What is an Empirical Educator?
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2018/04/11
I think the phrase 'empirical educator' is clever marketing and a not-bad attempt to capture the ideas of "efficacy, evidence-based, research-backed, data-informed, etc." under a single rubric. Philosophically, I am also an empiricist, in the classical sense (as compared to, say, 20th century empiricists, also known as logical positivists, or even its 20-21st century alternative, constructive empiricism). More...

Humans Wanted
Royal Bank of Canada, 2018/04/11
The gist of this report (44 page PDF) is that while technology is eliminating a lot of jobs, it won't eliminate work. But we have to be aware of what new skills and abilities the future workplace will require. Among the skills considered most important: active listening, speaking, and critical thinking. More...

DNA tests for IQ are coming, but it might not be smart to take one
Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review, 2018/04/10
This is another one of those education technologies where we might want to review the ethical implications before launching widespread deployment. More...

Securing the bava
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2018/04/10
I went through a similar exercise last week, and for similar reasons, switching from the unencrypted http format to the encrypted https. It was a pain, to say the least. I didn't go into static files and change all the existing http links from 20 years worth of web sites (nor will I, probably). More...

The Ethics of Manipulation
Robert Noggle, Robert Noggle, 2018/04/10
This is a new article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and it is as timely as it is provocative. I have always thought of advertising as deeply unethical. In a 1996 article I criticized McDonalds because "advertise heavily and focus their advertisements at innocent children." I also qwuestion the use of manipulative tactics in education; this, it seems to me, changes it from teaching to propaganda. More...

How to Collaborate When You Don’t Have Consensus
Adam Kahane, Strategy+Business, 2018/04/10
I really like this article because it addresses the question of how to work together in real life. In real like, you don't construct shared meaning or agree on values and goals. You might not agree on much at all. This is when traditional calls for 'collaboration' are at their most facile. As the author writes, "teams collaborate: A boss leads everyone to see the problem the same way (probably the way the boss does), and then to agree on a way forward." In any sort of non-hierarchal arrangement, that doesn't work. More...

“You might want to tell your instructors about this:” students as sales reps?
Kaitlyn Vitez, United States Public Interest Research Group, 2018/04/10
According to this article, Cengage is trying to convince student customers to send email messages to their professors urging them to adopt Cengage's 'flat fee for access' to course materials (previously covered here). The author quotes students arguing they don't like being used in this way. More...

RSS is undead
Danny Crichton, TechCrunch, 2018/04/10
The gist of this article is that RSS is beyond saving. Even if it appears to have life, the fact that big companies are turning their backs on it means that it has no real future. One failing, writes Danny Crichton, is that it doesn't prioritize content for the user, as illustrated by the futility of subscribing to the Washington Post RSS feed, which has 1200 articles per day. More...

12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech
Anil Dash, 2018/04/12
I think this is a good article but I think that readers in the education sector should read it critically. Parts I agree with. For example, 'tech is not neutral'. The tech we choose changes not only what we do but also what we can do. Others need clarification. For example, the statement 'tech is not inevitable' may be true for some specific piece of tech, but about tech generally. More...

The Use of E-Textiles in Ontario Education
Janette Hughes, Laura Jane Morrison, Canadian Journal of Education, 2018/04/12
"E-textiles, or electronic textiles, refer to 'fabric artifacts that include embedded computers and other electronics'." E-textile programs are now be implemented in some Ontario schools. It's a pretty new part of e-learning, though research dates back to 2012 or so. The authors report (29 page PDF) that e-textiles have been associated with the rise of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) learning in schools. Anyhow, the focus of the current article is on the "production pedagogies" employed in the field, "a focus on the cultivation of participatory and equitable spaces, where students can engage with ideas and issues as joint seekers and co-creators of knowledge and producers." The study is a design-based research project working alongside students in e-textile projects. More...