Occasionally, when a thought gets bubbled up in my brain, I pop open Twitter, and tweet the thought. In some cases, the fleeting idea seems larger than a tweet, so I open up WordPress, and start a post. I may save it and come back to add content to the post. I’ll come back to the post, and say to myself, what was I thinking, and don’t pursue publishing post. Here’s the list of blog posts that I drafted this year, but decided for one reason or another, I wouldn’t post it.
Tag Archives: Education
Google’s apps crash in a worldwide outage – Saas Education Outages are the new “Snow Day”.
The tech giant’s popular services like Gmail, Hangouts, Meet and YouTube went offline, halting work across the globe.
Source: Google’s apps crash in a worldwide outage. – The New York Times
This morning my kids woke up to the new “snow day”, an internet outage of SaaS Education products, i.e. Google Meet. Since we are primarily virtual with education these days, the term “Snow Day” at least for this Winter 2020-2021 season will not be an issue. No dangerous roads for busses to navigate. They have been replaced by tech outages. Although few in number, and limited duration, thus far, kids may be happy that they can miss their first period in school.
Best Learning Management Systems for Education | ZDNet
In the context of our new normal, we present our guide of 12 very capable learning management systems, each of which provides a different take on managing learning. We’ll show you LMS solutions tailored to K-12 and higher education, LMS solutions aimed at the enterprise and SMBs, and even one that helps you sell your own courses (AbsorbLMS) and another that optimizes the ability to provide custom certifications (TalentLMS).
Source: The best learning management systems for education, enterprise, and small business | ZDNet
Challenges beyond learning technologies for K-12 education are the social development challenges, especially in the younger ages transitioning into the education system.
Also, special needs children who require direct attention, and are pulled out of mainstream class time for one on one assistance are at the highest risk. We need to figure out how to best provide for these children in a “remote-only” configuration were “close contact” is required to help mitigate issues such as attention deficit.
Going Solo – Gig to Gig
Having the Stamina to Last…
Going the consulting path, on your own, is no small feat. Do you have what it takes to persist, survive, and thrive?
- Army of One – Not only do you need to perform your CONSULTANCY role, but you also have to be bookkeeper, sales and marketing, looking for new opportunities.
- The Gap Between Gigs – To all recruiters and hiring managers – it’s not a bad thing to have gaps in a candidate’s resume. Its the way of life in our gig economy. We are constantly hunting for just the right opportunity in a sea of hundreds or thousands of candidates per role.
- Keeping Up With Market Trends – Online learning platforms such as Pluralsight, keep their content fresh, relevant, and in line with your career path.
- Networking, Networking, Networking – at every opportunity, build your network of contacts and keep them in the know
Continuing Certification Requirements for Project Management Professional (PMP)
The years seem to have flown by, and it’s that time again to complete my Continuing Certification Requirements for my PMP cert.
I randomly searched the web for PMP courses, then found myself back at PMI.org “Searching Activities”. Seems like the easiest way to lookup activities because they define the activities, and the correlated list of Professional Development Units, categorized by:
- Technical
- Leadership
- Strategic & Business
Based on the activities I’ve already completed, my majority of work has been accomplished in the Technical category. I need to focus on attaining Leadership and Strategic & Business categories.
Here are a few activities I thought were interesting, and took each one of these Online or Digital Media courses. Pluralsight provides an excellent set of courses at a relatively low price. I highly recommend Pluralsight for your learning needs. I also took a few of the LinkedIn courses and found it to be an excellent learning platform with a wide array of courses that can be applied as PDU credits.
Customizing Your Team Workflow with the Best of Kanban and Scrum
If you have doubts choosing which methodology to use, this course will give you a comparison of Kanban and Scrum, making your choice easier. By watching this course you will learn how to take the best of both, Scrum and Kanban, and how to make a winning combination for your team and project.
Leadership: 1.25
Crisis Communication and Technology: Communicating with Colleagues
Crisis communication is one of the most challenging communication types an organization or individual can face, bringing together emotional vulnerability, ethical challenges, and high-stakes decisions amplified by informational and persuasive goals. When managed well, this communication can neutralize and calm an evolving crisis. When managed poorly, though, crisis communication makes a situation worse. This course takes viewers through the most important parts of preparing for crisis communication, including understanding crisis types and strategies, preparing foundational documents, and how to create communication in the moment. By the end of the course, viewers will have a concrete understanding of how to manage crisis communication for their own organizations, providing invaluable insight and immediate benefit.
Leadership: 1.50
Scrum Master Fundamentals – Growing Yourself and Your Team
Are you a Scrum Master ready to advance your craft? This course will teach you specific strategies for coaching each member of your team and show you how to build on your experience as a Scrum Master to advance your own career to the next level.
Leadership: 1.25
Product Owner Fundamentals – Foundations of Product Ownership
Did you know that one of the most common reasons Scrum Teams fail is the lack of a skilled Product Owner? If you’ve suddenly found yourself in this role, this course will teach you how you can use the role to help your team deliver a great product.
Technical: 0.75 Strategic & Business: 0.50
PMI-ACP®: Value-driven Delivery and Adaptive Planning (3 of 11)
This course will provide an in-depth understanding of Agile adaptive planning and value-driven delivery practices, requirements definition practices, as well as principles and practices related to stakeholder management. This course is part of the PMI-ACP Agile Project Management series.
Technical: 0.75 Strategic & Business: 1.75
Design Thinking: Lead Change in your Organization
Design thinking is a user-centered way of solving problems. It involves extensive collaboration, using strategies such as mapping customer journeys, concept creation, and prototyping. This course teaches leaders how to help their teams adopt a design thinking mindset, and provides examples from author Turi McKinley’s work at frog, a global design and strategy firm that transforms businesses at scale by creating systems of brand, product, and service.
Leadership: 2.00
Organizational Change Management for the ITIL® Practitioner
Organizational change management is as essential skill for all leaders. This course will teach you how to successfully navigate the people side of change.
Leadership: 1.50
Building AI Is Hard—So Facebook Is Building AI That Builds AI
“…companies like Google and Facebook pay top dollar for some really smart people. Only a few hundred souls on Earth have the talent and the training needed to really push the state-of-the-art [AI] forward, and paying for these top minds is a lot like paying for an NFL quarterback. That’s a bottleneck in the continued progress of artificial intelligence. And it’s not the only one. Even the top researchers can’t build these services without trial and error on an enormous scale. To build a deep neural network that cracks the next big AI problem, researchers must first try countless options that don’t work, running each one across dozens and potentially hundreds of machines.”
This article represents a true picture of where we are today for the average consumer and producer of information, and the companies that repurpose information, e.g. in the form of advertisements.
The advancement and current progress of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, analogously paints a picture akin to the 1970s with computers that fill rooms, and accept punch cards as input.
Today’s consumers have mobile computing power that is on par to the whole rooms of the 1970s; however, “more compute power” in a tinier package may not be the path to AI sentience. How AI algorithm models are computed might need to take an alternate approach.
In a classical computation system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a superposition of both states at the same time, a property which is fundamental to quantum computing.
The construction, and validation of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, algorithm models should be engineered on a Quantum Computing framework.
How Microsoft Gets Back into Mainstream Popularity
The HoloLens may propel Microsoft back to the ‘Cool’ kid on the block. The HoloLens has the potential to “fly off the shelves” in tandem to Windows 10.
Ever since I saw the movie Blue Thunder, I wanted my own Heads-up display (HUD). Here are a few suggestions for implementation:
Must Have’s
- ‘Priced to sell’: Even if the cost of the hardware is reduced to a thin the margin, that may or may not be enough. From day one, these “Windows into Windows” must be viewed as essential to the ‘enhanced’ OS package, like ‘Windows 10 Home Media’.
- Microsoft, Enable Channel Sales (DELL, HP) to offer Microsoft Windows 10 and HoloLens ‘Media’ package deals, together both the OS and the HoloLens are offered at a reduced price.
- The HoloLens and Windows 10 User Interface (UI) significantly enhances how the consumer interacts with Operating Systems.
- [Channel] Sales may offer bundled HoloLens / Windows 10 applications, e.g. Minecraft;
- Analyze / prioritize top 10 (N) opportunities for application development, and produce internally, and/or with partners.
- Partners may range from software vendors to accredited training programs, e.g. flight school XYZ
- Intuitive and feature rich developer APIs:
- Provide the HoloLens developer a software ‘Simulator’
- Products with source code examples
- Quick path from development to market: Lean application vetting process; including the vetting of app developers.
- Education levels 6 to 12 and beyond can benefit, segmented by: the sciences (e.g. Chemistry, Microbiology, Physics); Trade Schools such as Automotive and HVAC;
- Colleges and Universities may be early adopters, and expand their Massive open online courses to including remote participation, e.g. medicine
- Applying for an ‘operator license’? HoloLens, accompanied with a licensed operator, allows users to wear the HoloLens, and follow a step by step, interactive tutorial within the vehicle, e.g. Car, Boat, Helicopter, Truck, Airplane, etc.
Click here: comprehensive list of Augmented Reality (AR) apps.
Interesting articles on Microsoft’s Hololens:
Microsoft dives deeper into HoloLens details: ‘Holographic processor’ role revealed
Microsoft leaps into 3D computing with Windows Holographic and HoloLens
Hands-on with Microsoft’s HoloLens: The 3D augmented reality future is now
New PhD program pioneers ‘Big Data’ solutions
UDMessenger – Our Students – Big Data.
OUR STUDENTS | The University of Delaware’s new PhD program in Financial Services Analytics (FSAN) has gotten off to a strong start.
“I love how UD was able to merge finance, data mining, statistics and other areas to create the FSAN program,” said Leonardo De La Rosa Angarita, a current FSAN student. “This is also reflected in the diversity of the students. We come from different fields, and it is wonderful how we are able to complement each other in so many different ways.”The unique program, a collaborative effort between JPMorgan Chase & Co., the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and the College of Engineering, teaches students to become experts at researching and analyzing large swaths of electronic information, known as “big data” in the business world.
Long Chen, another FSAN PhD student, said, “After I joined the program, I expected to learn about a broad range of disciplines to fill my toolkit, and that is exactly what we are doing—taking courses from the areas of finance, statistics and computer science. Although the program just started, I can tell we are heading in the right direction.”
Bintong Chen, Director of the FSAN program, said that students are trained as researchers and professionals who play key roles in interdisciplinary teams, applying their knowledge and skills to convert vast amounts of data into meaningful information for businesses and consumers.
Bintong Chen added that the first semester put students’ skills to the test, “due to the intensity and breadth of the core classes designed for the program, ranging from very technical subjects, such as machine learning and data mining, to very business-oriented topics about financial institutions.”
Students are interacting with JPMorgan’s Corporate and Investment Bank during the spring semester to identify topics for their research projects and potential summer internships.
“I always wondered what would happen if engineers and economists would speak the same language, if professors would be more open to the world outside the walls of their offices and if industry would get more interested in what we study in our classrooms,” said Eriselda Danaj, another student in the program. “It is challenging and I love it.”
Article by Sunny Rosen, AS14
