OLDaily

My Best Photos of 2019
Stephen Downes, Flickr, 2019/12/31

These photos are my best of 2019. Please enjoy. Meanwhile, I'm pleased to be included in this list by George Siemens, and not to be included in this list by Audrey Watters.

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The End Of Education Reform, Or A New Beginning?
Natalie Wexler, Forbes, 2019/12/31

I have to confess that my main question on reading this Forbes article was to wonder who is funding all those articles that say the cure to all the nation's educational problems is direct instruction. This is Yet Another Article where direct instruction is offered as the solution to sagging test scores (this time placed in the context of explaining why a decade of 'reform' has failed). And it's deceptive - it begins by arguing that things like rock star teachers, charter schools, 'back to basics' and endless testing have all failed, but then shifts gears, blaming the failure on critical thinking and constructivism, offering direct instruction as the cure. The only consistent explanation for test schools that I've seen is that they measure for social equity. Countries with wide divisions between rich and poor have lower scores, and poorer countries fare less well overall. But fixing that sort of problem is the last thing the readers and writers of Forbes want to see.

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I Don’t Think I’m an EdTech Guy Anymore
Dean Shareski, Ideas and Thoughts, 2019/12/31

Dean Shareski question the nature of the discipline to which he has devoted most of a career. I confess to having said in recent years that I don't think ed tech is a discipline any more, so I can identify with where Shareski is coming from. It has splintered, with the 'pure' ed tech focusing on, as Shareski notes, things like augmented and virtual reality, 3D printing, coding, esports and blockchain. But there's also professional learning, global learning and digital citizenships, and I would add things like digital identity and open pedagogy. My focus has always been a bit different - my interest has always been 'online learning and new media'. But in the end, it doesnt matter how the communities form and reform. There's still alot to keep me interested.

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Further Defining Digital Literacies: The Ethics of Information Creation
Kevin Hodgson, Kevin's Meandering Mind, 2019/12/31

This post reflects on a revision of definition of Literacy in a Digital Age by the National Council of Teachers of English. In particular, it considers the act of "hitting 'send' or 'post' without thinking twice about what they are sending forward, and to whom, doing it on a whim." In short, writes Kevin, "this strand could be an entire semester course on ethical writing in an online world." The move from the one subject to the other is as seamless as any I have seen - but I have to ask, is ethics the same as literacy? Is being ethical part of being literate? I wouldn't have thought so, but there it is.  

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