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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes[Home] [Top] [Archives] [About] [Options]
by Stephen Downes
Feb 23, 2018
Presentation
Why Personal Learning
Stephen Downes, Feb 23, 2018, Moodle Moot 2018, York University
In this presentation I examine gthe difference between personal and personalized learning, show how this informs the design of the personal learning environment, and draw from that the reasons for preferring personal learning.
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JupyterLab is Ready for Users
Project Jupyter, 2018/02/23
Intended to be the next step in the evolution of Jupyter Notebooks (previously), Jupyter Lab is " an interactive development environment for working with notebooks, code and data... JupyterLab enables you to use text editors, terminals, data file viewers, and other custom components side by side with notebooks in a tabbed work area." Nice.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
The End of the Gatekeeper
Joshua Singletary, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/02/23
Good article about (what we hope is) the changing role of IT departments in the institution (your mileage may vary). Says the abstract: "The role of IT departments has evolved to one that is increasingly defined by a simple concept: who has control. To be successful in the changing landscape of technologies and user needs, IT will need to become a partner rather than a gatekeeper."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Do Our “Least Restrictive Environments” Help Kids?
Elizabeth Stein, Middle Web, 2018/02/23
The content in this post is pretty light but I liked the juxtoposition of least restrictibve environment (LRE), co-teaching, Friere's banking model, and teaching learners to understand how thinking works. " All learners deserve to be valued as powerful thinkers, and our students with disabilities need experiences that recognize and communicate to them their potential and abilities – not experiences that force them into a process of learning that is completely detached and only serves to accentuate a deficit view of themselves as learners."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
“Just an Ass-Backward Tech Company”: How Twitter Lost the Internet War
Maya Kosoff, Vanity Fair, 2018/02/23
This article has one of the best tech put-downs I've ever read: "Twitter’s backend was initially built on Ruby on Rails, a rudimentary web-application framework that made it nearly impossible to find a technical solution to the harassment problem. If Twitter’s co-founders had known what it would become, a third former executive told me, 'you never would have built it on a Fisher-Price infrastructure.'" Oh, ouch! But not wrong, right? beyond this dig, this is a pretty good article as a whole, with some good insights into the last decade of tech innocation.
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Space as a tool for analysis: Examining digital learning spaces
Michelle Harrison, Open Praxis, 2018/02/23
I once gave am presentation on the use of space as an analogy for learning environments, so this article resonates with me. " We will need to develop new methods and frameworks for analysis which takes into consideration how we conceive, perceive and enact our digital spaces and how this impacts on our practices and approaches to teaching and learning within these spaces," writes Michelle Harrison. And " we will also need to go beyond the metaphor of the network to look at the material infrastructures that provide and determine access, asking how these spaces are constructed, who owns them and how they then shape our educational spaces."
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MOOCs are not dead, but evolving
Diane Peters, University Affairs, 2018/02/23
“The numbers suggest MOOCs are, in fact, here to stay,” said Arshad Ahmad, vice-provost, teaching and learning, at McMaster University. As Diane Peters notes, " There are more MOOCs than ever, and some courses are indeed massive, with enrolments in the hundreds of thousands." No, they did not replace universities in ten years, but nobody seriously expected that. And MOOCs bring other things to the table. “It’s a collaboration, it’s a partnership. It’s not a colonial model,” said Dr. Ahmad. “When you design a MOOC, it’s all about the audience, that’s how teaching is changing.”
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Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs
Kai-Fu Lee, MIT Technology Review, 2018/02/23
" It will soon be obvious that half of our job tasks can be done better at almost no cost by AI and robots," writes Kai-Fu Lee. "This will be the fastest transition humankind has experienced, and we’re not ready for it." If we look at China, he writes, we can see where some of this is headed already. "P eople there carry no cash. They pay all their utility bills with their phones. They can do all their shopping on their phones. You get off work and open an app to order food. By the time you reach home, the food is right there." Related: Umair Haque, Are We Ready for a Post-Work World?
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Inclusive Citation: How Diverse Are Your References?
Maha Bali, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/02/23
I do pay attention (and always have) to diversity in the references in this newsletter and in my work in general. But I do it a bit differently than suggested here. In one sense, I have to - over the years I've referenced thousands of authors. So I can't spend time figuring out wherether they're gay or black or indigneous - how could I? It's not like people put race/gender/orientation/identity metadata in their posts.
I can and do ensure some gender balance, based on what I can tell from the author's name. Beyond that, I ensure diversity by focusing on diverse sources and diverse oplaces. I try to internationalize. I look for writing from India and Africa and Estonia. It's not perfect. I'm rooted in my own community in Canada, as I should be. And I'm limited to content written in English, which means people from diverse backgrounds need to make an extra effort to be included (eventually, with decent auto-translation, that will change).
Finally, diversity isn't simply about language, gender, colour, and orientation. It includes these but includes so much more. I see people who are marginalized because of poverty, because of geography, becuse of disability, because of occupation, because of nationality, because of socialization, because of age, because of ugliness, because of education, because of size, because of musicality, because of faith, because of introversion, and so much more. These are all important to me.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Apache Superset
GitHub, 2018/02/22
This relates to a large business intelligence project I'm a part of with the School of Public Service. "Apache Superset (incubating) is a modern, enterprise-ready business intelligence web application." Scoll down on the GitHub page to see screen shots and documentation. It looks nice. "Easy, code-free, user flows to drill down and slice and dice the data underlying exposed dashboards. The dashboards and charts acts as a starting point for deeper analysis. A state of the art SQL editor/IDE exposing a rich metadata browser, and an easy workflow to create visualizations out of any result set."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Blockchain and the Promise of an Open, Decentralized Internet
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2018/02/22
Interesting commentary from Steven Johnson, quoted here: “We spent our first years online in a world defined by open protocols and intellectual commons; we spent the second phase in a world increasingly dominated by closed architectures and proprietary databases. We have learned enough from this history to support the hypothesis that open works better than closed [but] the only real hope for a revival of the open-protocol ethos lies in the blockchain.” I'm not sure I agree with this but I'm not sure I disagree either. Image: Andrena.
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The Future of Testing
William Bryant, Getting Smart, 2018/02/22
This article describes " some directions in which the future of testing may be headed." Included in the list (paraphrased): classroom-based assessment of authentic classroom work ("The anti-standardized testing group, FairTest, has developed a model to help guide state system innovations"); technology-enhanced items pushing testing toward greater real-world fidelity; continuous assessment by immersing students in complex problem-solving activities; inclusion and flexibility in test content and the interpretation and use of standards. As I've said before, I think that eventually we'll move beyond testing and simply base assessment on what students do in the world.
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The media today: ‘This doesn’t look like the gun debate in America’
Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/02/22
The students are the stars in this article describing how jorunalists from The Eagle Eye covered the event in their school as it was happening and have taken the lead in ensuring that the story does not follow the usual 'thoughts and prayers'-'too early for the debate' news cycle following a major shooting. " Almost every journalism textbook says activism and journalism are incompatible. But the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas are busy ripping up that textbook and writing a new one. And some journalists would do well to note how deftly they’ve combined sensitivity and persistence with a clear message." Awesome. Keep ripping up the rulebook. The old one is broken.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Personalized Learning Meets AI With Watson Classroom
Erin Gohl, Getting Smart, 2018/02/22
"Generally speaking," says Erin Gohl, in personalized learning, "reducing people to a set of numbers overlooks so many factors that are integral to understanding a student, but explainable only as narrative comments." Rather, you need something that can brige the gap between words and numbers, for example, IBM Watson. Watson classroom is being positioned as an assistant, not a replacement, for teachers. " Watson Classroom is not a teacher nor does it replace the teacher, contrary to popular myths about AI. It is the aforementioned teacher’s assistant, data warehouse, personal researcher, note-taker, and constant collaborator brought into the classroom and accessible at a teacher’s fingertips via a mobile tablet."
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Monitoring at Moodle HeadQuarters
Paul Greidanus, Moodle, 2018/02/22
This is the exact text of a presentation by Paul Greidanus at today's Moodle Moot: "What does (Moodle) HQ use (for server monitoring)? UptimeRobot (Freemium SaaS) - runs a basic http(s) GET every minute, alerts if down. Prometheus (Apache 2.0 license) - polls services and instances for metrics. Graylog (GPL v3.0) centralized log management. Grafana (Apache 2.0 license) - beautiful dashboards and data visualizations. PagerDuty (Paid SaaS) - sends alerts to on-call staff."
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Learning to create the future of work
Harold Jarche, 2018/02/21
Harold Jarche writes, "when we look at the future of work, the loss of current jobs, and the effects of automation we should use a compass to guide us, not a list of what the jobs of the future may look like." In particular, he writes, "policy makers and organizational leaders should look at how they can enhance self-determination for everyone: by fostering autonomy, competence, and relatedness."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
The JavaScript Learning Landscape in 2018
Jason Rodriguez, CSS-Tricks, 2018/02/21
This is textbook. Not your textbook; my textbook. As I've been converting gRSShopper into a modern web application slash personal learning environment, I've had to dramatically improve my knowledge of Javascript. This article describes my learning landscape in this endeavour (minus the actual textbooks, because I'm cheap - but I have done that, with other subjects, working through the examples beginning to end). The blogs and newsletters provide me with a steady dose of insight (and yes, I read the ones listed here - it's uncanny). I listen to podcasts on the drive into work (different ones, though). I watch some videos, but not many (I'm impatient). And there's a lot of doing. Experimenting in CodePen. Using diagnostics in Firefox. It's completely informal - there isn't a course to be found. And it's working.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Career Perspectives of Elementary, Middle, and High School Students: Results of a Cross-Sectional Survey
Karyssa Siegel, randr Blog, 2018/02/21
This is marketing for a company called randr, a job search service, but it is well done, and makes a good point. The good point is this: " Students are expected to make decisions impacting the rest of their lives at age 18, despite the fact that they have had very little exposure to the abundance of options." This has a range of undesirable impacts. It means they aspire toward unrealistic careers, like pro athelete, or movie star. It results in gender imbalance in career aspirations. The recommendation makes sense: "Expose students to a wider variety of careers earlier in life to better inform their major in college and be prepared to enter the working world."
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Link educational occupational credentials to courses
Phil Barker, W3C Wiki, 2018/02/21
This is some work being done at the W3C and schema.org. "Having found an educational or occupational credential, and possibly identified the competencies required to obtain that credential, an individual may find courses (and hence perhaps learning materials or other things)." In order to do this, "it is necessary to be able to link these educational and occupational credentials to courses." This is what this specification describes. Here's a use case. Here's the schema.org page. The image is by Stuart Sutton.
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Autopsy of a Failed Holacracy: Lessons in Justice, Equity, and Self-Management
Simon Mont, NonProfit Quarterly, 2018/02/20
Here is an article highlighted by Wendy Wickham directly relevant to the Engagement in a Time of Polarization MOOC I am currently taking (it's a subscription article but I have six free views left, so...). Wickham writes, "The assumption behind any change model is 'I can change you.' Training = 'I can change you.' Organizational culture initiatives = 'I can change you.' Management = 'I can change you.' No wonder projects fail and people are resentful." Also: " The same people who tend to go after power will be the same people who have power in this structure. There is nothing inherently in the structure (or in any structure) that equalizes how people experience power in its various forms."
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Bad News: the game researchers hope will 'vaccinate' public against fake news
Ian Sample, The Guardian, 2018/02/20
This is an interesting idea. "Cambridge researchers have built an online game, simply titled Bad News, in which players compete to become 'a disinformation and fake news tycoon'. By shedding light on the shady practices, they hope the game will 'vaccinate' the public, and make people immune to the spread of untruths." As with all games, the lessons being taught are hidden in the game design, and thus hard to observe and assess, but assuming a benign and competent design, this format can be effective.
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McGraw-Hill Education Launches Textbook and E-Book Rental Program
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2018/02/20
Considering that you can only rent e-books as it is, it's hard to see what the big draw is here. The article suggests " College students may be able to save as much as 70 percent off their textbooks" but I'm sure few will ever see that level of savings. From where I sit this seems like a cynical effort to kill the used textbook market in order to eliminate the expense of creating new editions every year. Of course, the effort is sure to be successful: " McGraw-Hill Education currently has distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble Education, through its Barnes & Noble College and MBS Textbook Exchange subsidiaries, and Chegg." That means students will be stuck using this service, even when it costs them more.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Google Condemns the Archival Web
Doc Searls, dsearls, 2018/02/20
Doc Searls writes, "The archival Web—the one you see through the protocol HTTP—will soon be condemned, cordoned off behind Google's police tape, labeled "insecure" on every current Chrome browser... Every legacy website, nearly all of which were created with no malice, commit no fraud and distribute no malware, will become haunted houses: still there, but too scary for most people to visit." It's a problem for me because getting a certificate is neither simple nor cheap. "As Dave put it way back here, the costs are prohibitive—in time, money, hassle and all the rest." As I said in 2004, this is the 'high bar' attack on open content. The answer - for me, at least - is the free service Let's Encrypt - but I'll need the wildcard certificates, because I have a lot of different domains.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
I have forgotten how to read
Michael Harris, Globe and Mail, 2018/02/20
I thought at first the author was describing some rare mental condition involving Broca's area but all he is saying is that he reads differently now. "Online life makes me into a different kind of reader – a cynical one. I scrounge, now, for the useful fact; I zero in on the shareable link. My attention – and thus my experience – fractures." I'm sure people listened to the chanting monks differently after they were able to read the printed word for themselves. I'm sure I see cityscapes and scenic vistas now that I regard them with the photographer's eye. Michael Harris sees this as a bad thing. "We have digested our devices; they can numb us, now, to the pleasure of patience." My own view is different: I have a richer, deeper, multifaceted experience.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Wikispaces is Closing - Here Are Some Alternatives
Richard Byrne, Free Technology for Teachers, 2018/02/20
It's sad to read this. On the Wikispaces blog the developers write, "it has become apparent that the required investment to bring the infrastructure and code in line with modern standards is very substantial." Modern standards would include everything from security to accessibility to APIs and cloud services. There are instructions for downloading your content. The company, Tes, continues to exist, offering a marketplace of (it says) 775K educational resources, most of which seem to be offered for a few dollars (presumably this is more profitable than Wikispaces).
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
College and Career Readiness; What is the Purpose of School?
Nocking The Arrow, Robert Schuetz, 2018/02/19
How reflective it is of today's society that we would think that school is something we create to serve our needs, rather than (say) where we offer our wisdom and experience to our children so that they may make the best use of it they can to lead fulfilling and rewarding lives. But no. We read here, "Are students leaving school with the skills and dispositions employers desiderate?" For example, " our subcommittee, representing the "travel and hospitality" field, reviewed current course offerings conducive to preparing students with interests in hotel management, event planning, and tourism." And we read, "it's important to bring many voices to the table if schools are to fulfill a purpose of serving their respective communities." If the success of our schools depends on our success in predicting the future, then our children are in trouble.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Why even a moth’s brain is smarter than an AI
Emerging Technology from the arXiv, MIT Technology Review, 2018/02/19
A moth can recognize odour after just few exposures. The olfactory learning system in moths is completely mapped, but artificial neural networks do not perform the same task as well as moths. The difference, explains the article, lies in how the two types of neural networks learn (that is, how the two types of neural networks create and adjust connections between neurons). The artificial neural network uses back propagation. In other words, it is given feedback from a training set. The moth doesn't. "The successful recognition of an odor triggers a reward mechanism in which neurons spray a chemical neurotransmitter called octopamine into the antenna lobe and mushroom body." I don't know how well this work with students (probably not so well) but it's interesting to note that this discussion of learning doesn't involve language, learning content, or the social construction of meaning, or any of the trappings of traditional learning theory.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
The Future of Education Includes Learning Outside of the Classroom
Shireen Jaffer, Getting Smart, 2018/02/19
It's a bit funny because I am sometimes tempted to say "the future of education is learning outside of the classroom." Certainly it includes it. Consider this evidence for example: "Take a high school student who has always had excellent grades. They’ve been involved in clubs, sports, and organizations for years. This student divides their time between several of their interests and is still able to maintain top-tier grades." These extracurricular activities enrich their educational experience, and lead to success in more traditional learning. Also, "An added bonus of making learning outside of the classroom a priority is that students get an early taste of what they enjoy doing. The earlier career exploration occurs, the sooner students are able to cross career paths off their lists."
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The Facebook Armageddon
Mathew Ingram, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/02/19
I have from the beginning days of this newsletter been using the experience of traditional media as a touchstone on which to base my predictions for the learning and development sector. And I have also been saying that educational providers will one day face an overnight crisis that was 20 years in the making. The "armageddon" facing traditional news media serves as our guide. If you think about it, the threat to news media from social networks came out of nowhere. At the same time, social networks represent the most recent iteration of a movement that began with personal web pages and blogs. people still don't believe it, but traditional learning providers will be faces with a similar existential crisis. It will seem to have come from nowhere and be from a completely unexpected source. And the signs will have been there for 20 years.
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Learning to program is getting harder
Allen Downey, Probably Overthinking It, 2018/02/20
I can attest from p[ersonal experience that this is true. As Allen Downey says, " The fundamental problem is that the barrier between using a computer and programming a computer is getting higher."When I first started programming, all I needed to learn was the language. Then I began to use development environments, like Turbo C, and it got a bit more complicated. These days as I look at learning Puthon I need to configure application environments, learn how to use GitHub, and even understand how to set up cloud computing environments. There's no easy way to fix this.
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Colony: Technical White Paper
Aron Fischer, Jack du Rose, Alex Rea, Colony, 2018/02/20
Just open-sourced: Colony. This is a link to the Colony white paper (55 page PDF), also just released. "The Colony Protocol allows developers to integrate decentralised and self regulating division of labour, decision making, and financial management into their applications... The Colony Network consists of a collection of contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. At the core of the network will be a ColonyNetwork contract. This contract is primarily responsible for managing the reputation mining process." Right now I wouldn't invest any money into any of these schemes, but it's interesting to watch different iterations of this new technology be tested.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
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Copyright 2018 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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