Open University to be ‘first university of the cloud’

Wed, 06/14/2017 - 18:18

For those who don’t know it, Britain’s Open University is something of a national treasure. Its abiding image is of bearded professors with questionable fashion sense delivering maths and computer science lectures on grainy black-and-white TV sets in the early hours of the morning when airtime is cheap. Established in 1969, the OU delivers degree and postgraduate courses to mainly remote students, though it does have a campus in the city of Milton Keynes.

The human patch against ransomware

Mon, 06/05/2017 - 19:58

In the wake of May’s WannaCry crypto-ransomware attack which brought the UK’s National Health Service and many other large organisations to a standstill, a major provider of cyber security expertise and solutions has rushed out a 10-minute eLearning course it is calling ‘The Human Patch’. It is designed to raise awareness of ransomware and phishing attacks among the rank-and-file staff who use potentially vulnerable networked computers in their organisations.

How machine learning is going to revolutionise education

Tue, 04/25/2017 - 17:16

Machine learning is going mainstream, and it is going to impact education. Does that mean we are all going to be taught by AI holograms now? Not necessarily. It seems that machine learning, in the first few years at least, will act as more of a support for human teachers than as a rival.

Chinese maths textbooks to be translated for UK schools

Mon, 03/27/2017 - 20:16

British education ministers are interested in adopting what is known as ‘South Asian mastery’ in UK schools in an attempt to revive flagging maths achievement. China ranks fifth in the world league table for school mathematics grades. The UK lags far behind in twenty-seventh place. One in four Chinese pupils achieves the maximum possible grade.

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