OLDaily

The Future of Well-Being in a Tech-Saturated World
Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, Pew, 2018/04/17

According to this survey (92 page PDF) of internet experts, "Some 47% of these respondents predict that individuals’ well-being will be more helped than harmed by digital life in the next decade, while 32% say people’s well-being will be more harmed than helped. The remaining 21% predict there will not be much change." Count me as being among the 47%. Yes, the internet helps people do bad things. And these get all the headlines. But the internet also helps people do good and noble things, and in the end, these outweigh the bad.

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Open Science Training Handbook
Sonja Bezjak, et.al., GitBooks, 2018/04/17

The Open Science Handbook has launched version 1.0 on Gitbooks. "The Handbook is available under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0 Universal) and is oriented to practical teaching of Open Science principles. It was written by 14 experts during a book sprint organized by FOSTER and the TIB Hannover in February 2018. After including suggestions from the community the handbook was moved to Github and we can announce the release of version 1.0 now." It is intended to be a living text and will be revised through contributions in the future. The 'science' aspect of it (as in, for example, the description  of the scientific method) is pretty rudimentary, but it will do for now.

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How Debate Structures Allow English Learners' Brilliance to Shine
Katrina Schwartz, Mind/Shift, 2018/04/17

This is being posted to an NPR website as an example of good teaching, but my concern here is that this approach is not grounded in a proper understanding of critical thinking (which is why I recently wrote Critical Thinking for Educators). The non-standard approach is something called 'claim-evidence-reason' where the reason 'explains why' the evidence supports the claim. This misunderstanding of argument form makes it impossible for students to learn how arguments work. Moreover, the examples used are often poor, in some cases literally begging the question, and grammatically incoherent throughout. That these are being used for English language learning (ELL) only compounds the problem, because students are led to misunderstand the roles of different words in day-to-day use. If you're going to teach language and logic, you need to be somewhat proficient in it yourself.

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OECD Releases Report on Automation and the Workforce
Susan Gentz, ConVerge, 2018/04/17

The OECD has released a new report on automation, skills use and training (125 page web-based document). It asserts, essentially, that automation is on the increase and that therefore governments should consider allocating more resources to computer science training. As this summary in Converge points out, "The study is quick to point out that although not all jobs will be automated, they will certainly be impacted by new processes and technology. While not as many jobs will be completely automated as once thought, computer science and coding will be considered only basic skills.

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Google's latest do-it-yourself AI kits include everything you need
Jon Fingas, EdGadget, 2018/04/17

When I was a kid the prototypical DIY kit was a build-it-yourself crystal radio (for the princely sum of $24, well beyond my means at the time). Today's equivalent is DIY Artificial intelligence (AIY). "Google has released updated AIY Vision and AIY Voice kits that include what you need to get started. Both include a Raspberry Pi Zero WH board and a pre-provisioned SD card, while the Vision Kit also throws in a Raspberry Pi Camera v2." They cost $US 90 and 50 respectively, so they are actually cheaper (in relative terms) than the crystal radio. 

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