OLDaily

Presentation
Personal Learning Versus Personalized Learning - Making Lifelong Learning Happen
Stephen Downes, Oct 11, 2019, Online Learning 2019, Toronto, Ontario

This presentation draws a contrast between the concept of ‘personalized learning’, as exemplified in new learning technologies such as adaptive learning, and the concept of ‘personal learning’, which draws from a tradition of adult learning theory and heutagogy. Contrasting starting points, objectives, learning processes and forms of evaluation are identified. The article then considers strategies to implement personal learning in the form of support for lifelong learning, and contrasts this approach with the prevalent model governing educational institutions, and casts it as a means to address ongoing issues of access and sustainability. View and comment on the text of this presentation as an article (work in progress).

Sketchnotes

The sessions this am from #globalsummit19. @Downes session has me thinking of the pop ups this weekend in nature and the learning journal. How do we blend the many pathways to learning. pic.twitter.com/gueQQIMOxV

— Tina Zita (@tina_zita) October 10, 2019

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Futures of Education
UNESCO, 2019/10/11

UNESCO has launched an initiative called 'Futures of Education', "a global initiative to reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet." This is the project website. The initiative is frmed around the idea of 'learning to become', that is, "a philosophy of education and an approach to pedagogy that views learning as a process of continual unfolding that is ongoing and life-long. To think in terms of “becoming” is to invoke a line of thought that emphasizes potentials, rejects determinism and expresses a flexible openness to the new." Via eLearning Africa.

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Scientific sinkhole: The pernicious price of formatting
Allana G. LeBlanc, Joel D. Barnes, Travis J. Saunders, Mark S. Tremblay, Jean-Philippe Chaput, PLOS ONE, 2019/10/11

I feel this. It seems to me there is an opportunity for an application that automatically formats scientific publications, so people don't have to do it. "Our results suggest that each manuscript costs 14 hours, or US$477 to format for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This represents a loss of 52 hours or a cost of US$1,908 per person-year." By contrast, I spend virtually no time formatting these posts, my blog posts, photo pages, or whatever.

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Integrating the Science of How We Learn into Education Technology
Stephen M. Kosslyn, Harvard Business Review, 2019/10/11

Stephen Kosslyn has a long and distinguiished history of research on the subject, so he is worth listening to even in the form of a short HBS article. He writes, "When I’ve asked large numbers of people this question, they typically report that they intentionally tried to learn at most a tenth of what they recall at the end of the day. So, where did the rest of what we recall come from? Deep processing." This is the natural bypoduct of having paid attention to something and having thought about it. So successful learning results from activities that promote this. One part depends on getting the level of difficulty of right, which is where analytics may play a role. But also, " active learning (such as group problem solving, role playing, and debate) ... has been shown repeatedly to be a very effective way to learn." The third combines the first two: social ctivities that enable multi-layered levels of participation.

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Data Playbook Toolkit
Global Disaster Preparedness Center, 2019/10/11

According to this website, "The Data Playbook Beta is a recipe book or exercise book with examples, best practices, how-to’s, session plans, training materials, matrices, scenarios, and resources. The data playbook will provide resources for National Societies to develop their literacy around data." The context in which we find this resource is worthy of note: the Global Disaster Preparedness Center. The resources are available in nine modules consisting of a number of documents and slide presentations, all available as an open educational resource. Awesome.

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Competing on the Rate of Learning
Martin Reeves, Kevin Whitaker, Henderson Institute, 2019/10/11

The premise of this article is that companies need to learn to operate on different time scales: using "modern technologies, such as sensors, digital platforms, and AI" in order to "operate at superhuman speed, learning about the market and reacting in seconds or even milliseconds"; and "longer timescales, as social, political, and economic shifts gradually reshape the business context" (I would call this strategy "from pixel to pivot", but I'm terrible at naming things). Anyhow, to address this need, the article recommends learning companies focus on human-machine collaboration, and in particular, invest in autonomous technologies, design effective human–machine interfaces, ambed autonomous learning loops throughout the enterprise, and measure. Via Mike Taylor.

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Preventing Digital Feudalism
Mariana Mazzucato, Project Syndicate, 2019/10/11

"Creating an environment that rewards genuine value creation and punishes value extraction is the fundamental economic challenge of our time," writes Mariana Mazzucato. "Algorithms and big data could be used to improve public services, working conditions, and the wellbeing of all people. But these technologies are currently being used to undermine public services, promote zero-hour contracts, violate individual privacy, and destabilize the world’s democracies." Quite so. The question is whether this is a legislative challenge or a technological challenge.

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