Envisioning a regional Open Badges ecosystem in Ontario
Don Presant, Open Badge Factory, 2017/09/29
There isn't a lot of detail in this article, but it's interesting to me because it represents the coming together of two strands in the Canadian online learning ecosphere (and specifically, Don Presant and David Porter, via CanCred.ca (Canada’s Open Badges Solution) and eCampusOntario respectively). "The overall goal of these action-based pilot explorations is to generate a diverse collection of case studies based on hands-on experience in designing and using Open Badge systems. These case studies will be used to inform future decision-making around potential shared services for open badges that will benefit Ontario’s post-secondary environment."
Construction of Modern Educational Technology MOOC Platform Based on Courseware Resource Storage System
Jing Li, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2017/09/29
This paper (12 page PDF) is pretty loosely written but it within its evaluation of an open online course using a resourcwe storage system it offers a novel interpretation of connectivism to frame an evaluation of this system (and/or to evaluate the students using the system). "Connectivism can be understood in this way: the rapid change of knowledge foundation leads to decision change; the new information is gained continuously; the ability to distinguish important information and non-important information is crucial." The course was actually offered as blended learning, and was evaluated according to five criteria: participation, interaction, fitness, satisfaction and effect. The descriptions of each are unfortunately not very clear. Also worth noting is the conclusion that the blended learning environment did not support interaction very well. This accords with my own experience, specifically, that there is often better (and more) interaction online than in person.
Facebook will allow news subscriptions on Instant Articles
Saqib Shah, Engadget, 2017/09/29
The success of future Facebook paid content initiatives will depend to a degree on the success of this plan. It's a part of the general trend where social network services are trying to use their platform to sell subscription-based content. Perhaps the most significant to date is LinkedIn, which sells online courses through Lynda. But we can imagine Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon and the rest to sell learning content, news content, and other content, through their platforms. But not all news outlets are participating - they want to market content directly to readers.
G7 Science Ministers' Communiqué
2017/09/29
Some good stuff in this statement from the G7 science ministers: "We affirm the principle that efforts should be directed to promote a widespread participation of researchers in the network of global research infrastructures, taking account of the opportunities offered by open science paradigms." Also: "We believe that researchers should be encouraged and supported to carry out this dialogue with society on a permanent basis, taking care to involve them from the start of the technology development pipeline." Just consider this newsletter my early contribution to this effort. :) See also Richard Ackerman in Science Library Pad.
Design of Multimedia Teaching Platform for Chinese Folk Art Performance Based on Virtual Reality Technology
Hong Li, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2017/09/28
This is a detailed article (13 page PDF) describing the theory, development and testing of a virtual reality system for the teaching of Chinese folk dancing. The system was required because traditional methods of teaching, which depended on instruction followed by practice, were not inspiring people nor encouraging them to engage in the art. "There is still a large space for progress, which is because that the independent learning ability of the students who had received traditional 'duck-stuffing' teaching mode for a long time has not been fully developed." Good case study with a lot to offer people developing similar systems.
Why Venture Capitalists Aren’t Funding The Businesses We Need
Ben Schiller, Fast Company, 2017/09/28
I've expressed the view in the past that venture capitalists (VCs) don't fund ideas, they fund people, and specifically, people like themselves. This view is becoming more current, as evidenced by this article. "If you’re looking for money to start a new business, it helps to be white, male, attractive-looking, and living in a place like Boston or San Francisco. Better still, you want to have gone to a top-ranked university. People with these sorts of profiles win the lion’s share of funding from VC firms." This - and not our lack of drive, innovatioon or application - is why it's difficult to get startup and growth funding in Canada. It's a network, and it extends beyond just VC (you can find the same ties and connections in media and government, for example). I would love in my lifetime to see this advantage rendered obsolete.
Social Media and the Training of Our Minds
Samir Chopra, 3 Quarks Daily, 2017/09/28
We are being trained by scial media, writes Samir Chopra. "The folks at Facebook and Twitter have achieved something remarkable: they have made their users regard the world as staging ground for inputs to their products. The world and its events and relations are, so to speak, so much raw material to be submitted to the formulation and framing of Facebook statuses and tweets. The world is not the world tout court, it is the provisioner of ‘content’ for our social media reports." They have created an incentive scheme: we write in the format they require, and they provide us with social approval when we publish the post. What's key here is that we actually begin to think that way; we internalize the construction of tweets and posts, check-ins and photo ops. Interesting article that says a lot about both the nature of social media and the nature of training.
Accessibility: Ensuring that Edtech Systems Work Together to Serve All Students
Rick Johnson, EDUCAUSE Review, 2017/09/28
This article is mostly a recap for those familiar with accessibility issues, but offers a good overview for those learning how to address them. The twist is that it addresses accessibility in combinations of online systems. "The real-world test is not how each of the parts conform to a standard, but how all of the parts work together to provide a highly functional system for users." It's a good article, just don't fall for the sales pitch. The article is also marketing for Benetgech's global certified accessible program (EDUCAUSE Review should flag such posts as 'marketing' or 'Advertising Content').
The Rural Higher-Education Crisis
Jon Marcus, Matt Krupnick, The Atlantic, 2017/09/28
This article describes the disinclination of people in rural communities to continue on to higher education. It also notes the disdain toward rural people on campus. Going to school in Calgary, I didn't feel that, though it might have been different in Toronto or New York. When I lived there all of Calgary felt rural (in a sense it still does, which for me is one of its most attractive features). I grew up in a rural community, and I ive in one now, though I commute to the city. And I've always been happiest when living where I can see the land. Rural communities once were prosperous, and with advanced tehnology, they will be again. Either way, it's where I choose to live.
Leaders Commit to Education Financing; UNESCO Report Warns of ‘Learning Crisis’
Catherine Benson Whalén, IISD SDG Knowledge Hub, 2017/09/27
I realize that it's not a zero-sum game, and that we can work toward both quality and access, but I nonetheless caution against voices who look at the issues and proclaim "a wake-up call for greater investment in the quality of education." No it isn't. The vast bulk of the problem isn't the quality of education. It's access. The money directed toward access will ensure that learning resources (teachers, support materials, environments) reach those in need. The money directed toward 'quality' will end up in the hands of publishers and academics in the U.S. and Europe (which, my cynical voice intact, is I feel why they continually call for investment in 'quality'). People who are starving need food now.
As the University of South Africa Considers Predictive Analytics, Ethical Hoops Emerge
Manuela Ekowo, EdSurge, 2017/09/27
"In order for the University of South Africa (Unisa) to use predictive analytics to improve these outcomes though," writes Manuela Ekowo, "the school may first have to jump through some ethical and technical hoops." The tone implies that the hoops are unnecessary, but I don't think ghata was the author's intent. "For example, how can institutions avoid mischaracterizing students with labels such as 'at-risk'." It matters how you define 'at risk'. Here's Angelo Fynn, manager of student success projects: "I don’t share the common view that students are inherently at risk but rather that risk is contextually and historically located."
Publishing the 23andMe Way
Joseph Esposito, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2017/09/26
Read both parts of this article (part one, part two). The key bits are in part two, but you need part one to set up the context. The first part describes how 23andmMe has set up it's data collection website (badly, in the author's opinion: "They could have hired someone from Netflix or Facebook, but apparently the head of end-user experience comes from Verizon or United Airlines." Burn! The second part contains the zingers. It describes 23andme's long term plan as a publisher selling access to a database.
This, he argues, is quite reasonable, since they are producing the value (he does note the contradiction with other academic publishing, where the researchers who produce the value receive no part of the value). He then notes that this model is different from acdemic publishing, because price is based on that value, unlike journal articles. "Libraries, in other words, have been exploiting publishers economically for years. It’s good to have 23andme come along and stick up for the economic rights of the purveyors of content." Wow. Brazen. (Note: Beverly Hillbillies photo was uncredited on the original Scholarly Kitchen article).
The Pedagogic Architecture of MOOC: A Research Project on Educational Courses in Spanish
Elia Fernández-Díaz, Carlos Rodríguez-Hoyos, Adelina Calvo Salvador, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2017/09/25
The latest issue of IRRODL has this item studying "the pedagogic architecture of MOOC on pedagogic/educational subjects in Spanish over one academic year" (ie., last year). The study includes courses from Coursera, Miriadax, EdX, Eco and Educalab. The results aren't surprising (or, as I suppose I should say, the results provide some data consistent with my prior intuitions). "All of them (the courses) used traditional methodological strategies (100%), followed by applied strategies (61.10%) and lastly dialogic strategies (55.56%)... videos are present in all of the cases (100% of the courses), the next most used educational resource are forums (82.38%) followed by teaching guides and background reading (both 69.45%)." The courses were, in other words, almost completely traditional content-based courses. The best part of the article is the discussion on the varying use of forums in the different courses, including in social media.
Young people oppose Fitbits in schools
Charlotte Kerner, Mikael Quennerstedt, Victoria Goodyear, The Conversation, 2017/09/26
The generalization in the title is based on published research surveying 100 pupils aged 13 to 14 from two UK schools, which is to say, not reliable. I was able to access some of the original work at NRC, though I imagine it is paywalled elsewhere. Here's another paper from the same work (with none of the references to Foucault etc. cited in the other paper). I question not only the unrepresentative sample but the study itself. "Each pupil was asked to respond to a statement in turn that was presented to them by the interviewer. For example, statements introduced were ‘I would recommend using the Fitbit to other people my age because … ’ and ‘as a result of wearing the Fitbit I learnt … ’." There's no indication that the study was sponsored by FitBit (the authors credit Richard Benjamin Trust, whose website is several years out-of-date). Personally, I think there's a big difference between being required to wear devices, and then being surveiled, as these studenmts were, and choosing to wear the device on one's own, keeping the data private. I think there's really interesting work to be done on the relation between education and surveillance. But this isn't the way to do it.
Empowering Young Minds Everywhere: Five Teams Advance to Final Round of $15 Million Global Learning Xprize
Press Release, Global Learning Xprize, 2017/09/25
So here is what Silicon Valley finders are spending their money on in a bid to disrupt education. "The Global Learning Xprize will help prove that with the right resources, children can teach themselves to read, write and do arithmetic." Here are the finalists:
- CCI (New York) is developing a platform to enable non-coders to develop sequential instructional programs
- Chimple (Bangalore) is developing instructional games and stories for literacy and numeracy
- KitKit School (Berkeley) is developing a learning program with a game-based core
- oneBillion (London) is developing learning activities with continuous monitoring
- RoboTutor (Pittsburgh) is using some Carnegie Mellon reserach for an unspecified product
Each team is getting a $1 million startup grant. The winning team (ie., "the team whose solution enables the greatest proficiency gains in reading, writing and arithmetic") will get a $10 million Grand Prize. It's hard to be impressed with any of these proposals. I don't know why the organizers thing that short-term success with a test group will scale globally.
How Big is the LMS Market?
Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/09/26
The answer is, of course, pretty big. But Joshua Kim points to some apparent discrepencies in the research. He writes, "Instructure (Canvas) has about a 20 percent market share. In 2016, Instructure’s revenues were about $111 million." That gives us a total market of about %550 million. "What explains the discrepancy of this LMS market size estimate (between $555 and $832 million), and those from the market research companies and the press of between $3.2 and $5.2 billion?" Two things. First, Instructure's 20% market share is for the U.S. only. Instructure has a much lower share outside the U.S. And second, it's for higher education only. There's a much larger LMS market in corporate learning, which Instructure has barely touched. Is it possible that the U.S. higher education sector is only about 15% of the global market? Well, yeah. The numbers Kim points to as inconsistent are actually pretty consistent. Having said that, the real questuon mark isn't current size. It's growth.
Why Beall’s blacklist of predatory journals died
Paul Basken, University World News, 2017/09/25
Interesting article exploring the reasons why Beall's List of predatory journals was shut down. The answer, in a nutshell: publishers began complaining to the University of Colorado at Denver, where beall works as a tenured professor, and the university, which had originally defended Beall, change tack and launched an investigation into academic misconduct. Beall, meanwhile, works in "a small cubicle similar to a student’s study carrel." Nice. The list, meanwhile, has resurfaced in Europe at a new site.
Bangladeshi ‘floating schools’ reinvent education
2017/09/25
Duribg the Monsoons in Balgladesk a third of the country is flooded, making school attendance impossible. Flipping virtual learning on its head, a fleet of solar-powered floating schools has been launched to address the need. "Each morning, the elementary schools travel to different communities, picking up children along the way. The boats then docks and teach up to 30 children at a time. The boat schools also train adult villagers on children’s and women’s rights, nutrition, hygiene and other practical issues." This is the prmise of From Virtual to Reality. "While some first world countries have brought virtual reality into classrooms to study subjects like science, art and history, other schools are taking their classrooms into the forests or other natural settings."
Anatomy of a Moral Panic
Maciej Cegłowski, Idle Words, 2017/09/25
Those of us in education have experience no end to the moral panics about this and that over the years. This article is an extended take on moral panics in the media over sales of charcol, suphur and saltpeter on the internet. These, of course, are the ingredients to make black powder, a favourite of hobbyists worldwide. It reminded me of my own efforts to make rockets when I was a kid. These were not successful; the most notable result was an inch-deep hole gouged in the neighbour's porch (which truly was impressive). But of course, the panic is not just about black powder, it's about cryptography and algorithms and technology in general. "The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism.... Moral panics like this one are not just harmful to musket owners and model rocket builders. They distract and discredit journalists, making it harder to perform the essential function of serving as a check on the powerful." Right. Via Doug Belshaw.
4 Ways We Can Fund Personalized Learning to Create More Equitable Schools
Ace Parsi, Bryant Best, Getting Smart, 2017/09/25
The four methods are listed about half way through the post, and seem reasonable to me:
- close group-based opportunity gaps and support best practices in teaching traditionally disadvantaged populations
- acess to learning opportunities such as Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB)... through strategies such as universal design for learning
- targeted and supplemental investments can include support around professional development
- create equity-based professional-development opportunities for district and school leaders.
The idea here, as I see it, is to fund personalization in such a way as to target those most in need, and to have that funding follow that need through direct investment in learning support, as well as investment in those providing that support. This is quite a contrast from what we usually see in personalized learning, where efforts go to fund initiatives directed at thoe who already have significant advantages.
Bell Calls for CRTC-Backed Website Blocking System and Complete Criminalization of Copyright in NAFTA
Michael Geist, 2017/09/25
To understand why Bell is calling for ISPs to block infringing sites without any sort of judicial review (and to criminalize commercial copyright infringement) we need to understand that the telecom company is also a content publisher, Bell Media, owning dozens of television stations, radio stations and websites. As Michael Geist argues, "the company’s position as a common carrier representing the concerns of ISPs and their subscribers is long over." This is why carriers and content providers should be separate companies. The carrier should not be responsible for enforcing censorship, especially when the carrier has its own content it is trying to sell. These proposals are about eliminating competition, in my view, and have nothinbg to do with protecting content creators or fostering innovation.
The Media Has A Probability Problem
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, 2017/09/25
This is an excellent article, and while Nate Silver talks about presidential elections, the article really has nothing to do with them. And, interestingly, it begins with hurricane forecasting. The article is an extended discussion of probability that should be required reading for any educator or journalist. The presentations of alternatives as simple on-off or right-wrong decisions is a misrepresentation of a complex world. "properly measuring the uncertainty is at least as important a part of the forecast as plotting the single most likely course." And "most experts — including most journalists — make overconfident forecasts." Things to remember when reading my work, or anyone's.
ABC – Taking African scholarly books to the world
Justin Cox, University World News, 2017/09/25
After the collapse of its traditonal business in 2007, African Book Collective (ABC) bounced back as a virtual bookseller. "Rather than restricting access it placed the books in as many channels as it could find. In print the books were published in paperback so prices remained competitive... Discoverability drives sales and access can drive sales of printed books; one channel has not consumed another and the market for African published scholarship is healthy." This is having a beeficial effect generally. "Research output in Africa is on the increase.... By working together to bring down the barriers of access to scholarly books in Africa they can fill an important gap in the market and increase their own options."
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