OLDaily

The U.S. Education System Isn’t Giving Students What Employers Need
Michael Hansen, Harvard Business Review, 2021/05/18

My first thought was on how little employers are willing to pay either directly through taxes toward the education system or indirectly through wages to students paying tuition. Why should employers get what they need if they're not willing to pay for it? Then it occurred to me that the purpose of the system isn't to provide job training but to give students a broad set of skills and interpersonal networks. But my third though might be the most important, as it represents an effort to eliminate the existing credential system entirely in favour of things like IBM's Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) and Google's recently announced certificate programs.

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Creating an onramp to jobs in Canada with Google Career Certificates
Sabrina Geremia, Google Official Canada Blog, 2021/05/18

Academic institutions should read this value proposition closely: "Google Career Certificates prepare job seekers for new, high-demand careers in growing sectors in under six months, with no degree or relevant experience required." If this statement is an accurate description of what happens, then a key effect is to undermine the traditional monopoly colleges and universities have had over job-earning credentials. After all, if students don't need your credential to get employed, why are they paying your institution tens of thousands of dollars? It may be a pandemic response from Google, but it's also a commercial strategy.

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YouTube’s kids app has a rabbit hole problem
Rebecca Heilweil, Vox, Recode, 2021/05/18

The 'rabbit hole problem' is this: you watch one thing and then the algorithm takes you deeper and deeper down into whatever topic you were watching. I've seen this myself listening to Comedian podcasts which takes me from comedians I like to comedians I find crude and offensive. Amazon music has taken to switching me over to an 'artist radio' stream instead of simply stopping at the end of an album I was listening to. That's all fine if there's an off switch - but for YouTube Kids there's no off switch. Unless you're right there watching with them, the algorithm will take them down the rabbit hole, sometimes to some interesting content, but sometimes to some dark place. "It’s not clear why YouTube Kids was designed to prevent autoplay from being turned off or why YouTube has taken so long to address complaints about the feature."

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To navigate all the junk on the internet, you need powers of critical thinking — but also critical ignoring
Sam Wineburg, Nieman Lab, 2021/05/18

I guess I can accept 'critical ignoring' as a type of learned pattern recognition. But I want to be clear about something. Sam Wineburg says, "on the web, where a witches’ brew of advertisers, lobbyists, conspiracy theorists, and foreign governments conspire to hijack attention." True enough, I suppose. But crucially, this has always been the case. Misinformation didn't begin with the web - or did you forget about things like propaganda, talk radio and Fox News? And I would add, it's misinformation to point to "the dangers of dwelling on an unknown site" as though the well known sites are benign and harmless. All our media can mislead, and any source can be untrustworthy. But with practice, we can figure out (more or less) when they are lying and when it's to their advantage to tell the truth.

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Pedagogy, Presence and Placemaking: a learning-as-becoming model of education
David White, Digital – Learning – Culture, 2021/05/18

There are some interesting things in this post though I confess I find language like 'placemaking' a bit hand-wavy. Dave White writes things like, "Our buildings are suffused with cultural and social histories. They are full of artifacts and objects that are coated in the presence of people who passed through before us." Well, no, unless he means this in a metaphorical sense. Sure, these histories and that presence can be interpreted by people who follow, but they aren't inherent in the place. same with 'learning as becoming'. Growth may be inherent in the learner, but the idea of their 'becoming' is an interpretation we place on that growth. When I read language I always think back to Wittgenstein, and realize it's a game being played by by people trying to do the right call-and-response. But it's not concrete, not factual.

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Posted
Product Hunt, 2021/05/18

I'm writing this post on Sunday while watching the ball game. Twitter readers will see it right away and email readers will see it in Tuesday's newsletter. Normally I do most posts the day they publish but gRSShopper allows me to schedule them ahead of time. It also makes them easier to author. I mention all this as I ask what the difference is between my tool at the tool called 'Posted' that automates much of the process of writing social media posts. After all, mass-produced social media is a modern form of information pollution. The posts produced by tools like this aren't efforts to engage and interact; they're just content dumps. "With Posted," runs the tagline, "anyone can build a community." So is this me? I don't think so - most of my work comes in the reading of other people's thoughts and opinions, which I try to accurately reflect and criticize. And my objective isn't to build a community of people around me, it's to send readers elsewhere. Still - it's an important question to ask.

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