OLDaily

Open Educators on Mastodon
Clint Lalonde, EdTech Factotum, 2022/10/07

Clint Lalonde performs a useful service as he lists dozens of open educators (including me) who have accounts on Mastodon. Here's a quick article that will introduce you to Mastodon, or you can go directly to the website and join Mastodon.

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To transform education we need a Copernican revolution on how we work together
UNESCO, 2022/10/07

The reforms discussed here bear no resemblance to the Copernican revolution. It's basically a message from the education philanthropy community to itself saying that it should start to work together to enable an evidence-driven approach and align with national priorities. It also suggests that "we know enough about 'what works'; now we need to focus – together – on the challenges of bringing these to scale." I'm not sure how they can 'know' something in a domain where there is no real agreement even about what counts as success. There's a saying: "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation." I think something very similar applies to education - but the philanthropies don't see it that way.

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WorkingOutLoud on AI and Automated Insights
Julian Stodd, Julian Stodd's Learning Blog, 2022/10/07

This article is a pretty disjointed summary of an oddly titled trends article by Dmitry Korzhov but I want to point to Julian Stodd's classification of AI technologies:

• Free roaming Story Engines – browsing and synthesising
• Itinerant Connective Engines – opening up spaces and conversations
• Adversarial Integrity Engines – generating oppositional narratives and semiotic squares to explore

Now as he says, his mental image "was somewhat steampunk: these Engines shuffling around the halls of the empire, sniffing out narratives, constructing stories, and carrying them into strange spaces." It's a model of AI from a linear perspective. But it's interesting, and a mental picture worth contemplating.

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Myth Persistence
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2022/10/07

There's a cluster of writers, mostly in the corporate learning space, who think it's really really important to 'bust myths' about ed tech. Here we have Clark Quinn running through a few perennial favourites: learning preferences, unlearning, gamification, tech transformation. Here's the problem with this approach: if you pick on a straw man version of any of these then yes, you can make a case that it's a 'myth'. And probably there are people in the corporate learning space pushing these straw man versions. But at the same time, there are more nuanced presentations of each of these that are not myths, but they get caught up in the same discussion. And it results in absurdities. For example, Quinn writes, "There's no evidence that adapting to learners' preferred or identified styles makes a difference." Really? My 'preference' is to have learning delivered in English. I can get by if it's in French, but would be lost if it were in Arabic. No difference? This 'myth' is a myth. Clearly some preferences really do matter.

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Best Online Tools for Creating Interactive Maps for Students and Teachers
Med Kharbach, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2022/10/07

As with other lists of this type, I couldn't say whether the six applications listed here are the 'best' but I can say that they exist. I've used some of them, but it's not a specialization for me. Some of them require monthly fees, and as usual there's the concern that fees for different online apps can add up in a hurry. Most maps can be accessed online or embedded in a web page.

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How Conducting a Mixed-mode Class is Similar to Hosting a Late-night Talk Show
Randy Riddle, Faculty Focus, 2022/10/07

I've done this quite a bit and the analogy isn't wrong, but there's a huge difference: late night talk shows are highly opinionated and funny (at least in theiry), while a mixed-mode online class is for the most part neither of those things. That means that while the parameters are the same - knowing what the camera sees and doesn't see, responding to the in-room participants while taking into account the needs of those online, watching for cues from production staff - the calculations are not. Humour still matters, as does opinion, but it's also important to be much more practical and relevant in a class.

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As pandemic measures are lifted, social media use has declined with the exception of TikTok
Philip Mai, Anatoliy Gruzd, The Conversation, 2022/10/07

With the exception of TikTok, social media use in Canada is declining, according to research conducted back in May. My own impression is that TikTok will soon peak as well, mostly because the content becomes repetitive after watching a few thousand videos (that's my experience, at least). I would also expect Twitter to nosedive if the Musk deal goes through. I don't use any Meta properties (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) but they seem also to be becoming less relevant. LinkedIn is also weak, as my feed has become an almost nonstop barrage of self and corporate promotion. The only real strength I see is YouTube, though its grown is limited by format. I notice that distributed apps, like Mastodon, don't even make the list, and I don't expect that to change until they somehow differentiate themselves from traditional social media.

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