OLDaily

Montage, DaDa and the Dalek: The Game of Meaning in Higher Education
Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns, Sandra Sinfield, International Journal of Management and Applied Research, 2020/09/07

This article (16 page PDF) describes a module in which "we do not conceive of our module as a way of ‘fixing’ staff - nor of preparing them to ‘fix’ their students. Rather we use creative and visual practices as a way of helping them explore more ‘ways of seeing’ the educational context(s) in which we all operate." The idea is to use art as a visual metaphor as a way of seeing something in a new light, thus creating a means for new insugfhts about it. What makes the art work in this case is that it's not just about drawing pictures, but rather using found objects to create concrete representations. My favourite has to be the depiction of a student as a jar of fruit jelly. "How might the ‘jelly student’ eel when entering HE? How does he or she fit into, for example, a university that is built out of Lego as a high straight, impregnable tower?"

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Effective Use of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching within Higher Education
Charles Buckley, Chrissi Nerantzi, International Journal of Management and Applied Research, 2020/09/07

"Relationships between concepts, and their contexts, can be more easily and quickly understood using diagrams rather than in textual form," write the authors. This article (19 page PDF) is an exploration of some methods of using diagrams to convey ideas. For example, "The acronym FISh consists of letters representing the 3 stages of the PBL model: Focus – Investigate – Share. Using FISh as the name of the model, the visualisation happens almost automatically as we think about the word 'fish'." The article doesn't cover all types of visual representation, but focuses instead on the sort of planning required to create one.

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Leo learns from the community
Feedly, 2020/09/07

Feedly has added an AI engine called Leo to create a 'priority' feed from aggregated feeds. I've been training mine recently (though Feedly is getting expensive, so this may be my last year using it). It's based partially on keywords (I'm only using two) and partially on + buttons (it's also based on reads, but since I read at least some of everything in my feeds, that doesn't help me at all).  Early results are encouraging; it has indeed surfaced useful results. But it still misses more than it finds. But it does point to a way where an individual could work with their own AI, tweaking it go get the results they want. And I like the way Feedly is being transparent about the way they account for bias in our training process.

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4 ways to teach you’re (sic) kids about grammar so they actually care
Brett Healey, The Conversation, 2020/09/07

The key insight in this article is that grammar is not about rules, it's about making meaning. "A child with a broad repertoire of grammatical knowledge can skillfully choose how to phrase what they want to say." Quite right; it's a lesson I learned when mapping expressions in English to statements in formal logic, and then, there's a whole lot more you can express with the arrangement of words. The four principles are also on point, in my view. Begin with examples, talk about how they work, play with them yourself. And what's nice is that the article, so far as it can in text, follows the principles it describes.

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