Presentation
Trends in the Future of Learning
Stephen Downes, Dec 15, 2017, Learning Futures Workshop, Gatineau, Quebec
Work in the future will require higher levels of analysis, access to experts, and greater autonomy. How can the College@ESDC equipped itself for what’s coming? What form(s) is learning, and especially operational training, likely to take in 10-15 years?
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The World's Best Film School is Free on YouTube
David Pierce, Wired, 2017/12/22
Wired is prone to grand overstatements, and that's probably the case here as well. Having said that, the phenomenon they point to is real. The article points to YouTube advice channels such as Every Frame a Painting, VSauce, CGP Gray and Lessons from the Screenplay. The article talks about the "YouTube Film School", but it's just a concept, not an actually existing thing. I did find something called "No Film School", though. Also, there's a video talking about five channels that replace film school: D4Darius, Filmmaker IQ, Every Frame a Painting, This Guy Edits, and Rocketjump Film School. You'll find more if you search. What these channels don't replace, of course, is the feedback that you would receive from instructors and peers. You have to set that up for yourself, joining channels, commenting on others' work, and engaging in the filmmaking community.
Critical Thinking Skills to Help Students Better Evaluate Scientific Claims
Leah Shaffer, Mind/Shift, 2017/12/22
So much of what people are calling "critical thinking" and even "digital literacy" revolves around the idea of evaluating claims. This article in Big Think is a case in point, describing efforts to engage students in assessing articles and thinking like a scientist. I think that this is misplaced, and causes students to go in search of irrelevant data, for example, that "the study was financed by an environmental advocacy group, not an unbiased source." Gak! Who, exactly, is "unbiased" on the environment? I think evaluating claims is just a small part of a much broader discipline of how to think, and this articles like this do a disservice to that broader objective.
The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning
Benjamin Doxtdator, A Long View on Education, 2017/12/22
This is a more recent article from Benjamin Doxtdator on personalized learning (the previous one cited was from July). "Chomsky and Herman describe how five filters – media ownership, revenue through advertising, reliance on official sources, flak, and anticommunist ideology – shape not only the opinions expressed in the media, but the selection of what is newsworthy in the first place," he writes. "Here, I slightly modify their filters to examine how the venture philanthropy (specifically, The74 and EdSurge) media frames personalised learning."
The Year We Found Out Everything We Thought We Knew About the World Was Wrong
Umair Haque, Eudaimonia, Medium, 2017/12/22
To my mind, this is the same argument I've been having with David Wiley. "The necessity to buy back the basics of life that citizenship should entail from the highest bidder, while selling one’s self to the lowest bidder, is not really much freedom at all, compared to the simple, humble, gentle right, ability, capacity, to live a sane, healthy, happy, and full life, that hurts no one, and lifts up everyone." Turning what ought to be social goods into capital goods is a fundamental error.
Expectations make the difference
Matthias Melcher, x28s new Blog, 2017/12/22
Maybe nothing will come out of the idea of the 'pedagogy of harmony', or maybe I have at last found a worthy response to the idea of the pedagogy of the oppressed and even the pedagogy of hope. In any case, Matthias Melcher has teased out one fascinating strand, the idea that our exopectations make the difference between whether we are in harmony with the world of whether things sound a note of dissonance. It comes from an example offered by Laura Ritchie. Here's what she says: "The relationships of the notes, the ratios and intervals found within the natural harmonic series have not changed over the years, but the capabilities of reproducing the notes on manmade instruments has... What has also changed is our tolerance for adding new ideas to the conception of harmony." As we grow as individuals, as we grow as a society, we can become harmonious in new ways, by changing (and improving) our expectations.
Our Staggering Class Divide Starts With Childrearing (Joan Williams)
Larry Cuban, Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice, 2017/12/21
There is a truth in this article and an even deeper lie. The truth is that upper class children are educated differently than lower class children. "The ideology of natural growth prevalent among the poor and the working class contrasts with the 'concerted cultivation' of the professional elite.... Concerted cultivation is the rehearsal for a life of work devotion: the time pressure, the intense competition, the exhaustion with it all, the ethic of putting work before family." The suggestion nhere is that if we taught poor people to increase their drive, they would be successful to. But Larry Cuban calls this out as a lie (I think). In fact, the other big difference between upper class and lower class children is that the upper class children are rich. They can afford to be independent. They don't have to be respectful.
A Robot Goes to College
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/12/21
Not only did the robot pass the course, it identified 31 forms of love. That's pretty interesting, but I thinlk it's weird that a course in the Philosophy of Love included " a class debate about the use of nonlethal versus lethal weapons (an extension of a discussion about love and conflict) with students from an ethics course at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point." Maybe it's just me, but it feels like everything is being militarized. "At the end of the course, Bina48 received a certificate of participation signed by the provost, and is due to be enrolled as a guest student in Barry’s Robot Ethics class next semester." Maybe that course will include a unit on tank warfare.
Patterns in Contemporary Canadian Picture Books: Radical Change in Action
Beverley Brenna, Shuwen Sun, Yina Liu, in education, 2017/12/21
I was disappointed to find that there were no pictures in this article about picture books, just a few tables. This article doesn't ask whether picture books are still “the staple of children’s literature” - that's just a given - but instead enquires into 'how exactly they are changing in contemporary iterations," and in particular, whether there is "evidence of Radical Change" (capitalized because there's a Reference). According to the authors, "findings such as a broadening of audience-age, with particular picture-book titles for older readers only, and invitations for multidimensional travel out of the texts at hand, are hugely provocative, adding to the implications originally suggested by Dresang’s notion of new perspectives and changing boundaries."
The New Media Consortium: its sudden death and what comes next
Bryan Alexander, 2017/12/21
"The New Media Consortium (NMC) regrets to announce that because of apparent errors and omissions by its former Controller and Chief Financial Officer, the organization finds itself insolvent. Consequently, NMC must cease operations immediately.” Bryan Alexander writes., "The first and most important thing to bear in mind here is the human tragedy suffered by the NMC staff (Archive.org link; the official site’s page has been down for a few days)... There’s a crisis here, one requiring immediate, practical responses. We can also look ahead a bit and get creative... I think that’s a splendid way – maybe the best way – to honor the legacy of the New Media Consortium: to build upon the smoldering ruins something new, creative and amazing." Coverage from EdSurge, Inside Higher Ed, Campus Technology. Note that the NMC website is back up and accessible today.
Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences
Richard Fisher, Open and Shut?, 2017/12/21
In this post Richard Fisher argues that "polemical articles by Open Access enthusiasts claiming to know ‘what researchers want’ (when in reality what they mean is ‘what I and my immediate peer groups would find most helpful’) can be profoundly off-putting to those outside the circle of advocacy." There's a presumption of "universal acceptance of the principles behind Open Access" which leads him to "wonder which planet these agencies are inhabiting." Some examples: in STEM, research is used to create other products and services, which ultimately pay for the research, but in non-STEM fields the research output is the product. Moreover, "the presumption that ‘the law’ is, fundamentally, that law which applies to the state of California" is clearly mistaken." Even the "‘taxpayer pays’ arguments for Open Access" is weak, he argues, especially in research-exporting jurisdictions like the UK "where at least 80% of the consumers of British-originated research will not have contributed direct tax revenues towards its creation." There are some interesting points here.
A Field Guide to 'jobs that don't exist yet'
Benjamin Doxtdator, A Long View on Education, 2017/12/20
I found this article via the most recent of Audrey Watters's posts summarizing 2017. It traces the origin of the claim that "We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” It also attempts to debunk it. The claim appears to have its origin in a Bill Clinton speech in 1996. It shows up again in a 2006 speech by former Education Secretary Richard W. Riley. It was repeated by Ian Jukes and cited by Karl Fisch an d put into a video by Scott McLeod. It was also cited for a time by Cathy Davidson and by the World Economic Fourm and attributed to Jim Carroll and to the Innovation Council of Australia (both the report and the Council have disappeared) and to this 1999 report from the U.S. department of labour, which contains the assertion (illustrated) if not the precise number. But is it true? Doxtdator writes that "Andrew Old and more recently Michael Berman and the BBC have provided a solid de-bunking." But do they? Sure, the 65% figure is arbitrary, and depends a lot on how you count jobs. The BBC uses the 600 job titles in government labour surveys, but these are very broad categories, eg. "software professionals" and "IT user support technicians" and don't reflect change within categories. As Catrhy Davidson says in the BBC interview, "I think all jobs are new jobs."
Google Maps's Moat
Justin O’Beirne, 2017/12/20
The 'moat' in the title represents how hard it will be for competitors, like Apple Maps, to catch up. The article as a whole is a detailed analysis of what Google has been doing with its maps service in the last year and especially how it hasd been combining different kinds of data to create new data - such as, for example, shapes of buildings extracted from satellite projections, and business types extracted from street view, combined to form 'areas of interest' featuring clusters of shops and restaurants. From experience I can say that this new data greatly assists tourism and exploration.
Global education rankings to measure tolerance
Sean Coughlan, BBC News, 2017/12/20
According to this report, the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will be testing students' "global competence" in the next round of evaluations. "It's intended to find out how well young people can understand other people's views and cultures, how they can look beyond the partisan echo chamber of social media and distinguish reliable evidence from fake news." The tests, and the results, could be controversial. "As an example, the OECD suggests a question about different interpretations of evidence for global warming, in which the same information seems to have been used to produce charts supporting and opposing claims about climate change. Students are asked to analyse the evidence and to question how data might be used selectively or how the findings of research can be influenced by whomever has funded it." I can't wait.
Introduction to Psychology with Professor Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom, Yale University, 2017/12/20
Interesting project. According to the email, "Knowledge 4 All Foundation together with the UNESCO Chair in OER in Slovenia is testing a new machine translation service specifically tailored for educational texts from EN to 11 languages." This is one of two videos they're using as a test case (Physics I: Classical Mechanics is the other). Now they want your feedback on how well the translation worked. "We need your help to answer a short survey that is available under each video and at the top of the course," writes Igor Lesko in the email. "Your answers will help us understand how valuable this product would be to other users. You can select the languages in the video player by clicking on the CC button." Note that you'll need to be able to run Flash; the site refused to run the video for me and suggested I use a "more modern browser."
We must do more now to prepare young people for the future of work
Dave McKay, Globe and Mail, 2017/12/19
This is an op-ed from Dave McKay, president and CEO of Royal Bank of Canada. We are entering a skills revolution, he writes, but Canadian students are not being prepared for the future. We need "people who work well with technology and work well with people – that can be the Canadian difference." He touts an RBC program called Future Launch - actually started last March using a system called Talentlink. Here's the content. The program also includes "a 'no résumé required' paid internship program, with selection based on skills, not work experience" in partnership with WE Schools, a UK-US-based charity (download the WE Schools kit).
Workflow Strategy for Those Left Behind
Roger C. Schonfeld, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2017/12/19
This is a two part article (part one, part two) describing how the 'big two' (Elsevier and Digital Science) are in a race to create "an entirely new class of products, those that support research workflow for the sciences" and how this could "marginalize other publishers large and small." The case is well made. "With the SSRN and Digital Commons preprint services that Elsevier has been purchasing, there is ample potential for connections with article submission and review." But what should the other publishgers do? Here's where the article falters. It likens the situation to the challenge faced by Google from Apple when it launched its iPhone; Google's response was to build a phone of its own and to open-source (but not really open) the Android operating system. But the response to centralization is not more centralization, it's to offer a distributed alternative, and that's what Google did, allowing multiple providers to work together to respond to Apple.
The next generation of research – it’s online and open to all
Daniela Duca, JISC, 2017/12/19
This article points us in the direction of some startups representative of the trend toward open research. The three are: Sparrho, whose "mission is to make science more discoverable, understandable and shareable"; Reveal Digital, who "are helping to bring collections of specialist content, such as Independent Voices, into the digital age"; and Konfer, "escribed by its founders as ‘Google meets LinkedIn’."
Is Wikipedia a Trustworthy Academic Resource? Scientists Think So
Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech, 2017/12/19
Though I have some issues with how it is managed and how it is produced, I still consider Wikipedia to be a valuable resource and one that I am quite willing to reference in my articles. And that's the point of this article: Wikipedia is useful to me because I'm sceptical, because I'm careful to read articles in the context of my own wider knowledge, and because I cite them as background, not authority. Other reserachers seem to be doing the same. “Our research shows that scientists are using Wikipedia and it is influencing how they write about the science that they are doing... We need to change the conversation from one of abstinence to intelligent information consumption."
Measuring And Driving Usage Of Teams For Education
Sam McNeill, Microsoft Education Blog, 2017/12/19
The headline refers to Microsoft Teams, and not to teams in general. There's a reference back to this article on how to measure activity in Teams. In this article Sam McNeill looks specifically at measuring the use of Teams in education. It focuses mostly on how to extract data from the application to reveal usage. There is repeated reference to the idea that "if you value it, measure it". But increasingly, the tool does the measuring. "The future of O365 Admin reporting is clearly heading towards personalised recommendations on how to maximise the tools to drive efficiency and smarter collaboration within your organisation." Here's the question, though: should we trust the recommendation from the tool to use the tool more? That's like Facebook admitting that using the site poses a mental health risk, but then recommending people use the site more.
5 Ways to Teach How the Brain Learns
Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher Blog, 2017/12/18
I was expecting this to be pop pseudoscience, and while it's a bit pop, the five things seem pretty solid to me. They are: you can't learn when stressed, learning is based on similarity, learning requires repetition, the brain changes and adapts, and assessment (and hence reflection) is important. The interviewee is Ramona Persaud, producer and director of the documentary, Grey Matters. Interviewer Vicki Davis sometimes struggles with some of the concepts - you can see her try to match the ideas to things she already knows. But she does a service by bringing these to her readers and would do well to revisit these ideas in future columns.
Frontiers for Young Minds
2017/12/18
Frontiers for Young Minds is a scientific journal written by leading researchers but directed toward and edited by kids. "Distinguished scientists are invited to write about their cutting-edge discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the authors how to best improve the articles before publication." I love this concept. And there are so many scientists - it could be extended almost indefinitely. It was launched in 2014 and has involved 300 authors and 500 reviewers since then.
Kamadia: Why I didn't get a PhD – and why you shouldn't either
Aly Kamadia, Ottawa Citizen, 2017/12/18
I don't have a PhD but I have a PhD education - that is, I completed all the coursework for my PhD, passed five rigorous comprehensive exams, and prepared a dissertation proposal. I also spent four or five years teaching classes as part of my graduate assistantship. What I didn't do was to complete the dissertation; my committee felt I shouldn't be studying network theories of mind. So I am in a position to evaluate (for myself at least) Kamadia's assertion based on the work involved, not the paper you get. Was it worth it? For me, yes. But note: I never paid tuition, and I was paid through my assisstantship throughout. But it made me twice the philosopher I was when I started. It was the difference between knowing about philosophy and doing philosophy.
Focusing on the Process: Letting Go of Product Expectations
Jackie Gerstein, User Generated Education, 2017/12/18
This post draws a useful distinctoon between viewing education as a product and viewing it as a process. Quoting from Rogers’ Freedom to Learn Gurstein writes, "The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and incorporation into oneself of the process of change." The article lists the benefits of a process-based approach for both learners and educators, and points to examples of process-oriented learning activities.
Pearson Open Sources Equella—Properly
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2017/12/18
The most interesting bit is the pair of disclosures at the bottom of the article. What is the "yet-to-be-announced e-Literate project" being sponsored by Pearson? What is the other "yet-to-be-announced e-Literate project" being sponsored by Unicon? Further, why does Michael feldstein call Apereo, a university non-profit, "the closest thing higher education has to the Apache Foundation," as opposed to, say, Moodle? Anyhow, the main point in this article is that Pearson open-sourced Equella, a type of learning object repository, and did it "properly", handing it off to Apereo to run.
Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking
Mara Hvistendahl, Wired, 2017/12/18
This article descibes China's embrace of electronic payments using WeChat and Alipay, and discusses its extension into personal credit. It them suggests a linkage between various plans to allocate people 'social credit' according to their social behaviour (for example, whether they were charged with offenses, whether they disrupted spociety). In fairness, it then contrasts these with credit rating systems in North America. It raises questons about the surveillance such systems require, and questions the accuracy of the ratings that result. Yes, social credit could be employeed as an unaccountable means of social control. On the other hand, it could be a way to finally address the problem of corruption and cheating in society.
Moocs can still bring higher education to those who really need it
Diana Laurillard, Eileen Kennedy, Times Higher Education, 2017/12/18
For something that's supposed to be dead, MOOCs are still very much alive. And according to this articlee, they have more potential for the future. "Moocs are still multiplying and branching out into new forms of accredited learning experiences," write the authors. Millions of people "are capable of studying online but live too far from affordable campus education. For them, online learning might be their only chance to study. Given that the digital world now enables remote employment as well as remote learning, online learning could be a lifeline to a level of prosperity that has never before been possible." But they have yet to reach their goal of offering access to learning to children. "We need tens of millions of as-yet untrained teachers to educate school-age children. Moocs cannot directly teach those children, but they can train non-professional adults to become those teachers."
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: stephen@downes.ca
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