OLDaily

JSON-LD Playground
JSON-LD, 2021/06/24

If you want to get a sense of what's going on with JSON linked data (JSON-LD) have a look at this demonstration. You can input your own JSON-LD code or (far better) look at the examples provided of people, events, places, products, etc. You'll sdee the sample JSON-LD code and then how the same information can be expressed in a variety of formats (scroll down a bit and you'll see the tabs). Here's the full formal spec for JSON-LD 1.1

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Reframing the Revolution
Jonathan Bratt, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2021/06/24

The main point in this article is that the existing stage of privatization and corporate influence over education is just one step in a wider agenda to completely reform the system. This is probably true, but the main question here is, who cares? I think the answer, and most salient point, can be found in the latter half of the article (and you have to wade through a lot of rhetoric to get to it): "capitalism had always had low expectations of the working class: learn how to read, write, do arithmetic, and show up for work on time." I think this is an important point. Today, of course, needs and expectations are higher, but there's still a wide gap between the education that would be most beneficial for the individual, and education that would be sufficient for the needs of employers. We see this in the emphasis on skills and competencies for employees as compared to class-based socialization, network formation and opportunity development for those in more elite education.

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The Globe and Mail has built a paywall that knows when to give up
Sarah Scire, Nieman Lab, 2021/06/24

This is more about the Globe and Mail's automated paywall system, Sophi, which I covered here last week. "Sophi uses analytics to make decisions that balance the potential for ad revenue vs. the potential for subscriber revenue. 'It knows when to give up,' Verma said. 'It knows when not to bug someone because they’re not going to get money from them anyway.'" From my perspective, it's insidious, because I don't link to paywalls in OLDaily - but the AI might fool me into thinking there's no paywall when really there's just no paywall for me, but there might be one for you.

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Hand Labeling Considered Harmful
Shayan Mohanty, Hugo Bowne-Anderson, O'Reilly, 2021/06/24

One activity that is a constant of almost all research into education and ed tech is labeling. Labels "are used to identify characteristics operationally defined by researchers and are primarily used for classification and categorization of individuals in survey efforts." And while this article is more focused on the use of labels in AI, the applications are apparent in most any research. And here's the problem, according to this article: if you're labeling by hand, you are introducing bias and error into your research. Interestingly, the article recommends an educational game Survival of the Best Fit "where you’re a CEO who uses a machine learning model to scale their hiring decisions and see how the model replicates the bias inherent in the training data." I played it; it made the case quite well. Now there are many more factors to consider, but it's worth asking, even, what bias the limitation of research subjects to 'students' adds to your study. More (13 page PDF).

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Intellectual and Emotional Obstacles to Adopting Evidence-based Teaching Practices
David Wiley, improving learning, 2021/06/24

When an advertisement says "research-based" on TV, my sceptical antennae are raised. I must admit to similar doubt when people talk about "evidence-based" in online learning. It's not that I discount evidence - far from it. But the nature and quality of evidence in our field is far from even. There is disagreement about desired outcomes, and even disagreement about the theoretical domain. I can use Wiley's own references to make my point:

• One paper is drawn from biomedical research and introduces the reader to (a brand new?) "implementation science" designed "ensure that research investments maximize healthcare value and improve public health."
• Another paper proposes "a novel model incorporating implementation science for translating cognitive science to classroom practice in higher education".
• A third is an internal report produced by The Simon Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, and the paper itself uses "an anthropological approach" to arrive at its conclusions.
• Another is locked behind a paywall, but the abstract recommends "the engineering of high quality evidence into a more usable format and presenting it actively or iteratively via a respected and trusted conduit, or through population measures such as legislation."

So what does the evidence tell us here? What are we to make of these different approaches? Does this assemblage of a concoction of approaches from various disciplines - medicine, psychology, engineering, anthropology - really convince us of anything? The reason educators don't adopt as evidence-based approach isn't, as Wiley suggests, because it's a threat to their identity. It's because trustworthy evidence hasn't been forthcoming.

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Show Keys
Shuvam Manna, Product Hunt, 2021/06/24

This is a neat ideas, though it only works on Chrome at the moment. 'Show Keys' shows the keys you press on the screen as you press them. You might be thinking that this is a pretty useless invention, but I do quite a bit of presentation on video where I'm explaining how I've done something, and I always have to say out loud what keys I'm pressing, because otherwise it feels like text appears or menus open by magic. 'Show Keys' is a nice answer to that, and I'll be looking for something I can use on my desktop. Maybe a modification of this Javascript key event test script. More.

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