OLDaily

The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind
Erin Bartram, 2018/02/13

For the record: I was a really good philosophy professor. Just as Erin Bartram, who recounts her story here, was probably a really good history professor. But after getting a PhD and being rejected for a tenure track position, she leaves it behind. All of it. "One response is to tell the person that this doesn’t mean they’re not a historian, that they can still publish, and that they should. 'You can still be part of the conversation!' Some of you may be thinking that right now. To that I say: 'Why should I?' ... we’re also asking people to stay tethered to a community of scholars that has, in many ways, rejected them, and furthermore, asking them to continue contributing the fruits of their labor which we will only consider rigorous enough to cite if they’re published in the most inaccessible and least financially-rewarding ways." I wonder how academia would change if journals were open access and if writers were paid for their contributions. Via Inside Higher Ed. More.

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Book Review: Interaction Online By Lindsay Clandfield And Jill Hadfield
Philip J. Kerr, Adaptive Learning in ELT, 2018/02/13

Philip Kerr reviews Lindsay Clandfield and Jill Hadfield’s new book Interaction Online, calling it "a recipe book, containing about 80 different activities (many more if you consider the suggested variations)." The objective, he writes, is to address the phenomenon of underused chat and discussion areas in online  English language training (ELT) services. "A recipe book must be judged on the quality of the activities it contains," writes Kerr, "and the standard here is high. They range from relatively simple, short activities to much longer tasks which will need an hour or more to complete."

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Will Augmented and Virtual Reality Replace Textbooks?
Michael L. Matthews, Center for Digital Education, 2018/02/13

This article is over-stated, but I think it places augmented and virtual reality (AVR) in the correct context, positioning them as potential replacements for the traditional textbook. "Students and professors are now able to connect directly with current images, animations and entire visual learning environments that are fresh off the 'shop-room' floor from the workplace." But I think that the positioning of AVR as an equalizing agent is a bit misplaced. It gives "the ability for a class of diverse students to have an equal playing field," writes Michael L. Matthews. "In the era of textbooks, those who excel in memorization and linear learning styles easily outpaced the visual or conceptual learner."

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Read the Declaration
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, 2018/02/13

Developed in 2012, the Declaration on Research Assessment "is a cross-disciplinary global initiative seeking to improve the ways in which scholarly research outputs are evaluated." The core idea is to move away from journal-based metrics for the evaluation of research output. In particular, it addresses "the need to assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the journal in which the research is published; and the need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by online publication." It shows up in my inbox from time to time as new organizations sign on, as the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) did this week.

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What Are Progressive Web Apps?
Chris Hoffman, How-To Geek, 2018/02/13

A progressive web app is an application that works well on a mobile device but also supports older-style browsers (hence, they're 'progressive'). As well, they live on the web, not on your device. "Like the traditional web apps we use today, they’re hosted entirely on the application’s servers. If a developer wants to update their progressive web app, they update it exactly like they would update the web app—on their servers." What's new is that the major developers are gradually working toward a progressive web app standard.

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A Must Have Tool for Taking Notes on Videos
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2018/02/13

Reclipped "allows you to collect relevant parts from videos, add your comments and notes to them and then share them with others. You can trim videos and choose specific timestamps for the start and end of your snippet." It's a nice idea. It really needs to be integrated into a workflow, though. There's a Chrome plugin, or you can clip the videos from inside the Reclipped website.

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Personalized Learning Vs Personalization of Learning
George Couros, The Principal of Change, 2018/02/13

This is, I think, another effort to grapple with the distinction between 'personalized learning' and what I have been calling 'personal learning' and is called 'personalization of learning' in this article. The difference is that it is focused on an in-class perspective: the idea of “personalization of learning” is about "how does the teacher understand the student, build on their interests, and create learning opportunities for the student." I like what Tristan Miller says in the comments: "I think the disservice is to expect all children to learn the same things at the same rate.... Don’t typecast personalized, or believe it has to exclude the individual."

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