OLDaily

Naked in the Garden: Privacy and the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment
Lisa Ho, EDUCAUSE Review, 2017/08/10

There's an interesting diagram about half way down this article comparing four privacy schemas (Asilomar, LACE, IMS Key Principles  and UCal Principles) against five themes (transparency, anonymity and choice, ownership and control, stewardship, and technical standards). It strikes me that these themes could be better expressed, comprising as they do conjunctions of distinct concepts. Additional sources could also be consulted, such as the U.S. Department of Education, the Connecticut act, the European Commission recommendations, and more. Looking at the documents we can see that protections could range from minimal to extensive, choice from none to some (there's no outright assertion anywhere that students own their own data), and stewardship from self-managed (ie., 'ethical') to mandated.

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UBC’s Learning Technology Ecosystem: Developing a Shared Vision, Blueprint & Roadmap
Simon Bates, Carolun Kirkwood, Oliver Grüter –Andrew, Marianne Schroeder
, University of British Columbia, 2017/08/10

Dating from 2015 (but reaching me via an email from Marianne Schroeder just today, this is a useful document (26 page PDF)  (and would have helped me a lot had I seen it six months ago (though it still helps now)). I describes describes the goals and visions for a learning technology infrastructure at a major university and outlines a three-year roadmap. It's very similar to (but frankly much better than) a project I did recently. Interestingly, "With respect to specific technological approaches, we learned that social technology tools, Camtasia and media studios have shown demonstrated success, as have faculty/staff collaborations to explore emerging technologies. Learning analytics and adaptive personalized learning show promise. Podcasting, lecture capture and e-portfolios have all failed to realize their potential."  There are additional resources about the project here. Some updated work: a learning technologies snapshots, from 2016 (10 page PDF and 12 page PDF). Also from 2016: the project business case, project page, and needs assessment. This is all solid professional work from a leader in the field.

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JSON-LD
Various authors, 2017/08/10

The Acronym in full is 'Javascript Object Notation - Linked Data', or just 'JSON Linked Data'. This page is a central resource on the specification. The idea of JSON-LD is that yopu can present a body pof information that can be read by machines and interoperate with other information. To get a flavour, click on the 'Playground' tab (upper left) and 'Recipe'. Then click on the 'Visualized' tab (half-way down the page). If you see a green dot, click on it. Note especially that the data can be "signed" with RSA or Bitcoin. The documentation tab has a couple dozen good resources on how it works and how to use it. The 'Specifications' tab gives you the formal document and the 'Branding' tabcontains images and code libraries in Javascript, Python, Ruby, PHP and others. JSON-LD is part of the PaySwarm standardization initiative.

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Why Adopt Microlearning – 15 Questions Answered
Asha Pandey, EI Design, 2017/08/10

This is a pretty basic - but useful - introduction to the concept of microlearning. The 15 questions are a nice gimmick but do not define the structure of the article. Rather, there are five major sections: what is microlearning ("an action-oriented approach of offering bite-sized learning that gets learners to learn, act, and practice"), microlearning benefits, application of microlearning ("standalone nuggets or as a series of nuggets"), design and deployment, and impact (via the four Kirkpatrick levels).

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Claude Shannon’s “Creative Thinking” Speech: A Genius Reveals How To Be Creative
Jimmy Soni, The Mission, 2017/08/10

The post is at heart an advertisement for a book about Claude Shannon, and you get the speech beginning only at the half-way point. And also, I think a good part of it is wrong, as we would expect when a mathematician attempts to discuss educational theory. But it's also a good example of what we might call 'folk education theory', analogous to folk psychology, containing commonsense ideas not validated by research or science.

Shannon writes, "I think we could set down three things that are fairly necessary for scientific research or for any sort of inventing or mathematics or physics: 

• The first one is obvious — training and experience. You don’t expect a lawyer, however bright he may be, to give you a new theory of physics...
• The second thing is a certain amount of intelligence or talent... an IQ that is fairly high to do good research work... this, we might say, is a matter of environment; intelligence is a matter of heredity...
• You have to have some kind of a drive, some kind of a desire to find out the answer, a desire to find out what makes things tick... so far as motivation is concerned, it is maybe a little like Fats Waller said about swing music — 'either you got it or you ain’t.’"

These three things characterize a huge swath of thinking about education today; its what we see coming from the Ed Reform movement, it's what we see coming from Silicon Valley, it's what we see coming from the instructivist camp. And it's wrong.

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