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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes[Home] [Top] [Archives] [About] [Options]
by Stephen Downes
Nov 03, 2017
#SOCRMx: Week 4 – Discourse Analysis
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2017/10/31
In this post Jenny Machness shares "notes from watching Sally Wiggins’ video introducing Discourse Analysis." there's not a lot of detail, but just enought to be useful, as she distinguishes between five types of discourse analysis: conversation analysis, discursive psychology, critical discursive psychology, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis. She also links to a number of other course participants' blog postgs about this unit. Image: Rudy Banuta.
My part in the battle for Open (universities)
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2017/10/30
I didn't get a chance to see Martin Weller at ICDE last week but I'm still able to enjoy his throughts from the cconference in this post. It's a nice rethinking of his role in the promotion of open, and of large institutions like the Open University in the open learning ecosystem. Some of the thingss he sees as important: reclaiming the history of 'open' (it has, indeed, been appropriated and commodified); redefining what is meant by an 'open university'; advocating for use (as oppozsed to production) of OER; and examining hypotheses around OU course production.
The 3 foundations of Lean UX
Josh Seiden, Jeff Gothelf, O'Reilly, 2017/11/03
Reading this post made me wonder what the foundations of 'lean learning' would be (no doubt soome will 'invent' it; it's easy enough to follow the template set out in this article). The three foundations are; user experience design; design thinking; and agile software development. It reflects a focus on outcomes, not preroduct, and a development method based on conversation and collaboration rather than planning and documentation. "Lean UX values making over analysis. There is more value in creating the first version of an idea than spending half a day debating its merits in a conference room."
Fact checkers use this method to spot sketchy info
Carrie Spector, Futurity, 2017/10/29
This post summarizes a Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) report suggesting that fact-checkers more reliably assess article than professional hostorians and Stanford students. The assumptions going in were absurd: "“Historians sleuth for a living... Evaluating sources is absolutely essential to their professional practice. And Stanford students are our digital future. We expected them to be experts.” Anyhow, the fact-checkers used this one weird trick: checking other sources. "The fact checkers read laterally, meaning they would quickly scan a website in question but then open a series of additional browser tabs, seeking context and perspective from other sites. In contrast, the authors write, historians and students read vertically, meaning they would stay within the original website in question to evaluate its reliability."
IMS Global Learning Consortium Introduces LTI Advantage
Press Release, IMS Global, 2017/11/01
The press release doesn't really tell you what it is, but Blackboard Blog summarizes it as follows: "LTI Advantage is essentially a package of extensions that includes, at a minimum, LTI 1.1 link launching, Names and Role Provisioning Services, Deep Linking, and the soon-to-be released Assignments and Grades Services that build on the core LTI standard (LTI 1.1 and higher)." So: neat. Here's the overview page at IMS.
CC and ME
Helen DeWaard, Five Flames 4 Learning, 2017/10/30
Helen DeWaard writes, "After viewing the conversations between David Wiley and George Siemens for the #OpenEdMOOC (Week 2 Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) it becomes clear as mud that copyright and Creative Commons licensing has an impact on my work as an educator." I don't think that was the intend of the course (though I confess that the result of my own conversations withDavid Wiley has also been to leave things clear as mud). DeWaard writes, "I’ve crafted a video (AKGTC and CC) to encourage teachers and students to use and apply CC attribution and licensing to their creative works." Fair enough, though I'm not a fan of littering my work with advertisements for Creative Commons. Doug Peterson responds with thoughts about his own approach to licensing. He also points to a case of overzealous enforcement.
The Three Fundamental Moments of Podcast's Crazy Rise
Nicholas Quah, Wired, 2017/11/03
Doc Searls is quite right to complain about this article in Wired ostensibly about the history of podcasting. It fails, as he notes, to mention Adam Curry aand Dave Winer, and seems to get the relation between "podcast" and "RSS feed" backwards - a podcast is an RSS feed (one that contains references to MP3s as enclosurfes), so it doesn't make sense to talk about "the first mainstream podcast to have an RSS feed". My own contribution, 2003's Ed Radio, has even been excised from the Wikipedia page, but I've long since gotten used to that. I am enjoying the renaissance of podcasting, but wish professional magazine writers would preserve some semblance of accuracy in reporting.
The importance of compression when learning maths
Maggie Hos-McGrane, Tech Transformation, 2017/10/30
This reads to me like pseudoscience. "The process of compression happens because the brain is a highly complex organ with many things to control, and it can focus on only a few uncompressed ideas at one time." Yet it comes, apparently, from Jo Boaler, a Professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University. Maggie Hos-McGrane expands on the thoeory: "The brain can only compress concepts and not rules - hence students who learn the rules have to struggle to hold onto them - they are unable to be compressed, organized and filed away for later use." This doesn't make sense to me. The brain is not a computer. I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong here, but I really doubt it.
Governments need to ensure rules are followed in education
Manos Antoninis, World Education Blog, 2017/11/01
The varying systems of education around the world place more or less stress on goovernments. The private sector is often touted as a viable approach when governments cannot afford to provide services, but "when governments relinquish control of education to private providers, it is equally if not more important that standards be in place to regulate their work." These expenditures, and this overhead, is often not calculated into the cost of the private system to governments and families. And often, it doesn't work. "The very first step of accrediting schools in the first place is often cumbersome, prone to corruption, and therefore slow, leaving many operating without meeting even minimum safety and infrastructure standards."
What Is Success and Failure in Schooling?
Larry Cuban, 2017/10/31
Three part series (part one, part two, part three) that ought to be called "What are success and failure in learning?" The first part looks at different definitoons of success and failure in business and the military. You can skip this part. The second part talks about "success" in hospitals (about which I don't think Americans are in a position to judge) and begins the discussion of schools. It comes together in the third part. "If only policymakers, practitioners, and parents agreed upon what 'success' and 'failure' mean for schooling," he writes. This is in my view the single reason why most education reserach is futile. There are different points of division: what counts as success accordubg to left or right; measures of success applied to all or some (usually lower-class) schools; and the changing mission of tax-supported schools.
Reasons to be blogging ... 1 2 3....
Steve Wheeler, Learning With es, 2017/11/03
This is a short set of five reasons why regular blogging is a good professional practice. I can attest to them. When I'm blogging I'm at my best - it forces me to keep current and focus my thoughts. I'm less concerned about cultivating community than Wheeler mostly because I want people to create and join their own communities.
5 Lessons from Implementing Personal Learning
Matt Doyle, Education Week, 2017/11/02
I'm thinking this is "personalized learning" because although efforts are made to accommodate the individual, all students still learn the same lessons and are expected to achieve the same outcomes. That said, here are the five lessons (excerpted and quoted):
learn more about who an individual student is today design "personal on-ramps" to content a unique construct can be created that best fits each student's needs creation of a culture of student agency at every level use a variety of intervention tools early and continuouslyWhat strikes me about this approach is how labour-intensive it is. Sure, this can be accomplished if you remove a lot of the traditional overhead in teaching, from doing the paperwork to delivering instruction to marking tests. But the bulk of the individualization is still being done by hand by the teacher.
Democracy, data, and intelligence
Harold Jarche, 2017/10/31
There are two parts to this post. The first is the statement of the problem: "Social media platforms may extend global participation and can be a force for better understanding but often emotions trump reason in an online world of constant outrage..., as these tribal forces are extended by the internet, we see a reversal of democracy into tyranny under populist demagogues." The second is the proposed solution: "open democratic structures enable transparent design which yields humanity-centred progress which continues to serve democracy." I see something like this as possibly necessary, but certainly not sufficient. Openness is only one attribute of a successful society. When we describe "democratic structures" we need to be clear that we mean more than just voting.
The playbook for reimagining Higher Education
Patrick Brothers, Medium, 2017/11/01
This article tells us very little about this new initiative. Minerva is a startup 'university'. The "curriculum focuses on 'practical knowledge'. It "uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world (San Francisco, Seoul, Hyderabad, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Taipei)." The post describes a just-launched book about the initiative, which is unfortunately not open access. But to me, the really interesting thing isn't in the article at all: the book is co-edited by Stephen M. Kosslyn, yes, that Stephen Kosslyn, the cognitive psychologist who wrote the book on mental imagery, and much more besides. So maybe there's something to this project after all.
This Doctor Diagnosed His Own Cancer with an iPhone Ultrasound
Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review, 2017/10/31
I think that when the author writes "“Now we think it’s an individual purchase” and "anyone can afford it" they're living in a different economic reality than 99% of the world. But it is nonetheless true that the 2500 CAD device is a lot cheaper and more portable than any alternative, even if it will only appeal to the gold-plated iPhone X set. And it points the ay to devices that help you manage your own health (and by implication, your own education) on an ongoing and convenient basis. Now, what would be really great would be a cure for whatever the device detects.
Dr. Chuck on Inclusive Programming, Online Instructor Involvement and Coursera’s Paywall
Tina Nazerian, EdSurge, 2017/10/30
By "inclusive programming" the article means "teaching programming to everybody". By "online instructor involvement" it means face-to-face meetings with students in courses (made more difficult in MOOCs). By "Coursera's paywall" it means Charles Severance's strategy to redirect students to his home page if they complain about the paywall. It ends with what is actually a neat idea: "to connect with students is through “Teach Out” events, like an upcoming one he’s doing with Douglas Van Houweling. Severance said it will be 'very live and agile' and will 'only be a week.'" This article does not appear to be paid placement, but with EdSurge you never know.
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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