OLDaily

Toward Personal Learning: Reclaiming a role for humanity in a world of commercialism and automation
Stephen Downes, 2017/07/17

This is my ninth eBook and the first in five years. The result is another 750 page book, for which I deeply apologize. But don’t worry, it goes so fast it only feels like 550. As before, it’s a collection of blog posts, published articles, transcripts from talks, some interviews (I’m saving most of those for a separate volume, one day), diagrams and images, and photos. Why personal learning? Each age sets its own priorities, and personal learning I think captures what is important today. The first is the idea of autonomy in a connected world. We are reaching the end-game in the century-long struggle between individualism and collectivism. I reject both, and essentially for the same reason: they reject the humanity of individuals. A second is the idea that we need to reorganize knowledge in such a way as to better prepare people for a complex and changing world. And the third is the tension between commercial good and social good, especially with respect to open learning and open content, but also with respect to society and values generally.

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Will Virtual Reality Drive Deeper Learning?
Holly Korbey, Edutopia, 2017/07/17

The answer is, it might. But it depends on how it is used, and we need to understand that it won't do all things. It won't if it's just a passive experience. This article cites Audrey Watters: “My question is always: How is virtual reality different from educational film?” And it won't if the VR experience is just a virtual classroom or (as pictured) campus. Virtual reality will need to be social and interactive, helping people create as much as concume, for example where "students can uncover the aerodynamics of a windmill through a VR headset, for example, and then apply their newfound understanding to build a windmill of their own." And it will help if it's not expensive, as is currently the case (and a problem) for virtual reality.

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Back to the RSS(R)
Doug Belshaw, Discours.es, 2017/07/17

I've been a Feedly Pro user (and payer) for the last four years (yes, I sometimes pay for software!). And RSS is one of the most important tools I use to compile these newsletters. Algorithms can be useful, but the algorithm doesn't exist yet that caters to personal informational needs. Twitter also, as Bryan Alexander observes, is a flawed filter. He relies on the Digg Reader, which will also share the most-shared stories from your twitter friends, and help you share 'diggs' on the social media site. Either way, we need to ask,  "are we carelessly consuming whatever junk information is served up to us, or are we carefully ensuring we get a balanced information diet, including your five-a-day?"

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Adult MOOC Learners as Self-Directed: Perceptions of Motivation, Success, and Completion
Jamie Loizzo, Peggy A. Ertmer, William R. Watson, Sunnie Lee Watson, Online Learning , 2017/07/17

While it's true that you can't learn everything you need to learn from surveys of large numbers of people, if you are doing in-depth studies with a small number of people (12, in this case) then you have to resist the temptation to generalize. The only conclusions you can draw are existence claims and some modal claims (ie., 'x exists', 'some p are q', 'not all q are p', 'x is possible', 'x is not necessary'. These are perfectly legitimate conclusions and in many ways more valuable than generalizations. But the limitations of the method are not respected in the 'Discussion and Implications' section of this paper as it goes far beyond its data to make generalizations about adult learners and to inappropriately derive a conceptual framework. But with these caveats in mind, readers will find this an interesting and engaging paper that performs that most rare of academic feats: giving students a voice. 

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Apple’s Next Move? It’s Obvious. But We’re Missing It.
Seyi Fabode, HackerNoon, 2017/07/17

The title is unfortunate clickbait, but ignore that, as the content is worth the read. The main point is that the next big thing will be electricity management (and that Apple will be the ones to own the market). There's a case to be made for this - anything that runs on electricity can be run remotely through home (or office) wifi. More significantly, I think we're close to a revolution in battery power as we convert from lithium ion to graphene energy storage . This we read "Apple’s next move will be to design a home battery as part of a home energy management system controlled through the hub that is the Homepod or the iPhone." That's what the Apple patent for solid state power management relates to. But Apple won't own this market.

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