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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes[Home] [Top] [Archives] [About] [Options]
by Stephen Downes
Oct 06, 2017
Feature Article
Elements of a Successful Panel
Stephen Downes, Oct 06, 2017.
Academic panels are often awful. It's not just their all-white all-male constitution. They are self-indulgent, inward looking, dull, pretentious and boring. Duncan Green writes, "They end up being a parade of people reading out papers, or they include terrible powerpoints crammed with too many words and illegible graphics." In the aggregate, all the elements in this article are equally important for successful panels, and the omission of one or another in each case represents a specific sort of blindness to form and function in society.
Enclosure: Panel_of_Experts.JPG[Link] [Comment] [Tweet] 67304
Introducing Education Resources, a source of Open Educational Resources within Office 365
Microsoft, 2017/10/06
"Open Up Resources is a nonprofit working to develop the highest quality full-course OER curricula," according to this announcement, and "Microsoft Education is offering this curriculum through OneNote , Forms and custom dashboards." This is the sort of thing I've been lookinbg to see more of - the idea is that open educational resources can be used in other applications by students or teachers as stuff they can use to create things. This works on all levels. "Teachers can distribute the Illustrative Mathematics course materials on any device via OneNote. Students can write, draw, collaborate and save their work automatically in a personal digital notebook. Real-time collaboration can occur around the materials: teacher-to-class, teacher-to-student, and student-to-student. OneNote Class Notebooks integrate seamlessly with common LMS and SIS platforms." Now I haven't tested this, but it's the ambition that interests me here far more than the execution.
Skills, Competencies and Credentials
Alan Harrison, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2017/10/06
The current system of courses, grades and transcripts does not serve students well, according to a recent report (24 page PDF) from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. "While the current system does an excellent job documenting students’ knowledge of content, it provides neither students nor potential employers with an overview of the skills they have developed while studying." What's interesting is that this would suggest not merely a different system for documenting aachievement, but also completely new assessment metrics. This would in turn change the objective of higher education from that of imparting knowledge to that of training for skills. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if we're going to open the door to renegotiate the purpose of universities, we need to have more options on the table, because higher education is about more than just skills and competencies.
ResearchGate: Publishers Take Formal Steps to Force Copyright Compliance
Robert Harington, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2017/10/06
A time-honoured principle among researchers is the sharing of individual copies of published papers. One researcher says to the other, "Oh, could I have a copy of that?" and the other happily obliges. Like everything else that is good, this was automated and commodified on the internet and turned into sites like ResearchGate and Academia. Now requests for papers go through these centralized social networks, and the networks, in turn, ask you to upload your published papers. The sites also aggregate copies of open access publications. I don't like it because they force readers to log in to access the papers. Publishers don't like it because they think it's piracy, and they have formed a coalition to fight the practice: "the Coalition for Responsible Sharing, which includes publishers and societies ready to take action, ranging from legal requests asking ResearchGate to remove infringing articles, to litigation.
Our eyes are drawn to meaning, not shiny objects
Andy Fell, Futurity, 2017/10/05
We're looking at something, a display in a classroom or video, say. "How do we decide where to direct our attention, without thinking about it?" Well, we don't 'decide', because that just is a cognitive process. But our attention is directed. To what? Bright and shiny things? Not so much. The right answer is 'salience', which in this article is depicted as 'meaningful'. Something is salient if it is important or connected to what is happening or being discussed (see a much deeper account of this in Stalnaker's Thesis in Context). Sadly the paper cited in this short article is behind a paywall, but you can find similar work by the same author in this paper on scan patterns. Of course, some of these principles have been old saws in graphic design for decades. See also here and here for the same content as repeated in Futurity (the original source is probably the publisher's marketing department).
[Comment]
Why Canada’s New Cultural Policy Will Be Terrible for the Arts
Ira Wells, The Walrus, 2017/10/05
I don't agree with this argument, but let's hear it out. The context is a recent Canadian government "$500 million deal with Netflix to establish a permanent production presence in this country." A lot of this money will end up in the pockets of Canadian aretists. So what's the problem? "It’s that it treats those artists as tech entrepreneurs. The ethos of Silicon Valley is encoded into the very dna of our new policy framework. Artists, says Creative Canada, are valued not for the art they produce but for 'playing a critical role in driving innovation.' The plan answers the call “for developing the business, technology and entrepreneurial skills of Canadian artists and creators... (but) Creative Canada profoundly misunderstands the place of art and culture in our society. No lasting or meaningful monument of Canadian art will ever emerge from the desire to benefit the middle class.”
Want Change In Education? Look Beyond The Usual Suspects (Like Finland)
Anya Kamenetz, NPR, Mind/Shift, 2017/10/05
I know Anya Kamenetz means well, but her examination of global initiatives to improve education collapses into a raft of tired rhetoric. It starts off well, identifying two major problems: first, too many children around the world are not learning the basics, and second, the basics are no longer sufficient to prepare us for a changing world. But after stating the problem, the clichés flow unabated: students need to "find motivation and meaning, and take a playful attitude that makes it safe to try and fail.... schooling is fundamentally a human enterprise... Change can’t just be a matter of mass-producing some technological marvel and pushing it to market... it has to be both/and... kids can learn small things on the way to big things... We’re not doing poor kids any favors by the drill-and-kill method... Leapfrogging isn’t about supplanting traditional schools... the need to change how they do business... Identifying great ideas is one thing, but getting them to spread is another... they often don’t even know much about what the teacher down the hall is doing... thinking about new ways for teachers to collaborate and co-teach... We’re moving to a global world." Gak! Gak! Gak gak gak! No more, please!
How Machine Learning Is Easing OER Pain Points
David Raths, Campus Technology, 2017/10/04
One of the issues I have with so many education technology projects, especially in the area of OER, is the reduction of the education problem to a search or discoverability problem. That's mostly what's happening here, and mostly how the application of machine learning to education is characterized generally. The holy grail of these applications seems to be Netflix. But we don't want to simply watch or consume learning resources, we want to do things and create things. But even thinking is treated as a search problem in this article: "If you are thinking about a topic, the machine can say, 'well based on that, have you thought about x?'" No, no, that's not how we think and learn.
New Quality Measurement Initiatives
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2017/10/04
Interesting article describing to recent approaches to evaluations of institutional quality: one from the Netherlands called "Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe" (CALOHEE) which (interestingly) assesses each institution measures outcomes according to the objectives set at each institution. The other, from the United States, is the A Multi-State Collaborative to Advance Learning Outcomes Assessment (MSC) which "samples of ordinary student course work are scored according to various rubrics designed over a decade or more (see here for more on the rubrics and here for a very good Chronicle article on the project as a whole)." Alex Usher also asserts, incorrectly, that "how none of it (measurable accountability) is happening in Canada, which is demonstrably false.
How Communities of Inquiry Drive Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age
Terry Anderson, Contact North, 2017/10/04
Terry Anderson revisits the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model and looks at some more recent suggestions for extensions and revisions in this paper (16 page PDF) produced for Contact North in advance of the upcoming World Conference in Distance Learning in a couple of weeks (yes, I will be there). It's one of a series of insight reports being produced for the conference (yes, I contributed one, to be released soon). "Humans evolved in groups (mostly families and larger kin and tribal groups)" writes Anderson, "and these have evolved to create the social glue that facilitates learning and enhances motivation in the COI model. The continuing popularity of the model, through different technologies, shows that group based learning is still highly valued and the most common way in which at least young people engage in both formal and informal learning."
Is it time for a Photoshop button on Instagram?
Isaac Fanin, BBC News, 2017/10/04
There is discussion this week about the role of Photoshop after a new French law stipulates that "it will be mandatory to use the label ‘retouched photo’ alongside any photo used for commercial purposes when the body of a model has been modified by an image-editing software to either slim or flesh out her figure." In this post British actress Mel Wells argues that the thinking should be extended. ""The aspirational body types are just not realistic for 95% of the population and because of that it's really damaging people's self-esteem." But almost all photographs are altered, without an editing history it's difficult to tell whether a body has been reshaped or whether a blue hue created by the camera has been corrected. But it's worth keeping this in mind: advertising is the original fake news.
Wikipedia graph mining: dynamic structure of collective memory
Volodymyr Miz, 2017/10/03
A lot of AI analysis consists in taking individual entities and then making graphs out of them through training or making categories using some sort of algorithm like Nearest Neighbours (kNN). What I am interested in, though, is understanding the graph that is already created by the interactions of people online (and in society generally). A good example of this is shown in this paper. The author examines the Wikipedia graph through time and across various events. We see society working the way a mind works. "We see that the core events trigger relevant memories."
Analysis of the Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017
Jane Hart, 2017/10/03
Jane Hart offers a brief analysis of the list of the top 200 tools for lerarning posted here yesterday. Mostly what we find is that pretty much everyone on the list is an educator or developer of some sort (ie., not a student). So these aren't tools for learning per se but tools for people who work in the education industry. She also points to top 3 risers: Unsplash (up 71 places), Grammarly (up 70 places) and Snapchat (up 64 places). I didn't list any of these because none of them are very high on the list. She notes, correctly I think, that "messaging apps and team tools are particularly on the rise." This to me points to a trend toward work (and maybe learning) taking place more frequently outside formal learning environments rather than inside them.
Every Noise at Once
2017/10/03
This has nothing to do with online learning, really, but it's too good to pass up: As Kottke says, " Every Noise at Once is a one-page map of playable audio samples for more than 1500 musical genres, from deep tech house to Finnish metal to smooth jazz to geek folk to klezmer to deep opera." Enjoy.
Take a SPLOT Test Drive or… Instant SPLOT?
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2017/10/03
It's not really possible to determine what SPLOT stands for - but going back to this site (and this) I'm thinking it's 'Smallest Possible Learning Online Technology', though other variations are suggested. Anyhow, the idea here is to promote the splot.ca website, which offers a small set of WordPress Plug-Ins that create SPOLTs you can test for yourself. But it still requires WordPress, which takes some time to set up. So, as Alan Levine writes, "Now in the workshop, second year this has been offered, we have cut out all these steps, by using the StateU demo site offered by Reclaim Hosting. This site is insanely useful for introducing people to domains or making a case for it to your colleagues." So there you go.
OLC Launches Research Center for Digital Learning and Leadership
Press Release, Online Learning Consortium, 2017/10/03
The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) has launched a new research centre for digital learning and leadership. According to the press release, "The OLC Research Center will offer original, curated, commissioned, and sponsored research opportunities, and consulting and presentation services in areas related to digital learning and digital leadership research. It also features research publications, like OLC’s own peer-reviewed journal, Online Learning, podcasts, and infographics, offering researchers and practitioners resources they need to support their work in the field."
Eton for all: will robot teachers mean everyone gets an elite education?
Lizzie Palmer, New Statesman, 2017/10/03
"There are a few certainties in this world," writes Lizzie palmer. "death, taxes, and that our jobs will eventually be taken by robots." But does this mean that everybosy will get high quality robot services? Maybe. The article describes "Pepper and Nao, two humanoid robots made by Japanese company SoftBank Robotics, (that) were trialled in two Singapore pre-schools last year." It also mentions 'Jill Watson', the robot tutor that managed to fool students at the University of georgia last year. According to Anthony Seldon (author of a recent book, natch), the AI-based tutors will liberate STEM education, but the nuances in the humanities and social sciences will take decades longer for AIs to master. Rose Luckin, also quoted in the article, points to AI's use in identifying illnesses like depression. “We could be building systems to help people understand themselves better," she says.
Here's a 21st Century Skill--and How to Teach It!
Daniel Willingham, Science & Education, 2017/10/02
I'm going to give Daniel Willingham props for a no-qualifications admission that he was wrong in the past. He has argued in the past that students should be taught domain knowledge, rather than critical thinking or other '21st century skills'. But with the observation that "Students are too trusting of what they read on the Internet" comes the recognition that there is a need for "a useful, content-free strategy that could a big difference in student assessment of website accuracy." The one he proposes here is pretty basic: "read laterally. Instead of going through a checklist of features of the website in question (the usual advice) encourage students to get OFF the website to see what others say about it... show click restraint... refraining from clicking on the first result from a Google search (and) use Wikipedia wisely." I think there are more skills, of course, but that's a quibble. More.
Like to be connected?
Steve Wheeler, Learning With E's', 2017/10/02
"What would happen if someone created a digital platform which schools could use to connect with businesses, experts and industry," asks Steve Wheeler. We're about to foind out because of the service being announced in this post, LikeToBe, which connects professionals with schools and classes. "Using our unique platform and content, LiketoBe connects teachers and students with professionals to provide impartial, real world careers advice and e-pals. Join our network of professionals, become an e-pal to teachers and schools and help us create a grass route approach to career guidance around the world" ("grass route appears to be an eggcorn). Here's the product's investment page on Seedrs.
Pymetrics raises $8 million for job-matching with AI and neuroscience games
Bérénice Magistretti, Venture Beat, 2017/10/02
Venture Beat highlights the funding, but I'm more interested in the direction being taken by the technology. Here's the idea: "We collect dense behavioral data from successful professionals in various roles and use machine learning to build models of which traits separate the successful professionals from the general population." This was the idea behind what we called 'Automated Competency Detection and Recognition'. Study the experts using neural networks, then design training programs to help others develop similar traints. Ah, but it proves to be rather more difficult to implement than to describe. So maybe the funding is the story here, while the product itself is still a testing application. But the idea is still out there, waiting to replace testing and assessment with somnething far more practical. The danger? What if 'expertise' is associated with properties like race and attractiveness? That is, after all, how venture capitalists seem to make their decisions. And college professors, sometimes. But we should keep it out of AI, if we can.
Here’s how our minds organize experiences
James Devitt, Futurity, 2017/10/02
While I want to jump on this and say that my long-held theory has been vindicated, I know that I should await confirmation and test6ing. Still, an article that begins "our brains organize experiences by their similarities, new research suggests" just makes me feel fuzzy all over, because this is the theory I was working on 35 years ago and which underlies most of the work I've done since (here's a quick outline). The research article cited is probably paywalled for you (a ridiculous state of affairs). It's based on behaviour and fMRI studies, which leave plent of room for scepticism. Still, we see the role similarity plays in the creation of knowledge: "immediate post-learning changes in connectivity may reflect a consolidation mechanism that plays an active role in shaping memories over time, in a way that prioritizes their commonalities."
Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017
Jane Hart, 2017/10/02
The 2017 Jane Hart's list of the top tools used for e-learning (by mostly professionals) is now available. The list is now 200 tools long, but really, after 50 or so you're getting into the cruft. The top of the list, by contrast, is much more mainstream than in the past: YouTube, Google Search, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Twitter, Word, LinkedIn, Facebook and WordPress. The first big surprise on the list is Trello, a project tracking tool up 21 places to take the 22 spot. Zoom, a video meeting tool, has shot up 38 places to rank 28th.
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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