Back in September, I wrote about the 2014 grants Bill Gates was handing out and the ‘automated’  and ‘personalized’ learning app companies that were getting that money.

Educause was one of them:

Educause

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Date: May 2014
Purpose: to support the Next Generation Learning Challenges – Breakthrough Schools Fund
Amount: $5,100,000
Term: 20
Topic: College-Ready
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Louisville, Colorado
Grantee Website: http://www.educause.edu

I’m revisiting this since I’ve also pointed out that the Common Core Academic Standards Review Commission member picked by Governor McCrory is an IBM executive.

Educause and IBM are pals — actually a team.

The two of them teamed up at Educause’s 2014 conference and announced they would use computing power of IBM’s super computer, Watson, to understand the human mind.

Watson could lend teachers a hand by expanding its role as a search engine, returning not only the best answer to a question but also the logic for how it reached that conclusion, Frase said.

While IBM’s team is developing Watson’s brain, scientists are achieving a better understanding of how the human mind learns, said Satya Nitta, program director of cognitive computing for education at IBM.

“Over the next decade, we’ll know a lot more of the fundamental principles of how people learn,” Nitta said, adding that this kind of information could translate directly into new techniques for teaching. – EdTech Magazine

You read that correctly. IBM thinks it can map how kids learn and then direct teaching techniques. I’d love to see the code they use to factor in every single child is different and so is every single teacher.

So, Gates gives money to Educause who in turn teams up with IBM. Cozy.

Related Read:

Can the IBM Watson Computer Whisper to Teachers? Can We All Have Our Personal Mentor-Advisor? Can We Trust IBM?