By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Don’t Pee on My Leg and Call it Science!
Gary Stager, Stager-to-Go, 2019/03/25
I have to say, Gary Stager is not wrong here: " Social media and the nonsense masquerading as education journalism have become inundated with a flaming brown paper bag full of articles out to prove that phonics and penmanship instruction are crucial 21stCentury skills, class size does not matter, constructivism is a failed pedagogical strategy, there are no learning styles, not everyone “needs to code,” all kids need to be above the norm, and that standardized testing is objective, reliable, and valid... Free advice: Forbes, the McKinsey Group, anyone associated with Clayton Christensen, TED Talks and EdSurge are not credible sources on education reform, pedagogy, or learning theory even if they accidentally confirm our own biases once in a while. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Democratic-erosion.com: an Open Pedagogy network
Gardner Campbell, 2019/03/25
Gardner Campbell points readers toward this interesting project called Democratic Erosion. It's essentially a network that has gathered around a common co-created curriculum on the topic. Here's the curriculum (which has a number of articles well worth a read). There are different ways to join the network but the main way is to "Teach a full semester on democratic erosion". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Pragmatic Theory of Truth
John Capps, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019/03/25
While most educators know John Dewey as one of the founders of progressive education, in the wider world he is known (along with William James and Charles Sanders Pierce) as one of the three leading lights of pragmatism, and in particular, the pragmatic theory of truth. This article, just posted in the SEP, outlines that philosophy. "By focusing on the practical dimension of having true beliefs, Peirce plays down the significance of more theoretical questions about the nature of truth. In particular, Peirce is skeptical that the correspondence theory of truth—roughly, the idea that true beliefs correspond to reality—has much useful to say about the concept of truth. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Social Media and Seamless Learning
Stefanie Panke, AACE Review, 2019/03/29
I accept that there will be a certain amount of sloppiness in online posts; after all, I'm no saint. But the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) ought to have higher standards than this article. Not only is it riddled with grammatical errors, it's factually unsound. For example, at one point it says 3 billion is "about a third of the world's population," which isn't close. It later says "Globally, 45% of the population are social media users," which is more accurate, though 45% is nowhere near a third. It tells us "81 percent of the United States population had a social networking profile," but the number cited, 243.6 million, is actually 74% of that population. We are told, "in Germany, 42.8 million people use social media", which is about half Germany's 82 million people, not the 36% the article claims. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Reclaim the Robot
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2019/03/29
OK, at $3,000 each they're way too expensive, but if I want any toy to play with before I retire I want this. Jim Groom had one of these telepresence robots working in his office, and from everything I can see, it would be perfect for remote meetings and events (especially since it allows for the informal conversations in the hall that invariably follow). Groom writes, " You can control the robot from the browser, and adjust the height of the “head” which is an iPad mounted on a modded segueway. When you lower the 'head' the robot can move pretty quickly, and you have more control to get around. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Fujitsu and Sony think blockchain is the best way to store education records
Asha McLean, ZDNet, 2019/03/29
Storing education records on a blockchain makes them more accessible (and more permanent). It also opens up the concept of 'education records' to multiple education providers and issuers of credentials. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Bitnine: The Newly Revealed 'AI Teacher' Powered by Graph Database Delivers Hyper-Personalized Learning Experience
Financial Post, 2019/03/29
The idea of the personalized learning path recommendation has been around for a while now, and while I don't think it solves any real problem in education (as I like to say: "education is not a search problem") it is nonetheless attracting the interest of the business community. This article is a promotional piece for a BitNine graph database use case (available behind a spamwall - it's a 3-page PDF, don't bother). More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Synthesis of the Student Relationship Management System Using the Internet of Things to Collect the Digital Footprint for Higher Education Institutions
Nualsri Songsom, Prachyanun Nilsook, Panita Wannapiroon, International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering, 2019/03/29
This paper is actually a synthesis of eleven other papers looking at various aspects of student management systems with respect to remote data gathering tools. The upshot is that the 'consensus' system described by these papers includes five elements: identify module, alert module, tracking module, SRM module, and an analytic module. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Digital Expansion of the Mind Gone Wrong in Education
Daniel T.Willingham, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2019/03/29
This is another article from what I previously described as the other side of the 'scientific evidence' debate. In this article Daniel Willingham looks at three proposed effects of digital technology - less memorization, flipped classroom and personalized learning - in order to argue "that the suggested education reforms are founded on a misunderstanding of the cognitive processes involved." What follows is (in my view) intellectually questionable. There isn't room here to break it down, but you can't prove a trend by citing a survey from 19 years ago, or cite a single paper to show that "college students attending a selective university use a feeble strategy" in search. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Dark Day for the Web: EU Parliament Approves Damaging Copyright Rules
Timothy Vollmer, Creative Commons, 2019/03/27
According to the article, the law "will require nearly all for-profit web platforms to get a license for every user upload or otherwise install content filters and censor content... Article 11 also passed, which would force news aggregators to pay publishers for linking to their stories."  I will not be paying anyone any linking fees, so if you have a problem with that, let me know now. Also, I will not be charging any linking fees, so run wild. What I wonder is whether academic journals will start paying each other for citations, and whether newspapers will start paying the people they write about. More...