Examining ethical and privacy issues surrounding learning analytics
Tony Bates, online learning and distance education resources, 2016/06/23

Tony Bates reviews Drachsler, H. et al. (2016) Is Privacy a Show-stopper for Learning Analytics? A Review of Current Issues and Their Solutions Learning Analytics Review. The problem stems when individuals who provide data "are unable to specify who has access to the data, and for what purpose, and may not be confident that the changes to the education system which result from learning analytics will be desirable." My own response has been to focus on personal analytics, but this has been a hard sell. As Bates notes, a European Commission project called LACE (Learning Analytics Community Exchange). has proposed an eight-point framework (really badly) named DELICATE - it's described in Drachsler, H. and Greller, W. (2016) Privacy and Learning Analytics – its a DELICATE issue. From my perspective, it seems to me that a complex framework like DELICATE is full of loopholes, and therefore, no real protection for individuals.

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Work Changes Culture
Simon Terry, 2016/06/23

Nothing is more true than this. "Work changes culture, not words.... Creating new value requires people to do more than communicate. They must work in new ways." Simon Terry is talking about the future of work, but I'm thinking of work more generically, in the sense of taking action rather than merely thinking about it or talking about it. How many times have I met people who want to lead change without actually creating anything, who want to tell people how to do things without actually doing things themselves?

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Of OER and Free Riders
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2016/06/23

David Annand writes, "Incentives need to discourage ‘free-riders’. Otherwise, a valid competitive strategy for institutions... would be to wait and merely use without cost the OER resources produced by others." Heather Ross asks, "Is the idea of 'free-riders' really a concern in OER?" David Wiley replies with an emphatic "no" and then, more usefully, takes Annand to task for his presumed model of OER production. "If our only model for creating the OER necessary to replace traditional textbooks is to spend $250k of government or philanthropic funding for each and every course offered at each and every university, there is literally no path from here to there. We need to enable and facilitate alternative development models if our vision of universal OER adoption is to become a reality. (It’s no secret that I believe that these future models must be significantly more distributed and stigmergic than current models.)" Quite so.

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Part 2: Draining the Semantic Swamp of “Personalized Learning” : A View from Silicon Valley
Larry Cuban, Larry Cuban on School Reform, Classroom Practice, 2016/06/23

Continuing from Part One, covered here earlier this week, Larry Cuban continues his exploration of “personalized learning spectrum,” as anchored in the tangled history of school reform (he says) and now subject to more recent developments. In a nutshell, "those efficiency-minded school reformers, filled with optimism about the power of new technologies to 'transform' teaching and learning, have appropriated the language of 'whole child' Progressives."

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How to Succeed at Work When Your Boss Doesn’t Respect You
Christine Porath, Harvard Business Review, 2016/06/23

Here are the recommendations (all quoted):

• Identify areas for growth and actively pursue development in those areas.
• Sleep, exercise, good nutrition, and stress-management help ward off the noxious effects of disrespect.
• Generate more meaning at work by shaping your activities around your motives, strengths and passions.
• Seek positive relationships. Positive relationships in and out of work help you thrive.
• Thriving in non-work activities doubles an individual’s emotional reserves.

Sounds like a plan. Something everybody could use to more or less a degree.

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