Get ready for 6th International e-learning Conference - Chamilo Conference Spain
Chamilo Conference Spain – The 6th International e-learning conference will be held in Valencia, Spain from October 18-20 2023. The Chamilo Conference is an annual event focused on decision makers passionate about distance education & training, experienced with Chamilo.
Chamilo Conference is the best place to meet other administrators, coordinators, directors, managers and the founders of the Chamilo platform, as well as professionals involved in e-learning: a true networking and exchanges paradise.
Chamilo Conference is an international event focused on decision makers and managers in activity areas around education, training and talent management in Europe. You will find the event of interest if you are currently in charge of an online training project. It is only organized once a year and its goal is to promote the use of Chamilo to improve training efficiency. During the event, you will get the chance to enjoy:
Chamilo use cases from around the world in corporate training and education
Microsoft's New Learning Accelerators: Empowering Educators with the Latest Tools
As technology continues to transform the education landscape, educators are constantly seeking new ways to enhance their teaching experience and engage their students. Microsoft, a leading provider of education technology solutions, has recently introduced its new Learning Accelerators to help educators achieve these goals.
So, what are Learning Accelerators, and how can they benefit educators in today’s digital classroom? Let’s take a closer look.
What are Learning Accelerators?
Learning Accelerators are a set of tools and resources designed to help educators enhance their teaching experience and improve their students’ learning outcomes. These accelerators cover a range of topics, including digital literacy, inclusion and accessibility, project-based learning, and social-emotional learning.
Each accelerator provides educators with a variety of resources, such as lesson plans, activities, assessments, and professional development materials. These resources are designed to be customizable and adaptable to fit each educator’s unique teaching style and classroom needs.
We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications
These are AI-powered tools blended into Microsoft 365 products, including Bing, Teams and OneNote. PowerPoint, Word, and Immersive Reader have also been supercharged. These Microsoft 365 integrated tools, a.k.a Learning Accelerators, target critical skills, including:
Reading and Literacy
Information Literacy
Mathematics
Speaking and Presenting
Social-Emotional Learning
How can Learning Accelerators benefit educators?
Learning Accelerators can benefit educators in several ways, including:
Enhancing teaching effectiveness: Learning Accelerators provide educators with the latest tools and resources to help them stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in education. By incorporating these tools into their teaching, educators can improve their teaching effectiveness and enhance their students’ learning outcomes.
Promoting student engagement: The resources provided by Learning Accelerators are designed to be engaging and interactive, making learning more fun and meaningful for students. By using these resources, educators can create a more student-centered and engaging learning environment.
Supporting diversity and inclusion: Many of the Learning Accelerators are focused on promoting diversity and inclusion in the classroom. These resources provide educators with the tools and strategies to support students of all backgrounds and abilities and create a more inclusive learning environment.
Saving time and effort: With ready-to-use lesson plans and activities, Learning Accelerators can save educators time and effort in planning and preparing their lessons. This allows educators to focus more on teaching and interacting with their students.
Conclusion
Microsoft’s new Learning Accelerators are designed to provide educators with the latest tools and resources to enhance their teaching experience and improve their students’ learning outcomes. By incorporating these accelerators into their teaching, educators can enhance their teaching effectiveness, promote student engagement, support diversity and inclusion, and save time and effort. As technology continues to play a critical role in education, Learning Accelerators offer educators an opportunity to stay at the forefront of digital learning and maximize their impact in the classroom.
With Learning Accelerators, Microsoft is making its student learning surveillance efforts more transparent. Data tracked and reported includes students, classrooms, and schools.
What is GPTZero? How Can Educators Use it to detect ChatGPT generated content?
GPTZero is a tool to detect content written/generated by ChatGPT, the AI writing tool that debuted in November. Since its introduction ChatGPT has sent waves of shock as well as excitement for different educators. Many believe that it can take the online learning to the next level while others see it as a great risk to online learning especially with assignments, quizzes completed by ChatGPT.
GPTZero was created by Edward Tian, a senior at Princeton University who majors in computer science and minors in journalism. GPTZero is available for free of cost for teachers as well as other users, and can detect work generated by ChatGPT more than 98 percent of the time. The tool is one of several new (opens in new tab) detection tools that have emerged since the release of ChatGPT.
The creator has seen that the technology was used by students to cheat on assignments, so he came up with the safeguard. The web-based app is quite simple. You can either paste your text or load the pdf, docx, and txt files. With a single click on the “GET RESULTS” button, you can find the summary, average Perplexity, and Burstiness score. Furthermore, it will highlight the text that is likely to be written by AI.
How Does GPTZero work?
GPTZero detects AI-generated text by measuring two properties of text called “perplexity” and “burstiness.” According to the ZeroGPT creator Tian:
“Perplexity is a measurement of randomness. It’s a measurement of how random or how familiar a text is to a language model. So if a piece of text is very random, or chaotic, or unfamiliar to a language model, if it’s very perplexing to this language model, then it’s going to have high perplexity, and it’s more likely to be human generated.”
On the other hand, text that is very familiar and has likely been seen by the AI language model before will not be perplexing to it and is more likely to have been AI-generated. “Burstiness” refers to the complexity of sentences. Humans tend to vary their sentence length and write in “bursts,” while AI language models are more consistent. This can be seen if you create a chart looking at sentence variability.
How Can Educators Use GPTZero?
The free pilot version of GPTZero is available to all educators on the GPTZero website. However, it has its own limitations. For instance, it’s not designed to detect a mix of AI- and human-generated text. Educators can sign up to be put on an email list for updates about the next version of the technology, which will be able to highlight the portions of a text that seem to have been generated by AI.
GPTZero is built for the educators with following features in mind:
Plagiarism Scores – Get a holistic score for how much of the document is written by AI
Highlighted Portions – Each sentence written by AI is highlighted. Simple
File Batch Uploads – Upload multiple files at once, for your entire classroom
Can GPTZero improves with ChatGPT as the technology improves?
ChatGPT is going to be used everywhere as Microsoft announced its integration in most of its applications. It was recently introduced in the Bing search engine in Microsoft’s quest to take over Google in search engine business. Even as ChatGPT and other AI language models improve, Tian is confident that technology such as GPTZero and other AI-detecting software will keep pace.
Tian says, “Training a detection model is so much easier than training one of these gigantic large language models. It’s millions and millions of dollars to train one of these gigantic large language models,”
“These language models are just ingesting gigantic portions of the internet and regurgitating patterns, and they’re not coming up with anything really original,” he says. “So being able to write originally will remain an important skill.”
German edtech Knowunity, a TikTok for schoolwork, raises €9m Series A extension
Knowunity, a Berlin-based peer-to-peer learning app for secondary school students, has raised €9 million in its Series A extension round co-led by Stride and Redalpine with participation from existing investors Project A and Educapital, bringing its round total raised to €19 million after €10 million raise last year. The platform has had more than 600k study notes uploaded by students across a variety of subjects.
Knowunity is a peer-to-peer learning app for secondary school students based in Berlin. Users upload their own personal study notes and other resources to help fellow students grasp their school curricula and prepare for exams. The content on Knowunity spans everything from languages, science and mathematics to art and music, and is available in German, French, Spanish, English, Polish and Italian.
With the funds, Knowunity is looking to expand into the US. As per the company’s data, it has experienced strong growth in the last year, increasing its user base by 2m to 5.7m in the previous quarter of 2022 alone.
Co-founded by entrepreneurs, Benedict Kurz, Gregor Weber, Julian Prigl, and Lucas Hild, Knowunity provides a clean, vertically-focused mobile app that covers everything a student needs to have a great learning experience. It’s entirely peer-to-peer and enables students to create and publish their educational content to help learners better understand the course curriculum – all tailored to their country and in their language.
Students engage through direct messaging, and real support is provided via group learning and the power of the community. Through the platform’s creator tools, Knowunity allows students to build strong content, profiles, and followings that can be amplified both in-app and externally so they can boost their reach and generate a viral loop back to the product.
Speaking about the company, Co-founder of Knowunity Benedict Kurz, said:
We always felt that peer-to-peer content was way more helpful than most of the teachers’ content, as it was coming from an eye-to-eye, rather than a top-down, perspective. The platform has a built-in chat function allowing users to collaborate and offer group learning sessions. Catering to Gen Z, Knowunity also has creator tools allowing students to publish reels and videos, create profiles and build up personal followings. It might be the first digital learning app with influencers called “knowers”. The ones who upload the best and most popular content have up to 200k followers on the platform.
Students don’t get paid outright for uploading content, but some of the top knowers on the platform get small payouts on a monthly basis — what Kurz refers to as “pocket money” — which can be up to €250 a month depending on their success.
Kurz is quick to add that the key incentive for students to upload content is not the cash reward but the “social recognition they’re receiving from others and [the] intrinsic motivation to help others”.
Each piece of content is manually checked by Knowunity before being uploaded, but the platform offers pre-upload guidelines about what a helpful piece of content would look like.
Join Edtech World Forum in London on May 17-18, 2023
EdTech Conference 2023 in London is the EdTech World Forum 2023 as one of leading education technology EdTech events based in London, UK. EdTech World Forum aims to be a leading global education conference in London. The edtech event will be organized from 17th to 18th May 2023 in London, England, United Kingdom.
Education World Forum is the world’s largest gathering of education and skills ministers. It comprises three days of insight and inspiration from pioneers, policymakers, and experts, with many sessions given by education ministers themselves as part of an honest assessment of education’s common issues and challenges.
The Edtech World Forum 2023 will see a host of keynote speakers which includes David Julian (Google), Dr Wendy Purcell (Harvard University), Dylan Jones ( British Council), Charles Fadel (Harvard University), Vivek Oberoi (i30 Learning Center).
There will be more than 25 speakers from top institutes with more than 200 delegates from around the globe. The event venue is Kensington Conference and Event Centre. The ticket pricing starts from £495 (early bird pricing valid till 7th February).
You can book your seat for the Edtech World Forum 2023 here.
Bengaluru-Based HireSure.ai Raises $2.5M in Seed Funding
HireSure.ai, an HRTech platform that enables companies to leverage data in making more efficient compensation decisions, announced that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by YCombinator and Binny Bansal’s Three State Capital, with participation from San Francisco-based Tribe Capital and Pioneer fund. According to the press statement, the Bengaluru-based startup plans to use the funds to strengthen the community, build new products and primarily scale up the engineering and product teams for product development.
Started in 2019 by three graduates from IIT Kanpur -Anurag Dixit, Anshul Mishra, and Ramesh Konatham, HireSure.ai uses real-time compensation benchmarking data to help companies make more efficient compensation decisions and eliminate pay disparities. The startup also allows one to communicate your offer to the candidate in the most presentable and engaging manner. It also uses behaviour signals to predict a potential dropout to make course corrections and retain them.
The company has currently partnered with more than 200 funded startups in India including Meesho, Slice, Dream11, Apna, Porter, Dunzo, Khatabook, and Rapido. The aim is to partner with about 800 startups by the end of 2023 and will then expand our offering to Southeast Asia and Middle East, claimed by the company in the statement. The company has also appointed Satheesh K V (co-founder Spottabl, and former senior director HR at Flipkart) on its advisory board member, the statement added.
The platform designed a delightful journey with a sequence of custom touchpoints to ensure candidates are motivated and reduce the chances of potential dropouts. It aims to achieve pay parity by helping companies leverage data to make scientific and fair people decisions, starting with compensation.
Sharing about the company, Co-founder of HireSure.ai., Anurag Dixit said:
We believe that this problem of pay disparities can be solved only when companies come together to democratize access to real-time compensation benchmarks. This is why ‘Total Rewards’ leaders of funded startups are coming together to form an invite-only community with us. As of now, compensation data is sitting in silos in multiple systems. Our product CompUp aggregates compensation data from various systems and comes up with insights to make better compensation decisions.
Anurag further added:
More than half of the world’s GDP is salaries. Yet there is no full-stack solution to provide real-time compensation benchmarks and insights and enable companies to make data-driven compensation decisions for their employees. This results in removing biases in decision-making and reducing pay disparities. We have a first-mover advantage in solving this real-world challenge.
The company has also announced the launch of CompUp, a full-stack compensation management platform that combines all the compensation data and insights into one place. Companies will use this to compare, strategize, and communicate ‘Total rewards’ to their employees and candidates. CompUp is launching ‘Compensation Insider’, a community where CHROs and Reward professionals across sectors and companies would come together to share best practices around rewards and contribute towards building a global compensation platform that will make fair pay a reality. It will transform how pay processes are managed in companies to drive a higher fairness quotient among employees.
Join 2023 ASCD Annual Conference from March 31, 2023–April 3, 2023
The 2023 ASCD Annual Conference will be organized from march 31- April 3, 2023 in Denver, Colorado. The edtech event will have hundreds of educational movers, shakers, and changemakers.
Ignite your passion while you learn from innovative changemakers tackling today’s most pressing education issues. Renew your purpose as you get inspired to explore new thinking. Transform your practice in hands-on learning sessions based on real-world strategies and research-based methods. And, make the most of your time away by recharging and reconnecting. When you thrive, your students flourish.
Be a learning pioneer. Find innovative ways to solve tough problems.
Rediscover your passion. Renew your sense of purpose.
Find your people. Make new connections and fill up on fresh ideas to take back to school.
Choose from 100+ sessions focused on the most important issues in education. Create your own dynamic learning path to boost your professional growth. Topics include:
Educator’s Vital Roles
Burnout and Retention
Educator Capacity
Personalized Instruction
Using Data
District-Wide SEL
Equitable Learning
Leading through Change
Developing Cultural Competency
Advocating for Marginalized Families
Venue
The event venue is:
Colorado Convention Center
700 14th St
Denver, Colorado 80202
United States
Ticket Pricing
$689 Regular Registration
$399 Pre-Conference Institute
Pre-Conference Institute registration is separate from the Annual Conference registration.
You can register your seat for the edtech conference here.
ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.
BPP Education Group Acquires Digital Marketing Institute
BPP Education Group, a global leading professional and vocational education company, has recently announced that it has acquired Digital Marketing Institute (DMI), a leading provider of digital marketing training and certifications based in Dublin, Ireland. BPP said the acquisition would provide “valuable growth opportunities” for both companies as well as revenue synergies in support of their growth.
DMI will continue to operate as an independent business under its existing management and remain headquartered in Ireland, but BPP will share best practices and give its new subsidiary “opportunities” as a member of the wider group. The acquisition would also allow BPP to deliver a broader portfolio of programmes to provide more learners and clients with access to a leading portfolio of professional courses and apprenticeships, the company added.
Founded in 2009, DMI has certified over 55,000 individuals globally with its digital marketing training portfolio, which extends from short courses to Masters-level programmes. The company has over 230,000 members and partners with universities and training providers in over 100 countries.
DMI’s high-quality certifications are internationally recognised and are partnered with global marketing professional bodies, including the American Marketing Association and the Australian Marketing Institute. DMI also works in collaboration with search and performance marketing leader Neil Patel Digital.
Graham Gaddes, CEO of BPP Education Group, said,
The acquisition of Digital Marketing Institute introduces a new vertical of programmes into the BPP portfolio. We are seeing an ever-increasing demand from our clients and customers that want to expand their skills in digital marketing. The acquisition of DMI will allow our customers to access market-leading certified programmes, whilst allowing the BPP Education Group to expand into new geographies and markets. The highly experienced team at DMI are a great cultural fit for BPP, and we look forward to welcoming them into the BPP Education Group.
With the backing of sponsor TDR Capital, BPP group plans to expand its portfolio and geographical reach with the strategic acquisition of relevant education businesses. Ken Fitzpatrick, CEO of Digital Marketing Institute, said,
We are delighted to be part of the BPP Education Group, as DMI embarks on the next chapter of growth and success. BPP is an industry leader in education, and we are looking forward to sharing our passion for learning and delivering the highest quality learning experience for our students to drive capability and equip the workforce of the future.
What is Google Classroom? How it can make teaching and learning easier?
Google Classroom is one of the easiest platform to get started with your online teaching. You can setup your class, enroll students, set assignments and grade students in no time. The best thing about Google Classroom is that it offers an online classroom where teachers and students can communicate and collaborate. In this post, we will see what is Google Classroom and how you can use it to make teaching and learning easier for your students.
During the COVD-19 era, most of the teachers have started teaching online by using various tools. Google Classroom is offered by the search giant – Google as a solution to modern day education system. It is constantly updated with new features and resources to make it better for teachers to use. And the best part is that it is free of cost to start and comes along tight integration with other Google tools like such as Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms
However, you need to understand that it is not a complete Learning management System (LMS) like Moodle, Canvas, Sakai or any other. However, it can work similarly (albeit at a reduced capabilities) to let teachers share learning resources with students, set assignments, carry out presentations and more, all from one place.
What is Google Classroom?
Google Classroom is an online teaching portal that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments and engaging students in learning online or remotely. It is a free to use tool designed to help students and teachers communicate, collaborate, organize and manage assignments, go paperless, and much more. Along with Teachers & Students, Parents can also be invited to opt-in for updates about their children.
In contrast to Google’s regular services, Google Classroom does not show any ads in its interface for students, faculty, and teachers, and user data is not scanned or used for advertising purposes.
How do you use Google Classroom?
One of the main things that makes Google Classroom so popular is because it is easy to use. Getting started with it is really easy and you can setup your own class in no time. First, you create a class account, then you invite your students to join. When everyone’s onboard, you can make announcements, set up a learning schedule, and start setting assignments.
Anyone with a Google Account can start using Google Classroom and start teaching online. Educational institutions with G Suite for Education, non-profits, schools, independent educators, home-schoolers, administrators, and families are all eligible to use Google Classroom. Teachers and students are primary users and can access Google Classroom through a school account.
What are the main features of Google Classroom?
Live Classes – One of the most popular and most useful feature of Google Classroom is the ability to have Live Classes through Google Meet. Teachers can add up to 250 people to a call and around 100,000 viewers can live-stream the class. These meetings or lectures can also be recorded so that students who missed the live session can watch them later.
Reuse Assignments – One of the most underrated features of Google Classroom is the ability to reuse the course assignments at the end of the academic year. Infact, you can reuse assignments, announcements or questions from any one of your classes.
Improved Calendar Integration – It comes with a tight Google Calendar integration with a separate calendar for each class. All assignments with their due dates are automatically added to the calendar and kept up to date in case there are any changes.
Attach a Google Form to a post – If you’re a fan of Google Forms, you can easily add a new Google form to a post. You will get a link in Classroom to easily view the answers.
YouTube Functionality – Abilit to assign YouTube videos in any lesson, can be pretty helpful for teachers. In addition there are advanced YouTube settings for all Google Apps domains to restrict the YouTube videos viewable for signed-in users, as well as signed-out users on networks managed by the admin.
Customizable Grading System – You can choosing a grading system or else create your own grading rubric. You can also choose whether to display Course grades to the students as total points grading or else weighted by category.
How can you set it up?
Anyone who has a personal Gmail account can set up Google Classroom by following these steps:
Step 1: Open your Gmail account.
Step 2: Click on the waffle on the top right corner which contains all the Google applications, and click on Classroom.
Step 3: You’ll enter a dashboard. Click the PLUS sign on the top right and choose ‘Create Class’. If you’re a student, you can click on ‘Join a Class’ and enter the code given by your teacher.
Step 4: Enter details- class name, subject, room, etc. give a class name that your students can easily identify with; for instance, Miss Anne’s Maths Class.
Which devices can be used to work with Google Classroom?
Since it is completely web-based, you can access it in some form from pretty much any device with a web browser. All the processing is handled at Google’s server’s so your device even it is an old one can still be used. Apart from the browser access, there are device specific apps for iOS, Android while it also works on Mac, PC, and Chromebooks.
A big advantage of Google is that on most devices it is possible to do work offline, uploading when a connection is found. This all allows teachers and students to use Google Classroom since they can connect with it via any personal device.
What does Google Classroom cost?
Google Classroom is free for anyone who has a Google account. All the apps that work with the service are already free-to-use Google tools, and Classroom simply conglomerates it all into a centralized place.
An educational institute need to signup for the service in order to add all teachers and students. This is to make sure security is as tight as possible so no outsiders gain access to the information or students involved.
There are different levels of Google Classroom offered with various features. The plans vary from Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Teaching and learning Upgrade & Education Plus which comes with different levels of Security features, Analytics Features, Originality features etc.
Google Classroom Editions
Google Classroom Assignments
With a lot other options but Google Classroom Assignments is one of the best features for individual teachers. A teacher is able to set assignments and then upload documents that explain what is required for completion, and also provide extra information and a place for students to actually work.
When a task is finished, the student can turn it in for the teacher to grade. Teachers can then provide annotations and feedback for the student.
The teacher can also schedule multiple assignments in advance and students will receive an email when an assignment is waiting, it’s very easy to maintain a schedule without the teacher having to repeatedly contact the students.
Google Classroom Announcements
Teachers can also make announcements in Google Classroom that go out to the entire class. These announcements will appear on the Google Classroom home screen where the students will see when they log in the next time.
You can also send an email as announcement so that everyone will receive it at a certain time. You can also send to a custom list of users. An announcement can have more rich media added with attachments from the likes of YouTube and Google Drive. Any announcement can be set to either remain like a noticeboard statement, or it can be adjusted to allow for two-way communication from students.
Should I get Google Classroom?
If you are an individual teacher or a small educational institute you should definitely consider Google Classroom for teaching. While this isn’t a LMS replacement, it is a really great tool for taking the teaching basics online.
Classroom is super easy to learn, simple to use, and works across many devices – all for free. This means no costs for maintenance since there’s no need for an IT management team to support this system. It also automatically keeps you updated with Google’s advancements and changes to the service.
Difference between Google Classroom and Zoom?
There’s one main difference between Zoom and Google Classroom. Google Classroom is a digital classroom manager while Zoom is specifically designed for video conferencing. Zoom is one of the most efficient video conference applications, however, it doesn’t provide tools for classroom management.
Nigerian HRTech Company Pade HCM Raises $500k in Pre-Seed Round for African businesses
Pade HCM, a Nigerian HRTech platform that helps businesses automate the management of employee information, leave, payroll, claims, benefits, and performance, has raised $500,000 in its pre-seed round led by a global network of investors, including Zrosk IML, Zedcrest Capital, Microtraction, Expert Dojo, and Resilience 17, along with several angel investors.
Towards the end of 2020, Seye Bandele—a former marketing lead at Yudala and Konga, and Lekan Omotosho —a former consultant to the FCT and state governments in Nigeria co-founded Pade HCM, a SaaS company with a mission to build the simplest and most efficient people operations platform. It is an all-in-one, easy-to-use, cloud-based people management software that brings transformative HR strategy. The startup not only manages employee information; its services and products include: request management, payroll, approval workflows, customer notifications, management of benefits, performance, reports, and audits, but also drives disciplinary policies for compliance and behavioural issues.
Since its launch, Pade HCM has helped over 100 African businesses become more productive and profitable by taking repetitive HR tasks off of schedules. In 2022, the Nigerian HRTech company processed ₦2.67 billion (~$6.3 million) in payroll and managed over 10,000 employee profiles.
The platform stimulates team performance towards company objectives to create a high-performing organization. Using a balanced scorecard approach, transparently measure performance using OKRs that keeps the organization focused on its goals. It also manages health insurance, pension and other custom benefits for the team from within Pade. One can set up any statutory benefits provided locally and internationally.
Commenting on the investment, Co-founder & CEO of Pade HCM, Seye Bandele, said:
Our goal is to help businesses become more efficient, freeing up their time to focus on strategic work. Professionals should only spend valuable time handling HR tasks that can be automated with minimal human interaction. Our software helps organisations with onboarding, HRIS, payroll, compliance, performance management, asset management, disciplinary actions, and exit processes, providing reliable HR management solutions in all areas.
The statement further indicated that Pade HCM was founded with the recognition that Africa presents the largest opportunity for growth in the workforce globally. Africa is a continent with a young and rapidly growing population, but its economic growth and development have lagged behind other regions of the world.
