Schools Look To Algorithms To Flag Students Who May Harm Themselves

Using AI technology, home address data, and algorithms, the Metro21 Institute at Carnegie Mellon was able to find the best school bus routes to deliver school meals to students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The solution wouldn’t have worked with the help of a community of partners, leaders, and volunteers. “It truly has taken a village.”

School districts and cities in California are looking to create their own local Wifi networks as a long-term solution to the digital divide, and an alternative to hotspots. Some are even becoming internet service providers themselves (ISP) — efforts, they say, that will make it easier to provide internet access to those who can’t afford it.

High school students at Somerset High School in San Antonio, Texas get tested every week for COVID-19. The method is called “assurance testing,” and is a way to target “silent spreaders,” people who have COVID who don’t show symptoms and spread the virus to the larger community. With assurance testing, silent spreaders are quickly identified, preventing them from spreading COVID. “Of the 70,000 tests Community Labs has run so far, 1,700 were identified as positive for COVID-19. Most of those positive test results came from people who were asymptomatic and had no idea they had the virus.”

For those struggling with smartphone addiction, detox and counseling can prove beneficial. In South Korea, the government’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, alongside partners like the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction and the Youth Counseling and Welfare Center provide teens and elementary school students with detox programs to address the issue of internet and smartphone addiction. The students can attend summer camps where they switch off their phones, participate in activities, and attend counseling.

Schools in Austin, Texas have a renewed vigor to address student mental health after they saw hundreds of suicide attempts in recent years. In addition to approaching the issue in a serious manner, schools are now equipped with full-time mental health clinics on campus to offer support for students, teachers, and families. There are now 45 different clinics across the city that have worked with over 2,000 visitors, and already studies are showing improvements in things like increased self-esteem and decreased psychological distress.

The Mesa, Arizona, school district is expanding its mental health care programming in response to a high teen suicide rate in the region. By increasing the number of counselors available, using data to tailor its approach to each individual campus, and connecting students with outside therapy professionals when appropriate, Mesa is hoping to reach more students.

The restaurant industry can be incredibly stressful for those that work in it, but a chef based in Sacramento is trying to change this by focusing efforts on suicide prevention through education, trainings and other resource implementation. "This is a place for me to help my people," he says. "We are storytellers at the end of the day. And one of our stories is going to be about mental health."

Nevada’s Department of Health and Human Services has long used a designated suicide prevention coordinator as part of their suicide prevention tactics, and it's working. From forming statewide partnerships to mandated suicide prevention training for school and health officials, this approach has reduced the state's suicide rates and is proving to be a model for other states to follow.

Amidst the rise of new forms and packages of higher education, a traditional four year college with no computer science department of its own and a coding boot camp are joining forces. Students at Dominican University of California can now take computer science coursework at Make School, while Make School learners can engage in liberal arts courses at Dominican.

While some universities have been hesitant to let blockchain technology into the traditional halls of academia, UC Berkeley has started offering blockchain entrepreneurship courses and student-run blockchain clubs and is actively looking for more ways to collaborate with industry partners. But UC Berkeley is also the first to admit the transition has challenges - those interviewed cited the lack of infrastructure, rapid rate of technological change, and uniquely multidisciplinary nature of the subject area as barriers to timely and enthusiastic adoption.