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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes[Home] [Top] [Archives] [About] [Options]
by Stephen Downes
May 12, 2017
How to Become a Coach or Consultant After You Retire
Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review, 2017/05/12
😃This article speaks to me. I'm looking at what I'm going to do next, and am already beginning to transition into my post-NRC life. What will that look like? Well, as this article suggests, I'm beginning to figure that out ahead of time - I'm thinking about what I like to do, taking a skills inventory, looking at what separates me from the thousands of other people out there trying the same thing. I'm also recruiting potential clients and, if the opportunity comes along, splitting my time between NRC and consultancy (where 'consultancy' is construed fairly broadly at the moment).
Some thoughts on Keybase, online security, and verification of identity
Open Educational Thinkering, 2017/05/12
"Identity is the most important factor in any conversation or transaction. ," says Doug Belshaw. Not that it needs to be ties to real-world identity, but you need to be able to establish some sort of credential. Keybase, described by Belshaw, is one such option. "Cross-platform apps for desktop and mobile devices have been added, mearning not only can you verify your identity across the web, but you can chat and share files securely, " he writes." My Keybase ID is https://keybase.io/downes - you'll notice it lists only Twitter and GitHub as confirmed identities (as opposed to the five listed by Belshaw). I used to also list my website, but my security certificate expired and I don't want to spend money on a new one.
New post
10:24, , 12 May 2017
Enclosures:
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[Comment]
Open Distribution of Virtual Containers as a Key Framework for Open Educational Resources and STEAM Subjects
Alberto Corbi, Daniel Burgos, Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 2017/05/12
This paper (11 page PDF) covers an important topic and is one of the first detailed descriptions I've seen (not that others don't exist). The idea, in a nutshell, is that future OER distribution will be greatly enhanced by the use of virtualized containers. I've mentioned this a few times recently, referring to providers such as Vagrant or Docker. An example of this sort of thing in action is the Moodle in a box distributions that have been developed over the last five years. The current paper describes the provision of specific learning resources in their own boxes, these enabling a person to move easily from one environment to the next to the next.
Spotlight On Adea 2017 Triennial and Its Key Takeaways On Education and Training in Africa
Stefano De Cupis, African Development Bank, AllAfrica, 2017/05/12
This article reads a lot like an overly-wordy press release than it does an article, but I wanted to include it because of the background on work going on and organizations involved in Africa. In particular we have the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), whose annual conference is highlighted here (here's their blog (RSS is broken though)). As well, we have the African Development Bank (ADB), the African Education Fund (AEF) and the Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-2025 (CESA 16-25)(44 page PDF).
An Algorithm Summarizes Lengthy Text Surprisingly Well
Will Knight, MIT Technology Review, 2017/05/12
The day I started work at NRC I was told of our efforts to summarize documents using artificial intelligence. NRC has moved on to other things but document summarization has remained the subject of sustained research elsewhere ever since. Even humans have difficulty summarizing documents (so my years of teaching critical thinking can attest) and so it's not surprising machines struggle as well. But progress is being made, and yes, I would trust a machine to summarize documents for me (especially if I don't have legions of humans to do the work for me).
I So Want Try a Docker/Kitematic ContainerBook…
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2017/05/12
We move one step closer to personal cloud-based environments. Here's Tony Hirst: "it seems as if VMWare’s Workspace ONE product, which is at the heart of the announcement, provides a secure online environment for launching managed, personally contextualised, virtualised services." But Hirst wants more. "What I keep thinking I’d like to have is a containerbook, rather than netbook. Think: Docker + Kitematic + Docker Compose + a browser."
Globalization at a Crossroads
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2017/05/11
The suggestions at the end of this article are reasonable but I'm more sceptical of the discussion learning to them. No, I don't think opposition to globalization is due to " the tendency to overestimate globalization levels" or "thinking your own country is superior". It very much has to do with replacing social imperatives - such as education and health care - with business imperatives. There's nothing inherent about globalization (or anti-globalization, as we've seen recently) that makes this the case, but the way globalization has been structured, business interests supersede the public interest. Trade pacts - from the European Union to NAFTA to Trans Pacific Partnership - make it much more difficult to protect labour, the environment, pensions, health care, education and a host of other services. I am generally supportive of globalization, but I am not supportive of corporate rule - and that's what globalization represents today.
Learning’s Role in Innovation
Clark Quinn, Chief Learning Officer, 2017/05/11
The nature of productivity is changing, writes Clark Quinn. "The ability to plan, prepare and execute is no longer sufficient. Agility and the ability to adapt is imperative." This puts an increasing weight on innovation. Quinn cites Keith Sawyer’s 2007 book, Group Genius. "innovation is about creating an environment where people can be exposed to different concepts, interact productively, experiment safely and be allowed time to reflect." Learning plays a role here in four areas: explicit skills, process facilitation, culture and leadership.
Auto-Annotating News Articles To Scaffold Media Literacy Skills In Students
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2017/05/11
This is a really nice example of using automation hand-in-hand with instruction to develop metacognitive skills. To over-simplify: Mike Caulfield describes the use of a tool to extract data from large sets of articles where the data references funding, support or authorship from a partisan think-tank, then looks at these and asks about what sort of agenda these think-tanks may have. "It’s the sort of thing an perceptive student would select and search on, to find more about the source of the information. And it’s the kind of thing a majority of students wouldn’t notice or think about at all."
Emotions are not hardwired but learned in our brains, says author
Anna Maria Tremonti, CBC | The Current, 2017/05/11
This was an exceptionally good interview with psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett. The main point of her book How Emotions are Made is that that emotions are learned, not hardwired, and that they are part of the general mechanism of the brain as a whole, which is in essence to predict, not react. "Everyone has the same networks but the wiring is dependent on experience," says Feldman Barrett. "Anger, sadness are not universal. The way people make sense of sensations differ by culture."
Unsplashing
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2017/05/10
Alan Levine writes about trying out Unsplash. "I’ve known and used photos from Unsplash before but after a presentation on it at the Creative Commons Summit, I thought it was time to try it out with my first set of 10 photos," he writes. He isn't happy that they seem to emphasize a grab-and-go approach without worrying about credit, but was intrigued by the possibility of an API.
Email is the new RSS (or a Factotum is Born)
Clint Lalonde, ClintLalonde.net, 2017/05/10
I'm not sure I agree with Clink Lalonde that email is the New RSS, but I'm not sure I disagree as well. I can say both modes have been declining as large publication networks squeeze out the voices of non-members. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to the new newsletter, which will focus on three curated articles per week.
A Plan to Kill High School Transcripts … and Transform College Admissions
2017/05/10
I think it would be very interesting to be able to hear some of the discussions behind the scenes. The "Edward E. Ford Foundation on Tuesday announced a $2 million grant to support the effort," according to this article, and one wonders, why? "This foundation has a narrow focus in its support—independent, private U.S. high schools," according to Inside Philanthropy. According to Scott Looney, head of school of the Hawken School, a private institution in Cleveland, "Once the new mastery transcript takes hold, he said, colleges will value it over traditional materials they currently receive. Looney said that, initially, he expected the use of the mastery transcript might encourage colleges to pay more attention to standardized-test scores."
Google Chrome won't be allowed on Windows 10 S
Ed Bott, ZDNet, 2017/05/10
We are in the process of entering an unhappy world where the browser is part of the operating system. This seems to be the trend set by Windows-S, on which Google's Chrome browser won't run. I'm not sure, but I don't think you can run Internet Explorer on a Chrome desktop either. "In theory, Google could use those tools to turn the desktop version of its Chrome browser into an app package.....But if Google or Mozilla or any of those smaller developers submitted one of those packages to the Store for distribution, the submission would be rejected."
Educational Technology and Education Conferences for June to December 2017, Edition #37
Clayton R. Wright, 2017/05/11
Clayton R. Wright's excellent conference list is available once again. He writes, "The 37th edition of the conference list covers selected professional development events that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2017 are complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held after December 2017. In order to protect the privacy of individuals, only URLs are used in the listing as this enables readers of the list to obtain event information without submitting their e-mail addresses to anyone. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next."
Fait Accompli: Agentive Tech Is Here
Chris Noessel, A List Apart, 2017/05/09
Today's new word is 'agentive'. Something that is agentive "handles tasks so that you can use your limited attention on something else. So this part of 'acting on your behalf'—that it does its thing while out of sight and out of mind—is foundational to the notion of what an agent is, why it’s new, and why it’s valuable." This article looks at the concept, draws a very useful distinction between agents and tools, and makes the observation expressed in the title.'
Experiential Learning: It’s been happening for years
Joe Henry, It's Not Academic, 2017/05/09
Experiential learning is not new, argues Joe Henry. It has been happening for years. " students have for generations, accessed and created a myriad of co-curricular, extra-curricular and work opportunities on campus that have allowed them to develop the skills necessary to think about their coursework in different ways or gain the experience necessary for that first job post-graduation." I agree. My experiential learning included five years as a staff member on the student newspaper, participation in academic conferences, and any number of other campus activities. But - and this is key - these almost all took place outside my courses. Which is why we need to think of an online education as involving a lot more than just a bunch of online courses.
This is How Google will Collapse
Startup Grind, Medium, 2017/05/09
The thesis of this post is that advertising placement will collapse as a revenue model, and when it does, so will Google's dominance over the marketplace. What will replace it? Native advertising (i.e., advertising that is actually a part of the content you want to read, as for example when I mention Tim Horton's Coffee in a post). We're seeing this play out now as websites demand people turn off their ad blockers and as people, not being crazy, refuse to do so. And we're also seeing actual online commerce increase, a market in which Google has virtually no stake. "Over time, the computer itself — whatever its form factor — will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world."
Exploring Qualitative Displays and Interfaces – Architectures
Dan Lockton, Architectures, 2017/05/09
"Much of how we construct meaning in the real world is qualitative rather than quantitative," writes Dan Lockton, "Yet, quantification has become a default mode for information display, and for interfaces supporting decision-making and behaviour change." Her's right on both counts, and this article illustrates part of the reason why. It's not exactly easy to create a qualitative interface, though he offers a number of intuitive examples: the movement of water as an indicator of acceleration, the swirling of leaves as a wind indicator, or wind socks. How would our understanding of learning and performance data change if we used qualitative indicators? If, for example, we could see skills development, rather than simply measuring them? Related: Design students explore landscape as a metaphor.
Raise the Bar: Shooting and Editing Green-Screen Video
Mark Lassoff, Focus on Learning, 2017/05/09
Although I have the green cloth I've never actually created a green-screen video. This is something that I'll have to try one day. Looking at the direction in this article, it doesn't appear to me to be that complicated. And maybe next I can try to create one of those videos where the handwriting appears over top of the image, as though someone is writing on the screen.
Instagrim: Why Social Media Makes Students Miserable
Donna Freitas, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017/05/09
The gist of this article is that people can't be themselves any more on social media, that they have to edit their social media feeds and essentially 'professionalize' their online presence, and that this has in turn caused unhappiness in the student population. My own take is that the possibility of exposure on social media has made them clean up their act, and if this causes them stress and hardship, I'm sure they can learn to deal with it.
Enclosures:
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[Comment]
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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