Justin Hutchings, GitHub Greetings from Microsoft's Canberra office where I am attending a glitzy GitHub presentation. The bold claim made was that Copilot, Microsoft's implementation of ChatGPT, could end the computer productivity paradox. The paradox is that computers have not increased office productivity. We were invited to photograph the slide of claimed productivity increases ..read more

Looking forward to speaking on a panel on "Safety check: maintaining academic integrity through digital proctoring in assessments" in Singapore, at EDUtech Asia 2024, 7 November, 11am, Stage 4, with Girija Veerappan, & Mohd Rozi Ismail. I have lost count how many EduTechs I have been to ..read more

NUS eLearning Week Video, 2014This is to suggest Australian universities test they have an online learning option ready for use in an emergency. There is no specific threat at this at this time, but it would be prudent to be ready. Two developing situations are Avian influenza being tracked by the World Health Organisation, and military tension in the East China Sea.Universities were forced ..read more

"The Secret Lecturer : What Really Goes on at University" (Anon, 2024), is a very annoying book. I would like to say, despite that, it makes some good points, but it doesn't. The book is innovative in that a UK academic, who wisely chooses to remain anonymous, has taken the sort of thing we might think, and in a lapse of judgement write in a Tweet, and set it all down in a book for people to buy ..read more

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society, in Sydney,where Ed Husic MP, Minister for Industry and Science is launching the Pearcey Foundation's Australia 4.0 Communiqué: Collaboration to Transform the National Electricity System. The Pearcey Foundation is named in honor of computer pioneer Dr Trevor Pearcey, and does good works in the industry. The foundation has convened forums to work ..read more

John McCluskey, & James Bletcher, from Whizdom RecruitmentGreetings from the ANU Techlauncher job skills workshop. Staff from ANU Careers are going through interview skills. I was surprised to see that few of the students have ever been to a job interview. Some of the tips which careers advisers give, such as how to  read the job ad, might seem obvious, but they aren't. One ..read more

I will be speaking on "Teaching Green Computing Online: 15 Years of Student Engagement via Nudging" at the free HERDSA Online Engagement in Higher Education Special Interest Group Webinar, 1pm, this Wednesday, 10 April 2024. HERDSA didn't want this to be just me talking, so as well as ten slides, I prepared four questions for the participants to answer, & discuss live:"1. What have ..read more

Associate Professor Elaine Huber, University of SydneyIt is good to have a study which confirms, with scholarly rigor, what educators already knew: engagement is most important, with a focus on the student experience, and a supportive environment (McEwen & Huber, 2024).What makes good teaching applies equally in a classroom, & online. It is just easier to hide bad teaching in a classroom ..read more

Tom Worthington at ANU, with Telstra Tower in Background. Photo by Canberra Times, published 25 March 2024In an interview with The Canberra Times last week, I pointed out that space based telecommunications are vulnerable to solar storms, so terrestrial facilities such as Telstra Tower remain useful (Why Telstra Tower could save us in an apocalypse, Lucy Arundell, March 25 2024). As it happens ..read more

Greetings from the Australian National University where  Dr. Yun Kun Cheung is speaking on "Machine Learning in Games and Economic Systems" at the weekly AI ML & Friends seminar. One question raised was if algorithmic trading can cause stock markets to collapse, as well as deliberate attacks which incorporate algorithmic learning. This is my second AI seminar of the day discussing the ..read more