OLDaily

Can Everyone Be Excellent?
Alfie Kohn, 2019/07/16

I have to agree with this perspective from Alfie Kohn: "Many critics don’t even bother to assert that grades have risen over time or are too generous. They simply point to how many students (in a given class or school) get A’s right now — as if a sufficiently high number was objectionable on its face.... boy, do we love to rank. Worse, we create artificial scarcity such as awards — distinctions manufactured out of thin air specifically so that some cannot get them. Every contest involves the invention of a desired status where none existed before and none needs to exist." So much of what we feel today is normal and inescapable is really nothing more than an invention that can just as easily be uninvented. Image: Olivia Hemingway. Via Kottke.

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Identity, EduTwitter, and Power
Jennifer Borgioli Binis, Identity, EduTwitter, and Power, 2019/07/16

What caught my eye about this post wasn't the self-realization on the part of the author that debating on Twitter wasn't helpful, nor was it the useful set of thoughts about how to better interact with people on social media. No, it was the observation that "In those days, EduTwitter was much smaller, and as such, more intimate." And I think that the author's experiences are pretty common - you begin  with the feeling that you are the 'whatever' community, and then it appears to get bigger and bigger and more hectic. But in fact, there is no such thing (nor was there ever) as the EduTwitter. There were many small groups of educations, each of whom thought they were EduTwitter. We all think we are definitive of whatever we are, and that the rest of the world is watching. But none of us is.

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What Baseball Can Teach You About Using Data to Improve Yourself
Michael Schrage, Harvard Business Review, 2019/07/16

This is an article by a management consultant who read a book about baseball. The gist is that we can create all-stars out of average players by closely measuring their performance indicators. He tells us pitcher Trevor Bauer "wouldn’t have won a second glance, let alone a multi-million dollar contract, without cheap tools for computational introspection and training." Now I've talked about quantified self technology as part of online learning for as long as I've been talking about online learning. And today everybody is studying things like spin rate, launch angle and pitch velocity. But measurement is only a part of the story, not the whole story, and what really made Trevor Bauer an all-star is a lifetime of dedicated practice in the art of pitching a baseball.

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Future perfect
Dave Coplin, JISC, 2019/07/16

What should an education system of the future look like? "Creativity, empathy and accountability. I want an education system that delivers that," says Dave Coplin in this brief article. "How am I going to choose the correct course of human action? What parts of my human judgment can I add to the algorithm to give me what the right choice is? That's a core skill that we have to learn – as individuals and as organisations – and it is a core skill we have to teach." I think there's a point here, but I also think we need to think much more deeply about what this means, exactly. Machines can be creative, they can make decisions, and they can even decide what's important. It's not clear yet where we fit into that picture. Why are we training people to make decisions? Why are we training people for jobs? What do people want in a machine-supported world?

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Is Netflix bad for the environment? How streaming video contributes to climate change
Jeannette Cwienk, DW, 2019/07/16

I can't imagine that using Netflix creates more greenhouse gas than piling into a car and driving to the cinema, but there's no escaping these articles describing this or that aspect of internet activity as harmful to global health. The arguments depend on two key features: not comparing them to the alternative practice, and arguing that "to generate... electricity, the world still predominantly uses fossil fuels." This very much depends on where you live. In Canada, for example, we actually refer to electricity as "hydro" because so much of it is generated by dams. This article takes the position that it is basically impossible to stop burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, so we should practice "digital hygiene...  If instead you delete a few things here and there, you can save energy." No, I think the better plan would be to vote for governments that are serious about building alternative energy.

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AdvisoryCloud
2019/07/16

I encountered this in a LinkedIn post by Brad Pinch. I'm not endorsing it - I don't know enough about it - but I want to note its existence. According to the website, "whether you’re working on a key project, facing an important decision, or simply need a sounding board, AdvisoryCloud gives you one-on-one access to top executives who’ve been there before." It reads to me like an Uber of consulting.

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