OLDaily

After EI, DI?
Ian Stewart, Myles Runham, Chief Learning Officer, 2021/07/02

This post begins with Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, though it notes, "Gardner himself didn’t claim that these were true intelligences, but rather ways of thinking about the skills and abilities that we all need or desire, what he termed 'useful fictions.'" Thus so, it documents “emotional intelligence (EI),” popularized by Daniel Goleman, and draws a parallel with digital intelligence (DI). "We have been working on a simpler, pared-down model that focuses on the skills an individual needs to develop in order to take their place in the digital economy," write the authors. Well it's a good idea but in this case really fails in the execution, drawing on old standbys like 'critical thinking', 'communication skills' and 'collaboration'. My own work in subjects such as data literacy paints a very different picture, which I hope to share reasonably soon.

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CLIPDraw: Exploring Text-to-Drawing Synthesis through Language-Image Encoders
Kevin Frans, L.B. Soros, Olaf Witkowski, arXiv, 2021/07/02

File this one under 'AI-generated content'. "CLIPDraw is an algorithm that synthesizes stroke-based drawings based on natural language input. CLIPDraw does not require any training; rather a pre-trained CLIP language-image encoder is used as a metric for maximizing similarity between the given description and a generated drawing." Here's the Arxiv Paper (9 page PDF) and here's the Blog Post. Good-by clip art, hello Airt.

New term alert: Airt. (ɛərt) Art created by an AI, typically based on a verbal or textual description. Eyt: term coined by me, but when I looked it up to see if it's new (it is) the meaning resonates really well with the Scots term 'airt'.

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A collective effect observed in nature
Imgur, 2021/07/02

This is a good version of the metronome video that displays spontaneous synchronization, or as the caption says, "a collective effect observed in nature, whereby a population of oscillating units, which have diverse natural frequencies and are in weak interaction with one another, evolves to spontaneously exhibit collective oscillations at a common frequency."

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The Post-Covid Reality: From Leader-Driven To People-Powered
David Price, 2021/07/02

I guess I understand the appeal of writing posts specifically directed to leaders and leadership. The people who control the money - CEOs, Presidents, Directors - like to think of themselves as leaders. My own observation that the primary trait of such 'leadership' is "doing what you're told", otherwise they won't entrust you with the money. Anyhow, the point of this post is that "CEOs could apply any of these ‘lockdown lessons’ to their own enterprises and redefine organisational agility and creativity in the throes of the recovery already underway" (I'm not sure 'throes' was the right word there, but whatever...). Now I'm quite sure leaders won't actually follow that advice unless they're told to from above, especially as it undermines the myth about leaders actually leading. So however good the advice might be (and it's pretty good) I' sceptical about it being followed.

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Memoir and the Creative Process
W. Ian O'Byrne, 2021/07/02

There's this idea floating around that people should keep their professional and their personal lives separate. That's the magic that allows people to say "it's nothing personal" or "it's just business" while brutalizing someone in the workplace. I've never accepted that point of view, and I'm always welcoming when people tell us about their personal stories in their blog or publication. Being a human is hard - I speak from experience. It shapes everything we do. There's no requirement to share everything (I don't). It's up to you. But I always feel a bit better when I know about who I'm reading. Their trauma is my trauma, and that's never far from my mind. Via Aaron Davis.

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A review of frameworks as a starting point for anti-racism content development
Monica Chavez, ALTC Blog, 2021/07/02

What I like about the framework approach is that you can use any of the approaches as a tool without treating it as epistemically binding the way you would a theory. It's like being able to use a hammer without committing to the idea that everything is a nail. These frameworks offer slightly different approaches to the same problem: how to actually not be racist in online course and content development. It seems like a simple task, but for people (like me) who grew up in a sea of racist tropes and practices, it takes special care to avoid doing things like using diminutive stereotypes or abbreviations like BAME or BICOP that lump all non-white people into a single category.

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