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OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Feb 13, 2017
eLearning partnership opens doors to 10 million students
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An agreement between the Association of African
Universities and eLearnAfrica "will enable 10 million
students to access higher education through online services
provided to AAU member universities," according to this
report. As eLearnAfrica CEO Brook Negussie says, "Africa
cannot afford to keep building multi-million dollar
physical universities. The continent would have to open a
few every week for years just to meet existing demand."
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I look like a self-made millionaire. But I owe my success
to privilege.
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When we talk about education and human development we often
overlook the fact that success is driven by a lot of
factors that have nothing to do with learning. This article
makes the point as clearly as any I've seen. Being
well-nourished as a child, being safe, getting a good
education, being debt-free, getting good introductions,
eliminating the risk of failure, getting capital from the
family, and having the right physical appearance - if you
have all of these, you might be successful. Miss any of
them (have a learning deficiency, lack confidence, be
uneducated, be in debt, be unconnected, have no safety net,
have no capital, be female or black or whatever) and your
chances of success drop dramatically.
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Show me the evidenceâ¦
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At a certain point, writes James Clay, "the problem is not
the lack of evidence, but one of resistance to change,
fear, culture, rhetoric and motivation." At what point, he
asks, is there enough evidence? With some existing
academics, "Despite years of “evidence”
published in a range of journals, can studies from Jisc and
others, you will find that what ever evidence you
“provide” it won’t be good enough, to
justify that academic to start embedding that technology
into their practice." We need sometimes to understand what
is motivating the question, rather than simply reaching for
the answer.
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Editorial: Why Apple ignores so much pundit innovation
advice
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This is a good article even if the writing gets excessively
syrupy and sycophantic at times. The author identifies
three major themes of "toxic innovation advice" and talks
about how Apple has avoided them. Now I won't even touch an
Apple device any more, but the three themes are nonetheless
resonant. The first involves acquisitions: why doesn't
Apple buy Dropbox, Uber, etc.? But buying the already
successful isn't a good investment strategy. The second is
advice to innovate incrementally, eg., to build better
Windows-based systems, rather than abandoning windows
entirely. But doing what was already successful isn't a
good development strategy. Finally, there's the advice that
Apple should target existing commodity markets. But
building technology that was already successful isn't a
good device strategy. You get the idea. The point here is
that Apple isn't alone in getting this sort of advice. I
get it all the time (and it often drives policy). The key
to success is being able to resist it.
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What We All Agree On
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This post from University Ventures Exchange, people who
"invests in entrepreneurs and institutions that are
reimagining the future of higher education", seeks to find
common ground where "the many challenges and opportunities
facing higher education lend themselves to bipartisan
consensus." From my reading these points are not "agreed
on" at all, and of course the world consists or much more
than the "bipartisan consensus" the VCs refer to. The fact
is, they are seeing higher education institutions as they
are - big engines of revenue that could be profitable
investment centres - rather than what they could be for
students and the public as a whole.
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Revenge of the Lunch Lady
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This is a really interesting report looking into issues
related to school lunches in the United States by focusing
on schools in Huntington, West Virginia, which had been
labeled "the most unhealthy in the country" and had
suffered the attentions of British celebrity chef Jamie
Oliver. While the authors no doubt expected a disaster what
they found was a local food services manager who was
reforming the system from within. In the course of the
article we read of the conflicts of interest that result in
pizza being called a vegetable and the food industry
dumping surplus cheese and butter on the system. And we
read about the challenges posed by the idea that schools
might refuse a poor child anything to eat because their
parents didn't pay.
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes
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