OLDaily

General capabilities: A perspective from cognitive science
Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, NSW Department of Education, 2019/07/15

This article (10 page PDF) represents a bit of a retreat from the traditional position that "capabilities cannot be considered general or transferable across knowledge domains" and addresses the need to teach some 'capabilities' (though, of course, always within the context of some domain of 'content knowledge'). But citing Barry McGraw, the authors observe "capabilities such as the capacity to work with others, and meta skills such as metacognition, or learning how to learn, may be thought of as domain-independent competencies that can be developed in any learning area of the curriculum and applied to any other learning area." Even given this limited retreat, I still think the core argument from cognitive science is fundamentally mistaken, and that statements like "the only difference between the expert players and the novice players was their knowledge of chess" are fundamentally wrong. Via Steve Zanon.

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Learning Technology Evolves: Integrated Platforms Are Arriving
Josh Bersin, 2019/07/15

Josh Bersin discusses the evolution of the Learning Experience Platform (LXP) out of the LMS and the increasing range and complexity of learning support tools these platforms need to integrate in today's environment. "Tools for VR, embedded micro-learning, intelligent search, mobile content development, and many forms of assessment and video authoring are everywhere. In fact, we are in one of the most exciting cycles of innovation on all levels of the 'learning stack,'" he writes."Most customers tell me they’ve spent a lot of money on their LMS and they’re trying to buy easier to use tools around it, so this is likely to be where the market will go.

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Four Recommendations To Support Evidence-Informed L&D
Jos Arets, eLearning Industry, 2019/07/15

This article lurks in that dark corner where education and pedagogy mix with politics and policy. It starts with the obvious presumption that decisions in education ought to be made according to the evidence, but elides the questions of which evidence? and whose evidence? and what counts as evidence? The resulting treatment is not very sound. For example, in the first paragraph it tells us that "for physicians, evidence-based medicine is the norm," but just a few sentences later it asserts, "around half of current diagnosis and treatment is not (yet) evidence-based." In fact, as the footnotes note, "the debate about evidence medicine is lively." Hardly the norm. The real message of this post seems to be the use of 'evidence' to support rationing. "Evidence-based research is also used by doctors to develop a better do-not-do list," writes the author, noting that "university medical centers in the Netherlands are working together to build this list of 1,300 pointless medical procedures for the time being."

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How the biggest decentralized social network is dealing with its Nazi problem
Adi Robertson, The Verge, 2019/07/15

If a Nazi wants to use my software - or to use HTML, or to use RSS, or to use ActivityPub, or to use English - there's no real way to stop them. That's the core of the dilemma faced by the developers of Mastodon, the open source social networking application. But what they can do - and what they have done - is to block Nazis using the application from communicating with their own instances, including Mastodon.social, which is the instance I use. Beyond that, it's up to internet service providers, who allow Nazis to use their servers, or better yet, it's up to government, to finally criminalize Nazi hate - or to at least treat it as seriously as it treats copyright violations.

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