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by Stephen Downes
Oct 14, 2016
Presentation
Learning Communities
Stephen Downes, Oct 13, 2016, moocs4all.eu Extended Virtual Symposium , Online, Via Adobe Connect and YouTube Live
Presented atMOOCs4All. In this discussion I discuss the thinking behind our MOOCs, personal learning environments and connectivism and consider the question of how we know whether the method is working, how we know whether it is effective. Presented online via Adobe Connect and simulcast (using xSplit) to YouTube Live. Above is the SAdobe Connect recording. Also you can view the xSplit recording to YouTube Live from the presenter screen (doesn't show screen shares, because that's how Connect rolls).
[Link] [Slides] [Audio] [Video]
Share | Exploring more frameworks to understand OER/OEP
David T. Jones, The Weblog of (a) David Jones, 2016/10/14
I think this falls into the category of overthinking things, but I still want to pass on this discussion of OER 'frameworks', for example one describing "different stages of OEP using a combination of OER usage and learning architecture." Yes, it's another set of taxonomies-and-stages. And as always they seem to raise more questions than they solve. "Whats an institution?" What about collaborative development? "What about moving beyond the institution?" Why is 'open practice' a continuum? Is the 'value chain' the right place to locate OERs?
Scraping Google Scholar to write your PhD literature chapter
Jon Dron, The Landing, 2016/10/14
What's interesting about the diagram in this post is that you could figure out who the major writers are in the field without knowing anything about the writers or the field. Take a look. Rawls, Sen and Ostrom occupy central locations. "Basically, it automatically (well - a little effort and a bit of Google Scholar/Gephi competence needed) maps out connected research areas and authors, mined from Google Scholar, including their relative significance and centrality, shaped to fit your research interests." When we can do this for everybody, what would we need tests and exams for any more?
You are almost definitely not living in reality because your brain doesn’t want you to
Buster Benson, Quartz, 2016/10/14
Good article listing sources of cognitive bias (always an interest of mine). Numerous links. "In order to avoid drowning in information overload, our brains need to skim and filter insane amounts of information...
Information overload sucks, so we aggressively filter. Lack of meaning is confusing, so we fill in the gaps. We need to act fast lest we lose our chance, so we jump to conclusions. This isn’t getting easier, so we try to remember the important bits.By keeping these four problems and their four consequences in mind (we) will ensure that we notice our own biases more often." The item called to my recollection a CBC interview I listened to this morning with Julia Shaw, author of The Memory Illusion: Why you might not be who you think you are.At least, I think I listened to it.
Learning in the Digital Age
Michael Grant, Conference Board of Canada, 2016/10/14
This report from the Conference Board of Canada "explores the potential of e-learning in the Canadian setting." Most Conference Board reports are expensive (like this excellent Learning and Development Outlook from last year) but this one is free. Most readers of this newsletter will find the report very superficial, dated and quaint. It's not clear there was actually a literature review, as claimed - many of the (sparse) resources in the bibliography link to error pages on the Conference Board website (the references have other errors, including a '2003' article on MOOCs). The main points of discussion - whether e-learning should be employed, the quality of faculty-created courses, the nature of the LMS - would have been appropriate in 2004. Aside from a short discussion of MOOCs, there is nothing about modern e-learning: social networks, simulations and virtual reality, gamification, workplace support (indeed, workplace learning is all but ignored). The report contains three recommendations: reduce economic barriers, tackle institutional constraints, and adopt excellent practices. Well sure; we'll get right on that, once we get past this Y2K bug thing.
We’re Proud to Announce the Launch of MappingEDU
Troy Wheeler, Ed-Fi, 2016/10/13
This is a very specialized piece of technology, but if you're building learning technologies, it's also an important application. "MappingEDU is a web-based system designed to do one common, time-consuming data integration task well: map one data standard to another. The primary users are data analysts and technical staff who create mappings between data sources. MappingEDU also contains features to assist subject matter experts in reviewing data mappings." See also this press release.
Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature for Creating New Poetic Expressions within the Great American Song Tradition
Dan Colman, Open Culture, 2016/10/13
Normally I'd be celebrating a Nobel for peace or physics or something, but this year's Nobel prize in Literature speaks to me. "Dylan has released album after album, decade after decade, that showcase his unparalleled wordcraft in various song forms. And some of his finest work has appeared only in recent years, when it seems his career might have come to a close."
Digital Sunscreen – What does your school do?
Dean Groom, Playable, 2016/10/13
This is not a coherent post - not even close. But there is something interesting going on here. The core metaphor of 'digital sunscreen' is not defined (except for the fact that it lasts two hours). Meanwhile there is an undercurrent about teachers and tech leaders becoming part of the problem we're trying to solve. Then there's this: "I’ve been using the term edumedia sarcastically. The proper term is mission-driven marketing – a way to turn awareness into action with those new to your product or to engage already-supportive people in deeper ways. It uses teachers, enlists paid and unpaid teachers and ex-teachers – to present itself as ‘the future’ in a duplicity of discussions and forms." Lovely.
There's a follow-up post today that helps a bit. Dean Groom writes, "I think I’ll actively promote two hours a day (school+home) is an essential contract between parents and teachers." So I think the point is to limit screen time to two hours. Groom admits "Two hours a day is going to sound ridiculous to kids and adults alike." And the concern underlying the limit is this: " is dominated by the commercial agendas and belief of a few mega-brands – Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The ‘social stream’ of edumedia is seduced and propositioned by brands." He's not wrong - but the remedy needs to be fixed.
Arts-Based Research: Surprise and Self-Motivation
Raleigh Werberger, Edutopia, 2016/10/12
Here's the teaser: "Arts-based research is beginning an investigation without expectations and remaining open to all possibilities. Now imagine asking a ninth-grade class to deconstruct and recreate a Happy Meal. Now I wouldn't want a ninth-grade class to ever be in the same room as a happy meal. But I get the point; I remember at SXSW a decade ago watching participants take café offerings and turn them into nouveau cuisine. "Arts-based research, a methodology of inquiry promoted by Professors Shaun McNiff and Elliot Eisner, asks the researcher to begin an investigation, not with a predetermined sense of what is useful, but by remaining open to all possibilities for diving in." That's how I like to do my work, but it's far from universally accepted.
Why Isn’t Science Class More Like Learning to Play Baseball?
Alison Gopnik, Mind/Shift, 2016/10/12
I like the argument. And I think it's more right than wrong. "There is no particularly good reason why ballet or basketball should be taught through apprenticeship while science and math are not. As any scientist will tell you, our profession is as much a matter of hard-won skill as piano or tennis. In graduate school, where we really teach science, we use the same methods as a chef or a tailor."
YANSS 086 – Change My View
David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart, 2016/10/12
This podcast discusses an experiment whereby the history of discussions was run through natural language analytics. "When they did that, they discovered two things: what kind of arguments are most likely to change people’s minds, and what kinds of minds are most likely to be changed."
English man spends 11 hours trying to make cup of tea with Wi-Fi kettle
Bonnie Malkin, The Guardian, 2016/10/12
Voice-activated WiFi kettles are still in the realm of future technology (and, I would think, about as safe as a Galaxy Note 7) but this nightmare scenario still draws out an important lesson for the internet of things (IoT) and technology integration in general. But gthe best line in the article has nothing to do with the kettle: "Well the kettle is back online and responding to voice control, but now we're eating dinner in dark while lights download a firmware update." These are all the sort of things that can't happen with household appliances. We tolerated it for decades with software because, well, software, but when the toaster won't toast we're going to begin fighting back.
How Learning and Development Are Becoming More Agile
Jon Younger, Harvard Business Review, 2016/10/11
As the title suggests, learning and development are becoming more agile. By this, what they mean is that there is a much greater use of freelancers. The article draws from an Accenture study (14 page PDF) on outsourcing that suggests "HR will need to redefine its mission and activities—and perhaps create new roles and organizational structures to maximize the extended workforce’s strategic value... the best HR organizations of the future will offer learning opportunities to extended workers." The article quotes Patty Woolcock, the executive director of CSHRP, the California Strategic HR Partnership, says: "The future of learning is three 'justs': just enough, just-in-time, and just-for-me." So we're looking at technology-supported peer learning, bringing together customers and providers, and focusing on development (growth) rather than deficiencies (or gaps).
Scaling Up Learning Communities: The Experience of Six Community Colleges
Mary G. Visher, Emily Schneider, Heather Wathington, Herbert Collado, National Center for Postsecondary Research, 2016/10/11
I'm preparing for a talk on Thursday on learning communities and encountered this excellent study from 2010. This is a fairly large study, as the title suggests, and the report (153 page PDF) provides a comprehensive overview, including these observations:
A paid coordinator and committed college leaders were essential to managing and scaling up learning communities. As coordinators clarified expectations and offered support, faculty responded by changing their teaching practices. Curricular integration remained difficult to implement widely and deeply. Student cohorts led to strong relationships among students, creating both personal and academic support networks.Additionally, the authors recommend curricular integration supporting active and collaborative learning, including collaboration with faculty and student services, with the objective of promoting student engagement.
Why It’s Time to Let Go of ‘Meritocracy’
Doug Belshaw, DMLcentral, 2016/10/11
"Building an education system around ‘meritocracy’ as it is commonly used post-Thatcher may be a function of those in power being so privileged that they are not in a position to see their own privilege," writes Doug Belshaw. "Those who have never witnessed people having to work three jobs to keep their family afloat may not understand why parents can’t do more to coach their children through an entrance examination." I hear this. I managed to keep my grades up while working my way through university, but I wonder what sort of networking opportunities I lost while working at 7-Eleven Friday nights and Saturday nights.
I
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2016/10/11
Long post covering a number of keynote, hands-on and eveen virtual sessions from last week’s Digital Media and Learning conference. It's Alan Levine getting excited about educational technology again, and when that happens, it's always a good read. He also talks about his new approach to conferences: "A conference now to me is a huge serendipity engine that plays off of, and can amplify the valuable of connections in the online space. But not on its own. You have to initiate a few things." This includes talking to people in meal line-ups, going to sessions without checking the session titles, and watching the 'ignite' talks for new ideas. He also talks about the idea of leading into in-person talks with online talks involving the same audience. All good stuff.
From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality
Yong Zhao, 2016/10/10
This is an excellent article that takes a deep look at the concept of merit and 'the achievement gap' in education. In a nutshell, the argument begins with the observation that cuurent programs operate on a 'deficit model' of learning - students are judged to be deficient, and then it is the task of education to address that deficiency. But this system perpetuates the gap "because the paradigm reinforces and reproduces educational and social inequity by design." Yong explains: "The ideal of meritocracy is built on four assumptions. First, a society/authority can correctly identify the merit. Second, there are ways to accurately measure the merit. Third the merit is only individuals’ innate potential plus their efforts. In other words, it has nothing to do with their family background. Fourth, everyone has the same opportunity to develop the merit. None of these assumptions is true." Keep this article in your citations list; you'll be referring to it again and again. Also posted at the National Education Policy Center; Journal of Social Issues Vol. 72, No. 4, 2016, pp. 716–735. Download the PDF version.
Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses
Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch, 2016/10/10
Facebook is launching an enterprise version of its software called Workplace in a bid to replace emails in the office. Everybody wants to replace workplace emails, of course, but there is a wide range of products already in the marketplace that already do that. The sector is called 'enterprise social' or 'enterprise collaboration' and includes well-known products and companies such as Jive, Yammer from Microsoft, Chatter from Salesforce, Hipchat and Jira from Atlassian, Slack, and more. Facebook, frankly, feels like a toy when compared to these products. But against that, there's this: "Facebook has become a de facto platform for billions of consumers globally to communicate with each other in the digital world, and now it is aggressively moving to be the same in the working world." More from BBC, Fortune, Engadget, Recode, CNet, CBC.
New Directions in Open Education
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2016/10/10
Transcript of an excellent talk by Michael Caulfield. He begins with a historical perspective, first with a description of some of his own projects from the 90s, then a more general account of web history, leading ultimately to MOOCs and open learning. The point of his talk is to question the typical argument for OERs, specifically, that we can create a learning resource once and then reuse it over and over. For practical reasons, this doesn't really work - the 'human core of open', he says, is based on belonging, relevance and diversity of experience. Simply showing a video from Yale won't satisfy these needs. What does resonate, though are what he calls 'choral explanations'. We covered these in July. These support "what we called 'loosely-coupled coursesl — courses that were connected not in this lockstep we-read-everything-on-the-same-day way, but through mutual meaningful activities," he writes. "These loosely-coupled courses did a lot better at engaging connected classes."
Diversity And Diversity Training
, [email protected] (Stephen Downes), CC BY-NC-ND, Half an Hour, 2016/10/10
I get that Clark is trying to be cute, layering the objections to diversity into a series of objections to diversity training. Had he given his writing a bit more effort and thought this intent may have shone through. But it did not, and I am not convinced that he cared. Clark is free to oppose diversity. If he wants to align with the likes of Elizabeth May and Nigel Farage, he should just say so. This little dance around diversity training is a sham not worthy of the little effort it took to write.
Speak, Memory
Casey Newton, The Verge, 2016/10/10
I'm not sure whether I have enough data collected to achieve the same result, but I have a lot, especially if we include all the paper notes from the first half of my life still collected in cardboard boxes in the basement. For what, you ask? A digital avatar built using a neural network and stocked with all my writings, comments, emails, talks, and, of course, OLDaily posts. "Someday you will die, leaving behind a lifetime of text messages, posts, and other digital ephemera. For a while, your friends and family may put these digital traces out of their minds. But new services will arrive offering to transform them — possibly into something resembling Roman Mazurenko’s bot." What I wonder is: could my avatar earn a living? Would it have to, in order to stay switched on?
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes Contact: [email protected]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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