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CIM Future Focus - Newcastle

See on Scoop.it - innovation in vocational education

6pm Copthorne Hotel, Newcastle Quayside, Wednesday 26/11/2014


Paul Sutherland FCIM’s insight:

An interesting event - the CIM are seeking to discover your views on the future of marketing. The speaker panel includes 


Darren Richardson MCSD, Founder Director at Gardiner Richardson, Dr Joanna Berry, Newcastle University Business School, Charlie Nettle, Head of Marketing at the North East Chamber of Commerce…and me.


Hope to see you there


See on cim.co.uk

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Using big data to map the UK video games industry | Nesta

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

The creativity of the video games industry has a digital footprint in fan sites, product directories and review sites. We have scraped these big and messy data sources to measure and map the UK video games industry, and these are some of the findings.

Paul Sutherland FCIM’s insight:

needless to say very disappointed not to see any of our fair cities making it onto Nesta’s Map.   


See on nesta.org.uk

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School children as young as 11 to get cyber security lessons - Press releases - GOV.UK

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

The Cyber Security Skills: Business Perspectives and Government’s Next Steps report is published today (13 March 2014).

Special learning materials for 11 to 14 year-olds and plans for a new higher-level and advanced apprenticeships are among new government plans to increase the cyber security skills of our nation.

The Cyber Security Skills: Business Perspectives and Government’s Next Steps report, published today (13 March 2014), includes plans to provide training for teachers to enable them to teach pupils about cyber security.

Support will also be available for universities that come up with innovative proposals to improve cyber security teaching.

And a new internship scheme will help provide students with the work experience employers are looking for.


See on gov.uk

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Education & Technology in an Age of Pandemics (revisited)

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

consider this picture MOOCs – massively open online courses of the sort that can simultaneously enroll thousands, even tens of thousands, of learners simultaneously – have been a hot topic of discussion for a few years now in both the worlds of education and ‘international development’ (and, for what it’s worth, the subject of numerous related posts here on the World Bank’s EduTech blog). Recent news that edX, one of the prominent MOOC platforms, is to start offering courses aimed at high school students suggests that the potential usefulness and impact of things like MOOCs may soon extend beyond the realm of higher education, out of which MOOCs originally emerged and where most related activity has occurred to date. There is much (potentially) to be excited about here. Few would argue against having greater access to more learning opportunities, especially when those opportunities are offered for 'free’, where there is latent unmet demand, and where the opportunities themselves are well constructed and offer real value for learners. As with MOOCs at the level of higher education, however, we perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised if these new opportunities at the high school level are first seized upon *not* by some of the groups with the greatest learning needs – for example, students in overcrowded, poorly resourced secondary schools in developing countries, or even students who would like a secondary education, but for a variety of reasons aren’t able to receive one – but rather by those best placed to take advantage of them. This has been largely been the case for initial adopters of MOOCs. (One of the first studies of this aspect of the 'MOOC Phenomenon’, which looked at MOOCs from the University of Pennsylvania, found that students tended to be “young, well educated, and employed, with a majority from developed countries.”) As a practical matter, some of the first types of beneficiaries may, for example (and I am just speculating here), be homeschooling families in North America (while not necessarily comparatively 'rich’ by local standards, such families need to be affluent enough to be able to afford to have one parent stay at home with the kids, and generally have pretty good Internet connectivity); international schools around the world (which can offer a broader range of courses to students interested in an 'American’ education); and the families of 'foreign’ students looking to apply to college in the United States (the edX course “COL101x: The Road to Selective College Admissions” looks, at least to my eyes, tailor made for certain segments of the population of learners in places like China, Korea, Hong Kong, etc.). In other words, at least in the near term, a Matthew Effect in Educational Technology may be apparent, where those who are best placed to benefit from the introduction of a new technology tool or innovation are the ones who indeed benefit from it the most. Longer term, though, it is possible to view this news about movement of a major MOOC platform into the area of secondary education as one further indication that we are getting further along from the 'front end of the e-learning wave’ (of which MOOCs are but one part) to something that will eventually have a greater mass impact beyond what is happening now in the 'rich’ countries of North America and the OECD. Learning with new technologies has of course been around for many decades but, broadly speaking, has not (yet) had the 'transformational’ impact that has long been promised. “Gradually, then suddenly” is how one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters famously describes how he went bankrupt. Might this be how the large scale adoption of educational technologies will eventually happen as well in much of the world? I black swan f so, one credible potential tipping point may be a 'black swan’ event that could push all of this stuff into the mainstream, especially in places where it to date has been largely peripheral: some sort of major health-related scare. (For those unfamiliar with the term, which was popularized by Nicholas Taleb, a 'black swan’ is a rare event that people don’t anticipate but which has profound consequences). One of the first ever posts on the EduTech blog, Education & Technology in an Age of Pandemics, looked at some of what had been learned about how teachers and learners use new technologies to adapt when schools were closed in response to outbreaks involving the H1N1 influenza virus: the 'swine flu’ that afflicted many in Mexico about six years ago; and an earlier outbreak of 'bird flu’ in China. I have recently been fielding many calls as a result of the current outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa asking essentially, 'Can we do anything with technology to help our students while our schools are closed?’, and so I thought it might be useful to revisit, and update, that earlier post, in case doing so might be a useful contribution to a number of related discussions are occurring. —

See on blogs.worldbank.org

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HMRC Digital Recruitment Drive - Newcastle Open Day

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

Not many organisations can really offer the chance to be part of something new. Fewer still where there will be an impact on the whole of the UK. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is looking for digital specialists to help us transform the way we deliver services for 50 million customers.
 
We’re seeking Solutions Architects, Product Managers, Designers, Developers, a Web Ops Engineer and a Digital Performance Analyst, who will join our vibrant, modern Digital Delivery Centre in Newcastle. You will be right at the forefront of building revolutionary new digital services that will change forever how individuals, businesses and their agents manage their tax affairs.
 
If you’d like to know more we’re holding an “Open Evening” on Wednesday 24th September 2014, from 6pm to 9pm (last entry is 8pm). Come and visit our Digital Delivery Centre and chat to our teams about what’s on offer and the work you’d be doing.
 
Places are limited so if you’re interested, please register no later than 12pm on Tuesday 23rd September. We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
Directions:

Please use the HMRC Main Entrance on Benton Park Road. The address: HMRC Benton Park View (97 Benton Park Road), Longbenton, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE7 7NA.

Public Transport: We are a five minute walk from Longbenton Metro Station, and there are bus links to both Four Lane Ends and Benton Park Road. See here for walking directions from Longbenton Metro: http://bit.ly/1wbqWLZ

By car: On-site parking will not be available. The multi-storey car park at Four Lane Ends is free of change after 5pm, and a 15-20 minute walk from the main gate.

On your arrival a security officer will escort you to the reception office, where you will be issued with a visitor pass and a member of DDC staff will escort you with other attendees to the DDC.

See on eventbrite.com

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Omlis comments : Is Apple set to take a potentially huge bite out of mobile payments market with NFC?

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

With the predicted announcement of the Iphone 6 in September 2014, will Apple finally have a device through which they can dominate the mobile payments market? Android OS has continued to prove its global dominance in most mobile payment markets which could expose Apple’s vulnerability especially as their device costs have the potential to alienate a large number of mobile users across the …

See on hispanicbusiness.com

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The US government has been running a quantum Internet ...un-hackable/ un-tappable and ultra-fast telecomms.

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

It’s a perfectly secure Internet that by definition cannot be penetrated by wiretaps and eavesdropping — and the US government has been sitting on it for the last two-and-a-half years.

Paul Sutherland FCIM’s insight:

The US government has been running a quantum Internet for over two years…quantum Internet that allows information to be transmitted with perfect security.


See on rt.com

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Software That Can See Will Change Privacy Forever - MIT Technology Review

See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy

Advances in machine vision will let employers, governments, and advertisers spot you in photos and know exactly what you’re doing in them. All of us have become used to uploading photos and videos safe in the knowledge that we have privacy through obscurity, but as data-mining images becomes easy, they could come back to haunt us. I’ve been able to move on from my youthful missteps, but it could have been different if all the landlords, potential employers, and bureaucrats I’ve dealt with since then could have summoned photographic evidence of them all at the touch of a button.


Paul Sutherland FCIM’s insight:

…..as data-mining images becomes easy, they could well come back to haunt us.


See on technologyreview.com

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