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Karl Fisch, The Fischbowl, May 14, 2013 Karl Fisch captures the fallacy of the Common Core with one short post. He observes, referencing chaos theory, "When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future." Small microscopic changes in initial conditions result in large changes in outcome. Given this, he asks, "By trying to standardize on a common core curriculum to assure equality of preparation, aren't we ignoring what we know about dynamic systems?" To the point: "there's no possible way to standardize enough to prevent wildly different outcomes... we can't possibly use a controlled curriculum to pre-determine the outcomes." [Link] [Comment]

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Lili Loofbourow, Boston Review, May 14, 2013 Interesting account of the privatization of education that took place in Chile under Augusto Pinochet and the evolution of the system over the decades that followed, cumulating in recent years in protests and reform movements seeking to repair what has become one of the most expensive and least accessible education systems in the world. "The new system was intended to promote competition between schools and to stimulate the public schools to improve. But the plan backfired. Instead, three tiers developed... Chile has the most expensive education in the world, yet the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked primary education there 119th out of 144 countries." [Link] [Comment]

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Richard Millwood, HoTEL, May 14, 2013 This is a great big graph of 'learning theories'. As summarizedby Cammy bean, "With hyperlinks galore, you can drill down to learn about Vygotsky (and possibly even how to say it!), scaffolding, experiential learning and more." To me, it's just a really complicated way to make the point that connectivism is not a theory.

And, actually, a note on terminology. To me, these - constructivism, critical pedagogy, instructivism - are educational theories, or perhaps instructional theories. They do not describe how learning takes place. Learning is the formation of connections between nodes in a networks. A 'learning theory' describes a process that fosters the formation of these connections, such as Hebbian Associationism, Back Propagation, or Boltzmann mechanisms. [Link] [Comment]

C.K. Gunsalus, Inside Higher Ed, May 14, 2013 I've taught ethics in the past and on reading this would contemplate teaching ethics in the future - but in today's more emlightened MOOC format, rather than a classroom (I wonder what the interest would be in that). These days in the popular press 'ethics' typically is held to mean a set of principles to live one's lfe by that somehow act against one's own interest (this article actually states it outright: "what you’ re willing to sacrifice for your principles"). But that's just one view of ethics, and not (to my mind) the best - I am more inclined to want to foster what Hume would call a 'moral sentiment' which can be fostered through the development of compassion and empathy in people. [Link] [Comment]

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Russel Tarr, ActiveHistory, May 14, 2013 UK Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove is in the news twice in two days following this response to his Mr. Men speech in which he accuses history professor Russel Tarr if "infantilizing" history lessons by requiring students to participate in an activity whereby they render certain periods in history in the form of childrens' books. "It is anything but ‘ infantilisation’ to get secondary school students (or indeed adults) of any age to produce an effective children’ s storybook on a complex topic. The process of transforming a sophisticated historical phenomenon to its essential elements in a manner that much younger students will understand is no easy feat: it requires a sustained handling of analogy and metaphor. that is as challenging as it is stimulating and memorable." Quite so. See also, Richard Byrne, 5 Excellent Educational Activities Developed by @RusselTarr. [Link] [Comment]

Chris Hadfield, YouTube, May 13, 2013

I just want to say, on behalf of all of us Canadians stuck here on the ground, that Chris Hadfield is an example and an inspiration to us all, an example of the best we here in the great frozen north can be. Bravo, Commander! [Link] [Comment]

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Steve Wheeler, Learning with 'e's, May 13, 2013 As Steve Wheeler suggests, "John Dewey advocated 'learning by doing' and Seymour Papert called it 'learning by making'." Along with many others, I also advocate this approach to learning (it's half my unheralded 'Downes Learning Theory', "to learn is to practice and reflect" (which, I hasten to add, is completely unoriginal to me)). So he develops programs encouraging students to write for an audience (similar to what I described in my 2004 paper Educational Blogging). All great. But then he writes about encouraging his BA student to present his work, and "he presented in front of almost 100 people, by far the largest audience he had spoken in front of at that time." That struck me as surprising. Part of my childhood education (in a rural public school in Metcalf, Ontario) was writing my opwn speeches and presenting them. Everybody did this; we were expected to be able to speak coherently and think on our feet in public. Practice and reflection. Good at any age. Younger ages, especially. [Link] [Comment]

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Luis Suarez, E L U S A, May 13, 2013 IBM has been working on social networking for the enterprise, evidence of this being the work of Luis Suarez for the company over the last 11 years. In this post he expresses his concern about the automation of social networking activities; "they just can’ t find the time anymore to make it happen in a natural, authentic, self-driven manner." So where did we go wrong, he asks? Where did he get off the bus that said "conversation" and get on the bus that said "marketing activity?" He links to Mike Allton on "How to Destroy Your Social Media Credibility through Automation", making the very good point that you can do more damage than good though social media automation. I think it is a fear of disappearing from the social radar, the fear of 'going quiet' and becoming irrelevant. I feel this. Suarez suggests, "I am thinking that I prefer to go silent and learn from others reading along  than to automate an online presence that I know won’ t be fair to anyone out there." [Link] [Comment]

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J. Noah Brown, Inside Higher Ed, May 13, 2013 J. Noah Brown writes a long article for Inside Higher Ed that takes as it's point of departure the question, "do MOOCs represent a panacea for community colleges?" To which the answer is clearly and obviously 'no', because nothing is a panacea for anything! It is irresponsible to write essays about whether 'A is a panacea for B'. If you must write about A, in relation to B, then write about how A helps A, how A hinders B, or how the role of A is relevant or irrelevant to B. The language of panaceas is for children and politicians. The rest of us should know better.
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Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic, May 13, 2013 This is worth mentioning because it shows how easy it is to misread stuff like this. In a nutshell: in a large study researchers measured a variety of factors at age 7, and then the same subjects' earnings at age 42, and determined that (among other things) even if you compensate for other factors (such as socio-economic status) there is a correlation between a person's math skills at age 7 and income at age 42. So naturally, we are intended to read this as showing how important it is to tecah math at an early age (as it undoubtedly is). But as the article suggests, "these findings also point to a role played by children's innate ability to learn." That is, learning math and earning money are both improved by underlying abilities, such that, if we see them learning math at age 7, we can predict they have the ability to earn more at 42. But do we have innate math skills? I doubt it - but I have no doubt that childhood nutrition, parents' smoking and alcohol use, and various other factors all have an influence on both math skills at age 7 and earnings at age 42. Via Joanne Jacobs. [Link] [Comment]

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James Ball, The Guardian, May 13, 2013 This is the sort of thing we face in education. The British education secretary, Michael Gove, said in a Mail on Sunday article in March: "Survey after survey has revealed disturbing historical ignorance, with one teenager in five believing Winston Churchill was a fictional character while 58% think Sherlock Holmes was real." It turns out that the source he used was PR-commissioned opinion polls originating from Premier Inn and UKTV Gold press releases. His fallacious claim was exposed by Janet Downs, who filed a Freedom of Information request to obtain the information. The problem isn't so much that Michael Gove said a silly thing, it's that this is the sort of data relied upon by authorities and managers in general to make education policy. [Link] [Comment]

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IMS Global, May 13, 2013 It may be a hundred million dollar industry, but don't tell the winners of this contest "offering a $250 reward for each qualifying LTI app submitted by June 10, plus an additional $1,000 for the best apps selected by an expert panel of judges from Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Remote-Learner, IMS Global, Brown University, The University of Texas at Austin and Hack Education." Tell them to be happy with the $250. [Link] [Comment]

Paul Stacey, Musings on the ed tech frontier, May 13, 2013 Good article from Paul Stacey outlining the arc of MOOC pedagogy from the first days of the connectivist MOOCs to the more recent U.S.-based offerings. "All of these new MOOC’ s are focused on objectivist and behaviourist methods of teaching and learning. Their pedagogy is based on an assumption that when there are tens of thousands of learners social learning isn’ t feasible." But "Students tend to find online behaviourist and objectivist learning pedagogies boring, impersonal, and not interactive or engaging." Like Stacey, I don't see the story being over just yet. Yes, we've seen "a form of colonialism that attempts to rewrite MOOC history." But we persevere. [Link] [Comment]

May 12, 2013 test post [Link] [Comment]

Clayton R. Wright, May 13, 2013 Clayton R. Wright has just released the lated in his excellent lists of education and ed tech conferences, this one for June - December, 2013 (with some additional conferences from 2014, 2015 and even 2016). Please download the attachmenmt for the full list, in MS Word.  He writes, "During the last five years, there seems to be greater focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning. Hence, institutions are expanding their professional/faculty development capabilities and hiring directors or vice-provosts of academic innovation and excellence. Concurrently, there has been an increasing number of organizations and conferences that promote professional growth. A few of these organizations and events (primarily North American) are listed below along with the month during which their workshops or conferences are most often held.  

• Best Teachers Summer Institute, June
• Committee on College Teaching and Learning (CCTL) Conference, January
• Faculty Development Summer Institute on Active Learning and Teaching, July/August  
• International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, April
• International Conference on Improving University Teaching, July
• International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association, January
• International Institute for SoTL Scholars and Mentors (IISSAM), May/June
• International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning (ISETL), October
• International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), October
• International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), July
• Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching, dates vary
• National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), May
• North American Council for Staff, Program and Organizational Development (NCSPOD), October
• Professional and Organizational Development (POD), October
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Commons, March
• Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), June
• Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA), May
• Teaching Professor Conference, May/June
• Teaching Professor Technology Conference, October

"In my e-mail to others I would suggest that they examine http://fakejournals.blogspot.ca/ or Jeffry Beale’ s list of questionable publishers and organizations so that they could consider whether they want to attend events sponsored by these organizations. Also, I will advise them to read How to Get the Most Out of a Conference by Stephen Downes." [Link] [Comment]

Amy Erin Borovoy, Edutopia, May 10, 2013 This what makes the internet great. Skip the TED video and watch the rest. If you're wondering how it all works, skip over to this Guide to Practical Compassion. "How do you understand the pain of others?... How do I find empathy with thousands of people? It’ s almost impossible. So you see that applied compassion can become a complex thing." It's when we're reflecting on learning about this sort of thing - or even discovering the importance of compassion and empathy - that sterile objectivity seems most empty. [Link] [Comment]

Lisa Di Valentino, Social Science Research Network, May 10, 2013 Eric Tremblay summarizes: "Lisa Di Valentino... she collected data from a whopping 40 Canadian universities. She selected all non-Quebec university members of the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada that have an enrollment of 5,000 students or greater [and] prepared a paper entitled Review of Canadian University Fair Dealing Policies. It's well worth a read if you are in any way, shape or form responsible for copyright clearances anywhere in Canada." I echo that sentiment. And Di Valentino writes, "The closest to ideal among the sampled universities might be the University of Prince Edward Island’ s 'Fair Copying Guidelines' (although it requires updating)." 44 page PDF. [Link] [Comment]

Volvodea1, YouTube, May 10, 2013 Today's YouTube star is this student from Texas after giving his teacher an earful for simply handing him a packet and zoning out. Of course, while it's easy to blame teachers, we need to focus our attention to a system that supposes that handing out packets constitutes an education (online or offline). It's interesting, because this reminds me of myself in English class in grade 12, expressing similar sentiments for similar reasons (except my hair wasn't quite so long). Do take the time to read the comments, as they are actually quite good (I was afraid to read them, but this is not your typical YouTube comment thread). Oh, and one more note: vertical videos are just wrong; please view this PSA. [Link] [Comment]

[Slides][Audio] This is a description of my approach to research, based on problems inherent in traditional descriptions of scientific method, and the ways I have adapted my own work to compensate. It is a research process more like discovery, more like learning a language, than it is about forming hypotheses and confirming theories. Please note that the video was created May 9, 2013, one day ahead of the presentation, and that the audio is from the presentation itself, May 10, 2013. Both use the same slides. Digital Research Methodologies, Preston, UK, via Skype (Keynote) May 10, 2013 [Comment]

Lorna Campbell, Lorna’s JISC CETIS blog, May 10, 2013 "FutureLearn," writes Lorna Campbell, "doesn’ t appear to make any mention of using, creating or disseminating open educational resources." One of the core concepts of MOOCs - at least, the way we design them - was the use of open educational resources (OERs). After all, OERs and MOOCs are natural partners. Or were. On come the xMOOCs. "it seems that very few xMOOCs use or provide access to open educational resources. The relationship between MOOCs and OERs is problematic at best and non existent at worst. As Amber Thomas memorably commented at the Cetis13 conference 'it’ s like MOOCs stole OER’ s girlfriend.'" [Link] [Comment]