By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Complete Guide to Memory
Scott Young, Jakub Jílek, 2020/01/03
This long item showed up in Mike Taylor's list today (it's from last February). I would characterize it as 'practical advice for students' combined with a folk psychology of memory. It's long, it contains a lot of practical advice (that works, based on my own experience), and it's well written. As a theory of memory it falls short in numerous places. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. China No. 1 on 2018 PISA: Is the country really an education powerhouse as the rankings suggest?
Siyi Zhang, JMDedu, 2020/01/03
The answer to the question in the title is "no", though the story doesn't explicitly say so. The tests were from a total of 12,058 students from 361 schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (B-S-J-Z), a small fraction of the total student population. As always, "socio-economically advantaged students outperformed disadvantaged students," so what we have here is a sample of the wealthiest students in China's wealthiest cities. Now this sample, and this population, is nothing to be disregarded - it is equivalent to the entire student population of other countries.
Meanwhile, in the JMD article, there's a lot of expression of discomfort with the results even taken at face value. China's education system ranks among the least 'efficient' (ie., it is supplemented with a lot of time spent learning outside school). The students' "satisfaction with life" ranks near the bottom. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Predictions for Journalism 2020
NiemanLab, 2020/01/03
This is a long list of short contributions to a Nieman Labs special study on the future of journalism. Amid the dire predictions are suggestions about the business model, focus on content, focus on specific issues, format changes, and maybe even the rise of blogcasting. From my own perspective, I think I've found a good formula for doing journalism in this newsletter, but I don't know how I would make it pay if I had to leave my day job. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Free Textbooks for Law Students
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2020/01/03
This article questions whether some open access law textbooks count as open educational resources (OER) because they do not allow derivatives to be made from them. The article doesn't actually link to the texts, but they are freely available: here's the Trademark Law text (862 page PDF), and here's the Copyright Law text (702 page PDF). Both are CC non-commercial licensed, and only the Copyright Law text includes the no-derivatives clause. So is it OER? The story quotes Cable Green from Creative Commons as stating that they are not OER. My official and well-considered view on the matter? I don't care. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How to Change Your Conversations About Cultural Appropriation
James Mendez Hodes, 2020/01/03
I gave this item a slow and careful read, because it's a bit outside my comfort zone. I was rewarded with a nuanced, informed and engaging discussion of cultural appropriation. I like that it resisted drawing hard lines (someone wears deadlocks in Sweden; who cares, really?) and was sensitive to intention and context (someone goes overboard defending a person who wears dreadlocks in Sweden; what is their intent here?). "Next time the issue comes up, slow down and break the topic into its component parts. Don’t draw preconceived lines. Don’t pass sentences. Focus on the expression on the table and its own distinct character. Who has the power? Who’s vulnerable to harm? Where are the patterns? What’s the context?". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The future of high-speed computing may be larger CPUs with optics
Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 2020/01/02
This is pretty far down the ed tech stack, but I want to take note because I've been seeing an increase in the number of events in this area lately. The area in question could be described under the general heading of 'optical computing'. The idea is to use light-based components, rather than electricity-based components. There are numerous issues that have been solved, and many more to go, but the potential is for faster and more energy-efficient computers. This article is from last April - what prompted me to cover optical computing today was an ed tech review of an 'optica' computer (which as it turned out has nothing to do with optical computing). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade
Audrey Watters, Hack Education, 2020/01/02
I've been seeing a lot of praise for Audrey Watters's post The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade (these Tweets captured by Aaron Davis are typical). If you haven't seen it, take this as a reminder to put it on your weekend reading list. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. LEAP Innovations 2020 Framework
Emily Liebtag, Getting Smart, 2020/01/02
It's only January 2nd but I'm already sick of 'this-and-that 2020' themes. This one is a bit of marketing (I would guess) for LEAP Innovations. It reminds me that there's a whole world out there that I don't understand - for example, they write that they "they honored and used several key design principles." What is it to 'honor' a design principle? Or "they are able to witness more practitioners implementing their ideas." Again, it's odd word usage - which tells me that they are appealing to a specific demographic that talks like that. Anyhow, I wanted to link to this, so people can see what's happening in this space. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. What Is Curriculum Development
Dinant Roode, trenducation, 2020/01/02
This post is from October but I only found this feed today and I felt it would be useful to add a wider perspective to the instructional slash experience design discussion. The post itself is fairly introductory, explaining what curriculum development is, describing why it's important for teachers, and identifying three types of curriculum design: subject-centered, learner-centered, and problem-centered. I would imagine there are more (for example, performance-support-centered or task-centered). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Ten weird tricks for resisting surveillance capitalism in and through the classroom . . . next term!
Erin Glass, HASTAC, 2020/01/02
These are tricks for resisting surveillance in general, and not merely surveillance capitalism (though  probably most surveillance is ethically questionable). The article is written in that snappy sort of meme-aware jargon the well-informed like to use (with the weird tricks meme in the headline leading the way). But some of the information is good (and some of it is loopy). Maybe skip suggestions number 1 and  (which involves using "that wry teacherly snark you have" to "inform students on" various conspiracy theories). But exploring community-driven tools (like Commons in a Box) is a good idea. So is having students read terms of service. Definitely explore downloading your personal data (but maybe don't delete it until you have a back-up). More...