................................Really what it says in the heading. I will play with this from time to time. A mixture of education and domestic ...............................observations.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
2020 Vision and a Happy New Year !
What a year of loss and struggle for so many people. The impact on the economy and on people’s lives won’t really be clear until the end of next year. I know how fortunate we have been in the roles we are in, in that we enjoy a degree of job security and we have been able to help others.
Professionally it’s been great to see staff and learners rising to the challenge of new ways of learning. I work with a great team who have been working flat out.
It’s been great too to see how our two school age children have adapted to online learning and monthly changes in the schooling system - they both miss sport most of all and socialising out of school, but generally their enthusiasm for learning has not suffered. Blended learning really does work.
Personally, it’s been very long hours and dealing too with navigating family illness and the stresses and strains of the new enforced domestic arrangements. We’re so lucky to have a garden and a dog and this space and companionship have kept us all sane. The scottish weather was kind too when we made our great summer escape to Lewis and that made all the difference to recharging our batteries.
Along the way I lost a couple of good pals, in normal circumstances I’d have been present at the celebration of their lives. Watching remembrance services remotely , Zoom meetings and WhatsApp groups just don’t cut it.
I sometimes make predictions for the year ahead - I don’t think I could ever have predicted a year like this.
I hope things get back to a new normal where online learning is embedded in how everyone learns. I hope too we see a new system of national assessment in Scottish schools. We need some better national leadership around this. There is a lot of good learning that could come out of this pandemic. I am ever hopeful.
As the economy changes - I expect to be busier than ever , we have ambitious plans for the year ahead and the demand for digital learning and associated skills are not going to diminish. My inbox is perpetually full with requests for support.
May the New Year bring you and yours good health, happiness, prosperity and a timely dose of Covid Vaccine.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Beyond Multiple Choice #BMC2020
I am doing a bit of tidying up and catching up on some posts that should have appeared earlier in the year. What a strange yet busy time it has been. In early November I was asked to contribute to this global conference on assessment. You can find my modest contribution from a College perspective in day three of the proceedings.
Beyond Multiple Choice #BMC2020 ( worth clicking on timestamp below videos to see running schedule)
It was a really interesting conference given the world's reaction to CoVid - suddenly on-line testing came into its own - in ways that may surprise you - if you watch one session have a look at final session of the day about how the national testing system in Scotland is operating and the political pressures around this. It's all about putting the learner at the centre.
My slides below - if you have an interest in following this global community you can join the linkedIn Group.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
An Experienced Reflection on National Awarding
I worked for the SQA for most of the current century - and every year congratulations are due to all learners and this year, in that respect, it is no different.
I'm glad I am on a beach in the Outer Hebrides this week. Working for the SQA is a thankless task and colleagues will be working hard as ever to deliver.
We need to step back from the hysteria.
These are exceptional times. This is the first time since the 1880's that the national exam diet has been cancelled. This has put a strain on everyone; learners , teachers , administrators and politicians. In times like this tough decisions need to be made and justified. A decision was made today to uphold the estimates made by teachers.
This I think exposes some deep fault lines in our system. Teachers have systematically over estimated pupils eventual results for years. The external exams being the method of arbitration. Without the exam this issue is thrown into sharp focus.
I think the appeals system that was ready to go into operation would have supported the deserving cases. But we will never know. The noise about education being a postcode lottery isn’t just noise - but the appeals system would have adjusted these.
What is the issue .
Many teachers are not particularly good at designing prelims , and or are unsure about standards. The evidence is pretty well known to those who have worked in and around the system. There is often a big gap between learners actual grades and those predicted by their teachers. Appeals are often made based on invalid evidence, commonly cobbled together prelims based on items from past papers - when this was admissible evidence.
The system has not done enough over a lot of years to make sure that teachers can make better estimates. Perhaps given the parental and institutional pressure that teachers are under, along with different learner performance between prelim and final - it is too hard a task. SQA has done its bit around Understanding Standards.
SQA has data on the reliability of estimates at school level and I am certain that SQA's initial response was based on sound evidence. In this, and ultimately the change of tack, they follow the instructions from the government. SQA staff and the 15,000 appointees ( who are mainly serving teachers ) do their utmost to make the system fair for all.
Some observations -
A decision has been made that will be very popular with learners and teachers , it looks as though it has almost cross party support. The government was never going to have an easy decision on this.
Should the system now accept that teachers make these national assessment decisions ? ( I think the view is that this is perhaps a one off ( I'd like to see more robust decision making moved here ) . No one, least of all the learners were prepared for what has been an incredible year, an upward drift of 14% across the board, does create a credibility problem , but who knows perhaps lots of learning was happening in lock down and schools and local authorities had to put in long hours creating their orders of merit. Neatly too it creates a cohort of learners for Higher Education when overseas numbers are down. Perhaps it just highlights that exams are not really about quality control just quantity management for the tertiary sector. It probably mirrors what is happening in the Higher Education sector - where grade inflation is much more of a reality - and when the dust settles it will have ballooned this year. Please press, don't roll out the usual elite moaners and fixers from Higher Education about the school and college system - they have zero credibility on standards.
What is clear and to restore learners faith in the system is that learners need a better means of evaluating their performance against national standards. The wide variances between school estimates and the original awards need tackled. It is an opportunity to revisit the whole exam system - roll on , roll off digital assessment for all is within reach along with digital portfolios of evidence. Local Authorities , Education Scotland and the GTCS should take a much closer interest in teacher decision making. It is only recently that the GTCS started recognising teacher engagement in national assessment work as a critical part of CPD and often it is the schools with fewer SQA appointees that have the most divergent estimates. Perhaps a starting point could be a comparison of previous years performance based on exams and this year's based on estimates. What was this year’s secret sauce ?
The credibility of the national assessment system, whatever its future shape, is everyone's responsibility and it is ill served by political slagging matches and press hysteria. I think we are still not in a place where we can say the academic year ahead is without more uncertainties.
In the meantime , I wonder how the more market driven education system of England will cope with a similar crisis, A stars all round I wouldn't wonder.
Monday, August 03, 2020
Active Summer with Fresh Challenges Ahead.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Sign Up for Scottish Association of Learning Technology SIG Event with a difference 22nd of June
Check out this Flipgrid! flipgrid.com |
ALT Scotland Special Interest Group Co-Chairs
Joe and Vicki
Dr Vicki H.M. Dale, University of Glasgow
Joe Wilson MA, MBA , DipEd , PGCSE City of Glasgow College
Monday, June 01, 2020
Busy , Busy , Busy
( with thanks to Tom Duff)
Here is a wee list of what we have achieved in 10 weeks.
- On day college closed we had advice in place for teaching , support and students on working remotely.
- We moved all support on line - our inbox every day has now dealt with around 1500 support requests ( at 27/5)
- We immediately rolled out Zoom as a practical delivery tool for teachers and provided associated support.
- We’ve run 2 webinars a day covering critical systems and support – with more than 950 staff attending sessions . Through online booking platform and we've had great feedback.
- Our offer has tracked staff demand – initially focusing on communication tools , now focusing on assessment and evidence gathering tools and we will focus on learning design to make courses more digital and blended for start of next session. ( we are using our own version of ABC Learning Design.
- We have continued both to support a number of commercial projects like https://www.offsiteready.com/ and have won more commercial funding during lock down – and we are still bidding for new business. ( we are just about to roll out a UFI Project - watch this space)
- We documented our approach and it has been picked up as good practice and will feature in a future GTCS Magazine.
- From 17 March we have offered a digital first library service with advice, support, guidance and access to resources for students and staff.
- We have designed, developed and launched the Learning and Teaching Academy online presence. Re-branded existing pages and building whole new libguide platform and creating a wordpress site and created a suite of short instructional videos and guides for staff working remotely.
- Our team has offered an online landscape to enable and support teaching teams to deliver online. With daily learning opportunities such as webinars to online learning courses that encourage and exploit digital technologies such as Teams, Zooms and many educational technologies and software.
- The LTA has successfully created a team ethic that is centred on supporting academic development and enhancing teaching and learning within City and beyond.
- We just managed to squeeze out a Jisc Digital Insights Student survey - which I know will give us some valuable data on how learners are coping in lockdown.
- We are now well positioned to start the real work of transforming delivery at City of Glasgow College in a new working landscape.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
#OER20 Still reverberating around kitchens and home offices around the world.
The #OER conference always has great speakers and explores a broad range of open educational practice from around the globe. In some ways with us all sitting isolating in different parts of the world and beaming into home offices , kitchens in my case , it seemed to emphasise the global nature of open educational thinking and practices.
I'm guessing we were all balancing our institutional commitments. I've reflected these in some earlier posts and workload and on-line meetings did get in the way of some of the sessions I would have liked to tune in to.
The on-line conference grew from it's usual physical size of around 400 delegates to 1300 delegates , the social hangouts and back channels allowed some of the networking and chatting that is a critical component of the learning that comes from a conferences, though I have to say I missed the mingling and meeting old friends and new.
It was topical and on the ball and even managed to have its own Blackboard Collaborate Bombing - it's not just Zoom, it can happen on any platform folks.
I've embedded the conference playlist here ..
You can sneak a peak and many of the attendees who completed a splot and played social bingo.
As Lorna Campbell succinctly highlights
Please note, the OER20 conference wasn’t just free as in speech, it was also free as in beer, so if you participated in the event, either listening in to the presentations, or even just following the hashtag online, please consider making a donation to the conference fund. Every little helps to support ALT and cover the cost.
Our own session went well ... without rehearsal we summed up what we have achieved through a collaborative partnership around a shared G-Suite for Education - and the travails of getting staff to work in the open. You can find a recording of session and be your own judge. The site is in transition to NMIS and Strathclyde University and is currently not sitting on it's usual domain - the resources are open and reflects well on what was a real team effort and a development that I think breaks the mould in Scottish education at least.
I look forward to shaping it with the ALT team and my co-chairs.
In meantime I have three days off - I mooted this with rest of family, I am going on a camping trip into my suburban back garden. Initially, they thought I had finally cracked , but I think they maybe joining me. Now is the time to think differently folks.
Thursday, April 02, 2020
A week in learning technology #Clickview #OER20
So update we ran 10 webinars last week and over 250 staff tuned in .Between the learning tech and library team we dealt with over 1000 inquires through help desks and social media. We now have around 700 staff across teaching and support with an active zoom account and we look good to go.
I wonder what other colleges and universities could open up for to colleagues across public sector - we are now living in a remote working, on-line world.
Our own programme is expanding, having covered key communication channels, we are adding ClickView Training and for some Microsoft Teams training and we’ve added an online booking system - to make sign up easier.
And we are planning on building around a community of practice https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teach-online while promoting the bridge initiative from CDN and jisc . Tomorrow we are creating a What's On Page to capture more of the on-line events and training that are available to the College staff across the UK and beyond.
And I delivered a paper on how we harnessed google sites to deliver a national programme at #oer20 on Wednesday - Blackboard Collaborate this time globally 1200 delegates making this biggest #OER conference yet . Special thanks to my co-presenter Dr Lewis Ross and in the background Dr Julian Hopkins , John Casey and colleagues who supported delivery of this project including Jim Hannigan at SDS . They included a nice platform for delegates to introduce themselves https://oer20.socialbingo.oerconf.org/participants/joe-wilson/
I borrowed the meme from Clint Lalonde .
I'll post later on fabulous online #oer20 experience and some exciting news.
In meantime this is what's making us laugh this week.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Remote Working Across Large Scottish College
Sunday on a remote beach near Glasgow - self isolating |
At City of Glasgow College, this is what we’ve been busy doing.
Our priority has been working on improving communication between lecturers and their students. It has been a real team effort from shaping the offer to communicating across the College.
- We’ve prepared and published guides for teaching staff , support staff and students around all the systems we have in place for remote learning.
- We’ve changed the way we can be contacted and how we deliver our support services for those who run into technical challenges or simply need some online support.
This week we are rolling out a webinar programme. Two sessions a day, 10-11am and 2-3pm. A cycle of :
- Reminding staff by running webinars on how to use enquirer, our MIS system, to send emails and sms messages to class groups and individual students.
- Showing staff who haven’t been using forums inside their Moodle courses. How to set one up and how to make use of it to engage with learners.
- All sessions delivered by Zoom with additional training for staff on how to use Zoom with their students. We anticipate Zoom is our new face to face.
Support staff :: Lecturing staff :: Students :: Staff Help guides and videos
Learning Technologies Help
Friday, March 06, 2020
Blended Learning Consortium in Scotland / save the date @FeBlc
https://ca.bbcollab.com/guest/04f58e6003e945f58448288573a27210
Why not pop in to hear latest from what is the largest vocational learning content sharing collaborative across the UK.
Over the next few months many more of us will be polishing up our webinar skills. Here is a guide we are using across this large College, aimed at teaching staff.
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Thursday, January 09, 2020
#Bett20 , #Bett2020 , #Bettshow2020 Welcome to the roaring twenties !
Here we go again .
I am heading down to #BETT20 early on the Wednesday morning for some pre-meetings and then the usual busy schedule in and around the conference.
I'm expecting to catch up with Google , Microsoft , Fujitsu , Click-View among many others.
I'll be around until Friday afternoon.
I can't claim to have been every #BETT but I've attended since last century Reflections over last few years here and some guides for #BETT newbies.
My diary is pretty full, but if you have something unique and engaging aimed at any part of the assessment , e-portfolio space, digital skills for vocational teaching staff landscape or you have some genuinely open learning or you are looking for meaningful partnerships with a school , college or vocational learning space either in Scotland or internationally, then I would be interested in talking to you.
The College I am working in currently offers a great space to launch new ideas and systems in to the Scottish vocational sector and has a strong international reach.
You can find out more about me through my linkedin profile or just do a google for 'Joe Wilson and UK Colleges, or open education.
I am easy to get hold of - just tweet something to @joecar and I'll respond. You can find out about me and my institution here or get me through the new BETT app , it has improved over the years.
I am looking forward to meeting friends old and new and, above all, being inspired.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
#UFITrust Showcase Event London 21/11/2019
It does not seem that long ago that I met with Donald Clark , Bob Harrison and assorted others in a meeting room borrowed from City and Guilds in London to offer some advice on what kinds of activity and what models should be adopted around distributing the funds from the UFI Trust.
It is great that it has gone from strength to strength - and very timely - in England the monies arrived just as public funding dried up for innovation in educational technology and the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group started looking around for models and partners to deliver more blended learning and assessment in vocational learning. To some extent the UFI Trust monies have filled a gap that might otherwise have come from BECTA , Jisc or other agencies that had funding pots to encourage innovative practice. There is now a strong and growing legacy.
In Scotland while there has been no such drivers in the vocational space, we have been able to adopt some of the out puts from the UFI Trust and a number of Colleges have benefited from funding for a range of projects. But a good model for both current #digitalambition work in Scotland and broader UK #CollegeFutures work to take a careful note of.
It was great to see projects past and present on display and meet some old friends and colleagues. It is good to see those who innovate in education being constantly resilient and inventive - and great too to meet new people and projects trying to shake things up. This is a list of all this years crop of projects .
Note these are mixture of private and public organisations - this is seed funding for sustainable projects so different from some of the more speculative experimental projects that may have been funded in past with EU Monies. The projects are funded here on their basis to be revenue generating and self sustaining when UFI funding ends.
City of Glasgow College have a number of projects funded with #UFITrust funds past, live and in development with a range of commercial partners.
Here are my own take a ways - some from wandering around the stands and some from networking at event.
1. The great work done by Open University with Cisco - is open and available to any College . I am going to bring them up and see how we can get these materials used more widely. These are free.
2. STEM resources - I've come across Learning Science and these materials before and I made some high level sector introductions . I don't think things moved on from there - so will bring them up for a conversation - their simulated lab materials are used widely in the HE Sector. They now have a special offer for maths and engineering. Interested in price point.
3. Aftab and ADA Bolton College's digital assistant - just goes from strength to strengh - I'll shine a light on this again - I think model is great. The struggle in institutions is that this is so new and cuts across lots of silos - challenge is not technology but culture and ownership of data - that is the barrier to getting more projects like this moving. ( we have some interesting conversations happening with Google and Amazon services in background)
4. I like the 'engineering apprentices mate' materials nice simple training materials . I'll take these links back to relevant College team. Looking for website that takes me straight to the materials.
5. If you are a college teaching dental nurses , dental receptionists then CHOMP looks great and from a very passionate team - turning learning into gaming.
I had some great chats around the room and would be great to get a similar showcase event in Scotland -waving too at Vikki and https://set.et-foundation.co.uk/etf/ who are doing great job with focus on digital learning skills for College lecturers in England.
Always happy to make introductions to those in Scottish sector who are willing and able pick up opportunities.
All the projects are worth a look , I've just sampled the ones that caught my eye.
And I've a few other leads to follow up.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
#UNESCO , #Openscot Email to My Daughter.
I got some great news yesterday and I tried to explain what it means to my daughter who is in 5th year in a Scottish Secondary school. I thought worth sharing with a wider audience. I know some organisations that regulate teachers and lecturers like the General Teaching Council for Scotland and the Higher Education Academy, as well as those that fund education developments across the public sector will now have to take notice. It's great news for learners across the world.
How will we now embrace this in Scotland ?
In my immediate domain one for Colleges Scotland and College Regional Boards to sit up and take notice - this needs to be embedded in practice. We've already started at City of Glasgow College.
MJ ,
You might remember I disappeared to Malta, Slovenia and Poland among other places over the last few years. I wasn't having a holiday.
This is what I was helping to draft. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/in/rest/annotationSVC/Attachment/attach_import_b1276dcd-237e-488f-8b37-3c8847cb2e31
I was invited as the co founder of Open Scotland along with Lorna Campbell of Edinburgh University - as what they call domain experts. We were standing on the shoulders of giants from the Association of Learning Technology and early work done by Jisc and many others across the education sector in Scotland and the rest of the U.K. , especially those involved in the #oer , open education resource , series of conferences.
At the heart of it is a really simple principle.
One that Scottish Education should find easy to embrace.
'That publicly funded learning and teaching materials should be open and shareable.'
One day, this will make teaching and learning much easier for everyone.
For you, it’s an example of a real UN resolution and now you know someone that helped shape one. It’s just as complex as the resolutions you debate in the schools model UN.
Perhaps you can show it to your teachers and maybe they will start working to share learning materials with colleagues in other schools , colleges and universities.
It was approved to go forward yesterday ;-)
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
#DigitalAmbition City of Glasgow College
I plugged these sessions as they rolled out, I am part of national consultation group . Yesterday, the roadshow came to City of Glasgow College and we had a good attendance from both the College and Colleges across Scotland.
I had a sense of dejavu - but then I've been about and working in digital learning for a lot of years now.
Ken Thomson OBE leading event cc Tom Duff City of Glasgow College |
Some things struck me
- Scotland did not do the FELTAG ( Further Education Learning Technology Action Group ) thing, now almost 6 years ago - which has seen a lot of developments in English FE, many of which Scottish Colleges in the know have piggy backed on to.
- In terms of Digital Skills for staff and students - we've watched as both the ETF in England have developed quite advanced frameworks for digital staff skills and the Welsh Government has made digital literacy effectively a core skill for all learners in Wales in FE , Schools and Work Based learning.
- It's too easy not to acknowledge a lot of the support that Jisc gives in this space . It shouldn't be . Perhaps Jisc for all the support it gives FE are still seen as HE and distant . Though close up eduroam and other services are essential to the digital future.
We were asked ....
- What will learning look like in 2030?
- What will learners expect from colleges and how will learning be delivered?
- What will college staff need to deliver this?
- What will the college infrastructure look like to deliver our digital ambitions
- Digital in colleges is not just about learning. What will the college of the future look and feel like?
- What have we missed?
I made a stab at this ... it's same message really I've been pushing for last 10 years. I do hope Scottish Govt can reprofile some resource for this . I hope too SDS and SQA and relevant agencies get around this .. GTCS now for staff skills in FE in Scotland. CDN should be well placed through their networks to deliver messaging and some national development.
A lot is deliverable in large regional colleges .. but national frameworks around staff and student skills and things like sharing of digital learning resources ( I made sure that #openscot ) got a mention. We need high level leadership and resourcing, if it's going to happen sector wide. I do always worry that some of these consultation exercises are about telling a drowning person how to build a boat. The agencies and govt have clear role in sorting national picture out.
Tongue in cheek but perhaps one of our ambitions may be to find out what Scottish FE staff use in terms of social media #digitalambition , if it's Friends Reunited and MSN Messenger -we have a journey to travel - but clearly from engagement around the #digitalambition tag , at the moment perhaps it's not Twitter ?
Thursday, October 17, 2019
#OER20 #Openscot Tell Your Story , Find out how to become an Open Practitioner , Meet an international community.
We are delighted to announce that the OER20 Call for Proposals in now open. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2019.
The 11th annual OER conference for Open Education research, practice and policy will be co-chaired by Mia Zamora, Daniel Villar-Onrubia and Jonathan Shaw. Read more about the conference co-chairs.
The conference will be held from 1-2 April 2020, in London, and is themed around Care In Openness. Covering issues of privilege, equity, precarity, power relations and public interest, OER20 will put the spotlight on both the value and limitations of care in open education.
We are particularly interested in receiving proposals from people who have an interest in the following conference key themes:
Theme 1: Openness in the age of surveillance
Theme 2: Sustainable open education communities
Theme 3: Open education for civic engagement and democracy
Theme 4: Criticality and care in open education
Theme 5: Caring pedagogies and designing for diverse communities of inclusion.
And also Wildcard submissions : open education practice, research or policy session proposals that address the overarching conference theme.
To submit your proposal, please visit our OE20 Conference website where you will find full guidance, and our submission form. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2019.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Scottish Training Federation Conference #STF19 September 2019
I was asked to do a quick provocation for the annual gathering of all of the training providers in Scotland. Thanks to Scottish Training Federation for the kind invitation to address all of their members.
My reflections in this presentation are all based on working in and around the English Vocational Reform Programme. While it has different drivers, we do not appear to be learning lessons from this coordinated reform programme in England , rather we have set a number of fires in the heather - and there may be longer term consequences in tackling vocational reform in this more piecemeal way in Scotland. We are the only home nation that does not have something called a vocational reform programme. Though we have been made lots of changes.
Most of key messages are in the presentation, as I spoke I added that we need to make more of SCQF , decide who will actually fix Digital Literacy as a core skill across vocational learning and get on with it , Do more of a push on blended learning and sharing basic learning materials across Colleges and Training Providers and work towards cost effective on-line delivery for all knowledge based areas and some skills based ones too. STF members should tune in to digital skills courses appearing in FutureLearn and from the Education and Training Foundation in England.
Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Scottish Colleges #DigitalAmbition
The College Development Network is running a series of consultation events on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council to inform the work of the #DigitalAmbition working group.
What is it all about ? : To find out what staff working in Colleges think the future of learning looks like !
Why is this important ? : There is a pot of capital funding for College buildings, but perhaps we need a pot of capital available for some national digital learning initiatives !
So the question is : What Digital Ambition do you have for Colleges in 2030 ?
Booking is now open for #DigitalAmbition roadshows.
- What will learning look like in 2030 ?
- What will learners expect?
- What will colleges look & feel like?
- What will staff need to meet learner and employer expectations ?
Check out https://www.cdn.ac.uk/courses-events/ for all events.
Book here for Monday 11th of November City of Glasgow College Event https://www.events.cdn.ac.uk/ereg/index.php?eventid=488121&
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Business Breakfast #heraldAI
The Sponsors: Cathcart Associates , Brodies , The Herald , Incremental Group and Strathclyde University.
Everyman Cinema Glasgow Princes Square - is a nice venue but no wifi.
Pre meeting coffee, met microforming man from Strathclyde, charged with buying NMIS kit for next 4 years - Strathclyde have VR suite for developers - had useful conversation around www.nmis-skills.org and the establishment of the new manufacturing centre that is centerpiece of National Manufacturing Institute Scotland.
To see other tweets from event check out #heraldAI on twitter.
Event starts with great marketing around GPT2, too dangerous to release into wild, apparently. You can check out the back story here, example implementation called Talk to Transformer. And follow creator here @adamdanielking ,see it in the context of other current AI solutions here .
Perhaps how Herald will be written soon, spotted Donald Martin Herald Editor in audience.
Thinkpiece keynote from Dr Adam Sroka @adzsroka
Incremental Group data and AI . The organisation do Digital transformation through microsoft and associated technologies. Presentation gave some good examples :
- AI and manufacturing - can now scan and find faults in sheet metal etc - autonomous inspection -
- Retail - AI to analyse transactions around buying and returns - could focus sales and avoid customers who bought and returned most.
- Insurance - predicting - risk and wealth - use satellite images of addresses - it’s illegal to price on ethnicity - but you can do scrabble score in surnames though. ( Hmmn ) and hope HMRC are using the matching postcode to house image - wonder too how GDPR compliant this all is.
- Banks can monitor millions of transactions and stop your account when they see outlier behaviours.
- Most banking communications now driven by AI people can text and get answer from AI not a human.
- McDonalds can do speech to order with AI find Drivethru.wav speech recognition to burger order - good example.
- Ethics and things like driverless vehicles - autonomous systems need rules
- Data science hierarchy of needs - see heading.
- Digital Health and Care directory looking for more AI examples around Healthcare.
- Centre of excellence in Satellite Applications Strathclyde - good question -. What are limits of data collection it does cost money and energy to collect and crunch.
- Craig Patterson Data Lab - the aim to make Scotland famous for data - education advisor.
- Aggreko ( the generator people ) have team of data scientists.
- Stachastic solutions Sam Rhynas < girl geek scotland > commercial supporting data analysis for private companies - putting data at heart of business.
- Prof Crawford Revie - data analyst working in health - data driven models to predict health outcomes - delivering new masters degree in artificial intelligence.
- Stevie Grier Microsoft. AI example -
- How do you analyse the data set from colonoscopy 40,000 images AI is better than consultant.
- Martin Sloan Brodies LLP and Deryck Smith Clydesdale Bank.
Q and A
Can you retrain business analysts to be Data scientists ? good question - I think Business Analyst covers lots of job descriptions.
Big focus on how AI is used to understand the customer actual and potential and their behaviours.
There is real fear and lack of understanding of how AI can bring benefits and a lot is simply still process automation - look where you have seen AI drive value and how you apply this to your own business.
AI danger of introducing bias in workflow - if not thought through.
Amazon example - used past data and then found no change in recruitment metrics - bias had been built into system - by using past data as system training methodology - they built in bias.
AI as seventh consultant - offers another opinion- human experts evaluate this - perhaps improves decision making.
Stephen Grier cites - thriving Modern Apprenticeship programme - but still 10/12k people shortfall digital skills - Stephen - banish word computing - industry pays on average 25% more than other occupations. Amen but familiar cry.
Check out 99% invisible podcasts and articles
Brexit is starting to drive skill shortages - BI < business intelligence systems > programmers not enough people doing this.
How do we promote neural diversity , maths is creative , mix of skills , data lab supports placements , daydream believers creates learning materials for teachers to help them understand . I knew about this but good to share again.
In banking used to prevent fraud - almost AI v AI and money is becoming obsolete.
In remote places card machines are easier than cash - when there is no bank to bank the cash. This is to me counterintuitive . I think this is wishful thinking from the Clydesdale bank - case study Argyll where apparently you are most likely to see signs saying card payments only. I am wondering if this is, as all the rural banks have been closed down. I'm still used to seeing cash only in remote communities in Scotland.
Usual collective moan from panel mostly composed of industry, it is all education's fault apparently.
Kudos, I think to Strathclyde who have just started an MSC in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.
As a throw away someone recommended
Book -The 100 Year Life
Useful event now scrambling back to work.
That's all folks !