Microsoft is rolling out Reading Coach as a standalone app, which will expand its tools for educators in Microsoft Teams. The new app will be part of its Reading Progress suite designed to help students improve literacy in the classroom and at home. The tool will use artificial intelligence to provide users with personalized feedback on how to improve reading scores as well as specific suggestions for how to improve things like pronunciation. It will be free to any users that have a Microsoft account.
With prolonged use, the AI tool will flag specific words that a reader frequently mispronounces or misunderstands during reading sessions. To keep students engaged, the program will also ask a reader to choose prompts that can change a storyline as they progress.
Microsoft says teachers can integrate its program in classrooms through learning platforms starting in the Spring. But the tool is available to educators this month in preview. Teachers will be able to track how student’s feel about assignments using the Reflect tool within the program. This kind of feedback might help an educator determine what assignments students feel most excited about and which lessons might not be working. Beyond tracking student performance, the new features for Microsoft’s Teams for Education suite will help teachers generate content for lessons, such as passages and assignments for a student to engage with.
Microsoft also introduced new features for its Teams for Education app, which is designed to help educators tailor content for digital learning platforms. The Classwork tool will use AI to emphasize particular messages in an assignment’s instructions, according to an educator’s particular goals for that lesson. The Assignments tool will use AI to streamline the rubric generating process. Outlines can be tailored by a teacher based on grade level, evaluation scale or other factors.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-tool-for-ai-reading-lessons-is-now-a-standalone-app-230520756.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
The LinkedIn-like job search tool that X has been experimenting with is now live. A beta version of the feature launched in August to verified users, but the web version of the tool is now open to everyone on X, with iOS and Android availability expected “soon,” according to the company.
The job search feature appears to already be populated with open positions at numerous tech companies, including those run by Elon Musk. There are currently roles listed for SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink, as well as X and Musk’s newest venture, x.ai.
While Musk previously promised “we will make sure that the X competitor to LinkedIn is cool,” it appears to be very basic for now. Users can browse job listings and descriptions, but are directed to third-party sites to complete an application, even for roles at X. Elsewhere, the company has been testing “job cards” so that individual postings are more easily shareable throughout the platform.
But there have been signs the company has more ambitious plans for career-oriented features on its “everything app.” The company recently updated its privacy policy to note that it may collect data related to users’ employment history for “job applications and recommendations.” This may hint at some kind of recruiting feature for X or other, more advanced job finding features down the line.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/xs-job-search-tool-is-now-live-on-the-web-010200007.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
The Apple Watch Ultra is a capable smartwatch for divers and adventurers, but so-called tool watches need justification to wear. Here’s how to pull it off.
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A new trove of leaked documents has shed an unfavorable light on the early days of Uber. Dubbed the Uber Files, the leak consists of approximately 124,000 internal company documents, including more than 83,000 emails and text messages exchanged between former CEO Travis Kalanick and other executives, that date to a period between 2013 and 2017. The latter marks the year Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber amid mounting controversy.
Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The Guardian shared the trove with 180 journalists at 40 outlets across 29 countries. The documents show a company willing to do things many of its own executives thought were “fucking illegal.”
In 2016, for instance, Kalanick reportedly ordered French employees to encourage local Uber drivers to counter-protest the taxi strikes that were underway in Paris at the time. When one executive warned Kalanick that “extreme right thugs” were part of the protest, the former CEO pushed back. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no?”
One former senior executive told The Guardian that Kalanick’s response was consistent with a strategy of “weaponizing” drivers and a playbook the company returned to in other countries.
Another selection of documents details the lengths the company went to escape regulatory scrutiny. In at least 12 instances, Uber ordered staff at local offices in six countries, including France, the Netherlands and India, to employ the “kill switch,” an internal tool the company developed to protect its data.
“Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” Kalanick wrote in one email shared by The Washington Post. "Access must be shut down in AMS,” he added, referring to the company’s Amsterdam office. In two cases involving Uber’s Montreal office, authorities entered the building only to see all the computers and tablets before them resetting at the same time. The company told The Post “such software should never have been used to thwart legitimate regulatory actions,” and that it stopped using the system in 2017.
“We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values,” said Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior vice president of marketing and public affairs, in a statement the company issued after The Guardian published its findings on the Uber Files. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”
In a statement published by the ICIJ, Travis Kalanick’s spokesperson said any suggestion the former executive “directed, engaged in, or was involved” in “illegal or improper conduct" is “completely false."
"The reality was that Uber's expansion initiatives were led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber's robust legal, policy, and compliance groups," they added.
OPlayer is the latest app to earn a spot as MyAppFree’s App of the Week. You can pick it up free of charge from the 20th to the 22nd of November, saving yourself a cool $ 4.99 in the process. For the uninitiated, OPlayer is a professional video playbook tool from Olimsoft that’s been eight years […]
Come comment on this article: [Sponsored] OPlayer, the Acclaimed Video Playback Tool, Is MyAppFree’s Latest App of the Week
All Twitter users can now remove a follower without having to block them. The company started testing this option last month, and starting today, everyone will have access to it. To quietly stop someone from seeing your tweets in their feed, go to the Followers tab on your profile, click the three-dot menu next to the user in question and select the "Remove this follower" option.
rolling out to everyone on the web today? https://t.co/Nqhhf2q2fo
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 11, 2021
This is part of Twitter's efforts to reduce harassment on the platform. Blocking someone you don't want to follow you could lead to retaliation from that person via their allies or their secondary accounts after they find out. Cutting them in this fashion and muting them will mean they're none the wiser that they're out of the loop.
This method won't prevent someone you boot from your followers list from seeing your public tweets. Only blocking them or making your account private will do that. Elsewhere, Twitter is testing a Safety Mode, which automatically blocks accounts that use “potentially harmful language.” It's also looking into more ways to filter and limit replies, so it seems the company is making its anti-harassment efforts a bigger priority.
Facebook isn't entirely shying away from facial recognition, it seems. Code explorer Jane Manchun Wong has discovered a reference to a facial recognition system in Facebook's mobile app that would verify your identity. You'd have to take a "video s…
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The ransomware attacks in Baltimore and other US cities appear to have a common thread: they're using NSA tools on the agency's home soil. In-the-know security experts talking to the New York Times said the malware in the cyberattacks is using the NS…
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Instagram announced a couple of weeks ago that it would soon introduce a tool so users could download their information, similar to how Facebook users can. True to its word, Instagram has announced the availability of the tool that allows users to download their photos, videos, profile, info, comments, and archived Stories. The “Data Download” […]
Come comment on this article: Instagram’s “Data Download” tool lets you save offline copies of your content
The 01, the product of startup Instrumments, is a “dimensioning” tool that measures curved and contoured edges. It doubles as a pen or pencil, too, and pairs with a mobile device via Bluetooth for additional analysis.
The post Startup Instrumments’ 01 measuring tool measures curved surfaces appeared first on Digital Trends.
Understanding language is a big part of how computers communicate with humans. Google understands this, and has open-sourced SyntaxNet, its sentence parser. The English language module for SyntaxNet? Parsey McParseface.
The post Google open-sources Parsey McParseface, its tool for understanding English appeared first on Digital Trends.