Shape Shifting and Automated Teaching

In my current position I am working on helping to identify and deliver the technology that would assist in the delivery of Master level courses at scale. Before the pedagogy evangelists go all Opus Dei on me let me stress that I am a firm believer that technology is not the definitive answer alone (without good design or […]

FCL: Teaching Bot Hackathon

As part of the University of Edinburgh’s Festival of Creative Learning myself, Stewart Cromar and Marcello Crolla decided to host a Hackathon on chatbots. The premise of the hackathon wasn’t to delve into the technology and build a new skynet. It was too try and make the technology more accessible by removing the technology and […]

AI & Education, the great myth?

So, AI in education, what’s going on or should I say what’s not going on? AI has transformed from something associated with science fiction to everyday fact (e.g. smart phones camera subject detection to banking apps). AI is an umbrella term encompassing numerous technologies and concepts (e.g. machine learning, natural language understanding, robotics etc) these technologies […]

I haven’t got a clue how that works….but thats ok

Sometimes when I am sitting in meetings or speaking to colleagues regarding software deployments, coding changes, databases, conversational design tech even blogs I might say the words “I haven’t got a clue what that is or how it works” (queue your best Luke Skywalker The Empire Strikes back scream of ‘No!’) and sometimes they laugh […]

Bolton College Ada ChatBot Notes

I recently attended a JISC event @ Bolton College which discussed the usage of chatbots at the institution (thank to Jisc and Bolton for the hospitality). Bolton are doing alot with chatbots and are using IBM Watson Conversation (which is now rebranded as Watson Assistant) and starting to expand from text to voice platforms (e.g. […]

What do you do except for turn things off and on?

When I am usually asked ‘what do you do?’ by friends or relatives I consider my reply however most of the time I state that I work with digital learning technologies within a university. This is usually met with the statement ‘do you turn things off and on again?’ to which I quickly retort ‘I […]

Smart, Bots, AI and other kinda related buzz words

I have been reading a lot about AI and bots and in my own naive mind thought this would encompass working with other leading-edge institutions, SMEs and large global companies (having not worked with this technology or dare I say if it is pedagogically applicable to education). Much to my surprise upon reading articles, watching […]

Author: mblaney