OLDaily Text Edition ~ Sept 29, 2016

Stephen's Web ~ Link
OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Sept 29, 2016
PEARSONalized Learning
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I want to cut this out and put it on the wall around here:
"There is a recurring cultural fantasy that 'solving' the
education 'problem' consists of creating a customized
playlist of little content bits... Nobody who has taught
believes that proper sequencing of content chunks is the
hard part." Oh, but that's all so many people want to do.
That's how 'learning analytics will solve education!' Argh!
People (as Michael Feldstein vividly demonstrates (with
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examples
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should stop listening to ed tech vendor marketing when
thinking about how to design and use educational
technology.
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Digital Readiness Gaps
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How 'ready' are people to take online learning courses
(especially those that, like MOOCs, require a fair degree
of readiness)? According to this Pew report, which looks at
Americans only, the degree of readiness varies across
society. This really should be no surprise. The statistics
range from 17% for 'fully prepared' (from higher income
households and with more education) through to 33% who are
'reluctant' (tend to be men 50 and over with lower
educational backgrounds and lower incomes) through to 14%
who are 'unprepared' (who tend to be women and over with
lower educational backgrounds and incomes). I would imagine
you could find similar patterns in other countries, which
skews toward more-or-less prepared depending on income. The
interesting find would be the outliers - countries like
Ecuador and Uruguay, maybe. But Pew doesn't look at that.
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A Master List of 1,200 Free Courses From Top Universities:
40,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures
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From Open Culture: "Let’s give you the quick
overview: The list
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download audio & video lectures from schools
like Stanford LinkYale
LinkMIT LinkOxford
Linkand Harvard Link
Generally, the courses can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes
or university web sites, and you can listen to the
lectures anytime, anywhere, on your computer or smart
phone." Free an d open online learning is coming of age.
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Yes! #PhD written... looking for joyful bliss once more
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Inge de Waard has been working on this just about as long
as I have known her. So it's nice to she she has shut down
her word processor and shipped some product. "This research
investigates the informal learning journeys of 56
experienced adult online learners engaging in individual
and/or social self-directed learning using any device to
follow a FutureLearn course." You can read it here
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Disciplining Education Technology
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Audrey Watters is "perplexed by the recent
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call
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to create a new discipline for education technology" but I
think she has it right when she suggests that the point of
the initiative is "to determine the intellectual contours
and to shore up the departmental boundaries – to
decree an orthodoxy – for education technology?" And,
as she suggests, "this feels like yet another rebranding,
rehistoricizing of ed-tech by elite American universities."
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
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