OLDaily

The Information on School Websites Is Not as Safe as You Think
E.K. Moore, New York Times, 2018/08/02

Because there's nothing good in todays' world that won't be spoiled, we have this: a study of 159 public school websites "from among the nation’s largest and most tech-savvy districts" showed that all but one of them employed some sort of surveillance or tracking tool. According to the article, "The presence of trackers from data brokers such as BlueKai, AddThis or DataLogix on school sites should be viewed as a 'smoking gun' that demands an explanation." In fairness, a lot of these are probably just the schools' using free services (like AddThis) through there are holdovers from advocacy campaigns and advertising.

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Computer Science 20 - Saskatchewan
Dan Schellenberg, Saskatoon Public Schools, 2018/08/02

This link is to Dan Schellenberg's own copy of this openly-licesed computer science resource and will be updated over time - the official Saskatoon Public Schools of the CS 20 curriculum resource can be found here. Either way you have a nice clean workbook that will take students through Scratch, the Reeborg environment, and Python. What I like is how the book makes actual programming part of the process - you don't just read, you enter the Reeborg environment, or you execute script in nested windows. And as Schellenberg noted in an email exchange, the resource also helps students learn a bit about Python libraries, including a simple library that allows for simple GUI dialogue boxes. BBC Micro:bit, and some image libraries.

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The future is ear: Why “hearables” are finally tech’s next big thing
Peter Burrows, Fast Company, 2018/08/02

OK, remember, you heard about this here first. I'm going to combine two technologies to predict a wave of the future. The first is 'hearables'. The second is ASMR. Hearables are in-ear computers that "combine the utility of the hearing aid with the entertainment value of a pair of high-end headphones, and potentially much more." You can read all about them in this article. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and in video form it is basically a calming reassuring low-threshhold stimulation. "There are thousands of videos with millions of views on YouTube featuring quiet conversation, fingernail tapping, slow unboxings, soft brushing and soothing crinkle sounds. There's a wide range of AMSR videos; don't fall quickly into stereotypes. " Imagine having a positive 'voice in your head' that calms you, reassures you, encourages you and gives you strength. Or the sounds of an expert polishing shoes as you fall asleep.

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Where Do Educators Turn for Research into the Effectiveness of Technology Tools?
David Nagel, THE Journal, 2018/08/02

It's like our whole media world wrapped up in an educational technology article. "Educators are most likely to turn to media outlets and ed tech vendors for information about education technology. But they don't necessarily find the information from those sources reliable." I would ask, why don't they look elsewhere then? But where? The survey was conducted by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Jefferson Education Exchange (JEX). The article doesn't link to it (grrrr) and neither does the press release (grr). Indeed, the whole thing looks like an advertisement for ISTE's new EdTech Advisor service. So what we have here is what appears to be a fake news article describing a possibly fake survey all to advertise some product. Do you wonder why educators don't find these sources reliable? And ISTE - shame on you.

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How artificial intelligence could help teachers do a better job
Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report, 2018/08/02

I can't imagine there are too many teachers who would welcome the opportunity to be corrected by an artificial intelligence. Yet we move one step closer with "a computer model that came close to an expert educator’s ability to discern when a teacher was asking students an 'authentic' question." The model doesn't tell you what makes a question authentic - that would take the human evaluators who trained the model. But it does classify them in roughtly the same categories as human observers. Jill Barshay writes, "Hopefully, decision makers will use automated observer robots to improve instruction and not as a weapon against teachers, repeating the mistakes made using student test scores to pay and punish teachers." Sure. That would never happen. Right?

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Chasing Ghosts: How the focus on innovation in development has gone down the wrong path
David de Ferranti, Thomas Feeny, Nathaniel Heller, Results for Development, 2018/08/02

I think we see the same trends in education, especially where education overlaps with development, as in the case of OER. What trends? These: "the continued obsession with finding the new 'what works' solution may be quickly trumped by decision-makers’ tendencies to back solutions based on who surfaces them rather than what the evidentiary basis says about the same solution." The authors call for fewer flashy pilot projects, better bases in research, and more grounding for innovators in the social and political realities on the ground. Fair enough, but the same recipe serves also to block innovation before it can start.

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