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by Stephen Downes
Jun 16, 2017
Toward a Better Internet: Building Prosocial Behavior into the Commons
Jane Park, Creative Commons, 2017/06/16
This is a longish post devoted to the idea that the license isn't everything in reuse (Alan Levine has been making this point for a dog's age). OIn this post, prosocial behaviours are contrasted with "negative behaviors that occur with online content sharing more generally." For example: using bots to remix and repost CC-licensed designs; harassment of marginalized groups; not respecting people’s desires and expectations about how content will be used; claiming CC0 public domain works as their own and monetizing them; and more. These are all allowed under the license, but are genuinely anti-social behaviours. What to do? Suggestions included a prosocial behaviour toolkit, tools that make prosocial behaviour easier, or reputational algorithms. But the very concept of 'prosocial' cannot be applied to amoral actors, or to those who follow a different morality: businesses and individuals, for example, who see the making of money as the only moral virtue. The only way to inhibit them is to create risk for anti-social behaviour. But this may require Creative Commons to take a sharply more political stance than I think it is willing to take.
Open University jobs at risk in £100m 'root and branch' overhaul
Sally Weale, The Guardian, 2017/06/16
I'm sorry to read this. I'm taking it to reflect the impact of the transition from more traditional approaches to digital delivery (maybe with a bit of FutureLearn thrown in). And this: "The OU’s finances have been hit particularly hard by the significant decline in the number of part-time students since the introduction of tuition fees, losing a third of students in the past decade." And of course the impact of policies that view education as a commodity to be sold rather than as a public services as core as fire departments, police servcies, roads and rail. The projected saving amount to about a quarter of the Open University's budget and there's no way the university will be the same again.
A Guide for Resisting EdTech: The Case Against Turnitin
Sean Michael Morris, Jesse Stommel, Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2017/06/16
"While students who use Turnitin are discouraged from copying other work," write the authors, "the company itself can strip mine and sell student work for profit." This has been true for some time, and has been tested in court. But the point of this article is to argue that, in general, "we participate in a digital culture owned and operated by others who have come to understand how easily they can harvest our intellectual property, data, and the minute details of our lives." We need to be aware of this and address this, but enacting agency, as Tim Amidon writes, iscomplex work "… [that] requires an increasingly sophisticated array of multiliteracies." The auithors offer a short rubric for evaluating these technologies, looking at who owns the tool, what data we have to provide to use the tool, and how the tool mediates pedagogy. And it is on these grounds - not merely legal grounds - where Tuirnitin is found wanting. They: “undermine students’ authority over their own work; place students in a role of needing to be policed; create a hostile environment; supplant good teaching with the use of inferior technology; and violate student privacy."
Introduction to ePortfolios and Mahara
Kerry Johnson, KerryJ's Neotenous Tech, 2017/06/16
This post is an overview of e-portfolios and Mahara. It's basically a first-person video demo of the software, useful for people who don't want to download and install Mahara in order to see how it works.
Traditional assessment rewards the wrong behaviors-here’s why
Alan November, eSchool News, 2017/06/16
"Students as young as first grade can learn to solve complex linear equations—an algebraic concept that generally isn’t taught until the seventh or eighth grade." How's that for a lede? This article (and accompanying podcast) are the result of marketing from Enlern, "a next-generation personalized learning platform built on the understanding that all learning is contextual and shaped by complex interactions between a student, teachers, curricula, peers, and other interdependent variables in the learning ecosystem." It would be good to see a more sceptical stance from this (and other) articles, but that would require analyzing the research, which would require a rather more in-depth analysis than these authors (or me, for that matter) to complete. But we can approximate. This paper, for example, reduces the problem of solving linear equations to a set of rule-selection patterns (I've seen this approach in logic as well). Compare with Kirschener, who would say the process of 'discovering' the correct rule to apply is unnecessary overhead. This paper likens rule selection to matrix problem-solving (it reminds me of my categroical converter). So is that what this is? Does that approach really generalize? Does the author talk with anyone else about this approach to learning? Sadly, no.
Reading the Word and the World: A Critical Literary and Autoethnographic Analysis of Educational Renovation in Vietnam
Hien Dang Ta , University of Arizona, 2017/06/16
This is a lovely PhD thesis (197 page PDF) that explores aspects of Vietnamese education from the perspective of critical pedagogy and critical literacy. Critical literacy is "about much more than learning to read the 'word'; a learner must learn to understand the political and social practices that constitute their reality before she/ he can make sense of the written words that describe that reality." Conversely (from Olsen and Friere), "what is making them (famous people and intellectuals) cultural illiterates . . . is their prejudice against race, against class, against the nation.” The author focuses on the process of 'educational renovation' where we see that "students reject a class-based conception in favor of a more humanistic conception of the human being" based on "their experiences or interactions with books published outside the classrooms." But the emancipatory perspective of critical pedagogy was not integrated into he educational process. There's a contrast between "the seeming conformity, obedience, and resignation that many present in formal settings, and the torrents of 'critical literacy' when they express themselves at the cafeteria." Image: Vietnamnet.
What fake news is doing to digital literacy
Bryan Alexander, 2017/06/15
The issues of fake news and digital literacy have received a thorough airing over the last year or so, but despite that, we still have too much of the former and too little of the latter. The responses, as Bryan Alexander characterizes them, fall into two camps: (lower-case-d) democrats, who feel people can and should learn to make their own information choices, and neo-gatekeepers, who call on regulations to govern Facebook and Twitter and the rest (and maybe even the traditional media) to help people cope. I fall mostly into the former camp, though I do think that the proliferation of hatred and abuse have no place in any form of media. What also concerns me is that the widely understood definitions of digital literacy, critical thinking, and related concepts, are incorrect. For example, Alexander states that "digital literacy means learners are social, participatory makers." Well, no - this describes a practice, not a literacy. And the western-centric perspective of commentators continues to frustrate. In a world where most people are young, how can you say "it’s old people, in big cities, afraid of the sky?" People today need to learn how to read, more than ever - not books and newspapers and such (though that wouldn't hurt), but signs and portents, geographies and cultures, people and technologies. That's not digital literacy, especially - that's just literacy - or, as Friere would say, "reading the world".
eleven-x marches its low-power IoT network across Canada
Ryan Matthew Pierson, ReadWrite, 2017/06/15
It's surprising but it also makes sense that there would be a completely separate wireless network for Internet of Things devices. "Existing wireless carrier signals make a lot of bandwidth available, but also require a lot of energy to maintain a connection to. IoT devices don’t need a lot of bandwidth. They just need enough to send data and receive commands." So using the low-energy network (eleven-x, in Canada, on a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN)) these devices can greatly extend their battery life by "as much as 20 years," according to the article. The drawback is that the rollout is for high-density urban areas only.
For-Credit MOOC: Best of Both Worlds at MIT?
Nick Roll, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/06/15
This article is making the rounds, but there are many reasons to be unhappy with it. The main idea is that MIT students were happy with a for-credit MOOC, according to a recent study. For some reason, Inside Higher Ed doesn't actually link to the study (but you can find it here). But even more to the point, as one commenter says, "If it wasn't massive, and it wasn't open, then why are we still calling this a MOOC? It sounds like all MIT did was experiment with offering a class online. Great, but hardly groundbreaking." And another notes, "Why is it news that a school has finally decided to offer an online course with credits for 30 students?" I know that the press likes to gush over anything with the 'MIT' label attached to it, like this press release, but this is ridiculous.
These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books
Sarah Laskow, Atlas Obscura, 2017/06/15
This post is mostly eye candy but it makes clear what is going on in a certain type of game-based learning, specifically, branching scenario learning (see examples here, here, here). They also display pretty clearly the weakness of the branching scenario: students can figure out pretty quickly what's going on and can realize that success can be earned by memorizing the maze rather than learning the content. I remember watching people play branching scenario laser-disk games in the arcade (back in the days when we had both arcades and laser disks). Rather than watching the movie they close their eyes and toggle though the options: left - right - left - left - etc.
Event Recap: The Future of Work with Coursera and General Assembly
Coursera Blog, 2017/06/15
General Assembly began as a cooperative workspace but evolved into an IT and business skills training company with centres around the world. This short article from Coursera describes its future work with this company. "Both companies found opportunities to help large organizations solve unique learning and development challenges," the authors write. "Peer-reviewed assignments and forum discussions, both of which the Coursera platform offers... develop communication skills, and offer program managers with a reliable means of evaluating employees."
Sign of the times: Crowdfunding for scientific research
Elizabeth Payne, Ottawa Citizen, 2017/06/14
I'm thinking that if I had to depend on crowd-funding to support my research I'd be in trouble. It's not that it isn't important and worthwhile - it's just that, of the top thousand things on a person's mind, my work isn't one of them. Which means they'd never get around to crowdfunding it. My newsletter is a bit more top-of-mind for people, but averaging $3000 a year isn't going to pay the bills. One of the reasons government funding - or public funding in general - works really well (and far better than free-market based approaches) is that it leverages the concept of bundling really well. Canadians agree on the whole that scientific research is important, and allocate a few hundred million (out of a budget of a few hundred billion) and let the civil service take care of the rest.
Continuity and change: employers' training practices and partnerships with training providers
Erica Smith, Andrew Smith, Jacqueline Tuck, Victor Callan, National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2017/06/14
This report (112 page PDF) from Australia makes the point that employer training practices haven't changed a lot over the years. They recognize the value of training, especially with respect to the major drivers: to improve the quality of the product or service, to adopt new technology, and to meet increasing regulatory requirements. That said, they probably wouldn't do it without government funding: "The availability of government funding remains a key reason for employers making use of nationally recognised training, and changes in funding over recent years at both Commonwealth and state levels have complicated the picture." They also need help: "A key element in the use of nationally recognised training by employers is the existence of a ‘navigator’, an organisation that can guide the employer through the complexities of the vocational education and training (VET) system."
Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision For Prioritizing Wellbeing With Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Systems, Version 1
Ieee, 2017/06/14
This report (138 page PDF) was released last December and a second version is now in process for release in late 2017. Here's the blurb from the website: "The purpose of this Initiative is to ensure every technologist is educated, trained, and empowered to prioritize ethical considerations in the design and development of autonomous and intelligent systems. [This document] represents the collective input of over one hundred global thought leaders from academia, science, government and corporate sectors in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, ethics, philosophy, and policy." The document is based on the following general principles: "1. Embody the highest ideals of human rights. 2. Prioritize the maximum benefit to humanity and the natural environment. 3. Mitigate risks and negative impacts as AI/AS evolve as socio-technical systems."
Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool for STEM, STEAM, Maker Education
Jackie Gerstein, Barbara Bray, User Generated Education, 2017/06/14
This post brings together a couple of idea current in the field: dresign thinking, and universal design for learning (UDL). The overview is in the diagram. Basically, it's a fairly standard eight-step process that cycles during the development and deployment process, based on principles of engagement, representation, action and expression. It's also cross-posed here.
A brighter future for Athabasca University?
Tony Bates, online learning and distance education resources, 2017/06/14
I have a personal attachment to Athabasca University, not only because I know so many people there, but also because I worked there from 1987-1994 and its mission and mandate had a formative impact on me. So like most of its current staff, I am supportive of the overall goals of the institution and would like to see it succeed. It branded itself as "Canada's Open University", which it is, and has been historically at the forefront of online and distance education. It has faced recent challenges, and this report outlines their underlying origins and a path forward. Like Tony Bates, I agree that it is an excellent report. I read it carefully. You can read Bates's article for an accurate summary of the report.
10 recommendations on HE from OEB Mid-Summit (Reykjavik)
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2017/06/13
The recommendations in this post are mostly unremarkable, but there is interesting reading ion the section critiquing the keynote by Audrey Watters at the same conference. "It was the most disturbing session I heard," writes Donald Clark, "as it confirmed my view that the liberal elite are somewhat out of touch with reality and all too ready to trot out old leftist tropes about capitalism and ideology, without any real solutions."
New Vision for the Monograph
Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/06/13
Now that we have the World Wide Web, a technology that puts digital content into the hands of everyone, academics and publishers are turning their attention (once again) to book platforms. One wonders why. But instances abound. This article profiles a tool called Topicgraph That "is part of a JSTOR project to take the digital scholarly monograph from a PDF to something more useful for researchers." Read their white paper (54 page PDF). This initiative joins the EDUPUB Alliance, formed in 2013, and IEEE's Actionable Data Book (ADB) specification under development. And of course (as one commenter notes) we have other monograph-only platforms like ebrary and VitalSource. U personally think that the WWW works fine, but of course it's a lot harder for publishers to lock down content, which is why they're always in search of new platforms. Image: BookPrinting.com.
Companies using AI to find their next employee
David Israelson, Globe and Mail, 2017/06/13
Over the last few years I've been talking about the idea of using a person's online presence directly to evaluate their credentials and skills, rather than depending on proxies like degrees and certificates. This is a step in that direction. An application called Plum "uses algorithms based on surveys filled out by both employers and prospective employees to come up with a shortlist of prospective matches – a bit like a dating app only with more professionally focused parameters."
IEEE P7004: Standard for Child and Student Data Governance
Ieee, 2017/06/13
This group was constituted a couple weeks ago and meets monthly. Here's the outline: " The standard defines specific methodologies to help users certify how they approach accessing, collecting, storing, utilizing, sharing, and destroying child and student data. The standard provides specific metrics and conformance criteria regarding these types of uses from trusted global partners and how vendors and educational institutions can meet them."
New Project: Digitizing Higher Education
George Siemens, elearnspace, 2017/06/12
This is George Siemens's latest new project. "The project, University Networks, involves working with a small number of universities, or specific faculties and departments, that are committed to rethinking and redesigning how they operate. My goal is to bring on 30 universities and over a period of 4 years, rethink and redesign university operations to align with the modern information and knowledge ecosystem." OK. But he writes, "They need to start with a basic question: If we were to create a model of higher education today that serves the needs of learners and society, what would it look like given our networked and technologically infused society?" I think the question needs to be even more basic: If we were to create a model of higher education today, who or what would it serve? Because I don’t see learners and society ranking high on the list most academics would write. Image: Pomona College.
The Histories of Personalized Learning
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2017/06/12
As Audrey Watters points out, these days the term 'personalized learning' can mean almost anything you want it to mean, and in a sense the ideas it encompasses go back to Rousseau, Aristotle, Dewey, and various others. But there's a more modern sense we generally comprehend, and the history of this idea, she says, is a relatively recent invention, replacing 'individualization' in the late 1990s. This concept, the "tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals," is a salve, a product, and an ideology, she says. "Individualization through teaching machines is therefore a therapeutic and an ideological intervention, one that’s supposed to act as a salve in a system of mass education. And this has been the project of education technology throughout the twentieth century." And while it's sold as "meeting the needs of students", in the hands of Silicon Valley ideology, it also becomes a method of "placing all responsibility on the individual". She asks, "can we maintain a shared responsibility for one another when institutions are dismantled and disrupted?"
[Comment]
Sony’s New toio Wants to Inspire a Future Generation of Robotics Engineers
Johnny Strategy, Spoon & Tomago, 2017/06/12
According to this article, "Toio is the result of 5 years of research into developing a toy that’s simple enough for kids to use, but also sophisticated enough to create a figurative sandbox where kids can explore the inner-workings of robotics engineering." How simple? It's just a pair of blocks that move on wheels. But "they respond to motion, are able to detect the exact location of the other, and can be programmed but also remote controlled." The visuals in this article make the case. I can imagine how these would be endlessly fascinating.
You Are What is Killing Librarianship
Veronica Arellano Douglas, ACRLog, 2017/06/12
I haven't covered libraries and librarianship a lot in these pages because my perception has been that the both have become increasingly marginal over the years. Sure, there's a digital-age story we can tell about the role of information professionals, but this story was resisted by those already in the field. As this article relates, people advocating new roles and new definitions would be told "You are what is killing librarianship" by traditional librarians. And I have to say, I read no small number of librarian posts of this ilk. But maybe this is beginning to change. As the author says, "We need to consider critical inquiry, reflection, discussion, and revision of our professional values and practices as an integral part of our work. The only thing that will ever 'kill' librarianship is our inability to reflect and discuss our interpretations of our professional values and practice." Image: Walter Lim.
Facebook, an Online Learning Platform?
Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/06/12
It makes sense for a platform to want to be a platform, and so it's no surprise that Facebook would look with eager eyes at online learning. And it's integrated deep into Facebook functionality. The course is offered as a service within a discussion group, rather than discussion group offered as a service within a course. "Moderators of some Facebook groups listed as school or class have recently noticed that they can add course units that link to one another. As members of the groups work their way through the units, their efforts are tracked by a progress bar."
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Copyright 2017 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]
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