OLDaily

10 assertions about the future of social
Ben Werdmuller, 2021/07/23

If I had to put these ten points into a single point, it is this: the future of social won't be more of the same. And I think this is a good point. And if I had to characterize these ten points with a single observation, it would be this: these ten points are the dead ends we've reached with existing social. We've learned centralization doesn't work. It needs to support diversity. It won't be based on a single identity. It won't be standards-based or blockchain-based. And it will be simple to set up and run. Image: Pew.

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Philosophy Labs: Some Recommendations
Joseph Vukov, Kit Rempala, Katrina Sifferd, Daily Nous, 2021/07/23

Th term 'philosophy labs' is a bit misleading, and what the authors describe bears little resemblance to 'labs' as you find them in college and university classes, but I like what they're actually doing and thought I'd share it here. "Philosophy labs follow the model provided by STEM labs in bringing together researchers at various stages of development—faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students—to work collaboratively on professional-level projects." Again, that doesn't resemble the experience I had in STEM labs in university, but from my perspective it would have been great to work with a whole range of people on real problems. This article goes into quite a bit of detail about how to set up such a lab experience in a philosophy class, but thinking more broadly, I think this would be a better way to structure learning generally.

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Mental disorders are brain disorders – here’s why that matters
Camilla Nord, Psyche, 2021/07/23

There's a lot of overlap between education and psychology, and therefore also a lot of overlap between different approaches to these two subjects. Take a disorder such as depression, for example. What causes it? Is it entirely internal, or do external factors matter? And if external factors matter, can we treat it with external remedies, like counseling? There's a lot we don't know here, and it doesn't help that sometimes widely separate treatments - psychotherapy versus antidepressants, say - produce similar results. But this (from my perspective) masks the difference between being able to manage the symptoms versus treating the symptoms - between, say, being able to cope with a feeling of sadness, versus being able to remove that feeling of sadness. Different types of learning (probably) result in different types of changes as well. Which is why we (intuitively) say that being about to talk about something is very different from being able to do something.

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Blackboard launches Center for Advancing Learning to address education policy
Emily Bamforth, EdScoop, 2021/07/23

On the heels of Instructure's recently announced Edtech Collective comes Blackboard's Center for Advancing Learning, it's new lobbying arm. It will focus on "top priorities for the education community" as it sees them, which right now means "supporting historically Black colleges and universities and community colleges, exploring accessibility and discussing online program management alternatives" (this is called 'tranching', where you take two popular initiatives and add to them a third riskier element that is mostly about your business bottom line). "Blackboard employees can volunteer time for the center and leaders will name fellows from academia and nonprofits in industry." Yeah. 'Volunteer'.

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