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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes[Home] [Top] [Archives] [About] [Options]
by Stephen Downes
Jul 07, 2017
Feature Article
Is Technology Making Us Smarter? Yes!
Stephen Downes, Jul 03, 2017.
To understand the ways technology is making us smarter in 2017, let’s examine the ways we are told technology is making us less intelligent.
Enclosure: costco.jpg Do the “basics” change over time?
George Couros, The Principal of Change, 2017/07/06
The short answer to this question is "yes". But I don't think they hop from topic to topic, and I don't think they're something that communities simply decide for themselves. What happens, I think, is that the basics get 'deeper' over time (I put 'deeper' in quotes because it sort of means 'more basic', sort of means 'more widely applicable', and sort of means 'less immediately applicable'). That's why we see the basics migrate over the centuries from 'read a language' to 'write clearly in a language' to 'engage critically with a language', say, or 'perform addition and multiplication' to 'use variables in formulae and expressions' to 'work with numbers and sets'. Each of these reflects increasing knowledge of these fields, as well as increasing complexity of their application in day-to-day life. I think the information and digital age forces us to change the basics again, not simply by hopping to a new '21st centiry literacy', but by pushing deeper once more, into the nature of information.
Why I’ve just ditched my cloud-based password manager
Doug Belshaw, Open Educational Thinkering, 2017/07/06
I never used LastPass but I did use software from its parent company, LogMeIn, including Cubby and Join.me, along with the flagship LogMeIn application. But price increases, dubious practices and poor customer service led me to quit all their services. So I can imagine the feeling that my passwords would be unsafe in their hands (I changed all my passwords when I closed my account but I still get service emails from them, proving my data still exists on their system). The alternative described here, LessPass, is a clever browser-based method that will generally successfully obfuscate your passwords. I use a similar method, but I keep the algorithm in my head, so I can use it anywhere. But it would be nice not to have to type the thing out every time (especially since my passwords are typically 20 characters long).
The New Class of Digital Leaders
Pierre Peladeau, Mathias Herzog, Olaf Acker, Strategy+Business, 2017/07/06
Does this sound familiar: "ad hoc digital initiatives spread throughout a large organization, lacking central oversight; a traditional culture that resists change; a gap in the talent required; and legacy systems and structures that threaten to derail their ambitions?" The role of a chief digital officer (CDO) is to make this mélangework cooperatively. The trick, said one CDO, was to show "there were real advantages to cross-company alignment and coordination in the world that we were going into." This is a fairly detailed article looking at the role in some depth.
Trolls, Catfish, Cyberbullies--Oh My! How to Help Students Stay “Internet Kind”
Donnie Piercey, EdSurge, 2017/07/06
According to Donnie Peircey "The trouble is many of our students operate under the assumption that a divide exists between the 'real world' and the 'digital world.'" It's like the people at the other end of the line aren't real, and so it's OK to behave badly toward them. "As educators, our goal should be to eliminate this divide," he says, referencing Google's "Be Internet Awesome" resources. This initiative would be more credible if it weren't unrelenting marketing - this is exactly one of the things that leads people to believe there's nothing but a machine on the other side.
Integrating global issues in the creative English language classroom
Alan Maley, Nik Peachey, British Council, 2017/07/06
In 2010 Alan Maley and Nik Peachey released Creativity in the English Language Classroom (180 page PDF) which blended langiage learning with creative activities. This book (208 page PDF) is a follow-up to that effort. It incorporates the same activity-based model, but this time focuses on the United Nations sustainable development goals. It's an audacious project, one which if widely implemented would have a beneficial effect on global attitudes, but which may face political challenges. But so what? It's something that should be taught! I'd love to see it adapted into a MOOC for wider reach and effectiveness.
Blockbench: a framework for analyzing private blockchains
Adrian Coyler, The Morning Paper, 2017/07/05
This is a daunting post, and the article it summarizes is more daunting still. But don't worry about following all of it. Here are the main things. First, in addition to 'public' blockchain networks, like Bitcoin, there can be 'private' blockchain networks, used (for example) for internal recordkeeping. Blockchain's immutability and transparency make it attractive for this purpose. Second, in non-public settings, you don't need such an elaborate mechanism for adding a block to the bockchain. In public settings, you use something called Proof of Work (PoW), but this "consumes a lot of energy and computing power, as nodes spend their CPU cycles solving puzzles instead of doing otherwise useful work." As a result, third, "Applications for security trading and settlement, asset and finance management, banking and insurance are being built and evaluated." There's also some exposition of the different levels of a blockchain ecosystem.
Gitter Webapp
GitLab, 2017/07/05
This is the open-sourced code for a service called Gitter. "Gitter is a community for software developers. This project is the main monolith web application." When I had nothing but time I used to study software like this line by line to figure out how the web works. But I have to say, simple discussion boards have become a lot more complex (we have foundation-level functions to write, but many more capabilities have been added).
A Compilation of the Best Content Creation Strategies from 41 Experts
Christopher Jan Benitez, The Blog Herald, 2017/07/05
This post will either inspire you or make you sad. It made me sad. For the most part these arfe people not creating content because the content needs to be created, but rather, in order to create traffic, create backlinks, or generate sales leads. One person even uses a blog title generator in order to come up with things to post. Another uses We use SEMRush "to help us look for low hanging SEO keyword opportunities." It's all about the hustle. That's what the internet is these days: all about the hustle.
KineMan
2017/07/05
KineMan is a lovely web-based 3D simulation of a human skeleton. View KineMan from any angle, and manipulate any of the many joints in this body. "You’ll observe biomechanically-realistic behaviors, owing to movement parameters (like ranges of motion) derived from scientific sources." Is it wrong that when I see such a useful animation all I can think of is how this would make great material for videos or animated gifs?
Making the Web More Human
Creative Commons, Medium, 2017/07/05
Ths article and the associated Creative Commons project address “the abstraction problem.” This problem describes the tendency of digital interaction to depersonalize communications. It's why it's easier for some to say things by email than in person. So Creative Commons is asking, "What can platforms do to make interactions within their communities more human?" So we read a bit from latform representatives talking about how their platform makes the web more human. Creative Commons would do better, I think, to talk to users rather than platform owners.
The Structure of an Elm Application
James Kolce, CSS-Tricks, 2017/07/05
We habve a number of Javascript and CSS frameworks - JQuery, Angular, Vue, Node, Less, Bootstrap, React - so the case has to be pretty good for adding another one. Though that said, as HTML changes, and as modern HTML is implemented on browsers, the need for various frameworks changes. And each of these does a different thing: one specializes in document manipulation, another creates user interface designs, etc. It's a constantly moving target (disclosure: I am currently working with JQuery and have dropped Bootstrap, which makes me an old fuddy-duddy using 3-year-old technology). Anyhow, this article describes a relatibvely new entrant called Elm in three parts (Part One, Part Two, Part Three). Elm is a bit different in that it is a functional programming language based on static types with output that compiles into HTML, CSS and Javascript. It also promises "a sane package manager" (which would indeed make it unique).
Canvas - the undead LMS and the consolidation of managerial power
Leigh Blackall, 2017/07/04
Leigh Blackall criticizes "a whitewashed illusion of objectivity through 'stakeholder consultation' to create 'user stories' and 'personas' that inform 'requirements' in a 'data-driven, evidence -based' process that hides the reality of a political process of managed dissent and controlled opposition" in the selection of a new LMS for RMIT. I think that the criticism is fair enough, but I would observe that institutions themselves are structured to optimize "managed dissent and controlled opposition". That's what makes it so difficult for them to select - or even consider - decentralised, distributed and networked technologies. Institutions required consensus, and consensus requires that opposition remain localized. In short: the process comes with the territory.
Cool Tool | Discovery Education Streaming
Victor Rivero, Ed Tech Digest, 2017/07/04
On the one hand, we have this very laudable initiative: "Featuring tens of thousands of standards-aligned and searchable videos, images, primary source documents, podcasts, audio books, articles and more, Discovery Education Streaming has long been a “must have” cross-curricular K-12 digital content resource for educators across the country." On the other hand, at this very moment, Dscovery Channel is playing the utterly ridiculous (and very fake) 'Expedition Mungo' on our TV. I love the Discovery Channel but sometimes it's not possible to take it seriously as an education channel.
QUT Robot Academy
Queensland University of Technology, 2017/07/04
No, this is not a place where robots are trained, but.... well, OK, it is a place where robots are trained, but that's not the point of it, it's to train the robot trainers, who ar themselves not robots. Or as they say: "University-level, short video lessons and full online courses to help you understand and prepare for this technology of the future."
It’s time to protect the public domain!
Jan Gerlach, Dimitar Dimitrov, Wikimedia, 2017/07/04
You go to a museum - there are no photos allowed "because of copyright" even though most of the images are hundreds of years old. What's going on? It is a literal enclosure of public domain content, protected and monetized through the museum gift show. And protected with some very dubious legislation. "In Germany, for instance, the Reiss-Engelhorn museums have sued the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland over the use of images of cultural artefacts and paintings. Recently, the court has decided that even a photographer’s own images of these works will infringe on the museums’ property."
Big List of Decentralized Web Initiatives
Chris Johnson, 2017/07/04
It's not really a big list, yet, but it is a list. "This list is intended to be exhaustive, but this is only an early version.... For the most part, these are not companies. Companies will play a crucial role in the future of the decentralized software, but in our current funding ecosystem, the temptation for any individual company to abandon its principles and monitize its users' attention is too great for us to trust." Indeed, I have yet to see a company that has failed to do this eventually.
To Test Your Fake News Judgment, Play This Game
Tennessee Watson, NPR, 2017/07/03
The premise of this article is that you can learn how to distinguish between real news and fake news by playing this game. Try it here. With games and simulations, however, the assumptions matter a lot. A case in point: the first article I read was titled "Humans have shorter attention span than goldfish, thanks to smartphones." Now I know that this is not true, so I clicked "fake" and was corrected. Here's the justification: "That was actually a news article. [View it here] The Telegraph is a major British newspaper, generally regarded as reliable. It cites a Microsoft study, which can be verified." But newspapers, even the Telegraph, often run fake news stories. And the 'study' mentioned here (not 'cited': there is no link or reference) is dubious; as this criticism points out, "no definition of attention span is given, and it’s not at all clear how these numbers were developed." You can't just depend on the source to distinguish between fake news and real news. That should be the first lesson in the game, not the first error.
Questioning the status quo
David Atkinson, University World News, 2017/07/03
Grant MacEwan University president David Atkinson argues that a new type of teaching-focused university has emerged in western Canada, one that grants both trades-focused diplomas along with academic degrees, and he suggests that perhaps more thinking about the core structures of our post-secondary education system is needed. His insttution reflects a trend especially evident in western Canada of converting community colleges (such as Grant MacEwan Community College) into degree-granting universities. There is definitely a demand for their programs. But do they really represent a rethinking of basic structures, or are they a retrenchment of them?
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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