OLDaily

The Logic of Conditionals
Paul Égré, Hans Rott, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021/07/13

Believe it or not, I spent a lot of time on this subject in the 1980s (and one of my earliest published works was on the logic of conditional variability). This article takes me back to those days; skip the bit about three-valued conditionals and go right to the heart of the matter by looking at counterfactuals, possible world models, probabilistic interpretations, relevance and speech acts. Obscure, you say? Maybe. But it is difficult to understand the different and subtly distinct ways of looking at actions, intentions and causality without understanding conditionals. So much of our work, whether in writing software or designing learning theories, is based on the way we think things are connected together, on how we create outcomes, and how we explain the outcomes we've already created. You don't need to internalize all this discussion the way I did, but if you are in education and technology, you should at least be aware it exists.

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Ode to a world-saving idea
Robert Wright, Nonzero Newsletter, 2021/07/13

The 'fundamental attribution error', as psychologist Lee Ross called it, is this: "when we’re explaining the behavior of other people, we tend to put too much emphasis on 'disposition'—on their character, their personality, their essential nature. And we tend to put too little emphasis on 'situation'—on the circumstances they find themselves in." We certainly see a lot of evidence of this in discussions about education and development. More, "Every day lots of important players—politicians, social media potentates, think tank experts, journalists—reinforce and even intensify attribution error." But it's not sufficient to simply depict them as malintentioned propagandists - we need to take that additional step and attempt to understand from their perspective why they are doing the things they are doing. Image: APS.

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Cleveland’s Plain Dealer decided to “completely ignore” politicians’ “false statements and stunts.” It’s working.
Laura Hazard Owen, NiemanLab, 2021/07/13

I have tried to make the case over the last few years that traditional media - television news and newspapers, for example - bear the brunt of the responsibility for the current environment of lies and misinformation we face today, even as that same media directs most of the blame toward the internet and social media. Now Facebook and Twitter are no angels. But the agencies most responsible for misinformation are the mass media. That's why this story is interesting to me. What if traditional news media (including especially newspapers) decided to start reporting the news responsibly? "On Saturday, (the newspaper) provided an update. The paper’s policy to 'not take the bait and give these false statements the oxygen they need to flourish' is going well. 'Readers responded quite favorably to what we are doing, and rest assured that people are not complaining that they miss Mandel’s hate-filled invective.'" I would also add that responsible journalism makes the educator's job easier and more relevant.

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The Web is the Limit: Language, Culture and MOOCs
Silvia Florea, Peter J Wells, Diana Florea, Diversité et Identité Culturelle en Europe, 2021/07/13

This paper (14 page PDF) addresses issues that have become more predominant in recent discourse: "MOOCs  are  largely  an  American-led  effort,  with  most  courses coming from universities in the United States or other Western countries... the online courses threaten to exacerbate the worldwide  influence of Western academe, bolstering its higher-education hegemony." There are many other places where this is addressed, including here and here. First of all, though, it's not true. Sure, American MOOCs generated a lot of interest and publicity, but they weren't the first, nor are they the most numerous - there are large MOOC movements in China, India and Europe, among others. And second, the concept of MOOCs, at least the way we created them, was based on the opposite of hegemony, eschewing predefined bodies of content and curricular outcomes, encouraging diverse modes of participation, and leaving the definition of success in the hands of participants. Image: Loeckx.

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Improving the Creative Thinking Skills of the Next Generation of Mathematics Teachers Using Dynamic Mathematics Software
Tommy Tanu Wijaya, Ying Zhou, Andrew Ware, Neni Hermita, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 2021/07/13

The abstract makes this paper (15 page PDF) irresistible: "selecting material and combining it with art using dynamic mathematics software can improve the communication skills, problem-solving and creative thinking skills." This proposition was tested during a course design exercise conducted at Guangxi Normal University in China. The designers used a tool called Hawgent dynamic mathematics software and were required to "analyze their chosen problem, design, develop, and implement using the Hawgent software... (and) to evaluate were required to evaluate whether their work would be helpful for teachers and school children."

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An Intelligent Adaptive cMOOC “IACM” for Improving Learner’s Engagement
Soumaya El Emrani, Ali El Merzouqi, Mohamed Khaldi, International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (IJET), 2021/07/13

This short paper (13 page PDF) offers very preliminary work only, but I like the thinking. Their idea is to set up a cMOOC such that the learner interface for each participant is adjusted according to a personally defined learner model. In this paper, the research considers "the socioconstructivist pedagogical approach, as well as the experiential model of Kolb and the Dunn & Dunn model to detect preferences and learning styles." The current work consists of an analysis to determine what factors need to be adjusted. No matter how this works out, the thinking is in line with a connectivist approach, which to me suggests that each participant should be able to manage and operate their own personal interface with the online course.

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