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OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Oct 17, 2016
Online Learning Consortium Launches Courseware in Context
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This could be really handy for a lot of people. The idea is
"to help postsecondary decision-makers make informed
selections of digital courseware products, and support
effective adoption and implementation of these solutions."
The Courseware in Context
Link(CWiC) Framework is not a
framework in the traditional sense, but is composed of the
following tools (quoted):
A product taxonomy designed to give educators,
instructional designers and administrators information
about courseware product capabilities and attributes;
A list of published research to help instructional
designers and administrators make connections between
courseware capabilities and related research; and
Guides to help administrators assess practices and policies
related to effective courseware implementation at the
course and institution level.
The resources are available as a PDF and Excel spreadsheet.
There are no company or product listings (you have to do
that yourself - the tools help you do this). An
interactive-web-based version is planned but not yet
available. You'll be required to provide name and email in
order to access the materials.
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Ed-Tech as a Discipline
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The idea has been making the rounds recently. This article
summarizes some comments in favour from Martin Weller,
opposed from Audrey Watters, and breezes through some
comments take take the discussion in all sorts of
directions. "I’m left with the feeling that maybe a
discipline isn’t what we need," says Tim Kapdor in
this post, "but we do need something." Right now PopEdu
gets all the attention - Sal Khan and the Gates megamoney.
Against this, "Ed-tech and using digital technology for
learning is something distinct and relatively new.
It’s not computer, neuro or information science, or
humanities or education – it sits outside the normal
traditions. It needs staking out, research, evidence and
practices in order to take a seat at the table." I get the
point - there needs to be a way to weed out the fads
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and fashions, the quacks and the cretins.
But pretending that we're physicists
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isn't the answer either. If there is to be a centre
to this discipline, it needs to be an open centre. Because
as Maha Bali says, "I don’t know how becoming a
discipline won’t again exclude certain people from
the table."
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You Can’t Fix Education
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Education, says Hank Green, is impossible to optimize. Hank
and his brother John are the creators of Crash Course
Linka YouTube
educational channel, now being touted on Patreon
Link"We create free,
high-quality educational videos used by teachers and
learners of all kinds," says the Patreon description.
"That's all we want to do. After 200,000,000 views, it
turns out people like this." In this article Green writes
about talking to rich people about the success of Crash
Course. "They get really excited really fast," thinking
they could scale it up and 'fix' education. But there's no
one-size fits-all. "Different schools face different
problems. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions. You
can’t innovate your way into the kind of traditional
cost-savings the internet brings." So instead "we keep
doing what we’re good at…making great content
about difficult subjects that help students and teachers."
And giving them away for free.
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Why For-Profit Education Fails
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This is an interesting discussion but actually very light
on the explanation it promises. A close reading reveals it
to be this: first, VCs confuse size and scale, preferring
to create large institutions in an industry that depends on
local impact. Second, scope and scale do not always mix.
They try to reform the entire education system rather than
focusing on a specific activity or domain. Why do theey do
this? Ego plays a role, but ultimately the cause is found
in their desire to do good (which runs counter to the need
to make money ("one cannot do good for very long if the
business does not do well enough to survive")). The
consistent failure of private institutions, argues the
author, gives ammunition to those who oppose privatization,
but "that sphere will always comprise public and private,
nonprofit and for-profit institutions, and for-profit
businesses play an essential role."
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Spiraling Down Minuscule DS106 History Details
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The assignment bank was one of those details that made
DS106 so innovative. Basically the idea was that people
submit suggestions for assignments, which other people then
browse, select from, complete and contribute. Some
of the earliest posts
Link00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=7
in my art blog
Link(now used for my
photos of the day, but always subject to change) are from
the DS106 assignment bank. The title is also from the DS106
course. Anyhow, this post reconstructs the history of the
assignment bank. It begins from a Michael Cauldfield
post Linkin which part of this
history became the subject for discussions. Alan Levine
drills deep into the historical archive and concludes "the
Assignment bank is totally the idea and prowess of Martha
Burtis." He also comments on the difficulties of doing
digital history. I can relate; I've been updating
my Presentations ../presentations.htm files recently.
When people tell you "the internet is forever" don't
believe them. So much has already been lost. Take some time
now and repair your archives. The future will thank you.
Image: one of my DS106 contributions, The Long Goodbye
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Lucy Gray Presentation Resources for #GEF16
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In keeping with the learning communities theme from last
week have a look at these presentation resources
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shared by Lucy Gray on the Global Education Conference and
the Highly Connected Global Educator. There's a fair bit of
overlap between the two slide decks (the latter is the
better deck) but you'll see listings of learning
communities and networks, overviews of global education
projects, and related resources. The focus of these
projects, writes Gray, is not on the technology or the
content but on the people.
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
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