OLDaily

The great transition
Jennifer Brandel, Nieman Lab, 2021/12/28

News media indicators continue to lead education indicators by about ten or fifteen years, and while this might not be very good news for educators over the coming decade there are signs that there may be something emerging out the other side of the media commercialization collapse. First, we may see "engagement and engaging as the next revenue model for newsrooms." Second, journalists are looking to become "less harmful to the communities they haven’t served well, or who they outright damaged" (some of Miguel Guhlin's recent writing resonates here). And third, there is an ascendance of people "helping the organization to lay to rest practices that no longer serve its stakeholders, and experimenting with and amplifying the new ways of working that show promise." They're no longer outliers. They're the future.

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Watch Awesome Human Choreography That Reproduces the Murmurations of Starling Flocks
Ayun Halliday, Open Culture, 2021/12/28

I like to pass along murmuration images and videos, but this is not one. And the differences are what's important here. In a murmuration, there is nobody in charge - a change of direction might come from anywhere. There's no rehearsal or planning. The actions are not coordinated; you would never hear starlings change one-two-three-four in time. What I was expecting from this video - but did *not* get - was a sea of people each reacting only to the people around them, and not to anything else (I'd love to try that with a largish group of people one day - it would be fun and illuminating).

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Best Digital Education Tools For Teachers To Teach Online
Kris Taylor, TaughtUp, 2021/12/28

It's rare that I link to posts like this but I felt it worthwhile to survey some of the popular applications being used by educators today. The list includes such unsurprising things as Google Classroom, Zoom, Class Dojo and Kahoot, but also lesser known entries as IXL, Remind, Piazza and Quick Key. Each of the 25 items is described with a paragraph and a link, making this quick read a handy reference.

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VodXS
2021/12/28

I would like to think these are merely the product of an apocalyptic science fiction movie, but sadly, they are not. As we can see when one of these faucets breaks down, it records every transaction with a user and records the information on the blockchain. I would hope they're not coming to a school or business near you, but I can already imagine them being used to enforce handwashing protocols. Educational technology indeed! Their primary use, of course, is to host advertising. Because, you know, you aren't exposed to enough advertising, what with all the cable unplugging taking place these days.

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The Effect of Robotics-Based Storytelling Activities on Primary School Students’ Computational Thinking
Karin Tengler, Oliver Kastner-Hauler, Barbara Sabitzer, Zsolt Lavicza, Education Sciences, 2021/12/28

Again, we probably should not generalize from a single small study like this. But the important thing is that people are experimenting with robotic-based storytelling activities with third and fourth graders. The researchers used the Ozobot, "a little floor robot that moves on two wheels and uses color sensors to follow lines and recognize color codes." They use it as the basis for a "Tell, Draw, and Code method" involving the use of sequences and conditionals. This, though basic, can be used to create and described complex concepts. Readers may also recognize the standard steps of an artificial intelligence workflow in the sequence of steps described (see Table 1). Mapping these to fairy tales like 'Little Red Riding Hood' connects the concepts of computation and storytelling.

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Add a Service Worker to Your Site
2021/12/28

If you have been reading about Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), something Google uses to make mobile web sites work a bit better, then you may have seen them reference 'service workers'. This is the Javascript behind the scenes that does the heavy lifting. Service workers are called every time the page makes a request, and are used to support caching and even offline browser applications. This article describes how services workers work and how to create one for yourself.

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