Research affiliate Christos Makridis writes in Salon that IT skills, “are increasingly required if you want a job with upward mobility and autonomy.” Makridis argues that universities need to help students gain a working knowledge of cloud computing, big data and information security so that they can compete as the job market becomes more geared towards those that are technologically advanced.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Hiawatha Bray highlights how Prof. Anant Agarwal, president of edX, explained that online education can be a critical component of retraining workers for a more technologically advanced workplace during a Globe-sponsored panel discussion. “We have a planet-scale reskilling effort on our hands,” said Agarwal. “The only way to do that is really online education.”
Co.Design reporter Jesus Diaz writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique to 3-D print photorealistic representations of objects. Diaz explains that this could have significant potential in education and scientific visualization: “While you can look at a 3D representation of data in virtual or augmented reality, looking at a real physical model is an experience that is hard to beat.”
The Economist spotlights the experience of several MIT graduates who have started their own companies in a piece about teaching entrepreneurship. The Economist notes that MIT alumna Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola credits a course she took at MIT with helping her, “gain confidence in pitching to a room full of investors.”
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve, explains how the initiative is ‘crowdsolving’ thorny global problems through open innovation. “We need to source ideas from innovators all around the world to find the next breakthroughs,” argues Amouyel. “We know talent and ingenuity exist everywhere.”
Prof. Parag Pathak, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, speaks to The Wall Street Journal’s Michelle Hackman about his research on school choice. “What I sometimes find frustrating in conversations about student achievement is they often get sidetracked from the issue of school quality,” Pathak says. “Our job as researchers is exploring the nuances and subtleties.”
In a VICE News Tonight climate segment, MIT postdocs Volodymyr Koman and Seon-Yeong Kwak explain their technique for making plants glow in the dark to a first-grade class in Boston. Following a demonstration mixing plant glucose with the specialized nanoparticles, one student exclaims in disbelief, “no battery or anything!”
Prof. Duane Boning, faculty co-director of MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, talks to Forbes contributor Jim Lawton about preparing future leaders and workplace learning in the digital age. “The LGO model,” says Boning, “gives students a different way of thinking about their roles.”
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are donating $30 million to an MIT and Harvard initiative to improve child literacy. Reach Every Reader, which will be funded for five years, “will combine scientific research with new methods of tracking and predicting students’ reading abilities,” writes Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald.
The Associated Press reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Harvard and MIT, to help improve literacy skills in elementary school students. “[S]truggling to read can be a crushing blow with lifelong consequences,” said President Rafael Reif.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Reach Every Reader, an MIT and Harvard initiative that aims to tackle low elementary school literacy rates. Students younger than third grade will be the focus as “early intervention can have the most profound effect on turning students into proficient readers,” writes James Vaznis for The Boston Globe.
Mel King, who founded the Community Fellows Program in 1996, spoke to Crystal Haynes at Boston 25 News for a feature about his lifelong efforts to promote inclusion and equal access to technology. Haynes notes that King, a senior lecturer emeritus at MIT, “is credited with forming Boston into the city it is today; bringing groups separated by race, gender and sexuality together in a time when it was not only unexpected, but dangerous.”
Lecturer Amy Carleton speaks with Times Higher Ed reporter Holly Else about how she uses Wikipedia in her courses. Carleton explains that by asking students to write new pieces and add information to existing Wikipedia entries, she is attempting to help students “start to understand how important it is to have a high-quality source to back up any statements that they are making.”
During a broad-ranging conversation with Tom Moroney of Bloomberg News, President L. Rafael Reif discusses why education, the free-flow of talent and federal investment in fundamental scientific research are key components to America's success. Reif explains that, in his view, the foundation of our future is, “talent and believing that our research and investments will benefit the American economy.”
WBUR’s Fred Thys reports on how MIT faculty members are drawing on their experience with online courses to design more immersive case studies. “We really want students to feel like they're on the ground with us, investigating with us what is going on in a particular place,” explains Danya Sherman of the MIT Case Study Initiative.