Discover Top Posts Tagged with #oldaily

#edtech, elearning & more in OnLine Weekly, 12/26/2014

…by Stephen Downes…@OLDaily in weekly edition, the same but seven days worth ~ a periodic sample, not a PD regular PD item. Want more? See subscription information at the end. All educators, even (perhaps especially) the technophobic should arm themselves for the future by keeping up with information and learning technology, content delivery, platforms, learning and learning management data analytics and online learning in education and society. Don't depend on just higher ed and mainstream media. Build your own sources: start with following Stephen Downes (web, rss or by email. and blog), Audrey Watters' Hack Education (blog and weekly email newsletter), Bryan Alexander, and eLiterate (Michael Feldstein and Phil Hill). Stephen's and Audrey's blogs are already syndicated to Precarious Faculty Network on Facebook. The ubiquitous year end reviews seem a good time and place to introduce you to others, although As the Adjunctiverse Turns re-blogs Bryan regularly. Plus I follow online and IT educators on G+ ~ notably Laura Gibbs and George Station.

Presentation: Developing Personal Learning Stephen Downes, Dec 20, 2014, 6th IEEE International Conference on Technology for Education, Amrita University, Kerala, India, online via A-View

In this online presentation I discuss the evolution of personal learning technology and then itemize in more detail the elements of the NRC Learning and Performance Support Systems program, including the personal learning record, personal cloud, resource repository network, competency detection and recognition, and personal learning assistant.

[Link] [Slides] [Audio] [Video]

Can a Child’s Creativity and Persistence be Assessed by a Game? Katrina Schwartz, Mind/Shift, 2014/12/26

A 'stealth assessment' is "seamless and ubiquitous, providing important feedback to the student and creating a model of the learner that can help teachers tap the individual needs of each student." Consider, for example, the Physics Playground, where the laws of physics act as a pervasive force in the background, silently determining whether the scenario has been correctly constructed. Katrina Schwartz observes, "The key is to create a game that teaches the concepts students need to learn without messing up the unique engagement that good games provide."

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Education Should Step Away from Apple Devices Anthony Carabache, Authentic 21st Century Teaching & Learning, 2014/12/26

This is a conclusion I have already reached and is behind my decision to ditch my MacBook Pro, my iPod, and the horde of other knickknacks that go with an Apple purchase (because the spending on these things never ends). "After examining iPad implementation across the province, country and abroad over the last six years I have come to determine that it is simply not designed for shared use in education. This contradicts the very idea of what it means to collaborate – a 21st century skill we can all agree upon. It would seem that Apple’s philosophy when it comes to education is share less buy more."

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'If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It': Not True Liz Ryan, Forbes, 2014/12/26

Of course the sentiment expressed in the title has always been false. It is even somewhat surprising how many people act as though it were true. One thing I like about this article is how easily it transfers to education. The author writes, "Teachers are actually managing something far more important than test scores. They’re managing, massaging, inspiring, reinforcing and jollying along the only thing that helps a kid learn, which is the energy and trust in the classroom." Via Harold Jarche.

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I Will Not Post This Dave Pell, Life, Philosophy, 2014/12/26

Subtitled "the coming age of self-censorship" this article discusses the way the internet critics pile on when you tweet or write something inappropriate - or, as in the case of Donald Sterling, get recorded tirading through a racist rant. The conclusion, writes Dave Pell, is that "these new realities will lead us down path towards self-censorship." He writes as though this is a bad thing. But let's think this through. The examples he raises are actually all pretty despicable. If by "self-censorship" he means "not launch into racist tirades," then my response is, bring on self-censorship. Students are always taught "be careful what you pur on Facebook." But a much better lesson is, "be careful what you do." Not because it might end up on Facebook, though it might. But because, if it's wrong when it's all over the internet, it was wrong when you did it in private too. This and the next item via Doug Peterson.

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Outside the Skinner Box Gary Stager, Independent School Magazine, 2014/12/26

Gary Stager reprises his restatement of Seymour Papert's educational philosophy in this article touting learning by creating and by programming. "The satisfaction, personal efficacy, and knowledge construction resulting from the act of making something is well established," he writes. "Schools embracing the energy, tools, and passion of the Maker Movement recognize that, for the first time in history, kids can make real things - and, as a result, their learning is that much more authentic."

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Gates’ strict open access policy may have domino effect Tania Rabesandratana, SciDevNet, 2014/12/25

According to this article, the open access policy adopted by the Gates Foundation may cause others to adopt the same requirement. When it is fully implemented in 2107, the policy will require that authors publish papers funded by the foundation in open access journals without an embargo period. Between now and then there is a transition period that accommodates embargoes. The author also quotes a journal publisher expressing concerns that the policy will make it difficult for authors in developing nations to publish locally. I still question this argument. The developing world will not be helped by preserving bad business models there. The sooner it can adopt global practices, and enjoy the same benefits as we have in the western world, the better.

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10 Trends to Personalize Learning in 2015 Barbara Bray, Personalize Learning, 2014/12/25

There are some interesting thoughts in this post. The ten trends are divided into four quadrants: learning culture, learning environments, partnerships, and deeper learning. This allows Barbara Bray to look beyond technology and think about things like belief systems, competencies, advisories, project-based learning and assessment as learning. She writes, "It is about the learner making learning personal for his or herself. It is about teacher and learner roles changing....The current system of content delivery and focusing on performance instead of learning is not making positive changes for our children and their future."

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Five Reasons the Conversations Have Moved from Twitter to Voxer John Spencer, 2014/12/25

I don't know whether Voxer will replace existing social networks, but John Spencer's five reasons were enough to convince me to pay the $2.99 a month (quoted from his post):

The lack of badges, and metrics "likes" or "favorites" means we aren't playing Relational Fantasy Football. There are no rockstars.

We don't have to put on a public persona. On Twitter, it often feels less about talking with one another and more about talking to the public.

While Twitter feels like this massive, loud meet-and-greet, Voxer feels like a hangout.

The multimedia element allows it to still be asynchronous (similar to Twitter or Facebook) while still feeling like the person is physically there.

Sometimes someone has a longer thought that deserves a little extra time.

My user name on Voxer? Downes.

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A 2014 (Personal) Blogging Retrospective Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2014/12/25

Michael Feldstein writes a detail, clear and really honest blog post about the history of his own blog and the role it played in his career. I guess there are three major stages there: his early blogging days, in which he became part of the educational blogging community; his "war" against the Blackboard patent (and we all owe him a debt for that); and his post-lawsuit days in which the blog matured and his career flourished. I've always enjoyed Feldsteins informed and in-depth analyses; he is the type of blogger who goes well beyond the superficial to understand not just how things work the way they do, but also why. I still think he is more corporate-friendly and big-institution-friendly than I am, but there's no reason he needs to agree with me on these points, and the world is a far more interesting place with his perspective in it.

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If you were to Start a School from Scratch…. Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, LangWiches, 2014/12/25

I've actually thought about this question quite a bit. New Brunswick has legislation that makes it comparatively easy to start colleges and even universities, so I've idly scoped out all the buildings in the city, pondering amenities and sitelines, and thinking about the possibilities. Moncton could use a polytechnic (I always thought Saint John made a mistake in refusing one a few years back) with a strong liberal arts element, along the lines of MIT. I'd develop on an engaged and community-focused curriculum focused on projects rather than content. It would be bilingual. And I'd take the advice in this post:

hiring teachers "who can demonstrate skills (not just talk about them) and are experiencing a connected learning network as they are building their own digital presence "

supporting networked students

"including documenting and reflecting as an integral part of the student work flow /learning process"

I think it would be good, and it's the sort of core presence (and not a withdrawn and distracted academia) that is key to a region's cultural and economic growth.

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MOOCs are closed platforms… and probably doomed Daniel Lemire, 2014/12/25

"Do not be fooled by how savvy MOOC advocates sound," cautions Daniel Lemire. "They do not understand what they are doing." He doesn't mean me, of course. "The actual MOOCs that colleges publish are closed platforms, as per Wikipedia’s definition," he writes. Interestingly, you can walk into any university classroom and sit in on a lecture, and nobody will care (if they notice at all). That's because lectures are a hard sell, he writes. And consider this thought experiment: what if the degrees were free, if you passed the tests, but each hour of lecture cost twenty dollars. "You know what is going to happen? Nobody but the instructor will show up." Colleges are still selling the content - and that's why they canot afford actual open MOOCs. But this will change. "Colleges that try to lock down course content, let alone the content of their MOOCs, are signalling that they have no clue about the business that they are in."

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The Only Person Who Behaves Sensibly Is My Tailor Charles Jennings, Workplace Performance, 2014/12/24

I'm not sure I agree completely with this article but it's a good read and worth the time invested in it. Charles Jenning begins with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The only person who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes new measurements every time he sees me. All the rest go on with their old measurements.” This is fair enough and makes a good point. But what should be measures? Jennings argues that the focus should be on outcomes, not process. "Activity data provides few if any insight into the effectiveness of learning and provides only limited insight into the efficiency of learning activities," he writes. Maybe so, but not everybody is seeking the same outcomes, nor should they be expected to achieve the same outcomes. Jennings writes, "It is clear that the annual performance review, a metrics approach based on ling cycle times and relatively stability, will give way new, more nuanced approaches. A parallel path to learning metrics." (p.s. the fish image is from the NSW government. Why a fish? It is a tailor - a type of fish that showed up in my image search for tailor, and a good example of a good, but unexpected, outcome).

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The New Era of Smart, Connected Products Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2014/12/24

"We wanted flying cars," complained Peter Thiel, "instead we got 140 characters." Have we stopped solving the big problems? It may seem so, says Irving Wladawsky-Berger in this article, but with the age of smart devices almost upon us, we may be in for more big changes soon. As Kevin Kelly says, "Everything that we formerly electrified we will now cognitize,” he said. “There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or interesting by infusing it with some extra IQ… This is a big deal, and now it’s here." These enhancements break down into four major categories: monitoring, control, optimization and autonomy. I think I would add communication, coordination and cooperation, creating, effectively, products that work as teams.

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Models For Designing Your Personal Learning Environment Connie Malamed, The eLearning Coach, 2014/12/24

This article draws from several sources to draw out some concepts involved in designing a personal learning environment. A PLE, suggests Connie Malamed, is "a self-directed and evolving environment of tools, services and resources organized by a person seeking a way to accomplish lifetime learning, to create, and to connect with others of similar interests." And "because it is collaborative, information may be continually created and shared. In the workplace, designing a personal learning environment has the potential to partially replace conventional courses," she adds. See also building a personal learning ecosystem.

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The Six Deadly Sins of Training Donald Clark, Big Dog, Little Dog, 2014/12/24

Good longish article that doesn't just mention the six items but also takes the time to explain each in some detail. The six sins are:

Failing to align Training Goals with the Business Goals

Failing to Identify the Type of Performance Problem

Failing to get Support from the Leadership Team

Failing to Identify the Correct Setting for the Learning Process

Failing to Include Enough Activities and Practice Time to Reinforce Skills

Failing of the Learning and Development Team to Learn from Their Successes and Failures

"One of the major misconceptions of ADDIE or ISD is that it was created to only build classroom training environments, yet the reality is that it emphasizes other solutions first — you should too."

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Above-and-Beyond Responses Lee Rainie, Janna Anderson, Jennifer Connolly, Pew Research Internet Project, 2014/12/24

More predictions, in two parts (part 1, part 2) - I don't generally like prediction posts, but I indulge in them, from time to time. Vint Cerf, for example, advises us to "look for losses in intellectual property and via ‘data pollution’." Jeff Jarvis adds, "There will be continuing attacks bringing continuing damage. The question is how big an industry that will spawn in securing systems against such danger and mitigating risk." Jerry Muchalski writes, " Targeted attacks should rise, as should dysfunctional ideas (memes), spread to sew discord or doubt. Far too much of the world’s computing capacity is defenseless. Anything with firmware that can’t be upgraded securely in the field is vulnerable."

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The Agile Classroom Douglas Kiang, Edutopia, 2014/12/24

In the last year especially I've been steeped in project management theory as leader of our Learning and Performance Support Systems program. I can certainly understand the need for it in a wide variety of projects; even projects oriented toward exploration and discovery benefit from an organized approach. But is it an appropriate methodology for designing learning or classroom activities? I would not say "no" without careful thought. More significantly, is it worth sharing the methodology with students as the learning is designed? This might make even more sense.

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Margery Mayer’s 2015 Personal Statement: Frank McCourt, the Storytelling Machine of Heart and Wit Margery Mayer, EdSurge, 2014/12/24

Despite myself, I found myself enjoying these 'personal statements' from EdSurge:

Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist at Google: Beating the Low Expectation Syndrome

Margery Mayer, President of Scholastic Education: Frank McCourt, the Storytelling Machine of Heart and Wit

Dale Stephens, Chief Educational Deviant at UnCollege: The Power of the Alternate Path

Wendy Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Teach for All: The Choice to Be 'In the Arena'

Frank Catalano, edtech analyst and consulting strategist: Harnessing the Power of Information

John DeGioia, President of Georgetown University: Formation, Inquiry and the Common Good

And if that's not enough for you, here's EdSurge's Fifty Stories from Fifty States (actually 52 stories).

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Microsoft is Dumping Clip Art. What Are You Going to Do? Tom Kuhlmann, The Rapid E-Learning Blog, 2014/12/23

No more clip art? What will we do now? Microsoft will offer a Creative Commons - default Bing search instead. Tom Kuhlmann writes, "dropping clip art is probably a good thing for course designers. It forces us to be more intentional about the graphics we use in our courses. It also puts some pressure on organizations to finally commit some of their training budgets to graphic and visual design resources." But Creative Commons users who Freaked out when Yahoo started selling their photos had better prepare themselves for additional surprises. Meanwhile, Kuhlmann writes, "you’ll need to verify that the images you use via the Creative Commons search can be used for commercial work."

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Learning’s first principle – the most important thing i learned this year Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, 2014/12/23

The first principle Dave Cormier writes about is this: do they care? He writes, "Our job, as educators, is to convince students who don’t care to start caring, and to encourage those who currently care, to continue caring." In the comments comes an unexpected treat from David Wiley, an old paper on the same subject. "Why bother learning how to use all these 'effective instructional strategies' when people aren’t even going to engage with them?" he wondered. My take is different. I see education less as an enterprise in making people do what they don't want to do, and more as one of helping people do what they want to do. And there's something wrong with the selection mechanism when a student can pay and spend four years at a university and still not be engaged in learning.

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Strength in numbers John De Jong, Pearson, 2014/12/23

So what's the link between Pearson and the PISA assessments? I don't know either, but after reading this odd post I begin to suspect there is one. Why is it odd? Well, first, it conflates the emergence of the World Wide Web with a political campaign, saying (erroneously) that they both "show the power of a shared ambition and a collective approach." The web is exactly the opposite of a "collective" approach; each site is developed independently, the only links between them being, well, links. So why this odd definition of "collective"? Because the author thinks it applies to PISA as well. "Every three years around 70 countries volunteer to take part in PISA, which looks at the skills and knowledge of 15 year olds." Well, yes, but they don't represent any sort of collective effort (otherwise we'd see Americans involved in the testing of Chinese students, and vice versa). And the respective countries don't share common goals. It's unlikely even that they share the definition of "skills and knowledge" imposed on them by PISA (because otherwise national curricula would reflect these same topics, which they do not). Since I presume that the author knows better than to make such facile comparisons, I conclude they are deliberate, which makes me suspect something is up.

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Predictions for K-12 Education in 2015 Don Kilburn, Pearson, 2014/12/22

Not all 'predictions' articles are actually predictions. Very often they reflect aspirations or intentions. I think this post from the Official Pearson Blog qualifies as one of these. Among the 'predictions':

Continued Focus on Rigorous Learning Goals

Increased Use of Data to Improve Individual Student Outcomes

Emphasis on Ensuring That Students Are Not Just College-Ready, but Career-Ready as Well

These are predictions? Seriously? No, not hardly. They are things the company would like to see emphasized. These, in turn, map back to corporate marketing strategies and product lines. And a big part of that is standardized assessment so the company can make money off adaptive learning products. See here and here.

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Real talk Vyvyan Evans, Aeon, 2014/12/23

"For decades," begins this article, "the idea of a language instinct has dominated linguistics. It is simple, powerful and completely wrong." There is no language instinct - yes, we have the capacity to learn a language, but what`s key here is that language is something that is learned, and not the basis for learning. And the arguments against Chomsky`s theory of a universal grammar`should also cause you to doubt theories of learning based on similar ideas (especially, for example, Piaget or Pinker). We learn language the way we learn everything else: by observing examples of language being used, by imitation and practice, and finally, by reflection. And the ability to use language is a type of recognition, no different from recognizing Aunt Lucy, and not some artful manipulation of codes and rules. If this long article doesn't convince you to abandon the innateness-of-language theory, then I don't know what will.

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The End of Sitting Ronald Rietveld, Erik Rietveld, Arna Mackic, RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances], 2014/12/22

As we get away from classrooms we begin to look at new ways of creating environments for working together. The modern design - offices with desks, tables and chairs - is no real improvement on the classroom. This research project looks at alternatives, designing various shapes based on the different ways we can lean or stand when working with each other. I'm not sure I like it - it probably has the acoustical problems inherent in open-concept workspaces, and there's no place to put down my coffee or to grow a plant. But I like the thinking behind it. More from Wired, Science Alert, Fast Company, etc.

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How to Write a Resume That Stands Out Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review, 2014/12/25

Yes I know, there's a million of these articles out there already. But this is short, clear, and really good. It made me rethink how I wrote my own c.v. (you get to call a resumé a c.v. is you're looking for an academic position). Not that I'm looking for a job (I have really enjoyed the last year at NRC as a program leader) but it makes me rethink how I would organize my accomplishments and those of the people who work with me. As the article says, "'I managed a team of 10' doesn’t say much. You need to dig a level deeper. Did everyone on your team earn promotions? Did they exceed their targets?"

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The moos you can moo Mark Liberman, Language Log, 2014/12/26

This article looks at news reports that anthropomorphize elements of scientific reports and, as a consequence, misrepresent their conclusions. In this case, scientists examine how cows use distinctive calls to communicate with offspring. The news media adds a human element to this behaviour by saying these are "names" for the calves. What's happening is that the news media, by describing cows as though they were human, are essentially making stuff up. Geoff Pullman writes, "They actually print what are obviously lies, even when the text of the same article makes it clear that they are lying."

I think the same thing happens in educational writing. If this article, for example, we are told about "the brain’s danger detector, the amygdala, being down-regulated, trading energy normally spent on vigilance for heightened focus and enhanced recall." But the brain is doing no such thing; that is aninterpretation of a set of neural phenomena. Or this: "the human brain locks down episodic memories in the hippocampus." Or this, "the eyes and hands of children save memories for them." Assigning cognitive functions to things that do not have cognitive capacities is pernicious anthropomorphism, and it imposes a theory of self on the evidence that has no basis in reality.

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Article at the Open Badges in Education workshop Hans Põldoja, hanspoldoja.net, 2014/12/24

Post linking to an article on the use of open badges in education. Covers badges briefly and most notably, identifies the following use patterns (quoted from the post):

composite badges can be achieved by completing multiple assignments;

activity-based badges can be awarded automatically based on measurable learning activities;

grade-based badges are based on the grades that the learners have received;

hierarchical badges are divided to several levels, some of which may be composite badges based on lower level badges.

Interestingly, as the author notes, none of these are based on learning outcomes, showing that there is still a gap between the implementation of badges and the ideal envisioned.

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The conundrum of creating an open course in a closed site – Storyboard OOC update Gabi Witthaus, Art of e-learning, 2014/12/23

So this, I think, is the opposite of a MOOC: "We chose to use a platform that requires people to have accounts and sign in, in order to be able to set up and manage the groups effectively." Ironically the letter they choose to drop MOOC is not 'O' for 'Open' but 'M' for 'Massive'. It's true that if the course is not open, it won't be massive, but the really important bit is whether or not it's open. Additionally, setting up a course in such a way as to require management of groups is also contrary to the intent of MOOCs. So why not just call it an 'OC' (Online Course)? Well, it wouldn't be very interesting if it were just one of those, would it? And that's why we're getting so much false-MOOC pollution.

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The secret to the Uber economy is wealth inequality Leo Mirani, Quartz, 2014/12/22

We need to be careful about which part of the new technology-enabled on-demand economy we are cheering for. Uber, for example, or AirBNB appear to be tech-enabled, but they're not, really. " In my hometown of Mumbai," writes Leo Mirani, "we have had many of these conveniences for at least as long as we have had landlines -- and some even earlier than that. It did not take technology to spur the on-demand economy. It took masses of poor people." This isn't exactly what we're trying to achieve in education. Via Kottke.

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