MOOCs hold potential benefit for many in the developing world

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been the subject of much hyperbole in the educational/eLearning world for a few years now, under the guise of spreading university-quality education to the masses for free (the hyperbole is dwindling down, but not completely).

Postcolonial

A Postcolonial Look at the Future of #EdTech

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” 

When we encourage students to use technology, do we remind them of the risks of placing their information online and give them choices of how much personal information to reveal?

one could argue that the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman.

(Actually, I’m pretty sure the company above meant “constructivism” here, since “constructionism” builds upon the learn-by-doing of constructivism by stressing the importance of the tangible not just the abstract.)

The body matters to learning.

The military’s contributions to education technology are often overlooked

proper planning has been key

only the best projects get funded each year

grant-like programs where teachers apply for ed tech with a plan for how to use it

New technology has often been introduced in schools without the necessary long-term planning and training that should have accompanied it. SMART boards were notorious for being installed in classrooms (at great cost) and then used in the same way as the static blackboards that preceded them. One-to-one device programs have been ridiculed for the same reasons.

opportunity to print 3D prosthetic limbs for real children who need them

closing the “digital use divide.”

Bridging the Digital Divide

With internet access at home becoming increasingly important for students to be able to finish their homework, some schools are having to get creative to meet the needs of those without it.

It starts by rejecting the canard that a university education is just another commodity.

A J Angulo is the author of Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers and the American Dream

For-profits typically take those funds and spend way more on advertising and profit distribution than on teaching.

With the presidential election cycle coming to a close in November

The phrase “diploma mills” came into popular usage during the era.

A similar conclusion was reached by the medical (pdf) and legal professions of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

give students what they want

This model might make sense if our goal was to produce cars, clothing, and some other commodity more efficiently. But a university education doesn’t fit into this paradigm. It isn’t just a commodity.

There are outputs, such as graduates, increased social mobility and higher standards of living.

The idea is that higher education is like any other industry.

Don't turn students into consumers – the US proves it's a recipe for disaster

Right now the focus is on audio data, which is being used in two ways. First, the system signals the TA when he or she is talking too much. That shows up as a big red screen that flashes to the instructor to give a warning, or a green light to signal that all is well.

help TAs — especially those from other countries

While TAs are intended to help students understand the material, their teaching skills vary and they come at the job with widely different backgrounds.

Large lecture classes may go through the content too quickly for the typical student to understand. That's why so many schools follow the practice of breaking the class cohort into smaller sections led by teaching assistants.

The ultimate goal of the project is to support improved teaching and learning in university classrooms by bridging cultural divides between students and their teachers.

Tyton’s Bryant sees LinkedIn, Lynda and Microsoft tapping into continuing and lifelong learning, an arena in which he thinks higher-ed institutions have done poorly.

The more vulnerable part of higher ed is professional master’s and certificate programs, which are long and expensive and provide more than someone needs to get the job, said Selingo, the “There Is Life After College” author.

‘Well, but I have all these badges because I did a bunch of skill-based stuff online,’

much more tied to employment

Craig doesn’t think elite schools need to worry; their degrees will still be used by employers as a sign of quality.

“In five to 10 years, most students will buy their postsecondary education differently from the way they buy it now,”

That competency profile is part of a transformation Craig sees coming, “the great unbundling of higher education,” to borrow his 2015 book’s subtitle.

“In my perfect world, I have a competency profile — you know, on LinkedIn, presumably — that is kept up to date in real time on the competencies that I am exhibiting in my work, as well as competencies that I’ve demonstrated through assessments, through my education, the formal credentials that I’ve accrued,”

“unstructured informal just-in-time learning.”

“less formally organized around specific certifications and more organized around demonstrating competencies with specific technical skills.”

The tech skills that people are looking for now

traditional certification market

currently fragmented corporate-training market

A slide presentation promised to “transform learning.”

The culture of doctoral work can prompt paranoia, overwhelming desire to please dissertation committees and other faculty.

Improve Admissions ROI

which applicants are most likely to matriculate

Colleges using data analytics have to make sure their students have “open futures” — that their programs create educational opportunities, not the other way around.

Data collection on students should be considered a joint venture, with all parties — students, parents, instructors, administrators — on the same page about how the information is being used.

"We know the day before the course starts which students are highly unlikely to succeed,"

there is some disparity and implicit bias

that learning is defined by “student achievement,”

focus on teaching, not learning

assess the stuff that’s easy to measure

an assessment to see if, in fact, students leave at least as interested in learning as when they entered

relearning why we want kids in schools in the first place

The real innovation that we need in schools has little to do with technologies or tools or products designed to improve our teaching.

real world, authentic purpose

real learning that sticks with us over time

getting back to the old

our “stock of intuitive, empathic, commonsense knowledge about learning.”

those who are learners will have more opportunities for growth and success than those who are learned.

improving teaching, not amplifying learning.

shift agency for learning to the learner

“innovation”

the Maker Movement in schools, when fully embraced, is one such example of shifting roles in the classroom.

make money for Californian white people

At Google, I'll be encouraged to take annual Bias-Busting training, gathering with other privileged honkeys to encourage one another's virtuous respect of black coworkers we don't have.

Google decided to close Atlanta engineering, and they mainly went as a group to Square

A fellow Googler pointed out several factual inaccuracies in this post, and thus I have removed it.

It creates resentment towards minorities because you are forced to take take this training that treats them like charity cases which in turn encourages the “lowering the bar” mentality.

It encourages thinking that “you’ve done your part” since you’ve been taken training on diversity

perpetuating two negative attitudes

feel they are extremely open minded & tolerant

We found zero relationship.

technical interviews are completely worthless as a predictor for whether someone is a good hire or not

One of the open secrets of working in technology

We believe that America’s diversity is our strength.

she says of young digital natives

It's easier to get Hamilton tickets than to get your hands on the perpetually sold out Raspberry Pi Zero these days

never heard of Bateson before reading Musicking, but I’ve added some of his writings to my reading list!

am I just a visual learner?

disheartened that open education is still mainly focused on MOOCs and OERs, rather than on the broader concept of open textbooks, open research, and open data.

MOOCs have forced Vice Chancellors to focus on teaching and learning This is probably a true if sad statement.

Stop Teaching

In their current role, advertisements don’t just tell us what we should want, but also who we are. It’s no wonder that childless women want in

do these analyses without ever mentioning diversity when we recruit survey-takers or within our survey

terabyte’s worth of skepticism.

districts are pouring money into computers and software programs—money that’s badly needed for, say, hiring teachers

(Really. See their work. It’s worth reading.)

despite the fact that it’s remarkably expensive

we shouldn’t confuse personalized learning with personal learning

students were being made to take them several times a year, including “benchmark” tests to prepare them for the other tests.

putting grades online (thereby increasing their salience and their damaging effects)

meaningful learning never requires technology

efficiency...at teaching the same way that children have been taught for a very long time

people in other countries should be seen primarily as rivals to be defeated.

children’s learning

digitally personalized.

Other people, particularly politicians, defend technology on the grounds that it will keep our students “competitive in the global economy.”

spend oodles of money

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the idea of using digital technology in the classroom tends to be either loved or hated.

Black students in these schools took AP Physics at almost 11 times the rate as black students elsewhere, and they passed the exams at 3.4 times the rate

the largest consumer of college graduates

there is widespread agreement among college officials and policymakers that the current accreditation system is broken

after teaching online many start to realize, “I could never do this in a classroom!”

How does the increasing diversity of our student population make good teaching more challenging and what is the best approach to meeting that challenge?

discussion prompts

The verb “to problemetize” was coined for a reason.

From an academic perspective, “explainer” is almost inevitably a misnomer for a two-minute animation aimed at a mass audience. 

We also want to produce short-form pieces that reach a broader audience.

This is exactly the sort of solution-in-search-of-a-problem problem that leads us down the road to horror shows like “robot tutors in the sky that can semi-read your mind.”

This attempt at jujitsu is worth some unpacking.

I know there are quite a few people out there who dislike me and even hate me; you make speak poorly of me and call me names. That is fine, but know this: I wish you no ill will.

A man who is chancellor of a higher education facility blocked one of his students on the first day of his job.

Funding for humanities labs

our faculty are evaluated on not just research, teaching and service but also collaboration

Jack Ma said in a speech last month in Hangzhou, China, that the fakes are of "better quality, better prices than the real products, the real names."

Many, but not all, told me that they had integrated technology into their lessons to “personalize learning.”

The remix should be thought of as a method of quotation, citation and commentary; as a form of pastiche, parody or homage; as a means of picking our way through the media-saturated labyrinth in which we find ourselves; a vital expression of our living culture in a confused and confusing time.

Our research indicates that individuals exercise a great deal of critical evaluation of sources in non-academic contexts (as in the case of looking for good restaurants, or shopping for new cars, for instance). It may be of value to explore these personal evaluation practices with students, encouraging them to apply them in academic contexts.

“Students chose how they were going to display how they were going to master those standards through projects,”

"I realized then I could code on the computer to have it fulfill the tasks I wanted it to,"

what will happen to Tesla and the progress of autonomous driving as more people use Autosteer in situations it’s not good at

Recursive hamstering, if you will

Perceptual Learning - Training the brain to better perceive the information it is getting from the eyes.

The copyright for the materials in this collection is held by Universal Music Canada and their affiliates. These materials have been made available with their consent. Patrons may not download, reproduce, alter or transmit files/images without permission from the copyright holder(s). These files/images may not be used for commercial purposes but may be used under the fair dealing or educational exemptions outlined in the Canadian Copyright Act.

Facebook is shutting down its Paper newsreading app on July 29th

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Put simply, the people have spoken and news appears to have lost.

at a time when the public opinion of the media is at an all-time low, which all serves to make today’s announcement even thornier

Facebook is a social network, not a cable news network

Facebook indicated it wanted to be the internet’s best destination for news

I think it would be easier/better if Hypothes.is both accepted and sent webmentions.

Is there anyone here? I still have not received the product

It is important to note, however, that throughout all of this, we have always had the best intentions.

co-Founder and Executive Director for KDDC, a 30 megawatt hydropower dam in Nigeria—one of the first to be privatized in the country

people really don't want to criticize this, because it is a humanitarian effort, a nonprofit effort and to criticize it is a little bit stupid, actually.

Diigo’s Refocus Back to Annotation

This page does not exist yet.

Quiz questions can be exported in IMS QTI 2.0 format.

The need for workforce training and professional certificate programs will increase just as the need for more four-year degrees will, and schools must remain ahead of trends with research and training to stay competitive.

failure to find revenue and support from unconventional sources

We do not support casting from Android or iOS at this time.

It is unlikely that anyone is going to invite Shane Snow to redesign a major prison any time soon

ensure that you’re solving the right problem

demanding that technologies designed for a group of people be designed and built, in part, by those people

Understanding the wants and needs of users is important when you’re designing technologies for people much like yourself, but it’s utterly critical when designing for people with different backgrounds, experiences, wants and needs.

Without the active collaboration of the people he’s trying to help, he’s unable to make technological advances.

“Is it ever okay to solve another person’s problem?”

The War on Stupid People

When Michael Young, a British sociologist, coined the term meritocracy in 1958, it was in a dystopian satire. At the time, the world he imagined, in which intelligence fully determined who thrived and who languished, was understood to be predatory, pathological, far-fetched. Today, however, we’ve almost finished installing such a system, and we have embraced the idea of a meritocracy with few reservations, even treating it as virtuous.

At the same time, those positions that can still be acquired without a college degree are disappearing.

many jobs that have come to require college degrees, ranging from retail manager to administrative assistant, haven’t generally gotten harder for the less educated to perform.

People who’d swerve off a cliff rather than use a pejorative for race, religion, physical appearance, or disability are all too happy to drop the s‑bomb: Indeed, degrading others for being “stupid” has become nearly automatic in all forms of disagreement.

Two performances did seem to transcend the present, with artists sharing music that felt like open-source software to paths unknown. The first, Sam Aaron, played an early techno set to a small crowd, performing by coding live. His computer display, splayed naked on a giant screen, showcasedSonic Pi, the free software he invented. Before he let loose by revising lines of brackets, colons and commas, he typed:#This is Sonic Pi…..#I use it to teach people how to code#everything i do tonight, i can teach a 10 year old child…..His set – which sounded like Electric Café-era Kraftwerk, a little bit of Aphex Twin skitter and some Eighties electro – was constructed through typing and deleting lines of code. The shadowy DJ sets, knob-tweaking noise and fogbank ambient of many Moogfest performers was completely demystified and turned into simple numbers and letters that you could see in action. Dubbed "the live coding synth for everyone," it truly seemed less like a performance and more like an invitation to code your own adventure.

The shadowy DJ sets, knob-tweaking noise and fogbank ambient of many Moogfest performers was completely demystified and turned into simple numbers and letters that you could see in action.

Is there a particular reason why electronic music has to be played at night?

“'Makerspace' is just a modern term for project-based learning,” he said, adding embracing this teaching style in today’s classroom is “a part of good pedagogy.”

Those annoying pop-up windows? My fault, at least in part. I designed a vertically-oriented popup window that included navigation tools and an ad for inclusion on webpages at some point in late 1996 or early 1997. It was intended to be less intrusive than inserting an ad into the middle of a user’s homepage. I won’t claim responsibility (irresponsibility?) for inventing the damned things, and I disclaim any responsibility for cascading popups, popups that move to the top, and those annoying “bot” windows that open different popups every few minutes. Still, the fault is at least in part mine, and I’m sorry. :-)

(Who is “we”?)

The future of the sustainable development of effective OER will be characterized by stigmergy. Stigmergy is the watchword for the next decade of OER.

If only 2% – 5% of all faculty and their students (who are doing renewable assignments) were active creators and improvers of OER, that would likely be sufficient.

We need to enable and facilitate alternative development models if our vision of universal OER adoption is to become a reality.

No grades. No assignments. Instead, there are opportunities. 

change stereotypes

we need to broaden perceptions and stereotypes of CS

Placing Strategy Before Tech

A PANACEA FOR EDUCATION’S IRON TRIANGLE

The Piper Computer Kit comes with everything a 7-12 year old needs to assemble her own computer, including a Raspberry Pi 3 microcomputer, an HD LCD display, a powerbank, a speaker and a puzzle-like wooden case that she assemble to house her computer.

Les actions des enseignants sont maintenant considérées comme des actes professionnels, au même titre que les médecins, les avocats, etc.

«Les professeurs qui publient dans une revue disciplinaire n'ont pas toujours le temps, ni la reconnaissance, pour publier dans d'autres publications sur leurs projets ou leurs innovations pédagogiques, explique Anastassis Kozanitis. S'ils le font, ces publications hors discipline ne sont pas reconnues pour leurs demandes de subvention. C'est un frein majeur à la diffusion des recherches dans le domaine au Canada.»

«On entend pourtant peu parler de la pédagogie postsecondaire, même s'il y a des initiatives qui naissent à gauche et à droite. Certains innovent, mais ça reste dans leur collège ou leur département universitaire»

fail a little less

If the RRID is well-formed, and if the lookup found the right record, a human validator tags it a valid RRID — one that can now be associated mechanically with occurrences of the same resource in other contexts. If the RRID is not well-formed, or if the lookup fails to find the right record, a human validator tags the annotation as an exception and can discuss with others how to handle it. If an RRID is just missing, the validator notes that with another kind of exception tag.

It’s a human/machine partnership that works as follows.

“papers are the only scientific artifacts that are guaranteed to be preserved.”

produce schema-aware writing tools that everyone can use to add new documents to a nascent semantic web

Annotation can help us weave that web of linked data.

We pretend that tech innovation races along at breakneck speed. But sometimes it sputters until conditions are right.

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(The Gates Foundation is among the funders of the Hechinger Report.)

Most of the universities combined the software with human instruction, but a few courses were delivered entirely online.

Innovation isn’t always about technology, efficiency, speed, scale