OLDaily

Certifying Your Future: Making Sense of Micro-credentials
Mark Brown, LinkedIn, 2020/07/20

As always, this slide presentation would be a lot more useful with some audio or a trascript (it's 2020 - we should all be recording our presentations). Still, it gives us our new Phrase of the Day: "Warm Body Badges." I think the meaning is clear (badges you need only to have a pulse to obtain). Helpfully, Selena Chan offers some commentary: "The EU seems to be exploring this concept in a bid to provide badging with recognition and also to bring them into regulatory control.To be relevant, both bundled and unbundled are options depending on individual learners/organisational/national needs. Whether bundled or not, stacking is still the prevalent approach of qualification systems to addressing the recognition of microcredentials."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Matters Computational
J ̈org Arndt, 2020/07/20

This is one of those books (978 page PDF) that isn't intended to be read, but rather, browsed through to gain an appreciation for the art at the core of computing. Don't expect to understand it all (unless you're Daniel Lemire). It's the sort of book that says "The examples of assembler code are for the x86 and the AMD64 architecture. They should be simple enough to be understood by readers who know assembler for any CPU." But it's also full of useful tidbits, like "There are two types of right shifts: a logical and an arithmetical shift." And "Never ever delete the unoptimized version of some code fragment when introducing a streamlined one.Keep the original in the source." This is advice chip makers could have used.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

How to Support Student Voice in 4 Steps
Janet Taylor, The Art of Education, 2020/07/20

This is a pretty standard list of suggestions: create a safe space, scaffold choice, provide opportunity, and encourage connection. It's in the details that a list like this succeeds or fails. To create a safe space, for example, Janet Talor says "create a sense of community in our classrooms." But community is not sufficient; they can be very unsafe. So also, "setting the tone for everyone to respect all artistic voices, including opposing opinions, can really make or break your sense of community. Opinions that include hate, however, cannot be tolerated." Not really deep, but still necessary.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The self of self-help books is adrift from social and economic facts
Craig Schamel, Psyche, 2020/07/20

This article "reminded me of recent edtech 'self determination discourse'", says Gerald Ardito. As it says, "much of the self-help literature on economic and career success is still written in the vein of Carnegie’s book, and consequently reads as if one were always a free agent negotiating for (and with) oneself without a social context." It's true that we are largely defined by social and economic facts. But it may also be true that the only way to transcend our social and economic class may be to deny these facts. As the article says, ""When it’s time for ‘change agents’ and revolutionaries to alter the basic social conditions that keep individuals down, a self-help narrative might energise action best."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Ivory Towers: Will the Pandemic Blow Up College in America?
Michael S. Roth, Politico, 2020/07/20

There is definitely a risk that U.S. colleges and universities will become contagion tinderboxes if they open this fall, and there's a risk that many will close permanently if they don't. As usual, the peoplke who will suffer either way are the low-income and marginalized. And that's the problem with the system in a nutshell. In this article Michael S. Roth suggests that while the education system is overdue for some changes, it won't be technophilia that changes it. Collehges and universities are tyoo valuable to be converted by tech: "they’re a rare venue for bringing together people open to discoveries about themselves and the world." But they need tyo take steps to address inequalities, steps that include doing away with standardized tests, that work toward genuine dialogue between dissenting views, hybrid learning to lower costs, and greater integration into the community. All this would be a start. But only a start.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

2021 Global Learning Landscape
HolonIQ, 2020/07/20

HolonIQ has taken a large number of learning and education companies and organized them into a set of 55 categories. It's nice to have a comprehensive list of companies like this (though I'm sure that this list could be doubled, tripled, almost without end) and the categorizations are interesting to consider. What I did miss, though, was a consideration of the different types of educational technologies there are out there. Because while a list of companies tells us something about how education is managed, a list of educational technologies tells us about how education - and especially online learning - is constructed.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

xAPI + LRS: Everything You Need to Know in 2020
Devlin Peck, 2020/07/20

This is a really good comprehensive overview of the Experience API (xAPI) and learning record stores (LRS), including updated information on how much they are being used as of 2020. "The xAPI specification brings L&D into the data-rich world that other professions have been immersed in for some years now. xAPI data enables organizations to use a data-driven approach to their learning design, and it can help them focus their efforts on the tasks that produce the largest impact."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]