Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

Markov blankets: can they help explain learning from a systems perspective?

blog post image Every now and then you find something, described a long time ago (in this case 1988), that could have helped you if only you'd known about it. In supporting pharma companies I have used several approaches to explaining why learning is complex, non-linear, and how we should look at it from a systems perspective....

"Understanding by Design" session at the 17th European CME Forum

blog post image We are proud to be presenting a workshop at the 'Core Competencies in CME/CPD' session in the forthcoming 17th European CME Forum in Madrid. This approach to instructional design is one that we champion at Outcomes Engine when our tools are used or when we advise teams on how to develop their learning...

My favourite tech hacks ... a thread

blog post image I started a thread on Bluesky of my favourite tech hacks earlier in the year and just added a couple more. Will keep a parallel list running here. Invidious (YouTube alternative front end - Not working so well Dec 2024) Pixabay (photos with appropriate Copyright) Etherpad (collaborate on a document...
Source: bsky.app

What would my peers say?

blog post image "We're all used to giving our opinion with a Likert-type scale - choices from strongly disagree to strongly agree - but what if we were instead asked to predict what the overall score would be from our peers? Would using a prediction method be better than an opinion method?" From my LinkedIn article.
Source: linkedin.com

Designing for Outcomes: Putting the Learner at the Heart of Your Educational Strategy

blog post image "Are you measuring educational outcomes but failing to capture the true impact on your learners? As a CME/CPD professional, you know that proving the effectiveness of your educational programs is crucial. But in the rush to gather data and report metrics, it's easy to overlook the individual learner's...
Source: writemedicine.com

Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.

blog post image The Vesuvius Prize reward has encouraged work on deciphering scans of ancient charred scrolls from Herculaneum. "First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Marchant, Jo. Nature 2024. ... Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts,...
Source: nature.com

65 Reasons To Celebrate The 6502

blog post image "The legendary chip from 1975 that helped start the home computer revolution." I can remember sharing the manual for the 6502 with my school friend, Chris. He had a BBC micro computer and I had a Commodore Vic 20. To do the machine code I remember you had to: compile into 6502 instructions what you...
Source: substack.com

AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation

blog post image "Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly arguing with bots online, or believing what a fake image purports...
Source: eff.org

Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use

blog post image "The tool's creators are seeking to make it so that AI model developers must pay artists to train on data from them that is uncorrupted." Artists can now use this software to modify their art and influence the big tech owners of AI tools to properly recognise the original works. Growing the poisonous...
Source: venturebeat.com

Kenya's push to make 'boda-boda' motorbike taxis go electric

blog post image "The government wants Kenya's three million motorbike taxi riders to go green but only a few have done so." I last went to Kenya over 10 years ago and I got around Kitale on the back of push bikes by local riders. Motorised bikes 'boda-boda' were only just being introduced at the time. Apparently there...
Source: bbc.com

Predicting students’ academic progress and related attributes in first-year medical students: an analysis with artificial

"Background Dropout and poor academic performance are persistent problems in medical schools in emerging economies. Identifying at-risk students early and knowing the factors that contribute to their success would be useful for designing educational interventions. Educational Data Mining (EDM) methods...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Integrating basic sciences into clerkship rotation utilizing Kern’s six-step model of instructional design: lessons learned

Worked example of curriculum design using Kern's six-step approach. "Background It is generally agreed that basic and clinical sciences should be integrated throughout the undergraduate medical education, however, there is still need for continued formal integration of basic sciences into clinical...
Source: biomedcentral.com

OpenAI announces first partnership with a university

blog post image "Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise." "With the OpenAI partnership, ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor for students, not only for certain courses, but also for study topics. STEM subjects are a focus and are “the make-or-break...
Source: cnbc.com

Microsoft Cloud AI Accelerates Search for New Battery Materials

Extremetech report that "Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used AI to narrow a list of 32 million candidate materials down to 18 in hours instead of years."
Source: extremetech.com

Three Epochs of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Michael D. Howell. Greg S. Corrado. Karen B. DeSalvo. JAMA.

This Special Communication examines the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the years, and how developments with AI can help decision-makers improve health care while also recognizing its risks.
Source: jamanetwork.com

A checklist for reporting, reading and evaluating Artificial Intelligence Technology Enhanced Learning (AITEL) research

blog post image "This paper proposes a checklist for reporting on AI systems, and covers the initial protocols and scoping, modelling and code, algorithm design, training data, testing and validation, usage, comparisons, real-world requirements, results and limitations, and ethical considerations. The aim is to have...
Source: tandfonline.com

Apple knew AirDrop users could be identified and tracked as early as 2019, researchers say | CNN Business

Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy.
Source: cnn.com

Scientists identify first known prehistoric person with Turner syndrome

Studying skeletons could provide further insight into the past's gender variability.
Source: arstechnica.com

A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++ - Slashdot

serviscope_minor shares a Phoronix post: A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code. The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing wo...
Source: slashdot.org

Guest Post - Beyond Generative AI: The Indispensable Role of BERT in Scholarly Publishing - The Scholarly Kitchen

ChatGPT has popularized generative AI, but interpretive AI has quietly remained in the shadows. Interpretive AI offers profound insights into content and audience engagement, a critical tool for publishers aiming to harness the full potential of AI.
Source: sspnet.org