OLDaily

New Right 2.0: Teacher populism on social media in England
Steven Watson, British Educational Research Journal, 2020/07/24

Although the theoretical perspective drapes over this paper (17 page PDF) like an unwelcome layer of tasteless inpetentrable fondant, the core observations appear to me to be accurate, and the phenomenon being described is real. The author describes "teacher populism" as "wanting to give voice to the ordinary teacher against a liberal educational elite." You've seen it in action if you've seen "a positivistic perspective on educational research... contrasted with the ‘pseudo‐science’—or what is sometimes portrayed as post‐modern or relativist approaches." What's key here is "The emphasis on ‘what works’ or evidence‐based practice is associated with the privatisation of state schools, because schools become more like businesses through emphasising reductive outcomes rather than through educational values." Image: diggit.

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Why The Office Simply Cannot Go Away: The Compelling Case For The Workplace
Tracy Brower, Forbes, 2020/07/24

This article makes the case for working in the office instead of at home, and I can easily imagine the same argument made for in-person education. But at the same time, as I read through these reasons, they really sound like an argument asserting that the office is the best place to assert influence and control. True, "our humanity demands human connections and technology only meets part of our need," but the real danger of working from home is that you get human connections from people other than your co-workers - people like your family, neighbourhood, friends. The same with "organizations require collaboration between and across teams" - what they mean is they want you collaborating with coworkers, and not the wider community. The same with purpose, the same with energy, the same with talent, engagement and culture. You can get all of these things outside the office - but the difference is, you do not get them from the office, and that's why managers see risk in people working from home.

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How to design more actionable edtech dashboards: eleven principles
Adam Black, EnablingInsights, 2020/07/24

This isn't how I would approach the subject, but it's well worth considering as an alternative and more traditional perspective. The dashboard is based on the 'understand-decide-action' pronciple, with each of the eleven principles falling under one of these three headings. But recommendations like 'tell a story', 'reduce noise', etc., don't really capture my imagination. Now - to be fair - these dashboards are designed for edtech managers not learners. But I think suggesting that any set of data provides a "complete picture" is a mistake, and that even managers need a mechanism to probe, interact, obtain feedback, communicate, etc. - just like learners. Which is why reliance on analytics alone is not recommended.

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How To: Create an Architecture of Participation for your Open Source project
Doug Belshaw, We Are Open Co-op, 2020/07/24

Doug Belshaw may be limiting his discussion to open source projects, but I see this as a blueprint for how to create learning environments that maximize learner autonomy and engagement. The architecture he describes has eight components, but what brings them together (in my mind) is that each represents an element of an open-ended negotiation between the participants. The rest of this post details some of the practical aspects of cooperative organization - knowing who is participating, clearly identifying a project home, pathways to participation, signposting and orientation, recognition, and more.

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From Long-distance Entanglement to Building a Nationwide QuantumInternet
K. Kleese van Dam, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 2020/07/24

This is a report for the U.S. Department of Energy outlining development toward the Quantum Internet (QI). The QI depends on a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, whereby a change of state in one particle is mirrored by a second particle, no matter how far distant. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance". So it's a means of instantaneous information transmission. The speed would be limited only by how fast we can generate and read changes of state. This report (38 page PDF) is fairly technical, but the first 11 pages are accessible and will give you the general idea. Via Protocol.

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