The Little “b” and the Big “C”
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2018/05/18
There was once a time when blogging was new and exciting and something we thought everybody could be doing. I wrote Educational Blogging. Alan Levine launched CogDogBlog, Jim Groom was writing about blogging, and John Cricthlow wrote about Small b blogging. It's still relevant. But it's not like publishing or social media. More...
EIFL 2017 Annual Report
Rima Kupryte, EIFL, 2018/05/18
EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) "works with libraries to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America." This is its annual report for 2017. More...
A/B testing shows that Pavlovian gamification does not work
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2018/05/18
When somebody says "does not work" the first question should be about what counts as "working". Here Donald Clark writes that an A-B test (basically, you compare two interventions side-by-side) shows that "the gamification lesson plan fared worse than non-gamified lesson plans." In the report (20 page PDF) from 2016 the researchers use a platform to conduct "rapid randomized controlled trials (RCT), the evidentiary gold standard of evaluation for assessing what works." This 'gold standard' consists of pretests and post-tests consisting of a "set of six or ten post-exercise multiple-choice questions." In these trials, the non-gamification system reliably reported better results than the gamified system. More...
Facebook admits hundreds of apps vacuumed up user data
Mathew Ingram, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018/05/18
The other shoe has dropped. Facebook "announced on Monday that it has found at least 200 other apps that had access to user data in the same way that the app behind the infamous Cambridge Analytica leak did." You may also have read reports that Cambridge Analytica went bankrupt, but there was no real penalty as "the key players behind it have reportedly created a similar company called Emerdata." Meanwhile, Equifax made money from its data breach last year. More...
'Laurel' or 'Yanny'? People can't decide
Chris Bell, BBC News, 2018/05/17
You've probably seen the 'Yanny vs Laurel' audio clip that has been all over social media (and the evening news). Simply, people listen to the same audio recording, but some hear 'Yanny' and others hear 'Laurel'. More...
Myths of Early Math
Douglas H. Clements, Julie Sarama, Education Sciences, 2018/05/17
This is a good article (8 page PDF), and I would say that many of its points can be made about logic and critical thinking as well. What points. More...
Skills Strategy Implementation Guidance for Portugal
OECD, 2018/05/17
Portugal is a compelling case study for educational development. It's inside Europe and benefits from EU membership. But it faces employment challenges and comparatively low levels of education. This report builds on previous 'diagnostic' studies (pictured) and focuses on what the OECD believes Portugal should do. More...
OER Methods – Generative Designs for Reuse-With-Modification
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2018/05/17
There's some good thinking in this post from Tony Hirst as he follows up Martin Weller on why a focus on producing open educational resources is not enough. Weller argues that "if UNESCO really want to realise their aim of equitable education, they should foreground the need for support to accompany OER." But what is this support supposed to look like. More...
Colombia's ex-fighters taught skills for peace
Lucy Sherriff, BBC News, 2018/05/17
Readers will know I was in Colombia a couple of weeks ago so this story is fresh on my mind. This article underscores the umportance of, and the diffioculty of, the work to be done. More...
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