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by Stephen Downes
Jan 26, 2018
Presentation
Innovation in Educational Technology
Stephen Downes, Jan 24, 2018, EIDOS64, Bayonne, France
What are the factors that motivate innovation in educational technology, and what is the outcome that results from those factors. In this talk Stephen Downes addresses the set of commonly understood ‘drivers’, ranging from factors ranging from demographic change to economic restraint to technology development. In addition, he also examines the ‘attractors’ for innovation, defining these as the factors that define what we want to accomplish through education, factors that range from personal self-improvement to workplace training to social and cultural development. From the perspective of these factors we can comprehend not only the recent history of educational technology, but also gain perspectives on the future as well. We can also comment on what we want, need and value in an education system, and thus frame the decisions that we will need to take in the short term in order to prepare for the long term.
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Share | People with tetraplegia master brain implant in minutes
Kevin Stacey-Brown, Futurity, 2018/01/29
Stories like this illustrate why I can be so positive about technology. A tetraplegic - unable to niove at all - is able to control a computer with thoughts alone. By focusing on "training the computer, not the user" designers are making the easy to learn and to use. "One participant in the study, 'T5,' a 63-year-old man who had never used a BCI before, needed only 37 seconds of calibration time before he could control a computer cursor to reach targets on a screen, just by imagining using his hand to move a joystick." Obviously the technology is some distance away from widespread use. But that it exists at all points the way to a rich future. Image" HPlus.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
2017 Top Ten Books on Online Learning
Contact North, 2018/01/26
I'm thinking that the definition of 'book' ought to be changed for the purpose of such lists, because it seems to me highly unlikelt that the ten most important long-form reads of 2017 were published only by the likes of Routledge and Springer. I think that publishers have masterfully created this exclusive category of 'book' as something only they produce, and elicit free publicity for their product through member-only lists such as this (we see the same effect on radio shows such as CBC's 'The Next Chapter'). I listed dozens of book-length publications through the year that belong on any list of 'Top Ten Books on Online Learning. To recognize a category whose defining feature is that it is not accessible online seems to me to be so last century. I think that if people have something to say about learning today, they should be doing so openly, and online, where they can face the full glare of criticism.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
With New Personalized-Learning Software, AltSchool Moves Into Public Schools
Benjamin Herold, Education Week, 2018/01/26
More on AltSchool's pivot from running schools to selling personalized learning software as reported in December (more), including numerous criticisms of the company. AltSchool also reports that it has discontinued surveillance technologies that "included fisheye ceiling cameras and constantly running audio recorders to harvest massive volumes of data on its students." Not because they were wrong, of course, but because "the team has recognized that the utilities of some of those [data] is less than they had hoped for."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Restaurant Group, Pearson to Offer Free Education to Employees
Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/01/26
The real headline isn't in the story but in the comments. "Is Pearson now in the business of awarding degrees?" asks Betsy Smith. Well, what if they are? What happens should the major publishers and content compabies obtain permission to grant degrees? The crisis that has been stalking higher education for more than a decade would suddenly appear as though overnight. Something like this is coming. If not today, if not with this contract, then some time, with some contract. When the education is offered for free to students, as in this case, it's hard to say no to the enabling factors.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
As robots replace Indian techies, online education strikes gold
Rajiv Rao, ZDNet, 2018/01/26
It's one thing to talk about robot teachers in an environment where human teachers abound, but in an environment like India's tech industry there is no possibility of the teaching load being carried by traditional educators. Hence the headlines. For example, "in a crucial deal struck between Indian IT major Tech Mahindra and edX... edX would reskill 117,000 of its employees in India and around the world in skill sets that are desperately sought-after today." Meanwhile "Coursera has attracted an astonishing 2 million learners in India and is tacking on 60,000 new learners every month." Meanwhile, "homegrown (Indian) companies such as AcadGild, UpGrad, Simplilearn, and Emeritus -- who are all experiencing unprecedented interest and business in their online offerings -- will continue to prosper."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Higher Education Is Drowning in BS
Christian Smith, https://www.chronicle.com//img/photos/biz/photo_85241_landscape_650x433.jpg, 2018/01/26
Perhaps unaware of Harry G. Frankfurt's publication employing the same rhetorical device, Christian Smith launches into a tirade lashing the contemporary university for everything from "universities hijacked by the relentless pursuit of money and prestige" to "third-tier universities offering mediocre graduate programs to train second-rate Ph.D. students for jobs that do not exist." Ah, but I love a good rant, and this is a good rant. I think that there's a point to many of his critiques, but I think my response to them on many would be the opposite of his. Also, a note on the artwork: the excrement of note is a flat, round pie-shaped deposit, not the organized pile depicted in the article, as any student in the field would know.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Grade inflation could be the next battleground for higher education
Allan Howells, Wonkhe, 2018/01/26
The argument against grade inflation is based on the absurd premise that education isd a competition that ought to have far nore losers than winners. That, at least, is my view. This article points out "There is no doubt that improvements in primary and secondary school education have better-prepared students for their transition into higher education." As well, students "in a market economy and paying fees of £9,000+ per year, are demanding better degree outcomes." But let's not forget the real victims here. "With more students gaining higher grades it has become difficult for employers to distinguish between candidates using degree classification alone." Yeah, I feel for them.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Relationships Can Be the Solution, Even to Difficult Challenges
edCircuit, 2018/01/25
I don't think that "healing" is the right response to the school shootings that are a weekly event in the United States. I think the response should be anger and rage and a determination not to "heal" until the technologies that enable these senseless slaughters are eliminated from society. Relationships? Sure, but only if they lead to political action that removes firearms from society. Any of these posts that focuses on thoughts and prayers and healing and relationships is actually creating more victims by somehow making it acceptable that this slaughter continues. If you are in educationm don't write about this issue unless you are writing about how to combat a use of technology that would in any other case be abhorrant and an outrage.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
PLATO and the History of Education Technology (That Wasn't)
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2018/01/25
My history intersects with that of Plato, but this intersection is short. Plato was, indeed, a computer0aided instruction (CAI) system, even as late as the 1990s when I looked at it. That made it innovative (though by 1990, not that innovative). But what it wasn't, in any way sense or form was open. A school like ours would invest either in Plato or in the internet; there wasn't a middle ground. Which means, I think, we need to ask where Plato fits in the history of instructional technology. Any number of people were creating mainframe 'teaching machines'. To my mind, the really important instructional technology advances were communications technologies such as Usenet and email, and sharing technologies such as FTP, Gopher, and the web. I tried to convince the Plato representatives to release an internet version of the software. But there was no future in that, I was told.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Why true equity in learning depends on proactive, not reactive, design
Julia Freeland Fisher, Christensen Institute, 2018/01/25
Julia Freeland Fisher did not hear my pitch for affordances, not outcomes, in innovation, but there is an overlap between what she says in her column here and what I said yesterday." The risk of oversimplifying personalized learning on the front end is that we may fail to successfully leverage what works, for which students, in specific circumstances; especially in light of messy human relationships, political dynamics, and histories of discrimination," she writes. The focus of her article is on the idea of designing for accessibility from the outset. But if you weren't interested in affordances, you wouldn't be interested in accessibility. Or so I claim.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Every study we could find on what automation will do to jobs, in one chart
Erin Winick, Technology Review, 2018/01/25
When you are preparing students for jobs of the future, what are you preparing them for? It's unlikely you know. "No one agrees. Predictions range from optimistic to devastating, differing by tens of millions of jobs even when comparing similar time frames."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
A Network of Experts: From Content Curation to Insight Curation
Joe Arets, Bob Danna, Charles Jennings, Laci Loew, Chief Learning Officer, 2018/01/25
This is a pretty interesting article and is worth reading in its own right. But I want to digress in this post with a comment that is really only periphrial to the article. The author writes, "evidence suggests that teams containing or connected to experts always outperform even the best and brightest of individual experts, particularly when enabled with software or technology." Yes. I have no reason to doubt this. The team outperforns the individual. If they're doing the same thing. My experience with teams is that they want to do the wrong thing very well. I find myself working alone a lot because the team wants to work with much more traditional (even 'folk') versions of knowledge and learning, notions that have to my mind long since been discredited. This to my mind is why diversity and autonomy are so vital to networks.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Implement OAuth in 15 minutes with Firebase
Michael Dowden, Martine Dowden, Michael McGinnis, O'Reilly, 2018/01/25
This is a glimpse at the underpinnings of the modern web. OAuth allows you to use your login from one website on another website. When you see those boxes saying 'log in with Google' or 'log in with Facebook' you're seeing OAuth. Firebase is a no-SQL database application. It allows for free-form data storage. The article is "a start-to-finish example with Angular and Typescript." Angulay is a Javascript framework that manages web applications. Typescript is a type of Javascript that compiles to Javacript (confusing? Javascript has an awkward and wordy syntax, so Typescript makes it a lot easier to create Javascript code). What makes all this work in 15 minutes is that " Firebase is a Google product, you already have a developer account by virtue of signing up for Firebase. Therefore, Firebase requires no manual creation of API keys for OAuth."
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Knewton Releases $44 Adaptive Digital Textbooks
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2018/01/25
OK, there's some merit to the idea of selling software-enhanced textbooks directly to students. But I am sceptical as to whether these represent an advanced on the 'programmed texts' of the 1970s. Additionally, the $44 covers only a two year license, rendering them useless for future reference.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
The One Answer to All Questions in Education
George Couros, 2018/01/23
Just so you're not hanging in suspense: "The answer to all questions in education keeps pointing me back to one thing; leadership." Well, no. Even the examples George Couros uses in this article don't point to that conclusion. What we see are cases where the administrator tries to help the underling instead of supervising them. Couros calls this 'leadership' but the correct word is 'service'. The leader's first words should be "let me help you succeed." Where this begins to fail is when the leader begins to define what 'success' looks like, and begins to work against success as defined by the underling. Now the underling needs to be 'educated', 'motivated' and 'transformed'. The underling is expected to provide the service, for the benefit of the leader. That, too, is 'leadership' and is the model actually rewarded in the workplace. So, no, not 'leadership'. Service.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
Online Courses Are Harming the Students Who Need the Most Help
Susan Dynarski, New York Times, 2018/01/23
I was sent this on Twitter today. You can get the gist of the argument from the headline. I've seen this sort of article before. This is irresponsible journalism. There are many causes of failure - learning deficiencies, nutrition, attention deficit, poverty, family issues, etc. - that online learning was never designed to address. So pretending it should solve these issues is irresponsible.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
What is innovation and how can businesses foster it?
Hajra Rahim, The Telegraph, 2018/01/23
This is a fairly decent article that summrizes some of the major streams of thought regarding innovation." Innovation means creating value from ideas," says John Bessan. People often confuse innovation, which requires the creation of value, with ideation, which is the process of thinking of new products or processes, he says. "If I have a great idea for a heart valve, I will need a long time to refine the idea, take on board other people's input and knowledge to develop it, and require users to test it." This characterization isn't new by any means, but I liked the way it captured the idea in an introductory fashion.
Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]
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Copyright 2018 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]
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