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by Stephen Downes
Mar 18, 2016
Presentation
Virtual Worlds on the Go
Stephen Downes, Mar 13, 2016, Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, Online, via AvaCon
In this presentation I speculate about the future of virtual worlds in learning when they are mixed with mobile devices and performance support systems. Presented inside a virtual world using AvaCon.
Share | Philosophy in Figures
Ryan Reece, Philosophy in Figures, 2016/03/16
There are some pretty good images in this all-too-brief 'Philosophy in Figures' Tumblr blog. The one that caught my eye is the 'philosophy of science' image that has been circulating recently on Facebook (without attribution, natch). You could locate me somewhere on the border of instrumentalism and relativism, and metaphysically eliminativist. The diagram is interesting because for each approach in the philosophy of science, there is a corresponding approach in educational theory (many of the adherents in education appear not to know anything about these bases). So, for example, for various flavours of constructivism, we have various flavours of constructive empiricism. Naive instructivism takes us all the way over to realism (which is why 'content knowledge' is so much more important than structure or process).
Who You Know Matters. So Why Isn’t Edtech Helping Students Build Social Capital?
Julia Freeland Fisher, EdSurge, 2016/03/16
I have commented on numerous occasions that one of the main products elite universities sell is not high-quality learning (they're really no better than anyone else) but rather access to networks of power and influence. That's why we see the same names from the same schools show up over and over again in research and news reports - the people who run media are writing about their friends from Yale or wherever who run businesses or research. Poor students, meanwhile, even if given access to the same 'education', are locked out of this support network. So why does "the edtech market remains focused squarely on content delivery and assessment." This is a big part of what I'm trying to accomplish with personal learning. Not just tools that connect students to mentors, projects and coaching (though these help), but also, tools that connect them to each other. Support networks shouldn't just be something the elites have, they should be something everybody has.
Threat to openness: managing access to public archives
Lawrence Serewicz, Thoughts on management, 2016/03/16
Though the focus of this article in on access to public archives, many of the same concerns apply to educational resources. The author considers the nature of openness, drawing for example from Popper's work, and notes that it consists not only of the absence of barriers but also something like the ability to comprehend and use the resources. These constitute the basic types of threats to openness: first, archival, where "where threats to funding become a threat to limit access to archives"; second, societal, "when people no longer value or understand archives"; and third, resistance to openness "because of cultural reasons or for security reasons." Only the first of these is treated in any detail, in an extended 'Part 2', but I think the overall framework is of value. Image: Open Society. See the complete set of presentations from the Threats to Openness conference.
Towards a New Pedagogy
Contact North, 2016/03/16
MOOCs are impacting learning in many ways, says the author (11 page PDF), and the overall result is that we're looking at pedagogy differently. Interestingly, though, "MOOCs showcase the developments which online learning and other innovations have been encouraging for some time: they are not so much initiating these developments as acting as an accelerant for them," according to the author. For example, we're seeing such things as course unbundling, separation of delivery and development, separation of assessment from delivery, separation of certification, and more. The author looks at these in some depth. And hee makes it clear that we're at the beginning of the phenomenon, not the end: "What is clear is that extensive investment needs to be made in learning design for MOOCs and that such design needs to take full account of not only what we now know about adult learning." Image: Brian R. Gumm.
Why I Love the Open Learning XML Format and XBlocks
George Kroner, edutechnica, 2016/03/16
There's a bit of a sense in which I feel this is a post from ten years ago, but I am faced with the inescapable fact that learning management systems (LMSs) haven't really changed in that time. And they've been emplying the same disjointed design all that time:
learning tools separated from learning content links everywhere with several clicks before actually reaching learning material new tools just added to the bottom of ever-increasing dropdownsThe author recommends Open Learning XML, which is the 'markup language' edX provides for course authoring (note that i see no sign of this in the OpenEdX tools I'm using). It "prompts the course author to think holistically about how the course design fits together and how the courseware operates as a whole instead of considering each piece separately." This is indeed a better approach. It's also something FutureLearn does particularly well.
vs
Visual self-directed informal learning in FutureLearn MOOC
Inge de Waard, Ignatia Webs, 2016/03/16
Inge de Warrd diagrams the results of her stidy of FuutureLearn open online course participants. "The key inhibitors or enablers of self-directed, informal learning are: motivation and learning goals," she writes. "Motivation (in most cases intrinsic motivation) keeps them wanting to learn more, which is not the same as following all the content of the MOOC, simply absorbing that content which is relevant to the learner. And if the learning goal/s are not felt as being benefited by the MOOC, learners stop engaging in the MOOC. The learning goals (which can be professionally or personally driven, or both for those happy with their jobs) are what make learners move above and beyond: they will solve tech problems, they will connect to others, they will overcome lack of confidence, they will organise their learning against the time constraints."
Safety in the Cloud
David Burg, Tom Archer, Strategy+Business, 2016/03/15
Instead of putting up a shield, argues this article, cybersecurity can be found in deep data analytics. "It would defend itself by monitoring activity across all its online systems, studying not just the moves of hackers but the actions of legitimate customers as well." The key to this, write the authors, is to put data into the cloud, and specifically "offerings such as Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft’s Azure." These companies have made major investments in data monitoring and use analysis. They can watch every interaction, every keystroke, and detect intrusion before it happens using pattern recognition. All very good - but who watches the watchers?
7 Things Higher Education Innovators Want You to Know
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2016/03/14
I'm not sure exactly who these innovators are, but they're nobody I'm talking to. I don't, for example, see 'education' as being any more measurable than it was. I think it's becoming less measurable, which is a good thing. Nor do I see why we would need a "common definition of college affordability," especially if the only constant in the world of college is change. True, traditional instruction is no longer sufficient for students (it probably never was) but we need more than bland statements like "we need more innovation". And yes, we should take data seriously, but taking data seriously means not being data-driven (because we know that data will drive us straight over a cliff without blinking an eye). Yes we need digital content. But surly this doesn't count as innovation any more, does it? And we don't "need to change the way students think," we need to change the way we think theey should think - and maybe, stop telling them how to think. What I think innovators really want you to know is that you have to get out of the comfort zone of traditional higher education to understand innovation. (p.s. I linked to the printable version of this text, not the web version as I usually do, because I found it annoying to have such a short article spread out over four slow-loading pages. No need for that.
Beyond Engagement: Making School Personal
Mike Crowley, The Synapse, 2016/03/14
It's interesting that this would come out right after the other post. Mike Crowley's short commentary suggests to me that the idea of personal learning is taking hold in the wider community (and happily that people are getting away from talking simply about personalized learning). "For Kohn the imperative is personal learning, “that entails working with each child to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests." Oh, but there's still confusion in this article. We have Kohn saying "it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well," which is by no means proven. And we have the suggestion that we produce "a business school brain with a social worker’s heart," which sounds more like school as propaganda than school as personal empowerment. So there's still a way to go in developing the idea. But it's a start.
Student Engagement
Kelly Christopherson, The Synapse, 2016/03/15
Interestimng discussion of student engagement. "Are we preparing students for today? Are we engaging them in a discussion about what is happening in the present? Too often the mantra is “Prepare for the Future”. In some respects, today isn’t even close to what I thought it was going to be 10 years ago. In other way, it is." Now there are aspects of this discussion I don't exactly agree with - including, for example, the observation that "The current focus on the state of education on a global scale is on what teachers do in the classroom." This is the sort of thinking we need to get away from. It's not what the teacher does that is important. It's what the student does.
The Tau Manifesto
Michael Hartl, 2016/03/15
OK, I'm no mathematician. But this article has me convinced. "Pi (π) is a pedagogical disaster. Try explaining to a twelve-year-old (or to a thirty-year-old) why the angle measure for an eighth of a circle—one slice of pizza—is π/8. Wait, I meant π/4. See what I mean? It’s madness—sheer, unadulterated madness." The author proposes instead that we use Tau (τ) which has the value 2π, or 6.283185307179586… It creates a lot more symmetry in formulae across a range of mathematics. That, by the way, would make Tau Day (to Americans, at least) June 28.
African academics face a huge divide between their real and scholarly selves
Alex De Waal, The Conversation, 2016/03/14
"African scholarship on Africa is operating at only a fraction of its true potential," writes Alex De Waal. "It is hampered by the preferences, policies and politics of the Western academy." In particular, there are three reasons for this:
there is an over-reliance on datasets, while these datasets are in turn based on impoverished data actual knowledge isn't valued, while young academics are required to submit meaningless studies to academic journals there is a single model of value, based on occidentalist notions of 'the state'From my perspective, the same issues impoverish scholarship in education. It's a set of problems that afflict scholarship in the social sciences in general. But it's particularly acute in Africa, where there are not good means of working around these biases and prejudices.
Academics can change the world – if they stop talking only to their peers
Savo Heleta, The Conversation, 2016/03/14
I have never understood the desire to speak only amongst one's colleagues, but perhaps this is more my journalistic self speaking than my scientific self. This article makes what is to me the very good point that if academics want to have any impact on the world, they have to start talking to other people. And, I would add, they have to start listening to other people (and maybe even giving them credit for their work). Stating in the way of this outcome are several barriers, according to the article:
they argue that it's not their job to write for the public, and that it amounts to abandoning their intellectual mission their institution and work environment provides no incentives to talk with the public they are actually unable to write well enough to be understood by their public readersBut it's time academics got out a bit, experienced the real world, dealt with people and not constructs, and opened their writing - and their thoughts - to the rest of us to scrutinize. Via David Wiley.
Everything Is Crumbling
Daniel Engber, Slate, 2016/03/14
We see an awful lot in our field about what "the research tells us", typically stated in such a way as to suggest we are charlatans if we don't go along with it. I see this a lot, on a daily basis. "The research" is the basis of enterprises like the Campbell Collaboration, the promotion of various educational theories, and the authoring of well-meaning blog posts. But there is substantial reason to be sceptical. "All the old methods are in doubt. Even meta-analyses, which once were thought to yield a gold standard for evaluating bodies of research now seem somewhat worthless.... If you analyze 200 lousy studies, you’ll get a lousy answer in the end. It’s garbage in, garbage out." The crisis can't be wished away, nor can the basic lack of reproducibility be whitewashed. It's easy to hack your way to the conclusion you want to support. The phenomenon is well-documented, and we in education and technology should reserve judgements established through increasingly questionable methodology.
On Learning Objectives: A Response to Jeff Noonan
Geoff Cain, Brainstorm in Progress, 2016/03/14
This post is a response to Jeff Noonan's recent post against learning outcomes. Noonan writes, "there is no clear pedagogical value to learning outcomes. If there is no pedagogical value how are we to understand the current fad? As part of the attack on the professional autonomy of professors because it constitutes a barrier to the imposition of market discipline on universities." The response is less a criticism and more an exposition followed by as assertion generally of the form "x is not necessarily the case," which is always true, but a feeble objection.
The metaphors we stream by: Making sense of music streaming
Anja Nylund Hagen, First Monday, 2016/03/14
This article looks at four dominant metaphors for music streaming used by aficionados to describe their experience: streaming as tool use, streaming as entering places, music streaming as a way of being, and music streaming as lifeworld meditation. The study "demonstrated the complexity of individual online experiences" and the author notes that "this level of complexity was heightened when mobile and ubiquitous Internet characteristics were included, in turn incorporating notions of immediacy, serendipity, restlessness, fluidity, and fragmentation." For me, streaming means immediacy and presence; I like to close my eyes and let the sound surround me. As a kid, I listened to the radio using earbuds. I carefully wired them from the radio on the dresser, down the wall, under the carpet and under my pillow. I live that same experience today as I listen to 1950s radio dramas, baseball games, and yes, streaming music. It's hard to describe, which is why we need metaphors. p.s. death metal in a basement in Bergen - still one of my travel highlights.
Facebook is eating the world
Emily Bell, Columbia Journalism Review, 2016/03/14
There's a danger, writes the author, in danger, writes the author, in the ascendancy of social media networks. "We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable." True, and it's a concern. But it should be noted that before social networks, we weren't any better off, as our media were handled by "the staid, politically entrenched, and occasionally corrupt gatekeepers we have had in the past." I grew up delivering newspapers, spent my youth learning the trade, and love journalism. But I didn't miss newspapers, because they had long since sold their integrity to the highest bidder. This is something publishers and educators need to keep in mind as they face their own challenges from the digital world.
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Copyright 2010 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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