Code with Google, a New Computer Science Resource for Educators

IBL News | New York Educators can integrate CS First into their classroom, guide their high school students through the learning app Grasshopper to learn JavaScript, and share CS scholarship, summer programs, and internships opportunities. Alongside these resources, Google.org also announced a grant of $1 million to the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) to expand the CS learning. Currently, many schools don’t offer CS courses that include programming. “Code with Google is the next step in our ongoing commitment to closing equity gaps in CS education,” wrote Google VP of Education and University Relations, Maggie Johnson, in a blog post. With this initiative, Google continues its education strategy for schools. Affordable Chromebooks, free resources and cloud-based software is is how the giant company is trying to solidify its position among educators and students.

An Innovative, Stackable Online Master's in Supply Chain Management from ASU On edX

Amazon Partners with George Mason University to Launch a Cloud-Based Degree

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Chatbots Gain Traction Among Businesses – Now a Course About Them on edX

Chatbot–based customer services are increasingly in demand. Advancements in AI technology, natural language processing, neural networks and speech recognition are making chatbots more effective and affordable. However, they are still in an early phase of development. These revolutionary applications – which allow users to engage in interactive conversations using text or natural voice – have the potential to save businesses a fortune – over 8 billion annually by 2020 according to Juniper. Artificial Intelligence Chatbot technology is not ready to replace top customers agents when assisting customers yet, but is advancing rapidly. A well-performed human experience is unbeatable. Trying to trick customers by making them think that an AI chatbot is a real person only speaks poorly about that company. Customers get easily annoyed if they are asked the same information repeatedly. If they feel that an algorithm is in the works trying to match the best response, they will inevitably feel played. Antonio Cangiano, an IBM manager who teaches a class on chatbots on edX, highlights that these tools "augment humans, not replace them." Despite being imperfect, they represent a growing business opportunity. The mentioned course helps to build, analyze, and deploy chatbots powered by IBM's Watson. In addition, it teaches how to make money by selling chatbot services to clients, even by deploying them in WordPress sites.  

View: Instructional Designers Forget What Makes a Course Successful

Mikel Amigot | IBL News When we create courses, we follow the latest pedagogical innovations along with Backwards design rules, and this seems to be the right approach. The problem arises when our online courses get few enrollments and the economics of the course put our project in danger. What we are doing wrong? What needs to be fixed? As instructional designers, we forget what motivates enrollment and purchase’s decisions. Learners want real outcomes. How the online class they are enrolling in is going to change their life. It is all about career advancement. It is all about a direct impact on their earnings, income, and job promotion. If the promised transformation is not convincing, we won’t attract enough students to make the course or the program sustainable. A second requirement: we need to establish trust. Our instructor, or staff or instructors, need to prove that they are the right fit for the job. They should be authorities in that instructional field. They must be committed to teach you and deliver a transformational experience, too.A welcome trailer will prove all of it. Additionally, video testimonials from learners will be helpful. Third, we need to avoid unnecessary material and present a compelling, content outline. We will feature only the lessons required to achieve the goal. Long programs usually discourage learners. To make sure, it’s key we collect continuous feedback from reviewers prior to the launch, in order to validate the concept and the outline. Redo what needs to be redone, including videos and animations, and remove whatever seems redundant. Refining the course will ensure a great performance when it goes public. Let's follow all of these ideas when we engineer a program!

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A Fascinating Free Course About Beethoven's Music from Stanford University

Udacity Offers Two Programs to Train Cloud Engineers on AWS

Udacity.com introduced this week its School of Cloud Computing, which will be focused on two training programs offering learners to become cloud developers and DevOps engineers on AWS (Amazon Web Services). The two courses (4-month, 10 hours/week) will start on June 11 and cost $1,436 per course. Developers in this field are in high demand. There are over 50,000 jobs available in the US with a median salary of $146K, according to Forbes. Cloud tech services, which allow companies to innovate at a faster pace and reduce costs, are projected to grow to $206 billion in 2019, an increase of 17.3%, according to Gartner. "The cloud brings unlimited access to computing power, security, storage, networking, messaging, and management services to large organizations and everyday builders. When you no longer need to maintain data centers, your engineers can focus on that which differentiates your business from the competition. The cloud provides high availability, on-demand scalability and elasticity, and you pay only for what you use,” explained Kesha Williams, Software Engineering Manager, at Chick-fil-A and Udacity Cloud Computing Instructor. Udacity.com, a MOOC-platform that competes with Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn, highlights the employability of its programs (called Nanodegrees), offering them at a significantly higher price than rivals, at $1,436 per course. This platform prefers to produce their own online courses and feature industry experts as instructors rather than rely on college professors. "We are taking a huge step towards becoming the University of Silicon Valley (…) Going forward, Udacity will now provide one-on-one technical mentorship, along with expert feedback to student projects and individual career coaching to help students advance their careers (…) Our team of expert reviewers is available to give individual constructive feedback to every student project, with a median turnaround time of just 3.9 hours," recently announced Sebastian Thrun, Founder at Udacity. "With more than 75,000 Nanodegree program graduates and over 200 industry partners, the Nanodegree program is well on its way to becoming a de-facto standard for hiring and corporate training in the tech industry," he claimed. • Udacity Blog: Introducing Udacity’s School of Cloud Computing • Syllabus of Become a Cloud Developer (PDF) • Syllabus of Become a Cloud Dev Ops Engineer (PDF)

Open Resources Such as Jupyter and Open edX Transform STEM Education, Proves Prof. Barba

Using open educational resources such as Jupyter and Open edX to teach STEM will transform teaching and learning and result in an engaging active experience in the classroom. This was the central idea of a faculty workshop conducted by Professor Lorena A. Barba, from The George Washington University (GW), at the University at Buffalo this weekend. During this hands-on seminar, participants reviewed some of the education research underpinning design decisions and discovered practices of open education. Also, it included an introduction to the Jupyter toolbox for teaching and learning. "Jupyter is a killer app, it provides a medium for expression using computing as part of the learning," said Professor Lorena Barba who has been using Jupyter for over six years. “Using the Open edX course platform, you can construct learning pathways using content pulled dynamically from a public Jupyter notebook (e.g., on GitHub), with the Jupyter Viewer Xblock." GW, along with IBL Education, contributed two XBlocks to build edX-style courses based on Jupyter: the Viewer, and a Jupyter Grader for auto-graded student assignments. Jupyter-based courses can be written using an open development model (like any open-source software project), collaboratively and under version control. Once the material is ready, instructors can build a MOOC-style course on Open edX, pulling the content from the notebooks without duplication in the course platform. Instructors can interleave short videos and graded sub-sections using the built-in problem types, or using the Graded Jupyter XBlock. "Our course development workflow is the product of several years of refinement and applies evidence-based instructional design. Combined with modern pedagogies used in the classroom, like active learning via live coding, you can create learning experiences that are effective on campus and online," explained Prof. Barba. Watch the interview with Professor Lorena A. Barba in the video below.   • Valuable resource: Jupyter-first courses

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Thursday, November 20, 2025

Education technology today is marked by rising AI adoption among educators and innovative personalized learning approaches.

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Today in AI & EdTech

Thursday, November 20, 2025

AI is transforming the education technology landscape as more teachers adopt intelligent tools, driving forward and adaptive learning experiences.

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