While it’s easy to agree with the thrust of this piece (pretty much a Langdon Winner-style “LMS have politics”), this needs not follow. When we say that it’s not primarily about the tool, we’re not saying that tools don’t matter, that LMS affordances are irrelevant, that the exact same learning experience would occur whether or not we used tools. We’re saying that the tool is part of a broader equation, not the ultimate focal point. There’s a very general “fault line” (in seismological terms), a distinction to be made between technopedagogy and “EdTech”. As with any distinction, it shouldn’t be carried too far and there’s obviously a whole lot of overlap. But there clearly are actions which are technocentred. A common orientation in EdTech is towards the tools themselves (listicles about apps, inspira-/promotional videos, etc.) with sound pedagogy following naturally from “tried and true”, “studies have shown” “best practices”. This may sound like a caricature but “you know the type”. On the other hand, technopedagogy tends to be oriented towards high-concept “think pieces” with enough namedrops (from Freire and Vygotsky to Illich and Dewey) to require an encyclopedia. Again, a caricature. But we also “know the type”. In this “camp”, the #DigPedPosse has been quite prominent over the last little while. Despite being attracted to this sphere of agency, got several hints that “people need practical solutions to solve the simple problems in their everyday teaching”.

Sooo… This is a minor quibble, as the rest of the piece does resonate with me (apart from the serious issue, near the end). But, given its location so early in the post, it’s important to acknowledge.

Ahem! Got to disagree, here. That Maha had reservations in terms of facilitating this on her own, sure. That Jim helped in getting Maha over an obstacle, great. But why would “courage” come into play, here? If this sentence were written by a complete stranger, it’d sound quite dismissive. In fact, were it written by a man, it’d be easy to interpret it as downright sexist. So, no offence, but this statement should be reassessed.

Despite this deposition from two years ago, U. Md. still hasn’t updated this page.

A lot hinges on those mentors. Apparently, they’re not exclusively technical, which might be an important point. The mentoring is a big part of the learning experience, surely. But there’s a certain level of complexity involved when we start discussing mentorships.

Group privacy is much more infrequently discussed than individual privacy. At least in Euro-American contexts. Quite likely a very important bias.

Though licensing issues may be less of a focus in Francophone work on Open Educational Resources, this portal mostly focuses on material under Creative Commons.

First part of the full text

DIY, grassroots, bottom-up… but not learner-driven.

Why so coy?

R.G. Wilmot Lampros, chief product officer for Aleks, says the underlying ideas, referred to as Knowledge Space Theory, were developed by professors at the University of California at Irvine and are in the public domain. It's "there for anybody to vet," he says. But McGraw-Hill has no more plans to make its analytics algorithms public than Google would for its latest search algorithm.

"I know that there are a few results that our customers have found counterintuitive," Mr. Lampros says, but the company's own analyses of its algebra products have found they are 97 percent accurate in predicting when a student is ready to learn the next topic.

As for Ms. Thille's broader critique, he is unpersuaded. "It's a complaint about capitalism," he says. The original theoretical work behind Aleks was financed by the National Science Foundation, but after that, he says, "it would have been dead without business revenues."

MS. THILLE stops short of decrying capitalism. But she does say that letting the market alone shape the future of learning analytics would be a mistake.

Who Decides?

Teaser!

https://twitter.com/sakaiproject/status/740560783042588673

If it can’t be measured, does it count?

Though much of it may sound trite and the writeup is somewhat awkward (diverse opinions strung together haphazardly), there’s something which can help us focus on somewhat distinct attitudes towards Learning Analytics. Much of it hinges on what may or may not be measured. One might argue that learning happens outside the measurement parameters.

If it’s not counted, does it count?

Time-sensitive, mission-critical, just-in-time, realtime, 24/7…

The autopsy/biopsy distinction can indeed be useful, here. Leading to insight. Especially if it’s not about which one is better. A biopsy can help prevent something in an individual patient, but it’s also a dangerous, potentially life-threatening operation. An autopsy can famously identify a “cause of death” but, more broadly, it’s been the way we’ve learnt a lot about health, not just about individual patients. So, while Teamann frames it as a severe limitation, the “autopsy” part of Learning Analytics could do a lot to bring us beyond the individual focus.

No.

Much of it sounds like Bob Squillace’s post following #OpenApereo16.

Sounds like Innov@Cité!

That kind of wording has come under scrutiny by some. Though the sequence does matter and we clearly want to give prominence to the pedagogical/andragogical/heutagogical side, there’s something to be said about a more holistic approach. But, basically, this is the dividing line between #EdTech and technopedagogy. It can easily be blurred, but some of us are drawing this line, over and over again.

“Shaping” can serve as a tie-in to SCoT and SST: the Social Shaping of Technology. And, then, all the way to Actor-Network Theory.

In the Ivory Tower, we hear less about that part of the relationship between Higher Ed. and businesses. Those colleagues of ours who are so against the 100-year push for universities to become more vocational tend to assume that employers are the ones doing the pushing. While it’s quite possible that some managers wish for universities to produce optimised employees, many people on that side of the equation argue that they’re quite able to train employees, as long as they’re able to learn. Now, there’s a whole thing about the “talent pipeline” which might get faculty in a tizzy. But it’s not about moulding learners into employees. Like much of Higher Ed., it’s about identifying (and labeling) people who conform to a certain set of standards. Not less problematic, perhaps, but not so much of a distinction between academia and employability.

Sure, we’ve heard that before. But there’s reason to be cautiously optimistic about this one.

a) Apple haz diversity! b) Participants didn’t have to endure Eddy Cue’s campy humour for too long.

Sounds both like a relatively large number (given that the service was panned by many people) and a small percentage of Apple’s active userbase.

Strange typo for an Apple-focused site.

Solutions in search of problems?

“Resistance is futile” Personal-ized education

Kind of surprised not to see other [h] annotations, here.

Suitably “global”, underlining the inequalities inherent in the system.

Paging Ivan Illich.

Can the humanistic bent in DH counteract the `self-hating human” part of technocracy?

There are clear signs that some move towards Open Pedagogy is in fact happening. At SALTISE, last week, @Downes made it quite clear that Open Education is about openness, not merely about cost.

While this may be true, it sure is sad. Especially as the emphasis on cost is likely to have negative impacts in the long run.

Sounds a bit restrictive. Though there are hairy UX problems making it even more difficult for teachers to contribute content, many other issues are likely to remain, preventing contributions, even if the User Experience were optimal for every single potential contributor. In other words, it’s one thing to set “the problem to be solved” in a manageable way. It’s another to grasp the complexity of the situation.

Even offgrid, say on a Raspberry Pi.

Arguable.

Sounds like Norman’s Law.

Glad Anglophone prescriptivists aren’t having their way. If they did, chances are that the language would have a similar fate to German as a colonial language. Chances are that a predilection for normative language has greatly impacted language insecurity among Francophones.

Best of luck with that. The Future of Journalism requires better headlines. #FoJ

The difference in tone, from the “principles” stated above, is significant and impactful. It may not seem wise to introduce new tools too late in the semester, but it could be done.

As the principles above came from this experience, they both benefit from a practical case and make the most sense in view of this practice.

Unless we integrate such a platform in something else.

Discuss.

So far, the thrust of the post was about the teacher acting as instructional technologist.

A lot of EdTech (even in Higher Ed) is focused on the isolated world of the Ivory Tower or school system.

Useful to point out. There’s so much distrust of learners…

Shoutout to h?

Or Google.

The weight of default should be understood. It’s not just about experience or skills. Given the amount of pressure put on learners, many of them will restrict themselves to the default because they perceive anything else to be too risky. For instance, given the opportunity to do something completely different from a final essay, many learners still chose to do an essay (and keep asking about the number of references). In other words, a simple default is key, but it needs not serve as a way to lock down creativity and exploration.

Though the advice makes a lot of sense, leaving it aside makes for a very empowering experience.

… as much as possible. Apart from the possible exception, there’s the notion that some of this can be done with learners’ agreement, as exploration. But, sure, for high stakes work, introducing platforms willy-nilly during the semester can cause anxiety if not framed properly.

Students [create multimedia] work best in platforms they choose themselves.

You mean it’s not just about the price of textbooks??

Therein lies the rub.

Though it makes sense in context, the anti-JS sentiment can create new divides.

Feeling loose?

Flattery will lead us nowhere… But it’s still a warm and fuzzy feeling to be in such illustrious company.

Can’t shake the feeling that there’s a bit of a Hawthorne Effect at play with #ILT5320.

Craft beer is a fascinating world, partly because of this approach to sharing. Much of the so-called “Craft Beer Revolution” happened through homebrewers who were sharing tips and recipes online (not to mention ingredients and samples offline). The idea, in many an indie/craft scene, is that the out-group is the Mainstream. Very similar story among owners of Third Wave cafés. Of course, there are differences. But still… When you have a “common enemy” (Anheuser-Busch, Starbucks, McGraw-Hill…), it’s much easier to grow together.

Neat use of TAGS Explorer. Did do so, to interesting effects. Regular livetweet events may be more interesting. And there’s something to be said about NodeXL and COSMOS.

In contrast with “The Digital”, the Schutz-like we-ness coupled with “rightfulness” makes for thick layering.

It’s “The Digital” but it’s not about that, you understand? It’s something special… by being normal, human communication.

Speaking of fieldwork and coevalness…

Quasi-coeval

Wonder without magic. It’s not special, though it’s kinda special when we make it so.

Sounds like we should be jealous.

Truth-adjacent

Adjacency

That kid at the back of the room.

aka “The Digital”, “The Now”

We sure need to discuss inequalities.

Though there are major differences between Open Access and Open Educational Resources, the two approaches to openness share a lot. Advocates for both are likely to have a lot of values in common, including a distaste for inequalities.

Was this before @judell joined @hypothes_is?

And education is conceived as a “sector” through technology.

if allowed to spread

Act first, don’t even ask for permission later.

More than a use case.

Granularity of the content itself can matter quite a bit… Part of the reason the focus on textbooks may mislead us (apart from the difficulty of teaching from a textbook) is that the “monolithic” assumption behind the textbook model makes reuse more difficult. Sure, we can take textbooks apart and reuse individual items. But the high degree of integration between parts of a textbook makes it less likely that people will split the book apart.

Lots of work being done on collaborative work across institutions… or even across courses.

Useful advice.

Nice suggestion

Strange indeed, considering how Chomsky 2014 wasn’t defending the Chomsky of Syntactic Structures.

Really glad this is stated. Many comments on #TateGate are blaming Ella Dawson for her flawed perception. As “blaming the victim” is an unbelievably common occurrence in issues of domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections, there’s something quite bitter about the whole situation.

Daydream alert! Not that it’s necessarily the best solution or the only one. But it’s much easier to start building appropriate tools when the door is open to difficult ideas like negotiation than closing down discussion right away by claiming that nothing can be done besides a variant of the current system.

Negotiation is a complex process.

The notion that everyone (who matters) now has the equivalent of a printing press is an interesting part of the scriptocentric worldview.

And even setting things up so that thoughtful commentary is specifically encouraged. The tool may be part of it but the key difference, in my own personal experience, is about the first few interactions. When @RemiHolden invites annotations to his blogposts about annotations, he does so in the context of a burgeoning community of practice around open annotations for pedagogy. Much closer to the climate science case and, interestingly, quite close to the very memos and Requests for Comments at the origin of the Internet.

Which jurisdiction?

Again, it might be useful to distinguish the layers involved in the “publication” process. Including the climate scientists cited and quoted in the story. The journalist writing the story. The photographer providing a vivid depiction of the effects of climate change. Advertisers paying for the news site’s survival with advertorial about somewhat more “Earth-friendly” SUVs. Uncredited sources for the story. The mega-corporation behind the news site and all its affiliates… There’s copyright, moral rights to the image, reputations of everyone involved, etc.

And socially appropriate, and productive, and fun…

Useful list. Would make sense to spend some time discussing differences between individual content creators and major outlets since the discussion at Hypothesis seems to hinge on the “speaking truth to power” ideal. Technically, Automattic might be the publisher in Ella Dawson’s case. But she’s the one receiving the grief from people working for or with Genius Media Group.

Blog rings disappeared as commercial entities started using comment sections for their own purposes.

A small group of people with a vision. That might be the start of many a narrative, especially in the US, but there’s a difficult and complex transition to a much more diverse world where a shared sense of belonging is hard to maintain.

And diversified in the process, authority shifted.

So refreshing to hear actors in the scene allowing for deeper learning!

At least, it boils down ambiguity to straightforward specs.

Especially tricky when the tension involves raising awareness of sexual issues while maintaining your sanity.

Very commendable, especially the acknowledgment that it’s not merely a complicated issue of legal and ethical concerns in the United States of America’s news organisations.

There’s a whole chapter on this, to be written (and annotated). A key point, which is most often discussed by social scientists than by literary scholars or engineers, is that “groups” differ wildly in their shape, size, internal diversity, dynamics, growth, structures, etc.

One might even say that it’s a complex situation, not merely a complicated one, since these “variables” interact with one another in unpredictable ways. Through time.

On a page-by-page basis or sticking for a whole session?

In the “speaking truth to power” model, this affordance is an issue.

This type of opt-in requires a prior understanding of “what’s out there”. Current systems, including Hypothesis, are quite far from allowing this type of granularity. If one browses to a CBC page about pipeline projects and enables Hypothesis on that page to see what climate scientists have to say about it, the only way it could work is if all climate scientists annotating the page belonged to the same group and the reader had already specifically restricted annotations to come from that group. In the Genius case, she’s more likely to see snarky gifs than thoughtful exegesis from climate scientists. In Canada, the situation would have been worse just a few months ago, as many scientists were muzzled.

In some cases, this annotation layer is visible without this page-by-page opt-in.

As part of their job, many scientists have a responsibility to inform the public and science attracts people who share this sense of duty. Yet, oftentimes, scientists remain in such hermetic modes of discourse that their words aren’t understand by “the general population” (which includes a lot of brilliant people from other spheres of expertise).

Two key features of this case: experts in a field share a lot in advance and teaming up is quite different from the fluid world of social interactions (cf. Tuckman). In other words, this case is about “likeminded people” who may disagree on a lot of things and be quite different on a personal level but have a common “code”, in the linguistic sense. The early Internet was like that, the early Web was like that, and early blogging was pretty much like that.

That sets a rather high bar for dissent.

It’s often useful to distinguish content creators from publishers, as Doug Schepers does.

A small group of people picking up where others have left off. There have been many attempts at building annotation systems. Something interesting about the current is the map of connections between those who are trying to build new tools, based on an emerging standard. For one thing, it tends to be heavily rooted in the United States despite the fact that the Web and the Net as a whole are much less US-centric than before.

In radically different contexts, these two services came upon a rather busy scene. We frequently discuss these two, as though they started the movement to converge towards this form of “social media”. The focus on “personal branding” is a big part of the narrative.

Right after the bubble burst, blogging became an important outlet for geeks who had more time on their hands.

Many professional bloggers lost traffic and looked for other ways to gain it back.

Sounds nostalgic but it’s very difficult to compare the current context with that one in part because the changes intervening in the meantime have been complex. Jenny Cool and Howard Rheingold may have neat insight on other contexts, pre-UserLand.

Sounds like there were many other reasons that most Internet-based initiatives stayed civil in their early days. Some of them have to do with human diversity.

That’s something we’ve been doing, yes.

Obvious case for h. Imagine the possibilities of linked open data used in annotating presentations which would be part of scholarly books along with all the necessary material? The mind wanders…

Pause for effect…

Saddened by the fact that so many parts of the discussion about annotation adopt such a literal view of “public”, as though it were an easy thing to discuss and as if the whole issue revolved around this.

As the W3C is having its international conference in a few days (and since we’re holding Open Knowledge Fest concurrently), the Open Annotation web standard could be an interesting topic for thoughtful dialogue. The first step is acknowledging that people’s needs differ largely, in terms of annotations. Doug Schepers has an insightful way to put it.

Looks like Disqus is having issues…

Funny how frequently this terms comes up, when talking about Genius. The difference between annotation platforms is significantly a matter of usage. Usage of Genius has a lot to do with snarky comments made by “the smart kid at the back of the class”. My perception of Hypothesis is that it’s much more oriented towards diversifying voices. But that has less to do with technical features of the platform than with the community adopting it.

Glad engineering is part of it but hoping some of the work will touch on the community aspects.

Acknowledgment is an important step. It’s quite likely that principles guiding h are ideally suited for what the platform has been designed to accomplish. Yet no tool sits in a vacuum.

Answering a question you don’t understand with a snarky comment is a very efficient way to exclude people.

Many people are. We’re all ambivalent about what it means to write in public. Those of us who are so privileged as to not need to think about this too hard may not notice the extent of the issue.

Readers do encounter them without seeking them out.

Depends on what is meant by “directly” since annotation is specifically designed to be more direct than comments.

Just got in touch with @DoyleOwl. Neat approach to annotation. My sense is that Genius can have a useful effect similar to that of those programmes using basketball to keep kids off the streets.

Glad this was mentioned. To the Eric Raymonds of this world, such a response sounds “perfectly legitimate”. But it’s precisely what can differentiate communities and make one more welcoming than the other. Case in point: Arduino-related forums, in contrast with the Raspberry Pi community. Was looking for information about building a device to track knee movement. Noticed that “goniometer” was the technical term for that kind of device, measuring an angle (say, in physiotherapy). Ended up on this page, where someone had asked a legitimate question about Arduino and goniometers. First, the question:

Trying to make a goniometer using imu (gy-85). Hoe do I aquire data from the imu using the arduino? How do I code the data acquisition? Are there any tutorials avaible online? Thanks =)

Maybe it wouldn’t pass the Raymond test for “smart questions”, but it’s easy to understand and a straight answer could help others (e.g., me).

Now, the answer:

For me, google found 87,000,000 hits for gy-85. I wonder why it failed for you.

Wow. Just, wow.

Then, on the key part of the question (the goniometer):

No idea what that is or why I should have to google it for you.

While this one aborted Q&A is enough to put somebody off Arduino forever, it’s just an example among many. Like Stack Overflow, Quora, and geek hideouts, Arduino-related forums are filled with these kinds of snarky comments about #LMGTFY.

Contrast this with the Raspberry Pi. Liz Upton said it best in a recent interview (ca. 25:30):

People find it difficult to remember that sometimes when somebody comes along… and appears to be “not thinking very hard”, it could well be because they’re ten years old.

And we understand (from the context and such) that it’s about appearance (not about “not thinking clearly”). It’s also not really about age.

So, imagine this scenario. You’re teacher a class, seminar, workshop… Someone asks a question about using data from a device to make it into a goniometer. What’s the most appropriate strategy? Sure, you might ask the person to look for some of that information online. But there are ways to do so which are much more effective than the offputting ’tude behind #LMGTFY. Assuming they do search for that kind of information, you might want to help them dig through the massive results to find something usable, which is a remarkably difficult task which is misunderstood by someone who answer questions about goniometers without knowing the least thing about them.

The situation also applies to the notion that a question which has already been asked isn’t a legitimate question. A teacher adopting this notion would probably have a very difficult time teaching anyone who’s not in extremely narrow a field. (Those teachers do exist, but they complain bitterly about their job.)

Further, the same logic applies to the pedantry of correcting others. Despite the fact that English-speakers’ language ideology allows for a lot of non-normative speech, the kind of online #WordRage which leads to the creation of “language police” bots is more than a mere annoyance. Notice the name of this Twitter account (and the profile of the account which “liked” this tweet).

Lots of insight from @BiellaColeman on people who do things “for the lulz”. Her work is becoming increasingly relevant to thoughtful dialogue on annotations.

Same experience, even in the Genius guidelines. The tool’s affordances (and name) revolve around snark. In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with that. We need spaces for people to have fun, even if it’s at the expense of others. But the startup is based on a very specific idea of what constitutes useful commentary. That idea is closer to pedantry, snark, intellectual bullying, and animated gifs than on respectful exchange.

Ugh. The need for hype is well-understood but there’s something really offputting when journos start comparing extreme situations and claim that one is worse than another.

Beg to differ. The first part is factual but heavily loaded (as we can notice from what ensued). The second part is misleading: there’s a significant difference between commenting on a piece and posting something about it elsewhere, which is pretty much why some bloggers and news agencies have blocked comment sections. The last part can be understood as clumsy selfpromotion but it’s not really accurate: Genius, even in a simple form (differing from the one we do get?) is only a more efficient tool for comment if we oversimplify “commenting”.

Not so clear, no.

Not solutions, but more appropriate affordances. A “Bozo filter” isn’t a solution, as we all know. But the original one had advantages over Twitter’s blocking feature. Since the “bozo” in question wasn’t aware of the block, the retaliatory practice of opening sockpuppet accounts wasn’t common.

Yes, plenty. Most of them have little to do with the platforms, at a technical level. But they do have a whole lot to do with their userbase. As Trapani says, “your community is your best feature”.

Difficult to address those issues without exploring usage of the tools.

Would be neat to know more about the course’s studentship.

Explained further in the screencast. My paternal grandfather’s mother came from a well-to-do Schneider family and was a devout Christian, but she “read” the Bible upside-down, according to my paternal grandmother.

Maybe key. Similar to my previous claims.

Restatement from supra.

Weber understands by power: the chance of a man, or a number of men "to realize their own will in communal action, even against the resistance of others."

Weber – Class, Status, and Power

Meaning, in that Malian context.

A “well-informed citizenry” require journalistic assistance. Which is why US elections are such a neat context to discuss literacy, public opinion, agency, representativeness, and populism.

In precise contrast with school. In some ways, literacy is such a basic part of schooling that it’s nearly impossible to imagine other core skills (from numeracy to empathy) giving pupils and students any kind of social status outside of literacy.

Cf. supra.

Yet people assume that the issue of Free Will is a universal obsession. As per Foucault’s episteme, the notion is so strong as to restrict the imagination.

{cringe}

Though we always point out that moveable type didn’t wait for Gutenberg to have an impact, the master narrative of Occidentalism spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on the printing press as the key moment in history.

Based in part on Umberto Eco’s well-known text. As well as Medieval Catholics’ attitude towards scriptures, leading to Gutenberg, Luther, Calvin, and literacy campaigns all the way to the current climate of technological determinism.

What people tend to forget is that having others read to you is also a form of power. Sure, there are movies about the problems with this scenario. But our perception that scribes are the one with agency is at the very core of scriptocentism.

My understanding of what happens in Koranic schools is very limited but friends in Mali have described a process by which they had learnt the Koran by heart before they knew the meaning of any of the words. Something similar has been discussed in terms of the Bhagavad Gita.

Sadly, Judge Djibril Diarra passed away soon afterward.

Lots to be said on my work with Malian donsow. Some of it in the screencast. This text (in French) about hunter and bard Yoro Sidibe is among very few things ever published by yours truly.

Labov’s key text on the sociolinguistics of African American Vernacular English, with special attention to verbal eloquence (such as ritual insults, similar to Hip Hop taunts) regardless of literacy levels.

That part never worked. But maybe these annotations will? That’d be neat.

It’s been obvious in my teaching that a lot of people confuse -centrisms with pride or condescension. Yet it’s possible to be selfcentred and ashamed, or eurocentric and guilt-stricken. My favourite approach to explaining these -centrisms comes from a textbook which defines tempocentrism thusly:

Treating one's historical time period as "normal," or best, or as timeless; failing to conceive how the past or future might differ from the present.

Despite the mention of “best”, the key idea is quite different from comparative judgment. It’s about a failure of the imagination.

It’s not that Africa is necessarily that aural. But most africanists come contrast attitudes about the written word, at some point in our careers.

The statement which triggered my whole reaction. But the attitude is very common, just rarely so explicit and never discussed.

There’s a significant body of work in linguistic anthropology about the diversity of “language-related worldview”.