OLDaily

Some Misgivings about the 2020 PhilPapers Survey
David Egan, David Egan Philosophy, 2021/11/26

This article is a criticism of the survey of philosophers conducted recently by David Bourget and David Chalmers (I covered it here). The form of the survey suggests that "philosophers are in the business of developing arguments in support of one or another answer to a set question." As usual, the same could be said of theorists in other disciplines, including education. But "a lot of the philosophical work that I find most meaningful doesn’t take this form. Instead, it challenges the questions themselves." As has become so clear in my own MOOC this fall, things like ethics are more a matter of perception than decision, as Martha Nussbaum and Iris Murdoch propose. A lot of people still feel we can argue our way to knowledge in our field, and that we should stake out a position (constructivist, behaviourist), select a 'lens', and advance a thesis. I don't think it works that way at all.

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10 questions ignored by philosophy
Institute of Art and Ideas, 2021/11/26

These are interesting questions and are mostly overlooked in contemporary thought, though I think they're implied in a lot of thinking. For example: "what is the role of personal judgement in rational thought?" Or this question, which applies especially to educators: "how do we reconcile our moral intuition that all humans have an intrinsic value, with our intuition that some people are better than others?" They depict, I think, a discipline in flux, as people are becoming less forgiving of abstract theory that misleads, rather than informs, about day-to-day life (the same criticisms are being made in other disciplines).

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A Design Thinking Roadmap for Process Improvement and Organizational Change
Lymari Castro, Ben Linders, InfoQ, 2021/11/26

Design thinking, according to the article, "is a framework that provides a human-centered approach for problem-solving that provides a powerful set of techniques and tools for organizations to focus their attention on the most important problems that need to be solved." Most of my own research would probably be categorized under the heading of design thinking, although rather less formally than described here. This article offers a detailed step-by-step account, and it seems to me that this would translate really well into a structure for an online course. It's really detailed, with loads of activities and examples, and people interested in the concept won't want to miss it.

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Kahoot Guide to Creating Engaging and Fun Learning Games
Med Kharbach, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2021/11/26

As we learn in this post, "Kahoot is a game-based learning website that allows teachers and students to create, explore, and play a wide variety of educational games." The templates give a sense of what Kahoot can do: " Kahoot for formative assessment, Spark discussions with polls, Teach with slides, Practice spelling and adjectives with puzzle, Introduce new topics with a 'Blind' kahoot, and a Template inspired by a higher ed instructor." Or you can create a new Kahoot from scratch. I haven't used Kahoot, so I can only speak from second hand reports here, but again, a lot of people swear by it. The article describes Kahoot in detail and points to a Kahoot library that "embeds over 100 million public ready-to-use kahoots for you to choose from."

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What Is Padlet? Teachers Step by Step Guide
Med Kharbach, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2021/11/26

Padlet demands that I login before I can see or do anything, which takes me aback a bit, but many teachers I know swear by it, so it's certainly worth mentioning again (it has been around for quite a number of years). It's "an online bulletin board that teachers and students can use to collaborate, curate, and share digital content." Post content, and have others interact with it. You can upload content, draw it, record video, use a screen recorder, add links, or search and load content from YouTube, Spotify or the web. This article describes the application and links to a Padlet gallery.

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U Illinois Gies College of Business Develops Microcredential Pathways with Google
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2021/11/26

It's not a big huge technological advance, but it's definitely a sign of the times. "Learners now can complete any of the Google Career Certificates along with Gies' Professional Success Skills Certificate to receive a dual badge of completion. All courses for the certificate programs are delivered on the Coursera platform." At some point, maybe, Google and Coursera ask themselves whether the partnership with the college is really needed to make this work.

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Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
Council of Europe, 2021/11/26

I encountered this while working on something else (specifically, my ethics course) and I didn't want to pass it by without saving it and sharing it here. There are three documents, of which I was most interested in the first, on the concept and model (68 page PDF). The idea is that "our education systems and schools need to prepare young people to become active, participative and responsible individuals: the complex, multicultural and rapidly evolving societies we live in cannot do with less." It's hard, though, to foster a sense of empowerment and particiption while telling people what values they should have. The list of competences is quite detailed, and I feel it should be negotiated every step of the way with the students. It's a fine line that needs to be walked, because as we've seen in other contexts, a failure to make the effort is worse.

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