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Tag: Preview

Studiosity Validate Preview

Scrabble tiles spelling out 'Adapt or Fail'
Adapt or Fail: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

So Studiosity have bought out a wee Nordic company called Norvalid and are planning to integrate it into their service, and I was lucky enough to be given a sneak preview today. I think I need to be a little careful about what I say for the time being, but as Norvalid has been around for a while, I feel like it’s okay to talk about what they do.

Norvalid sprang up in response to the need to ensure academic integrity in the GenAI age, but are taking a different approach from the constant monitoring / police and punish model that we’ve seen to date from the likes of Turnitin (via Clarity) and Grammarly. Instead, Norvalid looks to do two things. First, it examines the ‘perplexity’ of a piece of writing, looking for the qualities it has of being human authored – so the opposite of trying to check for machine authored text. Secondly, it can then generate two different types of quiz based on that specific piece of writing which students have to answer as a check of their knowledge. The idea being that if they have indeed written the piece submitted, this should be quite straightforward. Kind of like a machine-generated mini viva.

Now under the umbrella of Studiosity, Norvalid will be integrated into their AI powered Writing Feedback service, and it will be offered to partners as an optional extra. Details and pricing to follow, after a trial with a small number of institutions over the summer.

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Windows 10 Impressions

Today I installed the latest technical preview of Windows 10 on a VM and had an initial poke about. Set up and installation was very easy, once I figured out you had to select ‘Windows 8.1’ in VirtualBox rather than ‘Windows Other’. I’ve used beta versions and previews of Windows for a while now, since Windows 7, but this is the first that really feels like beta software. All of the others have been nearly there, and certainly usable, but Windows 10 is full of bugs and stuttering. You definitely cannot use it in anger at this time.

However, it does look and feel pretty good for the most part, a nice incremental update on Windows 8 which works a lot better on the desktop. I would have liked to have seen Continum in action, the feature for tablets which toggles on-the-fly certain features based on whether or not a keyboard is detected or there is some other indication of a change from tablet to laptop mode. Not possible in a VM for obvious reasons, and I don’t have a spare Windows tablet lying around which I could get away with breaking.

Virtual desktops are nice, but long overdue. But I would say that wouldn’t I? I’ve been in love with Spaces on Mac OS X since Leopard in 2009, and I can remember using virtual desktops on Linux back in the early naughties when I had a piece of crap Compaq than came with the abominable Windows 98.

The new Start menu with integrated tiles is also very nice, as is the way TIFKAM* apps work in windows mode now, much more natural and consistent.

Some more details on TechRadar:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/windows-10-release-date-price-news-and-features-1029245

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/10-great-new-features-in-windows-10-1267365

* The Interface Formerly Known as Metro. Modern UI just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

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