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by Stephen Downes
Nov 04, 2016
Why Udacity and EdX Want to Trademark the Degrees of the Future—and What’s at Stake for Students
Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge, 2016/11/04
So this is not good. "No one owns the term “master’s degree.” But upstart education providers dream of getting a lock on the words for the next generation of online graduate certifications... Udacity won a trademark for Nanodegree last year. And in April, the nonprofit edX... applied for a trademark on the word MicroMasters. And MicroDegree? Yep, that’s trademarked too, by yet another company." It's clear that these new players in the world of e-learning demonstrating the same corporate bad behaviour as their predecessors in the LMS industry.
Future OER
Norman Bier, Brandon Muramatsu, 2016/11/04
From the website: "What is the future of Open Education? This panel and audience discussion will explore possible visions of open education in 2036, using a series of broadly solicited papers as a starting point. These essays are available at http://futuOER.org — please review, comment and consider in preparation for this discussion." One of my own essays is in there: Open Learning in the Future.
Textbook Example of Unbundling
Alec Whitters, EdTech Digest, 2016/11/10
We've been reading recently about the unbundling of textbooks and this article continues that discussion, contrasting it with "patchy" evidence for predictions of the unbundling of education generally. "Textbooks – the big, expensive, indispensable anchors of academia – are being unbundled at a frenetic pace... What textbook companies originally fought – the threats of pirated and copied digital versions of their property – they now embrace." Why would anyone think this will stop with textbooks, though?
Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter
David Rock, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, 2016/11/07
This article cites a couple studies arguing that ethnic, racial and gender diversity increases returns and growth in corporations. But the bulk of the article is intended to show "nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter." They focus more on facts, argue David Rock and Heidi Grant Halvorson, they process those facts more carefully, and they're more innovative. Not a long article, but well written and tightly argued.
Art & Design Students Produce Virtual Reality Musical
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2016/11/07
These are probably the same people who will be pioneering this art form professionally in a few years. Hands-on experience like this is invaluable. "As Michael Chaney, a professor of film and television and one of the faculty leads on the project, explained in a video about the production process, 'We consulted with the leading pioneers in this industry and we ourselves are becoming pioneers." It's worth visiting the project website, which gives you a far better idea of the project than this short article.
The Durability and Fragility of Knowledge Infrastructures: Lessons Learned from Astronomy
Christine L. Borgman, Peter T. Darch, Ashley E. Sands, Milena S. Golshan, ArXiv.org e-Print archive, 2016/11/07
Yes, it's a specialized case: "Research reported here draws upon a long-term study of scientific data practices to ask questions about the durability and fragility of infrastructures for data in astronomy." But from what I observe these trends exist in every discipline (and most fare worse than astronomy). "Infrastructure is fragile, even for one of the most durable of sciences – astronomy. The invisible work necessary to maintain individual systems, tools, technologies, standards, and other resources – much of it done by information professionals – may only become visible upon breakdown." Why not take a look for the websites, articles, conferences and other digital artifacts from our discipline from just ten years ago? It's astonishing how much has been lost, because nobody's taking care of it.
Open Research
Rebecca Pitt, Beatriz de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Martin Weller, PressBooks, 2016/11/04
You'll find that this 'textbook' based on the open course of the same name is a very quick read. But it does offer a glimpse at what the open textbook of the future may look like, containing not just text but hyperlinks, audio and video. "This new textbook edition builds on our earlier facilitated versions of the course by including group activities and incorporating participant contributions into new activity commentary sections. You can now work through the course material as an individual, group or if you’re a facilitator or educator, use the content and activities to aid discussion." Via Beck Pitt.
21st Century Learning, 20th Century Classroom
Zoe Branigan-Pipe, CAE Canada Education, 2016/11/04
"It’s time to match classroom and school design with our changing philosophies and teaching practices," argues Zoe Branigan-Pipe. From the way children sit, the way they are isolated from each other, to the way they are lumped into age-based groups, the realities of the 21st century school reflect an earlier age. "What if students could attend learning sessions based on their individual interests or needs, similar to the EdCamp model or MOOCs (massive open online courses) that allow choice and interest-based learning?" she asks. We begin to see some of the answers in the work of the the Enrichment and Innovation Centre, she writes. "The best examples that we found were Kindergarten classrooms." More on this in the Pipedreams blog:
Teaching and Learning in a “Post-truth” World
Andrew Campbell, Canadian Education Association (CEA), 2016/11/03
The idea that we are living in a "post-truth world" has become fashionable, but I like Andrew Campbell's take: "There are many historical examples of commonly held beliefs that have little basis in fact. Since the 1700's people have believed in the existence of a plot to control the world by the Bavarian Illuminati. McCarthy's communist witch hunt, the belief in a flat earth, assertions that the Apollo Moon landings were faked and the conspiracy theory that the attacks of September 11th 2001 were an 'inside job' are more modern examples of popular ideas which have no basis in fact, yet still endure." The internet did little to correct this, and if anything, has accelerated it. This creates an onus on us to ensure that the students we teach are aware of filtering algorithms, gather news from multiple sources, and have the ability to understand different perspectives on issues.
Happy Beta Release Day, Omeka S!!
Sharon Leon, Omeka, 2016/11/03
Via Digital Humanities Now, "Omeka S is the next-generation, open source web-publishing platform that is fully integrated into the scholarly communications ecosystem and designed to serve the needs of medium to large institutional users who wish to launch, monitor, and upgrade many sites from a single installation." The source (PHP and Javascript) is available on GitHub. "Omeka S is a free & open source platform for institutions that want to publish linked open data; integrate their collections with the scholarly communications ecosystem; and manage many users & sites from one installation."
3 Types of College Friendships That Matter For Student Success
Anya Kamenetz, NPR | Mind/Shift, 2016/11/03
Interesting summary of a new book from by Janice McCabe, a researcher at Dartmouth College, on the different types of networks students form in college or university. What's interesting is not the typology but the idea that your network of friends can, as the article says, drag you up or drag you down. "Among the students who said their close group of friends provided academic motivation and support, every one of them graduated. Among the ones who said they lacked this support and their friends distracted them from schoolwork, only half managed to graduate within six years." The usual caveat about sample sizes applies.
Building a News Bot for Facebook Messenger
Julien Genestoux, 2016/11/04
Building a Facebook news bot is all very fine, but there's this: it's easy (relatively speaking) to import content into Facebook. My own gRSShopper did that, and gRSShopper is also a web aggregator (though I had too much respect for readers to simply dump aggregated content into Facebook). What's difficult is getting content out of Facebook. Oh sure, it can be done, after a fashion - gRSShopper could harvest Facebook page feeds, for example. But Facebook doesn't really want you sharing Facebook content outside their platform. It wants everyone to use Facebook, which is why you hear that giant slurping sound as it tries to suck everyone in. Related: Here's why young people are abandoning Facebook: "It’s clogged with brands, news and the odd meme. It’s lost any semblance of a personality." Via Ben Werdmuller.
The State of Javascript 2016
Sacha Greif, 2016/11/04
This is a terrific website (it wouldn't be accurate to call it an article) covering the many flavours of Javascript libraries assembled in various web site and web service stacks. There's too much to summarize here, but there seems to be a general divide between Facebook's React framework and a range of other options. But don't think it's a neat divide; it's not. Anyway, these frameworks don't last long - JQuery (which powers this website) is already history. This work will take some effort to read and comprehend, especially if you haven't kept up, but it's well work the effort.
Deep Learning is Revolutionary
Oliver Cameron, Medium, 2016/11/03
Yes, this article is pretty superficial (and a "ten reasons" listicle) but if you haven't been looking at some of the things neural networks are doing you may want to take a look. Also, it makes me feel good, because I always knew they'd perform like this.
Blogging is a Choral Act
Bonnie Stewart, Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2016/11/02
Bonnie Stewart: "Blogging is a choral act. Posts are commented on; ties are formed. Stories and backstories become known. As I connected with other bloggers and found community first with other parents and then with those whose writing, like my own, unpacked identities in various forms, I stumbled into something extraordinary: a space wherein I was able, in small ways, to publicly mother a child who was not here."
Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of Libraries
Charles Bourg, Bruce Tidor, Mit, 2016/11/02
I don't write about libraries a lot because I'm not enthused by stacks of dusty paper. But of course libraries are evolving (slowly) with the digital age, as this report (28 page PDF) attests. I think what we'll see over time is a convergence of the library's traditional role with that of housing and disseminating academic resources, ultimately replacing publishers. Hence we read recommendation 4, "the MIT Libraries should be a trusted vehicle for disseminating MIT research to the world." And recommendation 6: "the Libraries should generate open, interoperable content platforms that explore new ways of producing, using, sharing, and preserving knowledge and that promote revolutionary new methodologies for the discovery and organization of information, people, ideas, and networks." Via Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
University Videos on YouTube Get Custom Search
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, 2016/11/02
This is interesting. Campus Technology summarizes it neatly: "A "boutique" search company has developed a free online resource that lets users search for university and college videos that have been posted to YouTube and then clip and share segments of those videos with students and colleagues." Leaving aside the danger of depending on Google for anything, it raises the possibility of other 'boutique' video search engines./ For example, a search engine specifically for cooking. Or scanning electron microscopes. Or...
Microsoft Teams challenges work chat rival Slack
Leo Kelion, BBC News, 2016/11/02
Microsoft has announced Microsoft Teams, a product to support work teams, rivaling Slack. The pending announcement prompted Slack CEO to run a newspaper ad "warning that running such a tool is 'harder than it looks'," according to this BBC article. "You're not going to create something people really love by making a big list of Slack's features and simply checking those boxes," it says. "Tiny details make big differences. If you want customers to switch to your product, you're going to have to match our commitment to their success and take the same amount of delight in their happiness." More from Ars Technica, Tech Crunch, the Verge,
Look out below: Cuts underway as advertising tumble accelerates
Pete Vernon, Columbia Journalism Review, 2016/11/02
It was not so long ago I heard people declaring that paper newspapers would endure and that large publications like, say, the Wall Street Journal, were too entrenched to imagine being impacted by the internet. Two weeks ago the WSJ offered buyouts to the paper’s entire editorial staff. Today came the layoffs and the dramatic reduction in size of the physical product. Meanwhile backs refused to back a loan that would allow Gannet to buy Tronc, the owners of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune. The end is near for paper-based newspapers.
Six strategies for Canadian universities to foster innovation
Moira MacDonald, University Affairs, 2016/11/02
This is a set of six short articles that overall represent an industry-driven approach to support for innovation in universities "by being willing to work with industry as partners and having our researchers work closely to solve key industry issues, rather than looking for places where university discoveries can be plugged in." From where I sit, this may (may) support innovation, but it puts the brakes on disruption and transformation. In a certain sense it represents a diversion of effort and resources toward incumbents and away from new ideas and businesses that would genuinely move us forward. This has been my experience with the policy over the last several years. Yes, this document deserves deeper discussion and criticism. But in my mind it represents a failed innovation policy.
Perspectives on Personal Digital Archiving
Bill LeFurgy, Library of Congress, 2016/11/01
I've been tending to my own archives lately and I echo this sentiment from this Library of Congress publication (79 page PDF): "One of the still unfolding impacts of the computer age is that everyone now must be their own digital archivist. Without some focused attention, any personal collection is at high risk of loss – and quick loss at that." Here are some resources to underline this important effort:
Library of Congress Personal Archiving website Kit to hold your own PDA day event Columbia University Digital Humanities Center – PDA online resources Guide from Cornell University is based on the workshop Personal Digital Archiving Paradigm Project - guidelines for the creators of personal digital archives The Digital Beyond is a blog about your digital existence and what happens to it after your death - PDA Conference archives Rural Malawians About to Go Online
Charity Chimungu Phiri, Inter Press Service, 2016/11/01
My colleague from Assibiboine Community College, Dinah Ceplis, sent me this item describing the launch of rural internet access in Malawi. This is significant as Ceplis has spend the last two decades or so working in rural Africa supporting agriculture and distance education (areas in which Assiniboine specializes). "We are building towers, installing Wi-Fi hotspots, backhaul links, some of these will be ready before end November.... Because there’s intermittent power supply in Malawi, we are running all our equipment on solar.... We’re getting financial and technical support from Microsoft…we’re a grant recipient of the Microsoft Affordable Access Initiative." Increased access to learning is only one of many benefits Malawians will realize from this initiative.
Top 10 Higher Ed IT Issues of 2017
Tanya Roscorla, ConVerge, 2016/11/01
There's a table comparing the top IT issues in higher ed over the last three years and this is probably the most interesting bit of the article. We see that IT security is the top issue for the second year in a row. But beyond that, there's a much greater focus on student success and even affordability as it seems that this year IT has become much more core to the institutional mission (compare 2014 when "demonstrating IT's value" placed a solid fifth).
Micro-Barriers Loom Large for First-Generation Students
Eric Johnson, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2016/11/01
I can attest from personal experience that the microbarriers described in this article existed in my university days and exist in my life to this day. It's true, in my experience, that "a relatively tiny difference in culture can make a huge difference in access." There are numerous opaque systems and unwritten rule sets. In searching for opportunities, employment and even internships, for example, "successful people are playing an entirely different game. They don’t flood the job market with résumés, hoping that some employer will grace them with an interview. They network." And even the little things. "Your shoes and belt should match."
But our approach differs. Where J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, wants to open up this culture of privilege and teach its nuances to those lucky enough to get into the system, I want to make it irrelevant. Widening access to privilege does not eliminate privilege, it entrenches it. We need to eliminate it. That's why I want to see learning and networking available to everyone, not the merely wealthy and their acolytes.
Ria #31: Dr. Tracy Teal On Data Carpentry
, Ecampus Research Unit | Oregon State University,
In this episode, Dr. Tracy Teal shares about how the organization Data Carpentry came to be and some of its programs to help researchers be more data literate.
What should the next generation of digital learning environments do?
JISC, 2016/10/31
The U.K.'s JISC is asking for contributions (in the form of tweet chats) to a series of 'six challenges' posed by the future of learning and research in a digital environment. You will want to read their set of visions before participating in this exercise (or indeed, before participating in JISC-funded research, as these visions will guide funding decisions). It is for the most part based on data-driven decision-making (as opposed to, say, design) and it is focused mostly on skills and employment, with a nod toward resources and personalization.
Virtual assistants spend much of their time fending off sexual harassment
Michael J. Coren, Quartz, 2016/10/31
It's the sort of issue that tends to turn out poorly in a free market environment: people prefer bot assistants that have female voices, and a significant number of users want their bots to behave in a subservient fashion. So these bots "must now suffer the indignities unethical bosses inflict on their human assistants, especially sexual harassment." You might say, "So what? They're bots." Yes, but if they're representative of women to the user, they're more than just bots. They become part of the way the user interacts with women generally. Anyhow, so far, bot-makers are trying to take the responsible route. For example, "Kasisto designed its bot to avoid demure or deferential responses when confronting sexual innuendo, or inappropriate personal questions such as asking Kai out on a date." And Microsoft's Deborah Harrison says "We wanted to be really careful that Cortana... is not subservient in a way that sets up a dynamic that we didn’t want to perpetuate socially."
Net neutrality is up for debate at CRTC hearings
Ramona Pringle, CBC News, 2016/10/31
Hearings on net neutrality are being held by Canada's telecom regulator starting today. The issue is of particular interest in Canada because we have fewer providers, bandwidth is more expensive than elsewhere, and we have lower data caps. So the internet service providers have a lot influence and their ability to offer better pricing to one or another content provider will create a significant advantage. For me it's a personal issue. It's hard enough to provide reasonable load times; the last thing I need is to have my own internet service provider throttling back the speed my site loads. Differential pricing hurts OLDaily. It's that simple. More: Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Open Media, Global.
Carré Technologies Astroskin Gets Green Light for Use on the International Space Station
Marc Boucher, SpaceRef Canada, 2016/10/31
They're calling it a 'smart shirt' though it's actually more of a singlet. It monitors blood pressure, skin temperature, activity level, heart rate and electrical activity, and breathing rate and volume. It will be worn by Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques during a six-month mission in 2018-2019. According to the article, "Astroskin's commercial spinoff is already available to the public under the brand Hexoskin and can purchased at Best Buy and other retailers." Technology like this has learning implications, as it is able to generate immediate performance feedback. Eventually, the phrase 'online learning' will mean you have your digital feedback mechanisms in place. More: Carré Technologies.
42 or why one college does not wipe out previous options
Inge de Waard, Ignatia Webs, 2016/10/31
What I like about this article is that it speaks directly against the sort of magical thinking that characterizes Silicon Valley innovations, the latest being 42, a college built "around the idea of peer learning, without the interference of teachers. " Inge de Waard writes, "MOOCs and 42 are not the solution for education, just as humans are not the solution for peace (clearly). It is a positive, engaging combination of elements that makes things happen." Fair enough. Yet at the same time 42 does tap into the need for self-managed tuition-free learning. And 42 does speak to a certain culture of self-made do-it-yourself autodidacts. But there's a model here based on rigorous competition and a live-in 4-week boot camp that suggests something more is going on, one that makes me just wish their design (illustrated in the diagram) weren't so phallic.
(This Is Not a Morphology of) The Monsters of Education Technology
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2016/10/31
I'm not a fan of holiday-themed articles (they're far too easy and forrmulaic) but I thoroughly enjoyed Audrey Watters's rant on the monsters of educational technology (even if I did make the list). I'm glad it's not a taxonomy nor a morphology, tools far to lightly wielded in our discipline. Structurally, I would have jumped into the list much earlier in the talk, offering my caveats and explanations in the context of the descriptions of our Frankensteins and our Draculas. But I like the way it ends: "Technology, education technology, is our creation. It need not be our monster."
P.S. Audrey Watters's unofficial slogan is "Be less pigeon" - "a companion species gone awry, a border creature that might mark its own and our own trainability" and a warning of a future where "our cyborg fantasies, despite their subversive theoretical promise, turn out to be quite submissive to the technologies of command and control." If I had my own version of the slogan, it would be be more sparrow. It's a huge world, but we can (and must) explore and discover and make our way across vast distances even where danger looms above and below, and it only works if we look out for each other and let none fall to the ground without our taking notice.
Teachers’ Informal Learning via Social Networking Technology
Radzuwan Ab Rashid, Mohd Firdaus Yahaya, Mohd Fazry A Rahman, Kamariah Yunus, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), 2016/11/02
I've talked about the way teachers use informal learning for a long time, so it's good to see discussion of this trend in the formal literature. "This research attempts to investigate how teachers engage in informal learning for their professional development when using Social Networking Site (SNS) technology." At this point, it is true that a "social networking site, such as Facebook is a potential platform to engage teachers in informal learning for their professional development." But I wouldn't depend on these over the long term; we need a social network, not a social network site. "Content knowledge is the most frequently exchanged knowledge on the teachers’ Timelines (33%, n=35). This is followed by knowledge of curriculum (25%, n=26), general pedagogical knowledge (16%, n=17), knowledge of learners and their characteristics (14%, n=15), and knowledge of educational contexts (11%, n=12)."
Extraction of Relevant Terms and Learning Outcomes from Online Courses
Isabel Guitart, Jordi Conesa, David Baneres, Joaquim Moré, Jordi Duran, David Gañan, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), 2016/11/01
This approach is a natural, and something I would have liked to have seen in LPSS. The project described "applies natural language processing(NLP) techniques to analyze the course’s materials and discover what concepts are taught, their relevancy in the course and their alignment with the learning outcomes of the course." You would use this eventually to assemble relevant resources from a repository network in order to build a course on the fly, based on competency information or needs assessments. This is a good core reference for projects intending to develop such systems.
Quality Assurance for Reusable Learning Objects on a Peer-To-Peer Network
Rajendra G. Singh, Margaret A. Bernard, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), 2016/10/31
Are learning objects making a comeback? We saw Cengage basically lay claim to the term last week with its announcement of a platform called Learning Objects. In this paper we read of a project evaluating learning objects using the Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI), another blast from the past. But the interesting part of the paper isn't the evaluation process. It's the effort to assemble learning activities from reusable learning resources in an entirely peer-to-peer environment. "The result is, for the first time, a self-contained end-to-end, P2P eLearning system with no reliance of any sort on client-server eLearning systems. This research on quality assurance has successfully contributed in achieving the overall goal." Alas, not the first. P2P learning object networks are yet another Canadian invention ahead of is time.
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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