OLDaily

Presentation
Future Learning in an Advanced Decentralized Learning Ecosystem
Stephen Downes, May 10, 2019, Individual Training and Education (IT&E) Symposium, Canadian Forces Base Borden

The U.S. Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL) has historically emphasized interoperability in decentralized learning ecosystems, supporting such things as the Personal Assistant for Learning (PAL) and Open Social Learning Models (OSLM). Similar challenges are being faced in the wider internet community. Developers have responded with new approaches supporting decentralized networks, such as open social applications (for example, micropub), distributed ledger technology (for example, blockchain), and cloud container networks. These will support new learning application such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and personal assistants. This presentation will provide an overview of this emerging infrastructure, describe key points of contact with training and development services, and outline the impact on future learning programs and systems.

[Link] [Slides] [Video]

Google’s Nest changes risk making the smart home a little dumber
Dan Seifert, The Verge, 2019/05/10

You may not have a Nest thermostat, but the news that the Works with Nest program is shutting down is important to you in any case. First, it's yet another example of Google shutting down a product that had attracted a lot of users and developers. And second, and perhaps more significantly, it's an example from Google of what is being called "ecosystem lock-in" - that is, the inability of a product to work with anything outside its home ecosystem. That's what we had with Microsoft, as it used Windows-only features to try to create a Microsoft-only internet - until the antitrust regulators stepped in. That's what we have with Apple, which makes products that only work with other Apple products. Now we see it from Google. I'm sure their stockholders will be happy, even if it leaves the rest of us poorer and more poorly served. See also Ars Technica.

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A Comprehensive Hands-on Guide to Transfer Learning with Real-World Applications in Deep Learning
Dipanjan (DJ) Sarkar, Towards Data Science, 2019/05/10

I came across the concept of 'transfer learning' in artificial intelligence today. This is not 'knowledge transfer' from one person to another. Rather, the idea is to teach an AI to apply knowledge it learning in one domain to speed its learning in another domain. This article is a deep deep dive into the concept - my advice is to start reading and stop when you feel like stopping. You'll get the gist; the article is pretty well written. I found it interesting because there are theorists (I'm thinking especially of Willingham) who argue for the primacy of 'content knowledge' because you can't apply principles from one domain to another - principles like, say, mathematics or critical thinking. But if an artificial neural network can figure it out, odds are, so can a human. More on transfer learning: this key paper on pretrained language models, this paper on tweet stance classification, and this paper on Google's BERT, a transfer learning model.

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Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation
danah boyd, Points, Medium, 2019/05/10

The term “agnotology” refers to the the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance. before this term was introduced, we used (more meaningful) words like "misinformation" and "disinformation". For the most part danah boyd is on-point with this discussion of the practice, describing how the tactic is used by far right groups to sow down and dissension in society, and to promote their own message and to create and recruit radicals. She also describes "epistemological fragmentation" to describe the creation or appropriation of terms that seed doubt and fragment society. And she suggests that the best response is to "blanket the information ecosystem with the information people need to make informed decisions." I think that's an old strategy, but then again, disinformation is an old tactic. But just as I don;t think yiu can defeat propaganda with more propaganda, I don't think adopting the tactics if the disinformationists will work either. It will just create two camps - one camp that uses the word “agnotology” and another that doesn't.

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"Predatory" company uses Canadian universities to sell shoddy conferences
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, 2019/05/10

This link was send to me by Clayton R. Wright along with his latest list of conferences. He also sent links to two items from the U.S. FTC - one a press release citing the court's ruling against the OMICS group, and a second to the ruling itself. The ruling orders "journal publisher and conference organizer Srinubabu Gedela and his companies to pay more than $50.1 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges that they made deceptive claims to academics and researchers about the nature of their conferences and publications, and hid steep publication fees."

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Educational Technology & Education Conferences 41 June to December 2019
Clayton R. Wright, 2019/05/10

This post links (147 page MS-Word document) to the latest installment of Clayton Wright's excellent list of educational technology & education conferences. Wright notes this time around that there has been an increase in the number of questionable conferences. He writes, via email, "The events may be held to attract papers which people plagiarize (and then publish the papers in their local language and receive academic or scientific credit) and/or to gather funds and offer little in return." And there are many other ways to act against the best interests of presenters and attendees. " Check your 'gut'," he writes, "if it doesn’t feel quite right, perhaps more checking is in order. Take the time to conduct your own due diligence."

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We studied what 10,000 people love online. The results would make Freud blush
Brian Millar, Fast Company, 2019/05/10

There's no link to the original research, and the headline is definitely clickbait, but the article is compelling and reasonable. It analyzes Facebook and YouTube algorithms as "the result of the biggest experiment ever conducted into what engages us" and concludes "The answer is clear: something more extreme than the thing we last watched." The algorithms that rely on this, writes Brian Millar, are what psychologist Philip Newall has called “dark nudges”. The problem is, it's not just Facebook and YouTube doing this. "Behavioral Economics is a great way to sell stuff, get elected and make experiences ‘sticky’," writes Millar.

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