Do Student-Produced Videos Enhance Engagement and Learning in the Online Environment
Denise Stanley, Jenny Zhang, online learning, 2018/06/05
This looks from the title like it would be an interesting paper. Alas, the article (22 page PDF) based on a study of 113 managerial economics students misses the interesting questions and instead goes down the demographics rabbit-hole. I don't care whether the students are Hispanic; I do care whether they've ever had any video production experience (because if they haven't, that would really distract from the learning they might otherwise do). More...
Instructional Strategies That Respond to Global Learners’ Needs in Massive Open Online Courses
Instructional Strategies That Respond to Global Learners’ Needs in Massive Open Online Courses
Trang Phan, online learning, 2018/06/05
The first thing you need to dfo in a paper like this is identify the needs. These were organized into three themes: language, content, and engagement. So far so good., Then they asked a few professors and instructional designers what sort of strategies they employed. Techniques described by the 1`5 participants included subtitles, multiple discussion venues, meet-and-greet, teaching assistants, and Power Point study guides. More...
What’s wrong with bots is they’re not ours
What’s wrong with bots is they’re not ours
Doc Searls, 2018/06/07
That's probably not all that's wrong with bots, but it's certainly part of the problem. After all, the reason why it's creepy if a bot is listening to your conversation is that it belongs to Amazon or Apple or whomever. More...
How to Create a Reskilling Environment
How to Create a Reskilling Environment
Wendy Wickham, In the Middle of the Curve, 2018/06/07
This is advice that could apply to learning generally, and certainly professional development and workplace learning. Wendy Wickham writes, "Reskilling is NOT about providing a library of online tutorials. Reskilling is NOT about providing courses. Or training. Or any of those other singular events. More...
How Do Objects Connect to the Internet of Things?
How Do Objects Connect to the Internet of Things?
Kenneth Evans, ReadWrite, 2018/06/07
This article is written at a medium level of technical detail, which means it contains more actual information than most Internet of Things (IoT) articles, but you're not going to be lost reading equations and mathematical formulae. Consider this article in relation to the Doc Searls article. Can we connect things to the internet in such a way that they become the conduit for message exchange. More...
Using Telepresence Robots to Support Students Facing Adversity
Using Telepresence Robots to Support Students Facing Adversity
Doris Cheung, Tarah Dykeman, Courtney Fell, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/06/07
At first I thought this was the sort of idea that was a very bad idea, something along the lines of replacing human advisors with bots. But this is actually the much more practical suggestion of attaching telepresence devices (ie., screens with our gfaces, cameras and speakers) to devices that can move around (ie., robots). More...
Connectively Full From First @ontarioextend Extended Lunch
Connectively Full From First @ontarioextend Extended Lunch
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2018/06/07
One thing I'll be watching closely after tofay's election in Ontario is the future of Campus Ontario. I most certainly hope their good work is able to continue. So on to the link: Alan Levine describes his first Ontario Extend Extended Lunch conversation. More...
The Uncertain Future of OER
The Uncertain Future of OER
Tom Berger, Edutopia, 2018/06/04
I think that the answer to the question of "why open educational resources (OER) haven't caught on" is in the last paragraph of this article: "will we ever get to a Wikipedia-type model of teaching resources, with teachers freely giving and taking textbooks, lesson plans, and tests, refining and improving them, and sharing their improvements?" My thinking here is that so long as you think of OERs as teaching resources, they're never going to work. More...
Facebook scraps 'outdated' trending news section
Facebook scraps 'outdated' trending news section
The Guardian, 2018/06/04
There is a lesson for education technology in this story. Facebook has had nothing but grief trying to offer personalized news. Google, meanwhile, has announced a complete revamp of Google News featuring a content selection that will be the same for everybody. The role the AI plays is focused on the story. More...
Hax
Hax
2018/06/04
Phil Barker writes in an email, "have a look at what the HAX team are doing, they are making a universal front-end authoring interface. It allows you to do things like write Schema into your content as you go, or drop in pre-made chunks with metadata provided. And then publish the html to git pages (not quite automatic yet, but it works)." The source is available on GitHub. More...