by Stephen Downes
Jan 26, 2017
This is a really nice use of Wikipedia to create a useful learning resource. The subject is cognitive bas and the author's intent is to bring together and categorize the various sources of bias, then provide some simple heuristics to comprehend them. Great idea (and I not in passing that these biases apply everywhere, and are not subject specific). The article offers an object lesson in how to use open educational resources in such a way that the licenses don't matter. It's the age of the internet - you don't need to mix and combine resources, you just link to them.
EDUCAUSE released its annual list of the top IT issues in education last week and the article - though chock-full of useful analysis - is the usual mélange of IT angst: information security, student success, leadership, management, funding, the like. It's worth a read as a good review of the strategic issues of the day. But the best perspective is always perspective, and that's where this 17-year retrospective steals the show. It's an interactive graphic (take the time to play with it) showing how issues have trended, come and gone through the years (the only constant, it seems, is a worry about funding). In an interview with the report's author, Susan Grajek, EdScoop suggests that the trends show that “IT took a back seat in the narrative” to a larger story — namely how IT forms the very “foundations of student success in higher education.” You can look for yourself, but I'm not seeing it.
I wonder how many pundits predicted that virtual reality would be one of the big trends for education in 2017. I wasn't one of them. Virtual reality, though definitely cool, suffers from many of the same issues as 3D TV, as this article notes. "Like 3D, it requires expensive, personal peripherals. Like 3D, games need to be designed explicitly for VR in order to showcase the technology to best effectiveness. Like 3D, VR can cause nausea and headaches. Like 3D, working in VR has an entirely new set of best practices... VR is debuting as a gaming peripheral, and gaming is still much more of a solo activity than TV watching." VR has many niche applications. But it won't sweep through learning and technology this year or the next because, fundamentally, it can't.
According to this article, "Canada has relied upon its supposedly self-evident and enduring allure to bring expats back," it is losing too many of its best and brightest, and "ending the brain drain should be a priority for the federal minister of innovation." I don't agree. First of all, many if not most of the Canadians who remain are (ahem) also its best and brightest. It's not like those who immigrated or who remained here are somehow not good enough. Second, it is natural and valuable for the flow of students and academics to be two-way, bringing in expertise from abroad and exporting the Canadian perspective in return. Just as we welcome those who arrive here from elsewhere, we should enthusiastically wish the best for those who decide to leave.
When companies acquire each other they create debt out of nothing, which creates from thin air a new urgency to increase customer revenue. This is what has happened to universities subscribing to Lynda.com as they face double digit increases after Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn, and LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft. In its defense "The company went on to say that part of the price hike can be explained by recently added features such as learning management system integration and offline access, as well as its ongoing push to expand its course library." But typically, these changes would be paid for (and justified) by the acquisition of new customers, not by squeezing existing customers.
This is a call to participate in a global research effort: "The survey addresses MOOC learners, MOOC designers and MOOC facilitators. It begins with a few questions on your profile before you are asked to select the survey section that fits best to your main role in MOOCs (i.e., either as MOOC learner, MOOC designer, or MOOC facilitator)."
Good article exploring the strengths and weaknesses of various chatbot platforms. "The chatbot ecosystem is moving very fast and new features are being released every day by the numerous existing platforms." There are non-technical platforms aimed at average users: Chatfuel, ManyChat, Octane Ai, Massively and Motion.ai. These, though, do not have natural language processing ability and are not suitable for commercial applications. The five major solutions are all from major companies (not surprisingly). They "represent already a standard or at least they are on (their) way to become one: Api.ai (Google), Wit.ai (Facebook), LUIS (Microsoft), Watson (IBM), Lex (Amazon).
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