OLDaily

Emotion, Reason, and Language: Meanings Are Made, Not Retrieved
J. Marshall Unger, Sino-Platonic Papers, 2019/06/14

This might be a shocker to some people, but I think it is exactly right: " emotion and reason are not stored routines or algorithms retrieved by mental processes akin to computer programs but are rather thoughts and behaviors that emerge in real time. Recent studies of brain states during the transition from word recognition to word understanding (Kutas & Federmeier 2011, Broderick et al. 2018) strongly suggest that linguistic meaning likewise is dynamically created on the occasion of each linguistic interaction." Read that again. We create the meaning of a word or phrase each time anew every time we have a conversation. (Do read the references; they're both open access.)

"Naturally, this undermining of the notion of meanings as discrete, context-independent packets of information associated with words or morphemes stored in the mind calls into question the claim that context-independent systems of symbols standing in one-to-one relationship with such mentally stored atoms of information exist." We 'make meaning' the way we 'make an emotion' - naturally, habitually, fluidly, without thought or premeditation. This is a short (18 page PDF) semantically dense paper but well worth the effort. Via Language Log (which, along with Language Hat, I read religiously).

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Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale
Clay Shirky, Phil on Ed Tech, 2019/06/14

This article is completely focused on the United States, so it can't be said to make a statistical case for anything, but despite that, what Clay Shirky says here is right: "What the mega-university story gets right is that online education is transforming higher education. What it gets wrong is the belief that transformation must end with consolidation around a few large-scale institutions." Having said that, while the article suggests that 'everybody' thought a few mega-universities would take over the entire market, in reality very few people ever thought that, and even fewer said it.

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M. David Merrill
M. David Merrill, 2019/06/14

David Merrill has updated his website making many of his important works and contributions (which have been numerous and significant) accessible to the general reading public. He writes in an announcement, "My new site contains biographical information about my career and is primarily a repository of some of my most important publications.  It also contains links to some online lectures and a couple of online courses." Merrill is widely regarded for his wortk on instructional design, and in particular, his 'first principles of instruction', which are "a basic set of principles that are required to make instruction effective, efficient and engaging."

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The End of the Line for iTunes U?
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2019/06/14

It has been so irrelevant for so long that I didn't even think of it, but in the wake of Apple's recent announcement that it is phasing out iTines, it follows that one of its side-projects, iTunes U, is also headed for the scrap heap. But it is where it has been headed for some time: "in 2017... Apple eliminated the iTunes U section of iTunes, making full courses accessible only through the iTunes U app on Apple mobile devices." For most of the world, at that point, iTunesU effectively disappeared. It remains out of sight to this day.

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Fables of School Reform
Audrey Watters, The Baffler, 2019/06/14

I liked the Audrey Watters article in the Baffler (via Doug Belshaw) and largely agree with her criticisms of the 'ed reform' set. But I wonder about this dichotomy she is setting up: the "only a bold, outside innovator can see beyond the constraints that expertise typically places on those working within a field." Are the 'innovators' really working against 'experts'? Yes, I know, among the VC crowd there's a lot of in-group thinking, pitchy narratives and outright hucksterism. But not all experts are on the other side. Some experts (ahem) reject both the ASU+GSV story and the AERA story. The history of ed reform may be a history of the con. But not all innovation is a con.

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