s third largest school district. Starting with next school year’s class of freshmen (class of 2020), students in Chicago Public Schools will be required to complete curriculum around computer science before graduating.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability,
Women in IT
Today, we’re on the verge of another revolution, as artificial intelligence and machine learning turn the graphic design field on its head again. The vision is, to quote one project’s slogan, “websites that just make themselves.” Software will evaluate your text content, line of business, and imagery, and spit out finished pages without your having to lift a finger. These kinds of automated tools will arrive on the web first, but print design will change, too, as design-software makers inject machine learning into their layout tools and apps.
SHARES in MGM Wireless surged almost 70 per cent today after the Adelaide software company announced the largest deal in its history. The agreement will see the West Australian Education Department roll out two MGM products — School Star and Outreach+ — across its 800-plus public schools from the beginning of term four this year. School Star, a Facebook-like app that allows access to only registered parents and carers, provides messaging technology for the purpose of announcements, absenteeism alerts, and other functions. It is integrated with Outreach+, a service that automatically switches to SMS if a parent hasn’t installed the app.
Labels:
Education,
ICT Capability
22 September, 2017
20 September, 2017
Hackers have proven just how urgently a gaping flaw in the global telecoms network, affecting what's known as Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), needs to be fixed. In a video demonstration, shown to Forbes ahead of publication today, benevolent hackers from Positive Technologies were able to take control of a Coinbase bitcoin wallet and start pilfering funds via the SS7 flaws.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
Ethical,
ICT Capability,
research
19 September, 2017
Last week, the credit reporting agency Equifax announced that malicious hackers had leaked the personal information of 143 million people in their system. That’s reason for concern, of course, but if a hacker wants to access your online data by simply guessing your password, you’re probably toast in less than an hour. Now, there’s more bad news: Scientists have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create a program that, combined with existing tools, figured more than a quarter of the passwords from a set of more than 43 million LinkedIn profiles. Yet the researchers say the technology may also be used to beat baddies at their own game.
Equifax “Chief Security Officer” Susan Mauldin has a bachelor’s degree and a master of fine arts degree in music composition from the University of Georgia. Her LinkedIn professional profile lists no education related to technology or security. This is the person who was in charge of keeping your personal and financial data safe — and whose apparent failings have put 143 million of us at risk from identity theft and fraud. It was revealed this week that the massive data breach came due to a software vulnerability that was known about, and should have been patched, months earlier.
Labels:
Cybersafety,
ICT Capability,
ICT Career,
Privacy,
Women in IT
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