The Case Against Reality
Chris Ashley, The Atlantic, 2016/04/27

I've always felt the case against realism is pretty definitive, so this article doesn't surprise me. And I love this analogy: "You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know." It's not that our perceptions are not useful; of course they are. But it is an error to take them literally. Some people may then ask, well what happens to science. This is the thing: this is what science tells us. As Donald Hoffman says, "I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world."

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Sebastian Thrun, Modi and the Forgotten Promise of MOOCs
Anuj Srivas, The Wire, 2016/04/27

I think this is exactly the wrong lesson, but it's the one being drawn nonetheless: "The fatal flaw in the “classic MOOC,” as Thrun noted in an interview with PandoDaily, is that it is free. “We learned we can drastically boost learning outcomes by adding a service layer around MOOCs… It’s not a MOOC [anymore] because we ended up charging for it." I think a better lesson is this: "putting up a lecture online without the rest of the traditional education infrastructure resulted in very low completion rates." The key is to do it without charging admission. Oh, and fwiw, Sebastian Thrun has stepped down as Udacity CEO.

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ASUGSV 2016 Highlights
Mitchell Weisburgh, PILOTed, 2016/04/27

Good quick overview of the ASUGSV Summit held last week in San Diego (ASU-GSV stands for Arizona State University / Global Silicon Valley). Some interesting bits (quoted): 

• There is a parallel design structure to designing great games and designing great learning. When looking at brain images, there is virtually no difference between play and learning. In fact, well-designed games inspire self-regulated learning.
• The large media companies are taking a close look at education (e.g. the $230M Bertlesmann plunked down on HotChalk). As the media companies look for better returns, they see that education is becoming more like what you watch on TV, except that people are willing to pay perhaps $5 for an hour of entertainment, but $100 for an hour of education, and the market for education is expanding as more people need to learn more over their entire lifetimes.

This is good stuff. There are videos available of many of the talks, for example, 'The Future of Education: John Fallon, CEO, Pearson and Rick Levin, CEO, Coursera.'

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