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Stephen's Web ~ Link
OLWeekly
by Stephen Downes
Feb 17, 2017
Maybe College Isn't the Great Equalizer
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Two things have held up through decades of research on
education and its impact. First, socio-economic background
is the single best predictor of educational outcomes. And
second, education is a necessary but not sufficient
precursor to increased socio-economic outcomes. These are
the findings that are rediscovered in the current
study published
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in the journal Social Forces. But Facebook devotes a
substantial portion of this article repeating criticism
from an outlier study
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/19/rich-students-flock-elite-colleges-study-finds-graduating-college-levels-playing"
target="_blank (more here
Link "finding
that college is in fact the great equalizer." According to
that outlier critics, "students who graduate from the same
Ivy League college -- or any college -- tend to earn
similar amounts of money in their adult lives." Well sure -
if you ignore selection bias, graduation rates, and the
fact that income at age 30 is not an educational outcome,
you get similar results. I would caution against making
this study the basis of criticism of future studies.
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Building Global Community
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a manifesto yesterday
afternoon stressing the importance of community and
Facebook's role in developing it. It is worth noting that I
quit Facebook last September because, in my view, Facebook
was subverting community, and replacing it with
advertising. Zuckerberg emphasizes, "the most important
thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social
infrastructure to give people the power to build a global
community that works for all of us." I think, though, that
there is am important distinction to be drawn between the
concept of infrastructure that is owned by, and operated
for, the benefit of a community, and a privately owned
platform managed for private interests. Zuckerberg believes
he is building society, without realizing that society can
only be built by all of us.
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Distance Education Price and Cost Report
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It's no surprise to anybody that distance and online
courses cost students more (a least, when they're offered
by traditional educational institutions). But more
controversial in this WECT report (79 page PDF
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is the contention that they cost more to produce. This
result is based on 197 responses (from an unknown number of
institutions) to an email survey sent to WCET members.
Reading the results, the main reason distance education
costs more seems to be "distance education costs more"
(p.48). Every category of expense was higher for distance
education. The main costs are faculty support and
development (52%), tech (37%), and student support (28%).
The report also makes the point that lowering cost isn't
seen as part of the mandate by many institutions. Via
Inside Higher Ed
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Working together for critical thinking in schools
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The focus of this article is critical thinking in the South
African context, and in particular the recent Curriculum
and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS
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and Thinking Schools South Africa (TSSA
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organisation encouraging and resourcing the teaching of
effective thinking in schools." One of the unsung
advantages of critical thinking, writes Peter Ellerton, is
that it creates resilience, promoting the development of
"students who have an ability to think their way through
problems, a confidence in their ability to do so, and who
can apply critical thinking skills to understand their
circumstances and explore options open to them."
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Choose Science
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Choose Science is a website recently created by the
Government of Canada to encourage girls to pursue their
interests (and may their careers) in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics - STEM. It was criticized
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by the National Post this week for perpetuating stereotypes
(featuring fashion, music and kittens) but after a quick
retrofit yesterday it is looking much better, though by no
means perfect. The activities for parents
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and for teachers
Linkare
drawn largely from Actua Linkand Let's
Talk Science Linkwhich are
private foundations with a lot of federal and industry
funding. The resources could be a lot deeper and could be
drawn from a much richer repository of actual work by
Canadian teachers and educators. And instead
of talking down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRtPrOeD6fU&feature=youtu.be
to girls interested in science, we should invite them to
tell their own stories in their own voices. But hey - I'd
rather see them do this work imperfectly than not at all.
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These 6 Chinese Tech Giants Are Ramping Up The Pace Of
Innovation For The World
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Mobile applications that have merged transactions and
services have become stables in China. "Hundreds of
millions of Chinese consumers now depend on these
all-in-one apps to do, well, everything
https://www.fastcompany.com/3056721/most-innovative-companies/a-week-behind-the-great-firewall-of-china"
target="_self: interact with friends; pay for cabs and
utility bills; book hotels, flights, and even dentist
appointments; find love; and read news." On the hardware
side, innovation is similarly flurishing, with companies
like Xiaomi, BBK and Huawei taking the lead. "Huawei
recently announced its new Mate 9, the first smartphone
embedded with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant...
Xiaomi’s Mi Mix smartphone... features a stunning
edge-to-edge screen
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3065003/did-xiaomi-just-beat-apple-at-its-own-game"
target="_self.
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GEâs Bill Ruh on the Industrial Internet Revolution
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Interesting discussion around the topic of internet-based
computational services in industry. "Every form of
large-scale machinery will be suffused with sensors and
software controls, all more and more interoperable.
Increasing productivity, raising profits, eliminating
waste, ensuring environmental quality, and improving
manufacturing processes will all be automated activities,
functions of a kind of ghost in the machine." What makes
the industrial market different from the consumer-based
market is the addition of physics-based modeling. "With a
cloud-based, physics-based model, you can run a million
scenarios simultaneously and pick one that is optimized for
what you’re trying to accomplish."
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The âSecret Sauceâ to Scaling Up Quality Education in
Developing Countries
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According to this article, "we know that large-scale
progress, in both getting children into school and
learning, is possible." It being Stanford, a certain amount
of scepticism is warranted (83 page PDF
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The 'secret sauce' is actually a combination of "14 core
ingredients that appear to contribute to scaling quality
learning, with the right combination depending on the
context," grouped into four areas:
Design - "develop programs and policies that students,
parents, or teachers actually want—not ones that
governments, practitioners, or funders think they need
Delivery - "not new gadgets to replace teachers, but tools
to help overcome a specific barrier, such as poor roads or
a lack of reading materials."
Finance - "stability, flexibility, and predictability in
financing are critical for scale that leads to lasting
changes in children’s learning."
An enabling environment - "government must accept
responsibility for ensuring a quality education for all,
reaching out to a range of partners, and considering new
ways of improving learning."
It's hard to disagree with any of these points, but the
difficulty is always in the details. How do you determine
what learners actually want? How do you deal with the scale
of delivery problems? What are the mechanisms for stable
finance? How do you convince increasingly reluctant
governments to take responsibility for education?
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We Are Not Agreed
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A few days ago University Ventures authored a piece
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in response to a post from the New America Foundation
comparing
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Republicans who defend for-profit colleges to climate
change deniers. The unattributed University Ventures
article argues "this piece re-fights yesterday’s
war... the many challenges and opportunities facing higher
education lend themselves to bipartisan consensus –
perhaps more than any other area of public policy."
Bipartisanship is of course a U.S. phenomenon. But it is
worth noting that there are many things U.S. lawmakers
agree upon that are opposed in corners around the world. I
find myself frequently occupying those corners, and today
is no exception. So, setting aside the for-profit colleges
debate for another day, I'd like to take the time to point
to the points where I disagree with what is taken to the
the emerging consensus.
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Ellucian Stops Support for Brainstorm, its CBE platform
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"Winter is here," writes Phil Hill as Ellucian ends support
for Brainstorm
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the competency-based education platform it acquired
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two years ago. This signals a permanent shift in the
market, he says. "The business of Ed Tech is changing, and
more decisions will be based on whether product lines have
a real chance to become self-sustaining based on
near-term revenue." We also reasd that " Ellucian is
also putting Banner 8 into sustaining support mode and that
customers need to be off that version by the end of 2018."
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How Google Chromebooks conquered schools
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This is an interesting statistic: "Chromebook's share of
the U.S. education market was 49 percent last year, up from
40 percent in 2015 and 9 percent in 2013, according to IDC
figures released this week." Who would have thought it? But
the Chromebook has several advantages: it's cheap, it's
lightweight, and it provides access to a full set of tools.
That said, "Macs and Windows laptops are still dominant on
college campuses." But will this change? And could it go
international? The answer to the latter question might be
"no" - for example, "Chromebooks are useless in China
because the device depends on Google services that aren't
available there." But the concept would work, wouldn't it?
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European MOOC Platform Expands to 5 U.S. Universities
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I can think of all sorts of policical questions that might
be asked in the U.S. following this announcement
(especially if the British import succeeds where the
US-based alternatives failed). On the other hand, there is
the global trade argument: "The partnership with
FutureLearn will allow the universities to extend their
reach internationally and tap into new communities of
potential learners, according to a statement from the
company."
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The Myth of Apple's Great Design
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As a counter to yesterday's post celebrating Apple, a
couple of articles are out today with the opposite view.
One of these points to the longstanding issue of Apple's
software (where 'upgrade' is defined as 'removing features
people use'). "Take the iPod," writes Ian Bogost. "It made
listening to a whole music library easy, but iTunes always
made managing that library difficult and
confusing—even destructive
http://fortune.com/2016/05/14/apple-itunes-deleting-music/"
data-omni-click="r'article',r'link',r'6',r'516093'. The
other article asks Is Apple Over
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Longtime Mac aficionado Shelly Palmer writes, "To be
incompatible with the competition is expected. But for
Apple's products to be incompatible with thousands of
dollars' worth of equipment that Apple forced you to
purchase borders on insane."
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Amazon Launches Chime Video & Voice Chat
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Amazon has launched a new video-chat and conference service
called Chime LinkI can't say I'm a
fan of the name. I downloaded the software and it seems
slick if simple - note the nifty URL it give me,
LinkLink- and I'll
probably run some tests this week (so watch my Twitter
account for announcements of ad hoc conferences) (note that
the URL won't be useful unless I'm actually hosting a
meeting).
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Tracking innovations in online learning in Canada
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Tony Bates reports on a project that sees him
criss-crossing the country talking to education and
technology innovators. He is "developing a comprehensive
national survey
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of online learning and distance education in Canadian
public post-secondary education" and working on "a project
for Contact North
Linkidentifying
pockets of innovation in online learning in Canadian
post-secondary institutions outside Ontario." Both of these
respond to oft-stated needs for more data on learning techn
ology in Canada. He writes, "there seems to be a widening
gap between what is actually happening on the ground and
what we read or hear about in the literature and at
conferences on innovation in online learning." That
disconnect has always existed; it's why I report here on
blogs and projects as well as on companies and academic
literature.
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Regulating âbig data educationâ in Europe: lessons
learned from the US
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I found this item while doing some background reading
related to the IEEE-LTSC's approval today of a new proposal
to look at standards for the ethical sharing of child and
student data. The main point of the analysis - and indeed,
the main reason for the IEEE project - is that the
responsibility for the management of student data is
shifting from the school to the technology company. We've
seen how that can turn out badly
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There's the risk of "disclosing sensitive information about
children, like data about learning disabilities,
disciplinary problems or family trauma." There's also a
concern that "monitoring of students’ online
activities may overly limit creativity, free speech and
free thought, by creating a 'surveillance effect'." There
are "concerns big data techniques prematurely and
permanently labeling students as underperformers." And
there are worries that "decision-making based on
algorithmic models will exacerbate bias and create new
forms of discrimination." Image: JISC, The future of
data-driven decision-making
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Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers Is Out
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Not the best headline (I thought it referred to a new U.S.
government policy). But Michael Caulfield has released a
new eBook (127 page PDF
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on web literacy for students who are fact-checkers. There's
some really useful and relatively novel content here: "how
to use date filters to find the source of viral content,
how to assess the reputation of a scientific journal in
less than five seconds, and how to see if a tweet is really
from the famous person... how to find pages that have been
deleted, figure out who paid for the web site you’re
looking at..." and a lot more. These are things I do on a
daily basis to make sure I don't pass along junk in this
newsletter. I'm glad Caulfield has rolled these techniques
up into a single document and explained them for everyone.
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Social Media Research Toolkit - Peer Tested & Peer
Reviewed
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As the website says, this "is a list of 50+ social
media research tools curated by researchers at the
Social Media Lab http://socialmedialab.ca/" target="_blank
at Ted Rogers School of Management
http://www.ryerson.ca/tedrogersschool/research/"
target="_blank, Ryerson University
http://www.ryerson.ca/research/" target="_blank. The
kit features tools that have been used in
peer-reviewed academic studies. Many tools are free to use
and require little or no programming. Some are simple data
collectors such as tweepy https://github.com/tweepy/tweepy"
target="_blank, a Python library for collecting
tweets and others are a bit more robust such as
Netlytic https://netlytic.org/home/" target="_blank, a
multi-platform (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) data
collector and analyzer, developed by our lab. All of the
tools are confirmed available and operational."
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eLearning partnership opens doors to 10 million students
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An agreement between the Association of African
Universities and eLearnAfrica "will enable 10 million
students to access higher education through online services
provided to AAU member universities," according to this
report. As eLearnAfrica CEO Brook Negussie says, "Africa
cannot afford to keep building multi-million dollar
physical universities. The continent would have to open a
few every week for years just to meet existing demand."
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I look like a self-made millionaire. But I owe my success
to privilege.
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When we talk about education and human development we often
overlook the fact that success is driven by a lot of
factors that have nothing to do with learning. This article
makes the point as clearly as any I've seen. Being
well-nourished as a child, being safe, getting a good
education, being debt-free, getting good introductions,
eliminating the risk of failure, getting capital from the
family, and having the right physical appearance - if you
have all of these, you might be successful. Miss any of
them (have a learning deficiency, lack confidence, be
uneducated, be in debt, be unconnected, have no safety net,
have no capital, be female or black or whatever) and your
chances of success drop dramatically.
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Show me the evidenceâ¦
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At a certain point, writes James Clay, "the problem is not
the lack of evidence, but one of resistance to change,
fear, culture, rhetoric and motivation." At what point, he
asks, is there enough evidence? With some existing
academics, "Despite years of “evidence”
published in a range of journals, can studies from Jisc and
others, you will find that what ever evidence you
“provide” it won’t be good enough, to
justify that academic to start embedding that technology
into their practice." We need sometimes to understand what
is motivating the question, rather than simply reaching for
the answer.
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Editorial: Why Apple ignores so much pundit innovation
advice
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This is a good article even if the writing gets excessively
syrupy and sycophantic at times. The author identifies
three major themes of "toxic innovation advice" and talks
about how Apple has avoided them. Now I won't even touch an
Apple device any more, but the three themes are nonetheless
resonant. The first involves acquisitions: why doesn't
Apple buy Dropbox, Uber, etc.? But buying the already
successful isn't a good investment strategy. The second is
advice to innovate incrementally, eg., to build better
Windows-based systems, rather than abandoning windows
entirely. But doing what was already successful isn't a
good development strategy. Finally, there's the advice that
Apple should target existing commodity markets. But
building technology that was already successful isn't a
good device strategy. You get the idea. The point here is
that Apple isn't alone in getting this sort of advice. I
get it all the time (and it often drives policy). The key
to success is being able to resist it.
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What We All Agree On
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This post from University Ventures Exchange, people who
"invests in entrepreneurs and institutions that are
reimagining the future of higher education", seeks to find
common ground where "the many challenges and opportunities
facing higher education lend themselves to bipartisan
consensus." From my reading these points are not "agreed
on" at all, and of course the world consists or much more
than the "bipartisan consensus" the VCs refer to. The fact
is, they are seeing higher education institutions as they
are - big engines of revenue that could be profitable
investment centres - rather than what they could be for
students and the public as a whole.
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Revenge of the Lunch Lady
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This is a really interesting report looking into issues
related to school lunches in the United States by focusing
on schools in Huntington, West Virginia, which had been
labeled "the most unhealthy in the country" and had
suffered the attentions of British celebrity chef Jamie
Oliver. While the authors no doubt expected a disaster what
they found was a local food services manager who was
reforming the system from within. In the course of the
article we read of the conflicts of interest that result in
pizza being called a vegetable and the food industry
dumping surplus cheese and butter on the system. And we
read about the challenges posed by the idea that schools
might refuse a poor child anything to eat because their
parents didn't pay.
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