OLDaily

TikTok teens’ latest passion is enterprise software
Makena Kelly, The Verge, 2021/01/08

It's the rise of TikTok Notion! According to this article a wave of TikTok teens have taken to creating their own accounts on Notion, an enterprise planning application. Here they are doing it. Notion promotes itself as "an all-in-one application for your notes, tasks, wikis..." In other words, it can be your own personal learning environment (PLE). The Verge explains, "I’m sure hardly any of these teens are walking into physical classrooms anymore. I imagine it’s hard to keep your life and schoolwork in order when your only classroom is your dining room table." Why Notion? Why Zoom, another enterprise application? If the tool works and is easy to use, people will use it (disclaimer: I have never tried Notion).

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New review says the ineffective 'learning styles' theory persists in education
Jonathan Kantrowitz, Education Research Report, 2021/01/08

Late last fall I was helping a student work with PowerPoint. He had been given instruction, but in audio only. He said, "I prefer to work hands-on, so I can see the result." So I had him share his screen, and gave him pointers as he completed the task. Sokath! It was like he could suddenly see. Now this is learning styles - isn't it? I raised this example to offer an explanation behind the phenomenon reported here, that "89.1 per cent of 15,045 educators believed that individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style." This finding is placed within a context of scepticism about learning syles and even the assertion that it "is also potentially harmful." So how to reconcile the vast gulf between the evidence of my own eyes and learning styles scepticism? I have some thoughts on this, but for now I'll leave the question hanging. Image: Integrated Learning Strategies.

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Template Literals
Ryan Christiani, CSS-Tricks, 2021/01/08

So I just learned about template literals in Javascript. I know, I know, they've been around since 2016. But I only came across them today as a consequence of rebuilding the gRSShopper aggregator (lots of updates coming to the repository shortly). What's interesting is not just what I learned but how I learned. I was writing code to convert JSON-encoded data from my API to HTML text I could display on a web page. As I edited the script, Visual Studio Code offered to refactor my code to use Javascript templating. "What?" I wondered, tried the refactoring, then started searching to figure out just what was happening here. I did not find a lot, but I found enough to let me try it out myself and make it work. I this this is a very satisfactory outcome, and the combination of performance support plus online resource really worked for me this time.

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The Human Side of BCcampus: Real People, Real Relationships
BCcampus, 2021/01/08

One of the things about moving from in-class to online learning is that it changes the way you think about education. I experienced that in my own life and have seen it play out in various waves over the years, including the most recent during the pandemic. This too is reflected in this article, a semi-profile of BCcampus executive director Mary Burgess. "For many years," she says, "across many disciplines, we still see that ‘sage on a stage’ model, but as we pivot to online, we’re democratizing the way that education happens, developing very different relationships that value what students already know and their lived experiences in the educational setting." This plays out in different ways - for Burgess, it plays out through the notions of vulnerability, compassion and care.

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How on earth do we run 2021 admissions now?
David Kernohan, Wonkhe, 2021/01/08

The problem, of course, is that in many cases test results (ie., "A levels") are not available to UK universities due to pandemic restrictions. So how to preserve the fairness of admissions (or at least, the appearance of fairness)? If it were me, I would do away with the admissions process - after all, we're in the age of digital learning and can, in theory at least, support much larger student numbers, and can also lower the stakes for students. Offer first-year courses as open-admission MOOCs. Offer preparatory MOOCs for those who might lack the skills or abilities. As people make their way through the MOOCs, scale online learning to meet the resulting demand. Focus on offering learning to anyone who has the determination and ability to master the discipline. Though I admit - 'education for all' is probably too radical a concept for the guardians of the higher education system.

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The Power of Visible Thinking in Virtual Learning
John Spencer, 2021/01/08

Learning should be visible, writes John Spencer. "When students process information visually and make their thinking visible, they improve in their metacognition and the learning tends to stick." So this post addresses how to make virtual learning visible (instead of the ubiquitous head-and-shoulders shot). he recommends such strategies as using Harvard Zero’s visible thinking strategy, or discussing “What is going on in this picture?” in breakout chats, or doing a doing a total physical response (TPR) for vocabulary, or sketching out a concept map in person, or providing a flow chart or having students create Venn diagrams. Spencer includes some product placements in the piece (as always) so be wary of clicking on tool or book links. But the suggestions are good, and should have people teaching either live or by YouTube thinking about what they can do to add a visual element to their videos.

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