Duolingo is best known for its language learning app, but it recently branched into teaching math and will soon offer music learning, the company announced. Through a series of "hundreds of bite-sized lessons," users will be able to learn notes and how to play tunes from a library of over 200+ songs. Using the app's gamified learning experience, the Music course "teaches you to read and play music anytime, through interactive lessons," according to Duolingo. 

"We know math and music, much like language, transcend cultures and connect people," Duolingo cofounder and CTO Severin Hacker. "Soon you will be able to learn math and music in the same Duolingo app — all with the same fun, engaging, and effective experience you know from learning languages with us."

Duolingo

Several screenshots show musical notation paired with piano keys (above), along with games like "fill in the blanks" and "match the pairs." The app will appear alongside languages and math at the top of the main Duolingo screen. The math app is already available for iOS, with levels ranging from elementary to more advanced, all using interactive, gamified lessons. 

A job posting spotted earlier this year provided hints that the company was working on a music app. Duolingo didn't give many details other than a few screenshots, but did say that "the course is free, fun and effective. It plans to reveal the app fully at its Duocon conference on October 11th. 

It certainly didn't take long for AI's other shoe to drop, what with the emergent technology already being perverted to commit confidence scams and generate spam content. We can now add censorship to that list as the Globe Gazette reports the school board of Mason City, Iowa has begun leveraging AI technology to cultivate lists of potentially bannable books from the district's libraries ahead of the 2023/24 school year. 

In May, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed, and Governor Kim Reynolds subsequently signed, Senate File 496 (SF 496), which enacted sweeping changes to the state's education curriculum. Specifically it limits what books can be made available in school libraries and classrooms, requiring titles to be "age appropriate” and without “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act,” per Iowa Code 702.17.

But ensuring that every book in the district's archives adhere to these new rules is quickly turning into a mammoth undertaking. "Our classroom and school libraries have vast collections, consisting of texts purchased, donated, and found," Bridgette Exman, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Mason City Community School District, said in a statement. "It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements." 

As such, the Mason City School District is bringing in AI to parse suspect texts for banned ideas and descriptions since there are simply too many titles for human reviewers to cover on their own. Per the district, a "master list" is first cobbled together from "several sources" based on whether there were previous complaints of sexual content. Books from that list are then scanned by "AI software" — the district doesn't specify which systems will be employed — which tells the state censors whether or not there actually is a depiction of sex in the book. 

“Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman told PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”

So far, the AI has flagged 19 books for removal. They are as follows:

• Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan

• Sold by Patricia McCormick

• A Court of Mist and Fury (series) by Sarah J. Maas

• Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson

• Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

• Beloved by Toni Morrison

• Looking for Alaska by John Green

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

• Crank by Ellen Hopkins

• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

• Feed by M.T. Anderson

• Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger

• Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

After a ransomware attack in June, the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) notified students on Friday of a potential data leak. In June, "unauthorized actor(s)" not yet publicly identified accessed CDHE systems in a ransomware attack. While authorities continue to investigate the full extent of the damage, the department has disclosed that the attack breached personally identifiable information like names and social security numbers.

"The review of the impacted records is ongoing and once complete, CDHE will be notifying individuals who are potentially impacted by mail or email to the extent we have contact information," CDHE wrote in a Notice of Data Incident. But the department warns students that the impact of the breach reaches across programs, from public schools to adult education initiatives, over a 16 year time period.

In response, CDHE is offering free access to Experian credit monitoring and identity theft protection to protect their data. The department recommends impacted groups keep an eye on their account statements and credit reports for suspicious activity. 

Education systems are a popular target for ransomware attacks. In 2022, at least 44 colleges and 45 school districts reported ransomware attacks, compared to 88 total education departments in 2021, according to data from Emsisoft. The Government Accountability Office recommended that the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security coordinate to evaluate school cybersecurity efforts across the country. 

Students at 68 colleges and universities across the US will easily be able to use their Samsung phones to tap for access and purchases. Samsung's Wallet app now supports digital student IDs, so long as it's on the United States versions of the brand's latest devices. Some of the educational institutions that have enabled ID integration for Samsung Wallet are Penn State, the University of Florida, Central Michigan University, University of North Alabama and the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Apple has supported contact-free student ID cards since 2018, allowing students to tap their phones to access facilities and, say, get food at the cafeteria. Google Pay also launched student ID integration in 2020 in partnership with a company called Transact, which offers solutions for tuition and other student expense payment. That's the same company Samsung has teamed up with to enable this integration, which means users will have to download the Transact eAccounts mobile app from Google Play, as well.

Like other digital student ID integrations, Samsung Wallet allows students to access school facilities with their phone. The app's Fast Mode feature will let users tap their phone without having to unlock their screen, while Power Reserve means they can use their digital ID even if their phone has switched off due to low battery reserves. That said, the capability to pay using NFC at on-campus stores and vending machines aren't available at all of the participating institutions.

At the moment, students can only use Samsung Wallet's digital ID support if they have a Galaxy S20 phone or later, a Note 20, a Galaxy Flip or Fold device, or a Galaxy A53. Galaxy Watch support is coming this fall. Samsung also says that it's working to expand the offering and make it available for students in more institutions. 

A group of college professors sued Texas today for banning TikTok on state devices and networks, as reported byThe Washington Post. The plaintiffs say the prohibition compromises their research and teaching while “preventing or seriously impeding faculty from pursuing research that relates to TikTok,” including studying the very disinformation and data-collection practices the restriction claims to address. The plaintiffs say the ban makes it “almost impossible for faculty to use TikTok in their classrooms — whether to teach about TikTok or to use content from TikTok to teach about other subjects.”

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed the lawsuit in the name of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, an academic research advocacy group the Texas professors are members of. The lawsuit names Governor Greg Abbott and 14 other state and public education officials as defendants. “The government’s authority to control their research and teaching… cannot survive First Amendment scrutiny,” the complaint says.

One example cited by the plaintiffs is Jacqueline Vickery, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts at the University of North Texas, who studies and teaches how young people use social media for expression and political organizing. “The ban has forced her to suspend research projects and change her research agenda, alter her teaching methodology, and eliminate course materials,” the complaint reads. “It has also undermined her ability to respond to student questions and to review the work of other researchers, including as part of the peer-review process.”

The lawsuit says that, although faculty at public universities are public employees, the First Amendment shields them from government control over their research and teaching. “Imposing a broad restraint on the research and teaching of public university faculty is not a constitutionally permissible means of protecting Texans’ ‘way of life’ or countering the threat of disinformation,” the suit says, citing Abbott’s comments that he feared the Chinese government “wields TikTok to attack our way of life.” The suit also condemns the double standard of claiming to care about Texans’ privacy while still allowing Meta, Google and Twitter (all American companies) to harvest much of the same data as TikTok.

“The ban is suppressing research about the very concerns that Governor Abbott has raised, about disinformation, about data collection,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Washington Post. “There are other ways to address those concerns that don’t impose the same severe burden on faculty and researchers’ First Amendment rights,” he added, as well as their “ability to continue studying what has, like it or not, become a hugely popular and influential communications platform.”

This is the third lawsuit this year challenging state TikTok bans. Two Montana lawsuits funded by the Chinese social media company claim the prohibition violates free speech rights. According toThe New York Times, TikTok is not involved with the Texas suit.

Instead of pen and paper, many students are now carrying a laptop with them, using it for everything from taking notes to doing research. Companies are responding with programs designed for tech-centric learning, including Figma, a cloud-based design tool. The company has announced that Figma is now free for all US students in K-12, in partnership with Google for Education. The initiative started in beta last year, with 50 high schools across the country getting free access to Figma and FigJam, a collaborative whiteboard.

While Figma offers a free version, it only allows users to have three files for each program. Instead, schools can access the company's most advanced tier, Figma Enterprise, for free (typically $75 per person monthly). It includes unlimited files, individual and shared project options, dedicated workspaces and more sophisticated design features, among other perks. Schools will need Chromebooks to utilize the program, but they can apply for access if they have non-Google systems. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 94 percent of schools provided devices like laptops and tablets to students who needed them for the 2022 to 2023 school year.

Figma's fate is a bit up in the air after Adobe entered into an agreement to buy the competitor in September 2022 for $20 billion in cash and shares. Regulators across the US, UK and EU are investigating whether the deal violates antitrust policies, with the first barrier emerging in February with reports that the US Justice Department was preparing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. The UK followed in May with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announcing it was launching an inquiry into the agreement. Most recently came reports that European antitrust regulators plan to initiate an investigation into the merger later this year.

As for free Figma access for students, the initiative holds promise, with the company sharing positive reviews from educators involved in the beta program. Educators can now sign up to bring Figma to their schools in the US — plus, the company is taking its Chromebook partnership global, starting with Google schools in Japan.

Google is making it easier for people with reading challenges, such as dyslexia, to be able to make out articles and text posts online. The tech giant has launched "reader mode" for Chrome, which takes a site's primary content and puts it into the sidebar to reduce clutter and distractions. Users will also be able to change the text's typeface, font size and spacing, as well as its color and background color, to find the combination that works best for them. 

Reader mode is but one of the new features and updates Google has rolled out for education users. Another new feature for Google Classroom gives educators the ability to add interactive questions to YouTube videos. That will allow students to answer them and get immediate feedback, giving teachers an insight on how well they understand the subject matter. 

Google is also giving teachers a way to share practice sets with other verified educators in their domain, so that they can expand the availability of materials their students have access to. For particularly difficult mathematical and scientific concepts, for instance, more examples mean more opportunity to better understand them. The company has released a new web player for Screencast on Chrome OS, as well, allowing users to watch casts in any browser on any platform. Plus, it has expanded language options for Screencast closed captions and for practice sets. 

Classes using Meet for online lectures will also find a new and useful feature: Hand raise gesture detection powered by AI. Apparently, when a student raises a hand in real life, the video conferencing app can now automatically activate its Hand Raise icon. In addition, two teachers can now also manage slides concurrently on Meet and co-present lectures together. Google has been growing and improving its education-related tools for years, though it has perhaps kicked things up a notch after schools shut down during the pandemic. It released a slew of updates to make virtual classrooms more usable since then, and it looks like it hasn't forgotten online-based education even though schools have mostly gone back to in-person learning. 

You most likely know Duolingo as an app you can fire up when you want to learn a new language or at least familiarize yourself with the local tongue of a place you're visiting. It has ventured into other subject matters over the years, though, and now it looks like the company is also hoping to be the one people turn to when they want to learn about music. According to a job posting (seen by TechCrunch), Duolingo has a small team that's currently working to build an app for teaching music. 

The job ad is for an "expert in music education who combines both theoretical knowledge of relevant learning science research and hands-on teaching experience." Whoever gets the job will be in charge of making sure that the app is "well-grounded in learning science." They have to translate "research findings into concrete ideas" that can be used for "learning by doing" activities that Duolingo is known for. They also have to take the lead on curriculum development, which signifies that the app is still in its very early stages. 

If and when Duolingo's Music app comes out, it will join the company's growing list of learning applications that include its ABC app, which teaches kids how to read and write. It also has an English Test app for language certification and a Math app that uses colorful animations and interactive exercises to help people learn multiplication, division, fractions, geometry and measurements. As TechCrunch notes, the company is most likely diversifying to ensure its survival and income growth in the future. And its plan seems to be working so far: In its earnings report (PDF) for the fourth quarter of 2022, Duolingo revealed that it enjoyed a 67 percent increase in paid subscribers from the year before. 

Microsoft announced new AI-powered classroom tools today. The company sees its new “Learning Accelerators” as helping students sharpen their speaking and math skills — while making teachers’ jobs a little easier — as children prepare for an even more technologically enhanced world.

Speaker Progress is a new AI classroom tool for teachers. Microsoft says it saves them time by “streamlining the process of creating, reviewing, and analyzing speaking and presentation assignments for students, groups, and classrooms.” It can provide tidy summaries of presentation-based skills while highlighting areas to improve. Additionally, it lets teachers review student recordings, identify their needs and track progress.

It will be a companion for Speaker Coach, an existing feature Microsoft launched in 2021 that provides one-on-one speaking guidance and feedback. For example, it uses AI to give real-time pointers on pacing, pitch and filler words. “Speaker Coach is one of those tools that kind of was a lightbulb tool for a lot of students that I’ve worked with,” said an unnamed teacher in a Microsoft launch video. “Being able to practice and get real-time feedback is where Speaker Coach really comes in and helps our students, and it even helps us as adults.”

Microsoft

Microsoft’s AI math tools are its answer to nosediving math scores during the pandemic. Math Coach deconstructs problems, walking students through the steps to solve them while encouraging critical thinking. Meanwhile, Math Progress is the teacher-focused companion tool, helping them generate practice questions and provide more efficient feedback. The company says the features work together: Math Coach uses teacher input from Math Progress to develop new lessons. Additionally, it says schools can use the tools’ overall math fluency data to track progress and better meet their goals.

Speaker Progress, Math Coach and Math Progress will launch in Microsoft Teams for Education in the 2023-24 school year. Meanwhile, Speaker Coach is available now in Teams and PowerPoint.

There's plenty of concern that OpenAI's ChatGPT could help students cheat on tests, but just how well would the chatbot fare if you asked it to write a graduate-level exam? It would pass — if only just. In a newly published study, University of Minnesota law professors had ChatGPT produce answers for graduate exams at four courses in their school. The AI passed all four, but with an average grade of C+. In another recent paper, Wharton School of Business professor Christian Terwiesch found that ChatGPT passed a business management exam with a B to B- grade. You wouldn't want to use the technology to impress academics, then.

The research teams found the AI to be inconsistent, to put it mildly. The University of Minnesota group noted that ChatGPT was good at addressing "basic legal rules" and summarizing doctrines, but floundered when trying to pinpoint issues relevant to a case. Terwiesch said the generator was "amazing" with simple operations management and process analysis questions, but couldn't handle advanced process questions. It even made mistakes with 6th grade-level math.

There's room for improvement. The Minnesota professors said they didn't adapt text generation prompts to specific courses or questions, and believed students could get better results with customization. At Wharton, Terwiesch said the bot was adept at changing answers in response to human coaching. ChatGPT might not ace an exam or essay by itself, but a cheater could have the system generate rough answers and refine them.

Both camps warned that schools should limit the use of technology to prevent ChatGPT-based cheating. They also recommended altering the questions to either discourage AI use (such as focusing on analysis rather than reciting rules) or increase the challenge for those people leaning on AI. Students still need to learn "fundamental skills" rather than leaning on a bot for help, the University of Minnesota said.

The study groups still believed that ChatGPT could have a place in the classroom. Professors could teach pupils how to rely on AI in the workplace, or even use it to write and grade exams. The tech could ultimately save time that could be spent on the students, Terwiesch explains, such as more student meetings and new course material.