OLDaily

The Digital Expansion of the Mind Gone Wrong in Education
Daniel T.Willingham, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 2019/03/29

This is another article from what I previously described as the other side of the 'scientific evidence' debate. In this article Daniel Willingham looks at three proposed effects of digital technology - less memorization, flipped classroom and personalized learning - in order to argue "that the suggested education reforms are founded on a misunderstanding of the cognitive processes involved." What follows is (in my view) intellectually questionable. There isn't room here to break it down, but you can't prove a trend by citing a survey from 19 years ago, or cite a single paper to show that "college students attending a selective university use a feeble strategy" in search. Nor is it reasonable to cite Marissa Mayer to represent the position you are opposing, or to say it draws on a set of factors that hadn't been published yet.

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The Synthesis of the Student Relationship Management System Using the Internet of Things to Collect the Digital Footprint for Higher Education Institutions
Nualsri Songsom, Prachyanun Nilsook, Panita Wannapiroon, International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering, 2019/03/29

This paper is actually a synthesis of eleven other papers looking at various aspects of student management systems with respect to remote data gathering tools. The upshot is that the 'consensus' system described by these papers includes five elements: identify module, alert module, tracking module, SRM module, and an analytic module. Each of these is described a bit and the whole system is presented as a simple stack diagram.

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Bitnine: The Newly Revealed 'AI Teacher' Powered by Graph Database Delivers Hyper-Personalized Learning Experience
Financial Post, 2019/03/29

The idea of the personalized learning path recommendation has been around for a while now, and while I don't think it solves any real problem in education (as I like to say: "education is not a search problem") it is nonetheless attracting the interest of the business community. This article is a promotional piece for a BitNine graph database use case (available behind a spamwall - it's a 3-page PDF, don't bother). The idea is that the system "recommends appropriate courses and types of questions to solve repeatedly and suggest similar questions. On the basis of comprehensive information covering the student's tendency and concept levels, the solution predicts when the student needs to
repeat his or her study." You don't need to use a graph database to do this, but it makes for a neat infographic.

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Fujitsu and Sony think blockchain is the best way to store education records
Asha McLean, ZDNet, 2019/03/29

Storing education records on a blockchain makes them more accessible (and more permanent). It also opens up the concept of 'education records' to multiple education providers and issuers of credentials. So while the initial application - putting records on a blockchain - might not seem very interesting, the potential side-effects just might be.

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Reclaim the Robot
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2019/03/29

OK, at $3,000 each they're way too expensive, but if I want any toy to play with before I retire I want this. Jim Groom had one of these telepresence robots working in his office, and from everything I can see, it would be perfect for remote meetings and events (especially since it allows for the informal conversations in the hall that invariably follow). Groom writes, " You can control the robot from the browser, and adjust the height of the “head” which is an iPad mounted on a modded segueway. When you lower the 'head' the robot can move pretty quickly, and you have more control to get around. One you are ready to stay put, you can park the robot and share links, pictures, videos, etc."

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Social Media and Seamless Learning
Stefanie Panke, AACE Review, 2019/03/29

I accept that there will be a certain amount of sloppiness in online posts; after all, I'm no saint. But the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) ought to have higher standards than this article. Not only is it riddled with grammatical errors, it's factually unsound. For example, at one point it says 3 billion is "about a third of the world's population," which isn't close. It later says "Globally, 45% of the population are social media users," which is more accurate, though 45% is nowhere near a third. It tells us "81 percent of the United States population had a social networking profile," but the number cited, 243.6 million, is actually 74% of that population. We are told, "in Germany, 42.8 million people use social media", which is about half Germany's 82 million people, not the 36% the article claims. This article, which appears to be a placement for a statistics company, has zero credibility, and reflects the same on AACE.

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