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OLWeekly ~ by Stephen Downes

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OLWeekly

by Stephen Downes
Mar 09, 2018

The Empathetic School
Carol Ann Tomlinson, Michael Murphy, ASCD Express, 2018/03/09

Strictly speaking, 'empathy' is the capacity to feel what someone else is feeling. That's not how it is used here. The authors write, " An empathetic school asks everyone in it—teachers, leaders, staff, and students—to diminish some of their self-focus and respond in a fuller and more informed way to those around them." Expressed more fully, this means countering "'the deeply flawed belief' - often exhibited in the way we do school - 'that teachers and students are interchangeable parts, rather than thoughtful, unique, caring, experienced, and often passionate human beings.'" The article points to an ethical dimension to education. But it's not clear here whether education is at its core an ethical activity, or whether education is some other sort of activity (growing, playing, doing, whatever) that is informed by ethics.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Who spreads fake news? On Twitter, humans are more likely culprits than bots, new study suggests
Matthew Braga, CBC News, 2018/03/09

Reports of this study on the spread of fake news are all over the media today. There are several major threads (and it's interesting to see which news outlet points to which). First, humans, rather than robots, are the ones that really spready fake news. Second, fake news spreads much more quickly than real news. Third, it reaches more people than real news. Why? " We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust." More: New Scientist, Vox, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, USA Today, BBC, Reuters.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

How Canadian student newspapers are going digital
Audrey Carleton, J-Source, 2018/03/09

As a long-time former denizen of the student newspaper office I'm still interested in what they're up to, and these days (for the last few years, actually) they're moving to digital. It only makes sense. " Despite the historical legacy that comes with printing a newspaper, the fact remains that students, like most audiences, consume news differently than they did years ago, and it’s up to campus publications to meet these demands." Ah - but it was so exciting, and terrifying, to publish in print for the first time.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

When is an OER an OER?
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2018/03/08

David Wiley argues that we shoul revise the definition of 'open educational resources', changing the criteria from requiring 'free access to the resource' to requiring only 'free access to the rights to reuse the resource'. This allows the resource itself to be not available for free, and yet still be an open educational resource. On this model, he suggests, "the public will always have free access to the resource, but not that the public will have free access to every copy of the resource." It's a clever argument but has the unpalatable consequence that a resource might not be available to anyone and yet still, by this definition, be classified as an OER.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Physarum Polycephalum
University of New Hampshire, 2018/03/08

So far as I know, this is the first slime mold to hold a faculty position at a university. The faculty page says " Physarum Polycephalum, a plasmodial slime mold, researches important problems from a non-human perspective, and enhances intellectual life on campus by helping students and colleagues to think about the world without human biases." This Vox article fills in the details. "Slime molds are not actually molds. They’re much more like amoebas — single-celled microscopic sacs that move around by altering their shape... when two or more slime mold cells meet, they dissolve the cell membranes that separate each individual and fuse together in one membrane... there’s no limit to the number of individuals that can join the collective, called a plasmodium. Each cell of the slime mold is making decisions that ultimately benefit the whole collective."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The free online courses that are putting college in reach
Nicole Freeling, University of California, 2018/03/08

Back in the days when people were debating whether online learning was as good as in-person learning I would make the argument that for many people the choice wasn't "online versus in-person", it was "online versus nothing". And for many people, as this article makes clear, that's still the choice. “You’ve got students whose parents are leaving at 6 in the morning to go to work in the fields, who maybe work two or three jobs. It’s just not realistic to assume our students can manage the transportation to community college,” Barajas said. “All of a sudden, we’ve got something that is extremely feasible we can offer our students, and all they need to be able to do is get online.”

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Bravery is Neither Created Nor Destroyed
Bud Hunt, Bud the Teacher, 2018/03/08

Nice post from Bud Hunt on his experiences during a student protest against guns. "It’s easy for me to forget, in the humdrum of spreadsheets and TPS reports and invoices and administrivia, that there are real fights to fight, and real struggles of the head and heart and hands that require my, and many others’ attention," he writes. "I hope you’re finding ways, even really little ways, to practice being brave and strong and true. Not only will they make the world a better place – but they’ll make you stronger for the next struggle that’ll need the best you can bring."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

How Critical Thinking and Media Literacy Efforts Are ‘Backfiring’ Today
Tony Wan, EdSurge, 2018/03/08

I certainly agree with danah boyd when she suggests that the focus on using critical thing as a means to "find the truth" is mistaken. She suggests that this approach to critical thinking has been "weaponized". “Right now, the conversation around fact checking has devolved to suggest that there is only one truth. We have to recognize that there are plenty of students who are taught that there is only one legitimate way of thinking, one accepted worldview,” boyd said. This, of course, was never the purpose of critical thinking. As I wrote back in 1995, "The idea of logic is truth preservation. What that means is that if you start with true beliefs, your reasoning will not lead you to false conclusions. But logic does not generate true beliefs."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Reflecting on the Original Big Idea for MOOCs
James DeVaney, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/03/07

The announcements yesterday from Michigan and Rice have actually been in the works for a long time. The three-year "Credits for MOOCs" program "allows students from the participating schools to enroll in specific free online courses from the other member schools and receive transfer credits for passing them." In this post James DeVaney, associate vice provost for academic innovation at the University of Michigan, describes the thinking behind the program. "MOOCs and MOOC derivatives (e.g. Teach-Outs, specializations, MicroMasters, MasterTrack, etc.)  are helping universities to expand how they think about engaging with the world," he writes. Related: Coursera introduces its first bachelor's.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Twitter Linguistics: A Study
Serena, Google Docs, 2018/03/07

I hope that one day the author (apparently a high school student) gets appropriate credit for what is an insightful and clear study on five elements of Twitter linguistics: the keyboard smash, phrase capitalization, period insertion, excessively long ellipses, and comma ellipses. The author summarizes the study perfectly: " I would like to note in my analysis is simply how complicated many of these linguistic phenomena are... there might not be a definitive explanation at all to why certain slang works and why others do not... online linguistic phenomena are not simple blips. As seen from this survey, they are extremely complex signified meanings masked by extremely simple and elementary signifiers." See also: Dude srsly? and The Language of Twitter.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

More than 120 live online trainings just released on O'Reilly's learning platform
O'Reilly, 2018/03/07

I don't normally post list of course offerings like this (so don't ask) but I wanted to highlight the business model here (I also wanted to complain bitterly about the use of the word 'trainings' as a plural noun - the English language groans in agony). First, O'Reilly is a publisher, not an educational institution, but they're moving into that territory. These are live online events, but the archives are stored and can also be used as training resources. Even more to the point, access is by subscription model only - they'll set you back $US 39 a month if you're a sole learner, more for groups. This is about the pricing average for these bundled services. I don't know what the subscription rates are like, but it doesn't take that many to turn into a substantial revenue stream.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

A quick and simple definition of microservices
Mac Slocum, O'Reilly, 2018/03/07

This article "covers some of the basics of microservices: what they are, how they work, and what you need to keep in mind before implementing them." These are small autonomous services. The idea is that they work together in groups to produce ensemble effects. " In a microservice architecture, the services tend to get simpler, but the architecture tends to get more complex. That complexity is often managed with tooling, automation, and process."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”: A Toolkit That Can Help You Scientifically Separate Sense from Nonsense
Josh Jones, Open Culture, 2018/03/06

I link to this “Baloney Detection Kit” to contrast the accounts of critical thinking that depend a lot on source and authority. Sagan (like most scientists) isn't having it. "Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." And we all know not to trust the experts. More: Carl Sagan, Pale Bue Dot. Also: The Frontier is Everywhere. Sagan was always my hero.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Delivering digital change
Sarah Knight , JISC, 2018/03/07

"Digital used to be an add-on to core business but those are days behind us, now," writes Sarah Knight. "It's time for universities and colleges to stop treating digital as an accessory and to integrate it fully within all aspects of their business activities." This is in the context of introducting a new 'senior leaders briefing paper' entitled Delivering digital change: strategy, practice and process (8 page PDF, with a lot of white space and images, because senior leaders don't read long things). There are key points in case even that's too much text, including helpful advice such as "Leaders should develop confidence in their own digital capabilities, modelling the behaviours they want their staff to display."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What are the expectations of disabled learners when participating in a MOOC?
Paul Feldman, JISC, 2018/03/06

I think this is a good question to ask but I'm really not sure it was asked properly in this report. We read, for example, that " disabled learners appear to be more interested in these subject areas: Society, History and Arts and Nature and Environment." Does that have anything to do with their self-identification as disabled learners? Or is it just a reflection of a small number of survey participants (which is not disclosed)? Do we really know that "disabled learners are particularly interested in taking up MOOCs to determine if they can study at a higher educational level and to link to voluntary work?" I'm saying we don't. Image: MIT (I typed in the title and did an image search and this came up. Google works in mysterious ways.)

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Over Sharing
Garett Sloane, Ad Age, 2018/03/05

This item comes in the context of reports that people are sharing less content through social media - "social sharing of content has been cut in half since 2015." It describes the phenomenon of people quitting Facebook because of fake news, relentless advertsing, and a general lack of value in a service that isn't even a record of anything. I quit Faacebook in September of 2016. There was a short-term impact on my connectivity but this effect has essentially disappeared. It helps that I publish on my own website, an it helps that I have smaller more personal communities I belong to. (Note: you might encounter a whitelist wall at Ad Age. Since I switched ad blockers from AdBlock Plus to Ublock Origin my problems with sites demanding I whitelist have ended).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Open Educational Resources in TVET
UNEVOC, UNESCO, 2018/03/05

Simple but very useful OER source list: " On this page you find a commented list of platforms and services that provide or give access to openly licensed content for Technical and Vocational Education and Training." Three dozen sources are listed with short descriptions. More from UNEVOC. That is all.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.
MIT Technology Review, 2018/03/05

I have always felt that great wealth is prima facie evidence of criminality. But this study (24 page PDF) suggests that another factor is involved: luck. It's certainly not intelligence, skill or hard work: there's no correlation between those factors and wealth. This article reportswork by Alessandro Pluchino and colleagues at the University of Catania in Italy. “It is evident that the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones,” they say. “And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones.”

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What We Can Learn From Glosses And Research Into Glosses
Philip Kerr, Adaptive Learning in ELT, 2018/03/05

A gloss is "‘a brief definition or synonym, either in (your first or second language) which is provided with [a] text’ They can take many forms (e.g. annotations in the margin or at the foot a printed page), but electronic or CALL glossing is ‘an instant look-up capability – dictionary or linked’". It's where the term 'glossary' comes from. The question here is, do glosses help reading comprehension in language learning. But the more meta - and more interesting - question asks whether we can rely on meta-analyses to learn the answer to questions like the first question. "We need to be cautious about using meta-analyses and effect sizes... we cannot necessarily assume that the findings of meta-meta-analyses are educationally significant."

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Copyright 2018 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]

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