By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Glossary Items
Training Industry, 2019/12/23
I was looking for something else (specifically - pre-2015 references to 'learning experience platform' - why is Google's date-based search so unreliable?) when I encountered this glossaty of training industry terms. Useful. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The War for Corporate Learning Platforms Gets Hotter
Josh Bersin, 2019/12/23
This is a pretty good overview of the shifting market in corporate e-learning technology (I wouldn't classify it as a "war" since as far as I know no violence has occurred, happily). One point of focus is the learning experience platform (LXP), "intelligent learning portals that use a variety of approaches to making all forms of learning content (articles, videos, courses, podcasts) easy to find for employees." These need to be linked with (or merged with) 'systems of record' in the corporate environment. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. ATARs measure privilege, not academic merit, and it starts in kindergarten
Tara Schultz, ABC News, 2019/12/23
If we combine the philosophy of testing with the well-established fact that socioeconomic status is the best predictor of academic success, then we must draw the conclusion in the title. This article is a forthright and frank story about how that played out for one person. "I failed school because I grew up in a world that exists beneath yours. I learnt a range of skills that helped me survive in the impoverished world I was born into. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Hacking the MOOC: Towards a Postdigital Pedagogy of Critical Hope
Joel Lazarus, Postdigital Science and Education, 2019/12/23
This post (22 page PDF) is thickly laden with jargon and a theoretical overlay, but its core message is clear enough: "I am arguing that radical cMOOCs should be designed with and express a consciousness of class relations of knowledge production and that the relations and knowledge we cultivate through our cMOOC experience and endeavours can express our personal and collective power to overturn and transform these relations." Well, yes, that's one message we could get from a cMOOC. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Chatham House Sharing for OER
Michael Caulfield, Hapgood, 2019/12/23
I always thought it was 'Charterhouse Rules', but I guess not (I say this after a Google search for the alternatives). The idea of the rules is that "you can report out anything said, but you can’t identify who said it." This is because, presumably, "people need to speak freely as they hash out things at a conference, and to do that they sometimes have to speak loosely in ways that don’t translate outside the conference." Of, as I interpret such rules, "they're able to lie with impunity either inside or outside the meeting. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Attack on Canada’s Schools
Grant Frost, frostededucation, 2020/01/28
Canada has had for many years one of the best school systems in the world. This is not just opinion; it's a statement that is proven in test after test. However, as Grant Frost notes, "from coast to coast, regardless of province or political affiliation, our public education system is in turmoil, driven by a strikingly similar 'Our schools are failing' rhetoric." Why? He argues, and I agree, that "our public education system, from coast to coast, is embroiled in a fight for its very life." I also think that collective bargaining itself is also under attack, as Doug Peterson suggests. And the motivation is money - the money that could be made by privatizing schools, the money that could be made by plundering teachers' pension plans. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Individual Learning Experience in Connectivist Environment: A Qualitative Sequence AnalysisBy Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mental Representation
David Pitt, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020/01/28
This is a substantive revision of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on mental representation. I won't say a lot about it here, except to say that this is (by and large) a theory I believe to be incorrect. I am definitely in the minority here, though. The representational theory of mind (RTM) "takes as its starting point commonsense mental states, such as thoughts, beliefs, desires, perceptions and imagings". More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Legal Challenge for Inclusive Access
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2020/01/28
This lawsuit probably doesn't have much of a chance, but it does reflect the sad state of affairs that exists when students, under the blatently mis-named 'inclusive access' program, must go to extreme lengths in order to not buy a text from a major publisher. "The ‘opt-out’ process, when there is one at all, is opaque, confusing and difficult if not impossible to execute,” said the plaintiffs in the most recent lawsuit. More...
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Disruption’s legacy
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2020/01/28
The core idea of 'disruption' is this: existing companies over time spend more and more time and money building features for and supporting a minority (and often premium) portion of their client base, thus creating an opportunity for a new company without this overhead to come along and build a streamlined product serving the majority who don't need these special features and services. Hence, say, discount airlines. Because these companies are focused on lowering costs, they often underpaid staff, undercut unions, and flouted regulations. But all that is a product of capitalism, not disruption. All that is why I think Martin Weller's criticism of Christensen is not only a poorly-timed attack, it is also wrong. Christensen didn't undermine labour, conservative governments did. Christensen didn't undermine experience, the intransigence of incumbent companies did. More...
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