2,073 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2019
    1. Remember that they require full access to your Gmail in order to do their thing.

      Not to be flippant but isn’t Gmail use training people to “just give up”? Any second-party email service already has access to your full email account and some are using that to track complex patterns of behaviours which they can then use to get deeper insight on large populations, especially through the aforementioned triangulation. A little bit like the precedent from the business’s perspective, this is also about “well, I already allow Google to track me, so who cares?”. In the process of weaning myself away from Google products, dropping Gmail was a major part of my switch in mindframe. It was originally based on the fact that my account was full, but it quickly allowed me to venture out of this Google bubble. “Oh, right! I could simply not use it… Google doesn’t own me!” Gmail was also one of the easiest to drop (I use my own email server and I have email accounts from different organizations where I work). In a way, I feel privileged that I don’t need to use Gmail. Not that it requires much technical knowledge but it does mean that I haven’t been forced into Gmail by others.

    2. I can avoid their service

      Again, as an email recipient, avoiding the service is trickier. Sure, it sounds like we should all avoid loading images, even from known senders. But this isn’t very empowering.

    3. If Superhuman is truly willing to commit to never license any data to anyone for any reason, they should be able to clearly say so right now. But they probably won’t, because they want to keep their options open.

      Even if they say so, an acquisition could flip that over.

  2. Jan 2019
    1. Grid devices can be nested or layered along with other devices and your plug-ins,

      Thanks to training for Cycling ’74 Max, had a kind of micro-epiphany about encapsulation, a year or so ago. Nesting devices in one another sounds like a convenience but there’s a rather deep effect on workflow when you start arranging things in this way: you don’t have to worry about the internals of a box/patcher/module/device if you really know what you can expect out of it. Though some may take this for granted (after all, other modular systems have had it for quite a while), there’s something profound about getting modules that can include other modules. Especially when some of these are third-party plugins.

    2. phase is the essential element of sound,

      It’ll be very interesting to experiment with phase-focused modules. Even when we intellectually know how phase affects sound, we often have a hard time figuring out how we can leverage it.

    3. all signals are interchangeable so any out port can be connected to any in port

      For those of us who’ve had to deal with distinctions between audio and control signals, this is actually pretty major. However, it’s already become something in modular synthesis. People who get started in Eurorack, for instance, may not need to worry nearly as much about different types of signals as those who used Csound or, more importantly for this marketing copy, Cycling ’74 Max.

    4. Try something crazy

      DAWs typically don’t mesh so well with prototyping culture. When Ableton brought clip launching through Live, its flagship DAW, it had some of this effect: experiment with clips then play with them instead of just playing them. Of course, Cycling ’74 has been all about prototyping, long before Ableton bought the company. But “Max for Live” devices are closer to plugins in that users expect to just be able to use them, not have to create them from scratch. What this marketing copy is emphasizing is that this really is about getting a box of LEGO blocks, not just about getting a DIY kit to create your own instance of something which somebody else designed. The framing sure is specific.

    1. The Grid is based around ideas familiar to Bitwig Studio

      The continuity between these new modular features and the rest of the DAW’s workflow probably has unexpected consequences. Before getting information about BWS3, one might have thought that the “Native Modular System” promised since the first version might still be an add-on. What the marketing copy around this “killer feature” makes clear, it’s the result of a very deliberate process from the start and it’ll make for a qualitatively different workflow.

  3. Apr 2018
    1. your future success depends on developing a new kind of expertise: the ability to leverage your proprietary knowledge strategically and to make useful connections between seemingly unrelated knowledge assets or tap fallow, undeveloped knowledge.
    2. One powerful way to do so internally is to run workshops that bring together people who have subject matter expertise with people facing a particular problem for which that expertise is relevant. Apprenticeship programs, too, have long been an effective way to transfer difficult-to-codify tacit knowledge.
  4. Dec 2017
  5. Nov 2017
    1. The concept of “glocalization” which permeated throughout the event was perfectly introduced to me in the first session that I attended at the festival; Glocalization for Noobs: How to Design Tools for a Global Audience where panelists discussed and advocated for integrating the process of translation more tightly into software development. They discussed the translation of software going beyond localizing text and taking into consideration the entire user experience from perspectives of various regions. While many products are marketed towards specific areas, most software is used globally, or at the least have potential for wider adoption and would benefit from the review of testers in various locales. Importance on focusing attention on region specific points of view continued throughout the event where a handful of meetups dedicated time to discussing the state of Internet security and surveillance in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
    1. Our vision around the phrase reclaim is at least in part inspired by the documented work that Boone Gorges and D'Arcy Norman have been doing to take back their online presence from third-party services since 2011. While their approach is far more drastic than what we are advocating, Project Reclaim represents an ethos that is diametrically opposed to the innovation outsourcing that is prevalent in higher education IT shops at the moment.
    2. The idea that we can collaboratively build a platform that will frame the discourse and promote sharing is a promising aftereffect of the current MOOC backlash.

      Since the term “disruptive” has come to be associated with Clay Christensen’s model, there might be something closer to a reappropriation model like Hippies appropriating VW Beetles, Roadsworth painting pedestrian crossings into zippers, or circuit benders making musical instruments out of old toys. Somewhere, someone may subvert a MOOC into something useful. In fact, Arshad Ahmad once described a successful MOOC which had lost its instructors. Learners started owning their learning activities.

    3. Do everything possible to minimize reliance on an enterprise LMS. Explore ways to support activity and content development in environments that foster collaboration and also interoperability with a wide range of tools. Before directing activity to a complex, locked-down system, ask: "Do we really need to do it this way? Is there a simpler, cheaper, open alternative that will do the job?"
    4. an environment unlike anything they will encounter outside of school

      Hm? Aren’t they likely to encounter Content Management Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Intranets, etc.? Granted, these aren’t precisely the same think as LMS. But there’s quite a bit of continuity between Drupal, Oracle, Moodle, Sharepoint, and Salesforce.

    5. Courses are severely limited in the ability to access other courses even within the institution (so much for "connecting silos"), and when courses end, students are typically cast out, unable to refer to past activity in their ongoing studies or in their lives (so much for "promoting lifelong learning").

      Which is where a different type of unbundling can happen. “Courses” may limit our thinking.

    6. mandate the use of "learning management systems."

      Therein lies the rub. Mandated systems are a radically different thing from “systems which are available for use”. This quote from the aforelinked IHE piece is quite telling:

      “I want somebody to fight!” Crouch said. “These things are not cheap -- 300 grand or something like that? ... I want people to want it! When you’re trying to buy something, you want them to work at it!”

      In the end, it’s about “procurement”, which is quite different from “adoption” which is itself quite different from “appropriation”.

    7. "it's not about the technology" because "the technology is neutral."

      Right. Technology isn’t neutral. Nor is it good or bad. It’s diverse and it’s part of a broader context. Can get that some educators saying that it’s not about technology may have a skewed view of technology. But, on its own, this first part can also lead to an important point about our goals. It’s about something else. But, of course, there are some people who use the “bah, the technology doesn’t matter as long as we can do what we do” line to evade discussion. Might be a sign that the context isn’t right for deep discussion, maybe because educators have deeper fears.

    8. instances of broad, culture-shifting experimentation along these lines in higher education can be counted on one hand

      Let’s count them! And there’s something interesting about this contrast between experimentation and disruption. The latter may be about shifting profit centres. The former may be about learning.

    9. institutional demands for enterprise services such as e-mail, student information systems, and the branded website become mission-critical

      In context, these other dimensions of “online presence” in Higher Education take a special meaning. Reminds me of WPcampus. One might have thought that it was about using WordPress to enhance learning. While there are some presentations on leveraging WP as a kind of “Learning Management System”, much of it is about Higher Education as a sector for webwork (-development, -design, etc.).

    1. (At the time, Stephen Downes mocked me for thinking that this was an important aspect of LMS design to consider.)

      An interesting case where Stephen’s tone might have drowned a useful discussion. FWIW, flexible roles and permissions are among the key things in my own personal “spec list” for a tool to use with learners, but it’s rarely possible to have that flexibility without also getting a very messy administration. This is actually one of the reasons people like WordPress.

    2. Do you know what the feature set was that had faculty from Albany to Anaheim falling to their knees, tears of joy streaming down their faces, and proclaiming with cracking, emotion-laden voices, "Finally, an LMS company that understands me!"?

      While this whole bit is over-the-top, à la @mfeldstein67, must admit that my initial reaction was close to that. For a very similar reason. Still haven’t had an opportunity to use Canvas with learners, but the overall workflow for this type of feature really does make a big difference. The openness aspect is very close to gravy. After all, there are ways to do a lot of work in the open without relying on any LMS. But the LMS does make a huge difference in terms of such features as quickly grading learners’ work.

    3. Why, they would build an LMS. They did build an LMS. Blackboard started as a system designed by a professor and a TA at Cornell University. Desire2Learn (a.k.a. Brightspace) was designed by a student at the University of Waterloo. Moodle was the project of a graduate student at Curtin University in Australia. Sakai was built by a consortium of universities. WebCT was started at the University of British Columbia. ANGEL at Indiana University.
    4. And that, in fact, is a pretty good description of the IMS standard in development called Caliper, which is why I am so interested in it. In my recent post about walled gardens from the series that Jonathan mentions in his own post, I tried to spell out how Caliper could enable either a better LMS, a better world without an LMS, or both simultaneously.
    1. Alan Levine’s comment also needs to be kept for posterity:

      I so appreciate the framing of this history for the oMOOC (Original) as "courses of lectures" which seems not focused on the lectures but the discussions generated. And thanks for the mention of the ds106 assignment bank (a concept I seem to suggest in every project) but I must make a small historical credit. Grant Potter was definitely part of the foundation, but his great contribution was DS106 Radio. The person who credit for the Assignment Bank must go to is Martha Burtis who did this and more for co-creating DS106, but she's often invisible in the Shadow of Groom. I did the archeology on the Assignment Bank history: http://cogdogblog.com/2016/10/ds106-history-details/ I dream that someone would fund you to roll out the model described, maybe it's a dMOOC (Downsian) not that it would likely overtake the xMOOC Hype Train (which all its is shiny conductors have jumped off the train, i just keeps rolling through burgs like EdSurge).

    2. On this model, students are responsible for their own education, often forming communities or societies to collaborate. Professors typically worked one-on-one with students, but from time to time would be enlisted to offer a series - or 'course' - of lectures on a given topic. The lectures could be (and often were) public, and were frequently attended by other professors in the same field.

      Reminds me of @KevinCarey1 describe the original university of Bologna, in his End of College. Don’t have the quote handy (one of many cases where #OpenAccess would allow for more thoughtful discussion), but the gist of that paragraph sounds similar to what @Downes is describing here

  6. www.torrancelearning.com www.torrancelearning.com
    1. xAPI and Next Generation Learning Get the right data about the learning experience and its impact on performance. We’re among the early adopters and leaders in the Experience API (xAPI) and its application in performance & analytics. As winners of the xAPI Hyperdrive, eLearning Guild Demofest and Brandon Hall Awards with our xAPI-based solutions, we’re inspiring others with fresh thinking. As hosts of the xAPI Learning Cohort we’re supporting hundreds of pioneers and experimenters in learning and working with the xAPI.
  7. courses.openulmus.org courses.openulmus.org
    1. A video for Domains 2017. All footage by the amazing Meredith Fierro. Contributions from Zach Whalen, Steve Greenlaw, Nora Forknall, Janine Davis, Mark Synder, Clark Billups, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Callie Liberty, Parrish Waters, Claudine Ferrell, Sierra, Andi Livi Smith, Elaina Finkelstein, Troy Paino, Kris Shaffer, Jenn Hill, Stephanie Buckler, and Audrey Watters.

      Recognized a few, but not everyone. Would need to watch Meredith Fierra’s full film (with lower thirds, one might assume). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9dGAAe-emY

    1. I’ve come to realize more and more that these analogies, metaphors, and symbols are the way that we can come to teach the Web so that our students know it in the sense of recognizing it — distinguishing it, perceiving it in relation to those things already known.
    2. We need to provide useful guidance. We need to point students in those directions where we think that they can be successful, by suggesting applications they should install and use, by offering ideas of what elements to include on their sites, by providing feedback as they explore their own digital presence, but after that we need to be able to step back and get out of the way.

      Part of the reason it can be so difficult to step back is that students really expect us not to do so.

    3. having students do a basic Google image search for terms like “doctor” “teacher” “baby”

      It may sound obvious but it actually works. Just did it with each of these three words (on DuckDuckGo) and the results, though unsurprising, bring home the point. Tried switching on the Canadian filter, to check if their might be a difference, and it mostly reorders the results, for some reason. Also tried “student” and “musician” which provide an interesting contrast. Doing this exercise in class, would probably start by asking learners to write down what they expect to get. (Might even do it in my applied anthro class, tomorrow.)

    4. But if they are learning how to build on the Web they probably need to know something about becoming findable (or unfindable) on the Web. And by extension they need to understand how the power behind that findability is impacting the course of human history. 12 months ago if I had said that, some people would have rolled their eyes at me, but I think it’s safe to say that in the last 9 months we’ve all realized just how powerful algorithms are in shaping the outcomes of our culture.

      This is a pretty useful example of a paragraph with subtext, don’t you think? Could easily imagine future readers and annotators coming to this passage and scratching their heads for a minute while looking at the date. What happened nine months before June 2017? Living outside the US, it took me a few seconds to guess it (and my guess may be wrong). Of course, Martha was “playing for the audience” (though DoOO is having an impact outside the US). There’s indeed a shared understanding that events in the political arena may be relevant in our work on digital literacies.

    5. our CIO said that sure he could put some money to a pilot that did something like this

      Fateful. It might not be about investing resources, but some may miscalculate the resources needed or available for such initiatives.

    1. As an example, one of the most significant problems in healthcare security is the need for users to authenticate quickly to shared workstations in clinical environments. I could see a future version of Face ID embedded in an iMac solving that problem, changing an entire industry, and selling a lot of iMacs!

      Sounds very unlikely.

    1. Mount St. Mary’s use of predictive analytics to encourage at-risk students to drop out to elevate the retention rate reveals how analytics can be abused without student knowledge and consent

      Wow. Not that we need such an extreme case to shed light on the perverse incentives at stake in Learning Analytics, but this surely made readers react. On the other hand, there’s a lot more to be said about retention policies. People often act as though they were essential to learning. Retention is important to the institution but are we treating drop-outs as escapees? One learner in my class (whose major is criminology) was describing the similarities between schools and prisons. It can be hard to dissipate this notion when leaving an institution is perceived as a big failure of that institution. (Plus, Learning Analytics can really feel like the Panopticon.) Some comments about drop-outs make it sound like they got no learning done. Meanwhile, some entrepreneurs are encouraging students to leave institutions or to not enroll in the first place. Going back to that important question by @sarahfr: why do people go to university?

    2. Embracing an Entrepreneurial Culture on Campus go.nmc.org/uni(Tom Corr, University Affairs, 4 May 2016.) The Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs is gaining global recognition for its efforts to bolster students’ business skills through investing in multiple campus events and programs. For example, the success of Ontario Centres of Excellence has led to the establishment of similar innovation hubs throughout North America, the UK, Australia, and Asia.

      What’s fascinating here is that the province might be cutting a major part of the funding for the Ontario Centres of Excellence, particularly the part which has to do with Entrepreneurship Programs. (My current work is associated with Lead To Win, a Campus-Linked Accelerator out of Carleton University.)

    1. An institution has implemented a learning management system (LMS). The LMS contains a learning object repository (LOR) that in some aspects is populated by all users across the world  who use the same LMS.  Each user is able to align his/her learning objects to the academic standards appropriate to that jurisdiction. Using CASE 1.0, the LMS is able to present the same learning objects to users in other jurisdictions while displaying the academic standards alignment for the other jurisdictions (associations).

      Sounds like part of the problem Vitrine technologie-éducation has been tackling with Ceres, a Learning Object Repository with a Semantic core.

    1. The IMS Global Competencies and Academic Standards Exchange™ specification (CASE)™ is used to exchange information about learning and education competencies. CASE also transmits information about rubrics, criteria for performance tasks, which may or may not be aligned to competencies.

      Interesting that they explicitly talk about tasks which may not be aligned to competencies. Leaves room for co-curricular activities and microcredentials.

    2. Thanks to @jeffgrann for the heads-up! Clearly, people have been waiting for this. We’ll have to wait for the concrete results (not all IMS Global activities make as big of a splash as the others). But it’s very interesting. And needed. For instance, Quebec uses a competencies model all the way to higher education (its Cégeps are post-secondary institutions for vocational training and pre-university education). Thing is, they lack consistent frameworks. CASE won’t make these magically appear, but at least it gives them room for impact.

    1. Enhanced learning experience Graduate students now receive upgraded iPads, and all students access course materials with Canvas, a new learning management software. The School of Aeronautics is now the College of Aeronautics; and the College of Business and Management is hosting a business symposium Nov. 15.

      This from a university which had dropped Blackboard for iTunes U.