OLDaily

How market research reveals what you really think
Michael Dempsey, BBC News, 2021/06/18

I'm interested in stories like this not simply because of the way they address how tracking and surveillance can expose your preferences and habits, but also in anticipation of how similar technology will reveal your skills and aptitudes. This is really important because it disrupts testing and assessment, and hence, credentials in general. It may taker some time, but there's a billion dollar business opportunity out there for the company that can find the best candidate for a job simply by analyzing the 'trove of data' we provide through our online presence. It's easy to say now that this is intrusive, and should be disallowed, but we've already seen how a YouTube presence or open source software site can translate into real opportunities for people. Why would we expect - or desire - less of this in the future, when we could have more?

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Is improving your personality a moral duty or a category confusion?
T Ryan Byerly, Psyche, 2021/06/18

This post raises some interesting questions about character and personality. According to the article, there is evidence you can improve your personality through some effort, similar to the way people can improve their character and habits. But the question remains, should you? This article considers several arguments. One is that personality reflects values, and speaks to how moral a person you are. Another is that personality impacts life outcomes such as prosperity and longevity. And most people want better personalities; "they tend to want to become more conscientious, agreeable, extroverted, open and emotionally stable." All of this may be true. But against them are weighed the fact that maybe I don't want to have a better personality, maybe I like the intrinsic value of who I am. I think a lot about that.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Simone Weil – some brief notes
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2021/06/18

I am not familiar with Simone Weil so this is overview of her work is an introduction for me. Weil writes, "The authentic and pure values – truth, beauty and goodness – in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act." Jenny Mackness adds, "This is where we see the influence of Weil on Noddings, who wrote about the need for the one-caring to be engrossed in and fully committed to the cared-for." There is a point to that, this idea of giving yourself completely to the task, as in "dance like there's nobody watching", and I've seen it (or something like it) referenced many times.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Amazon is Blocking Google's FLoC
Slashdot, 2021/06/18

There's only one source for this story - DigiDay, which limits access (here's a screen shot) - though you can see it echoed around the technosphere - Reddit, Slashdot, Hacker News - and copied in various cut-and-paste publications. One person on Reddit also added, "Amazon also stopped including in their order-confirmation emails the details of what you ordered, on the grounds that webmail was reading that and leaking it back to Google or ISPs for their own marketing." It does raise the question of how much control websites have over being tracked themselves by browsers like Chrome that send website data to the competition. Previously.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Libera me
Wendy M. Grossman, net.wars, 2021/06/18

This post describes an unusual migration that took place in the world of Inter-Relay Chat (IRC) recently. An IRC server managed by volunteers to help with Linux support went through a series of ownership changes and ended up in private hands. As a result, most of the volunteers resigned, accusing the new owner of executing a hostile takeover and  set up Libera as an alternative. Because IRC is open source, they were able to create an exact clone of the original site, including the history, groups, and all the other data. But while the incident points to the advantage of open source and open networks, it also points to the fragility of the network as a whole, because where possible private owners will try to take over and monetize public infrastructure.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Constructionism and AI: A history and possible futures
Ken Kahn, Niall Winters, British Journal of Educational Technology, 2021/06/18

This is a nice paper showing the history and nature of the association between artificial intelligence and the educational theory of constructionism and discussing some current and future prospects. Here's the short version of the history: " In (the) early days... there was a clear relationship between constructionism and symbolic artificial intelligence. More recently, this has changed with the wider shift in AI towards machine learning with neural networks and big data, which constructionism has mirrored." But something is missing, write the authors, in this new emphasis on neural networks. "With neural nets, students are now making ‘toy brains’. They are not programming at the level of concepts, symbols, and plans, but instead are relying upon crude approximations to how neurons work in brains." Maybe (and this would certainly reflect Minsky and Papert's criticisms of connectionism). But maybe programming at the level of concepts, symbols and plans lead students astray in precisely the wrong direction. No matter; the paper references numerous interesting projects and resources and should be read by anyone interested in the topic. The paper is open access but I found the BERA system made it difficult to download, so I saved a copy here: 13 page PDF.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Wow! Some significant statements coming from this highly-regarded physics professor!
Daniel S. Christian, Learning Ecosystems, 2021/06/18

I guess now that a Harvard professor has endorsed it, the debate about onlin elearning is now over. "“I have never been able to offer a course of the quality that I’m offering now," he (Eric Mazur) says. "I am convinced that there is no way I could do anything close to what I’m doing in person. Online teaching is better than in person." This post links to Teaching: Why an Active-Learning Evangelist Is Sold on Online Teaching by Beth McMurtrie in the Chronicle and which may or may not be locked behind a paywall (depending, I guess, on what the AI says about your liklihood of subscribing).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

CS First
Google for Education, 2021/06/18

As Richard Byrne summarizes, "CS First is a free computer science curriculum designed specifically for classroom use." Basically, you set up your class (Google will ask you some questions about what class you're teaching and what tools you've used) and then you offer a set of basic hands-on activities recommended by the classroom engine. Actual programming exercises "teach students the basics of block-based coding and Scratch." Why would Google do this? Beyond there being an industry-wide need for more talent, Google is also able to foster a way of thinking and reasoning about problem-solving in general, as well as to introduce people to Google's own technology and the how the company approaches emerging challenges in general. See also: Google's tech toolkit for families and guardians.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What if the future of media is only newsletters and podcasts? Axios seems to think that’s right.
David Tvrdon, The Fix, 2021/06/18

If I were starting an institution of learning in 2021 this is pretty much the recipe I'd follow: "blog, newsletter, podcast. From there you scale up and start adding additional verticals, like events (both virtual and in-person as more people get vaccinated), discussion forums (like a Discord server for paying subscribers), a YouTube channel and so on." The overall cost for participants would be a lot lower than traditional instruction. I'd look for (but not depend on) government and industry support for the wider more open-access elements on the basis of public support and social value. More expensive personal and hands-on applications would be targeted to the people and places where they're most needed.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]