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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes

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OLWeekly

by Stephen Downes
Apr 13, 2018

How Dark Patterns Trick You Online
Nerdwriter, YouTube, 2018/04/13

Pattern recognition is a critical literacy. This video makes it clear why, with vivid examples of how hard it is to close your account, and how easy it is to pay money. Companies use tactics like 'roach motel' and acculturation in order to persuade you to take actions that work against your best interests. The term 'dark pattern' was coined by  in 2010. Here's a Hall of Shame from Harry Brignull's 'Dark Patterns' website. "Our best defense against the dark patterns is to be aware of them." Via How-To Geek. More really good media analysis from Nerdwriter: this bit on vlogger Casey Neistat, this analysis of a Louis C.K. joke, this explanation of why the Prisoner of Azbakan is the best Harry Potter, this insight into a Goya painting.

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Publishers Win Big in Fake-Textbook Lawsuit
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/04/13

I haven't been hearing the term 'fake textbook' used in copyright coverage, so I'm wondering whether its use here signals a change in strategy. It certainly leaves me wondering what makes a face textbook fake. I assume it's not like fake news, which is news that's not true. The facts in fake textbooks are presumably the same as the ones in the original textbooks, otherwise they wouldn't be accused of copyright infringement. Is it that the original textbooks use higher quality electrons? or is some publicity mill just muddying up the use of the word 'fake' in an effort to accomplish, well, something. It's typical of traditional media that they would accept the new terminology and use it in their articles without even a murmur. Image: Amazon.

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Love, Faith, Hope & Charity – the future of the OU
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2018/04/13

This was an interesting read, which is why I posted it. It's also noteworthy how similar this story is to that so so many others, including my own. How often do we read things like this: " Senior management need to trust their staff and to demonstrate that trust for any large scale change to occur." It also reminded me of a thing I did years ago called Moulin Ching, based on the ideas of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love (for old time's sake I tossed the coins and got 1-1-1-0: "Friendship. Acceptance and understanding").

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Why I Left Academic Philosophy
Rachel Williams, Medium, 2018/04/13

My own observations about academic philosophy - and academia in general - are similar to those offered here by Rachel Williams. "Academic papers usually end up popularity contests, a game of who’s-who where the goal is to develop incestuous citation networks so that your impact factor will look better for hiring and/or tenure committees." But to be honest, I probably would have stayed. I'm not going to kid myself. Staying in academia would have allowed me to focus on philosophy. Happily, this also is true: "I don’t need academic philosophy to do philosophy. My blogging over the past ten years has reached a larger audience than I could ever hope to achieve through the traditional academic journal system."

Williams also talks about the propensity of philosophy to do work that doesn't matter, contrasting rarefied work like metametaphysics with the urgent demands of social and ethical issues. My concern was different. What I disliked about professional philosophers was that their work didn't matter to them. It really is just a game to them, a job they set aside when they leave the office. To me, then and now, it matters. It was never about getting a job (which is ultimately why the line in the c.v. didn't bother me as much as it perhaps should have). It matters what truth is, it matters where we get our knowledge from, it matters how we understand our place in the world. The rest of it - the whole publishing / job seeking / reputation building thing - is dross.

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It's Time for an RSS Revival
Brian Barrett, Wired, 2018/04/12

And the debate goes back and forth. " Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It's time to head back to RSS." So writes Brian Barrett in this Wired article. Mostly it profiles two remaining RSS readers, Feedly and The Old Reader. "The lasting appeal of RSS remains the parts that haven't changed: the unfiltered view of the open web, and the chance to make your own decisions about what you find there."

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Why Your Advice for Ph.D.s Leaving Academe Might Be Making Things Worse
Erin Bartram, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2018/04/13

This is a follow-up to the Erin Bartram story, the history PhD who couldn't find a position and left the field, writing a letter about her departure that everyone read. I wrote about it back in February. The Chronicle also published a short abridged version of her article. The original is much better and we know this because the comments that follow from the academic crowd that reads the Chronicle are, well, brutal and unsympathetic. Today Bertram writes, "Academe isn’t even fully honest about the bleak conditions of its own job market — perhaps because to describe it accurately still feels like hyperbole to some. Giving Pollyannaish advice doesn’t help those leaving the faculty career path any more than it does for those remaining." No kidding.

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How to Soft Launch Virtual Reality in Schools
Kipp Bentley, ConVerge, 2018/04/12

Short article with some advice that seems, on the face of it, obvious. Start with the cheap cardboard VR headsets and maybe have some students do demos for their classes. After experience with this, purchase one or two higher-end headsets and do some exploration projects. Have some students support those teachers who may be interested. Don't buy full-class sets of VR headsets; it's way too early for that. Maybe do some reading (some articles are listed at the end).

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The Use of E-Textiles in Ontario Education
Janette Hughes, Laura Jane Morrison, Canadian Journal of Education, 2018/04/12

"E-textiles, or electronic textiles, refer to 'fabric artifacts that include embedded computers and other electronics'." E-textile programs are now be implemented in some Ontario schools. It's a pretty new part of e-learning, though research dates back to 2012 or so. The authors report (29 page PDF) that e-textiles have been associated with the rise of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) learning in schools. Anyhow, the focus of the current article is on the "production pedagogies" employed in the field, "a focus on the cultivation of participatory and equitable spaces, where students can engage with ideas and issues as joint seekers and co-creators of knowledge and producers." The study is a design-based research project working alongside students in e-textile projects. They conclude that "choice, collaboration, and making for purpose are three vital elements that promote engagement and deep learning." Good paper. Image: Steve Auslander,Exploring e-Textiles in Indiana.

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12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech
Anil Dash, 2018/04/12

I think this is a good article but I think that readers in the education sector should read it critically. Parts I agree with. For example, 'tech is not neutral'. The tech we choose changes not only what we do but also what we can do. Others need clarification. For example, the statement 'tech is not inevitable' may be true for some specific piece of tech, but about tech generally. Others need a lot of clarification. For example, "most people in tech sincerely want to do good" is true only if you have a very wide definition of good. Compare, for example, what Mark Zuckerberg thinks is 'good' with what you think is good. Also, I want to point out that 'tech' means way more than 'tech companies'. We have people working in schools, people working in government, people working in open source, all of whom are 'in tech' but who are not in tech companies. That's probably the biggest thing tech journalists overlook.

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Humans Wanted
Royal Bank of Canada, 2018/04/11

The gist of this report (44 page PDF) is that while technology is eliminating a lot of jobs, it won't eliminate work. But we have to be aware of what new skills and abilities the future workplace will require. Among the skills considered most important: active listening, speaking, and critical thinking. The first was a bit of a surprise - but was also the key skill I used in my last two research projects. You should read the Tony Bates summary, as he uses more words than I can here and thus provides a much more comprehensive outline. He also references UBC's Digital Tattoo showing how these skills overlap into our personal lives. In the same context, you might look at the recently released Business Council of Canada skills survey (28 page PDF) which reaches many of the same conclusions. See also Alex Usher's summary and discussion.

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What Do Google, Microsoft Stand To Gain From Launching Free MOOCs In AI
Richa Bhatia, Analytics India, 2018/04/12

Here's what the article says: "According to Susan Dumais, distinguished scientist and assistant director of Microsoft Research AI, the most important reason for launching free, publicly available AI training courses is to lend a broader push throughout the technology industry to fill a gap in workers with skills in artificial intelligence. 'AI is increasingly important in how our products and services are designed and delivered and that is true for our customers as well. Fundamentally, we are all interested in developing talent that is able to build, understand and design systems that have AI as a central component.'" So long as corporations need specialized training, MOOCs will continue to be a viable educational solution.

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What is an Empirical Educator?
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2018/04/11

I think the phrase 'empirical educator' is clever marketing and a not-bad attempt to capture the ideas of "efficacy, evidence-based, research-backed, data-informed, etc." under a single rubric. Philosophically, I am also an empiricist, in the classical sense (as compared to, say, 20th century empiricists, also known as logical positivists, or even its 20-21st century alternative, constructive empiricism). So maybe there's something interesting here. What we get is a "taxonomy of levels" (naturally, because the taxonomy of levels is the apex of education research). And (sorry) not a very good one, classifying between intuitive, mindful, meta-cognitive and social empiricist educators. These may be different ways of being teachers, but they are not different ways of being empirical. I think that if you're going to appropriate a term with hundreds of years of history behind it, you should do so more literately.

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How to Host a Student Media Festival
Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, 2018/04/11

I love the idea of a student media festival. We read "We tell people, 'It’s in Hollywood! It’s coming to accept awards, and it’s the Oscars for kids,'" which I guess is good marketing, but the big difference between a media festival and the Oscars is that the photos are actually shown and the videos are actually viewed. The main point here is that students are acting as creators and are sharing their media with each other and with Festival attendees. This sort of engagement creates lasting memories and lasting learning. "What I love about the festival," says manager Mike Lawrence, "is that kids actually get celebrated for their creativity while they’re learning. And they get to come down, and we have a microphone for them." The post is an audio interview with transcript.

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YouTube and Facebook Are Losing Creators to Blockchain-Powered Rivals
Camila Russo, Bloomberg, 2018/04/11

The idea of blockchain-enabled alternatives such as DTube is that viewers can pay for content directly through tips or subscriptions, thus avoiding the tracking and advertising pervasive on platforms like YouTube and Google. But a quick look at DTube shows the risks as well - scam links in the comments, for example, or unsavory videos on the home page. Yes, it can be worse than YouTube out there.Still, as the article notes, " The less centralized platforms keep more power—and potentially, privacy—in the hands of creators and users, says Ned Scott, who runs the Steem-based social network Steemit." That's why I'm on Mastodon, not Facebook, and distributed marketplaces like LBRY (read more).

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RSS is undead
Danny Crichton, TechCrunch, 2018/04/10

The gist of this article is that RSS is beyond saving. Even if it appears to have life, the fact that big companies are turning their backs on it means that it has no real future. One failing, writes Danny Crichton, is that it doesn't prioritize content for the user, as illustrated by the futility of subscribing to the Washington Post RSS feed, which has 1200 articles per day. "How exactly do you find good RSS feeds? Once you have found them, how do you group and prune them over time to maximize signal?" But even more significant, he writes, is the lack of analytics on the publisher side. "RSS doesn’t allow publishers to track user behavior." Also, "RSS also offers very few opportunities for branding content effectively." What RSS enabled, which commercial providers couldn't stand, were things like choice and privacy. There may not be a business model for these - which, of course, is the author's point. But they are what readers want. Which is why RSS refuses to die.

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“You might want to tell your instructors about this:” students as sales reps?
Kaitlyn Vitez, United States Public Interest Research Group, 2018/04/10

According to this article, Cengage is trying to convince student customers to send email messages to their professors urging them to adopt Cengage's 'flat fee for access' to course materials (previously covered here). The author quotes students arguing they don't like being used in this way. “It’s pretty aggressive, I don’t like how they’re using us to get into the professor’s head. The worst part is that professors could totally fall for it.” Though I agree with the criticism, note that this article is from an advocacy group, though most cites are coming from copy on Medium.

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How to Collaborate When You Don’t Have Consensus
Adam Kahane, Strategy+Business, 2018/04/10

I really like this article because it addresses the question of how to work together in real life. In real like, you don't construct shared meaning or agree on values and goals. You might not agree on much at all. This is when traditional calls for 'collaboration' are at their most facile. As the author writes, "teams collaborate: A boss leads everyone to see the problem the same way (probably the way the boss does), and then to agree on a way forward." In any sort of non-hierarchal arrangement, that doesn't work. You have to learn to work differently. As Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogotá, said, "The most robust agreements are those that different actors support for different reasons.” Do read this article. And when you advocate 'collaboration' as a part of education, or something that should be taught, think of the more complex picture this article evokes.

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Designing Projects so Students Have High Quality Project Based Learning Experiences
Jamie Back, Getting Smart, 2018/04/11

This post begins by referencing some different types of project-based and design-based learning and then in the main body lists "the six criteria outlined in the recently-released Framework for High Quality Project Based Learning (HQPBL) — Authenticity, Intellectual Challenge and Accomplishment, Public Product, Collaboration, Project Management, and Reflection." These are to me mostly reasonable (as always, I like to position 'cooperation' as an alternative to 'collaboration' for those people like me who don't get on well in groups but still want to interact with other people).

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The Ethics of Manipulation
Robert Noggle, Robert Noggle, 2018/04/10

This is a new article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and it is as timely as it is provocative. I have always thought of advertising as deeply unethical. In a 1996 article I criticized McDonalds because "advertise heavily and focus their advertisements at innocent children." I also qwuestion the use of manipulative tactics in education; this, it seems to me, changes it from teaching to propaganda. And of course we have all been reading about recent social media manipulation changing the oucomes of referenca and elections. But if it's unethical, why would this be? Is it because it bypasses reason? Is it because it's a type of trickery? Is it because it's a pressure tactic? Is it because it treats people as things? Is it because it bypasses autonomy? Is it, indeed, always wrong? Things to think about. Image: XKCD. I downloaded it, so I thought I'd get some use out of it.

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Securing the bava
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2018/04/10

I went through a similar exercise last week, and for similar reasons, switching from the unencrypted http format to the encrypted https. It was a pain, to say the least. I didn't go into static files and change all the existing http links from 20 years worth of web sites (nor will I, probably). What I did do, though, is set up my server so that any call to http on any of my sites will automatically redirect to an https call. I might still need to do more to make full Google-compliance, but if you're getting stuff from my site, you're getting it encrypted. See also: organizational linkrot.

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DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take one
Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review, 2018/04/10

This is another one of those education technologies where we might want to review the ethical implications before launching widespread deployment. According to this report, " we can now read the DNA of a young child and get a notion of how intelligent he or she will be." Allow me to say, "oh my gosh what a bad idea!" We don't even know whether IQ is relevant, now we're trying to predict it using possible specious correlations? Anyhow, the story continues, "Plomin outlined the DNA IQ test scenario in January in a paper titled The New Genetics of Intelligence, making a case that parents will use direct-to-consumer tests to predict kids’ mental abilities and make schooling choices, a concept he calls precision education."

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When virtual reality feels real, so does the sexual harassment
Jessica Buchleitner, Reveal, 2018/04/09

We may have new technology but we have the same old problems: “unbridled misogyny that spawns from gaming anonymity.” As this article notes, this type of poor behaviour has a long history: "Julian Dibbell’s 1993 Village Voice article A Rape in Cyberspace; A decade later, reports of avatar rapes began surfacing after Linden Lab’s virtual world Second Life launched in 2003," and misogynist comments "while then-17-year-old Gittins was playing World of Warcraft". Then there's gamergate, which erupted in the 2010s.The problem, in my view, is that the perpetrators don't think the behaviour is wrong. There need to be consequences, so that they learn that it is.

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Evolving Learning Paradigms: Re-Setting Baselines and Collection Methods of Information and Communication Technology in Education Statistics
David Gibson, Tania Broadley, Jill Downie, Peter Wallet, Educational Technology & Society, 2018/04/09

This paper reflects a shift in the data-gathering priorities in educational statistics. The authors write, "Sustainable development goal (SDG) 4, for example, moves beyond measures of access and increasingly focuses on the sustainability of education including issues of educational quality and student outcomes." I'm seeing this in my own work in business intelligence. The paper surveys some emerging trends and offers a list of recommended indicators for leadership and teacher training data. "the indicators of evolving learning paradigms need to focus on what teachers and students are doing with ICT in relation to teaching and learning." Image: FITSI

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Agent-based Individual Network Teaching System for Modern History Outline of China
Xianguo Jia, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2018/04/09

This approach makes me think of Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind, where an intelligent system is composed of a set of interacting task-specific agents. "An Agent is composed of different modules, and the information interaction mode and behavior and state control modes are different among various modules. They form an organic whole."

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Design of a Personalized Massive Open Online Course Platform
Junfu Xi, Yehua Chen, Gang Wang, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2018/04/09

You might think (as I did) that this has to do with personalized access to MOOCs, but the article is in fact about building an analytics engine into a MOOC platform. It's still an interesting article. "Through the analysis of learning behaviours on the MOOC platform, the model digs deep into the pattern of learning behaviours, and lays the basis for personalized intervention in the learning process."

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Elsevier launches Mendeley Data to manage entire lifecycle of research data
2018/04/09

While this appears to be a good announcement, my fear of course is that Elsevier will somehow clamp down on access as it tries to monetize this offering. In any case: " With Mendeley Data, researchers can safely record and share research data while improving its reuse via publication, while universities can showcase institutional outputs and improve their collaboration rate.

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A Taxonomy of Asynchronous Instructional Video Styles
Konstantinos Chorianopoulos, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2018/04/09

I suppose somebody had to write this article, and the taxonomy represents the prototypical apex of educational research, and it's in IRRODL so I'm sure the formatting was perfect. But really? Well, OK, it is interesting to see the list of different instructional video 'styles'. It would have made a good blog post, though I do have my criticisms. First, are these really 'styles'? There are two dimensions: the type of 'human embodiment' in the video, and the type of 'instructional media'. These are at the very least nothing more than 'presentation styles'. There are many more dimensions we could consider. Second, as a taxonomy, is it complete? Probably not; the author appears to have only consulted the usual sources, and not (for example) examined YouTube's vast library of instructional videos. Third, is it consistent? No: either a 'pentip' is a 'human embodiment' or a type of 'instructional media', but not both. A 'blackboard' is a blackboard, and a digital whiteboard is not a blackboard.

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Copyright 2018 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]

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