OLDaily

A new way to help students turn in their best work
Brian Hendricks, Keyword, Google, 2019/08/14

No doubt there is nervousness today at companies like TurnItIn as Google announces a new originality reports service as part of its Classroom and Assignments products. "We create originality reports by scanning student work for matched phrases across hundreds of billions of web pages and tens of millions of books... After submission, a fresh originality report will automatically be available to instructors when grading the assignment. These reports will flag text that has missed citations and has high similarity with text on the web or in books."

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Human vs Artificial Intelligence: Who Wins at Sales?
Nick Jiang, ReadWrite, 2019/08/14

Leaving aside the main question, there's an illustrative lesson in this article. One place the author says humans have the edge over machines is in 'empathy', which he defines as the “ability to walk a mile in another person’s shoes.” This a metaphor, not a definition, and it's terribly misleading. A better definition of 'empathy' might be "to be able to read the other person's values and feelings and reflect them back to the person." It certainly fits the story better. But if this is the definition, then machines win hands down, as we've already seen through the use of analytics-based advertising. The lesson here is that we will be forced to define what it is to be human much more precisely if we are to know how humans and machines will interact. Definitions of 'human' based on metaphor, story and folk psychology will not be sufficient.

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What’s Next in Learning? Four Future Trends
Tom Vander Ark, Forbes, 2019/08/14

What I like about this article is that it brings together different types of trends - mega trends, emerging trends and adjacent trends - in order to derive what the author describes as the four emerging trends. But while I like the method, I'm less about the outcome. The four trends are: responsive education, lean development, social (gig) economy, and growth communities. There's a grain of truth in each of these, but it feels like he started with these outcomes, and derived the trends that are supposed to lead tothem. For example,  the idea of "educational opportunities grounded in the mastery of academic fundamentals," comes from a report, not this analysis. The idea where schools " sell off their facilities to a group like WeWork" is a lifelong dream of the Forbes set. The same with things like Seth Godin’s altMBA.

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The OECD Learning Compass 2030
OECD, 2019/08/14

According to OECD, "The Learning Compass 2030 defines the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that learners need to fulfill their potential and contribute to the well-being of their communities and the planet." Mostly this appears to be set up as a way of standardizing discussion about learning, ethics and development. But I also find it prescriptive, where OECD is looking to define what skills, attitudes and values people need. Specifically, "a common thread emerges on the importance given to certain values, such as human dignity, respect, equality,  justice, responsibility, global-mindedness, cultural  diversity,  freedom, tolerance and democracy." The Learning Compass is part of an overall Learning 2030 project, and the documentation here is well worth investigating.

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Learning Arch Design
Simon Kavanagh, Kaos Pilot Learning Design Agency, 2019/08/14

When we last looked at Kaos Pilot , founded in 1991 by Uffe Elbæk, it was in the context of student choice and authentic learning. None of that has changed, however, today we see the release of the 'learning arches design' (36 page PDF), which describes the theory and application of the Kaos Pilot methodology, according to Simon Kavanagh, director of the Kaos Pilot Learning Design Agency (KPLDA). There's a lot to like in this work, and a lot that will confound. I found myself wondering why the same diagram is repeated over and over. And the arches design didn't really feel different from a hierarchal organization of learning content. At the same time, I appreciated the focus on practice and real-world application.

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