OLDaily

Feature Article
Connectivism
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2022/02/09

This paper presents an overview of connectivism, offering a connectivist account of learning and a detailed analysis of how learning occurs in networks. It then offers readers an interpretation of connectivism, that is, a set of mechanisms for talking about and implementing connectivism in learning networks, and finally, pedagogy.

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1 in 4 youth ‘may ignore science,’ leading to calls for improved communications
Hannah Liddle, University Affairs, 2022/02/09

Everything in this alarmist post depends on what you mean by 'science'. The article summarizes a report describing an Ipsos poll on youth and science conducted for the Canada Foundation for Innovation. "The survey made clear that young adults are navigating an extremely complex and diverse information ecosystem where they are inevitably exposed to fake news and anti-science information." But let's not focus on the 'influencer' who has expressed anti-science views. They're just as likely (if not more so) to have heard these views on television, or perhaps in the opinion pages of their local newspaper. A case in point, for example, is the article that depicts 'science' as though it represents a single uniform perspective. Science informs but it does not decide. We base our views and opinions on a variety of factors. These include ethics, religion, economic interests, and background beliefs about the world. And youth, I think, know this.

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Using Digital Badges to Incentivize Professional Development
Anita Gabbard, Beth Nettles, WCET Frontiers, 2022/02/09

My response to this is: if it needs to be incentivized, it isn't professional development. The whole idea of being a professional is that you've taken on the responsibility of developing and pursuring expertise, and you don't need to be managed or otherwise 'incentivized' into doing it. One example offered in this article is a Remote Work Leadership badge "intended to encourage supervisors to watch a series of videos on the topic of managing remote teams." I would be very worried about my leadership is they had to be given a badge in order to get them to learn about leadership. And I think that's the core issue with badges generally: they conflate incentive and recognition.

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To save independent journalism, media must embrace web3 innovation
Jarno Koponen, TechCrunch, 2022/02/09

As usual, substitute the word 'media' with the word 'educators' for an edtech version of the argument. Then, as is always wise, remove the word 'must' and replace it with the word 'can'. Then you get some interesting points. For example, "Web3 technologies... offer new tools for content verification and fact-checking." And with community-driven impact analysis and ranking, content "could be recommended and prioritized based on the impact on the things the user considers valuable." Also (and contrary to what this article suggests), web3 allows people to create their own learning cooperatives, and avoid paying higher prices based on marketing algorithms.

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What Are Decentralized Apps (dApps) and How Do They Work?
Sydny Butler, How-To Geek, 2022/02/09

This is another part of the whole concept of web3 that has been around for a while but is getting newfound attention. "With dApps, there are still computers that do the same job a traditional server does, but those computers don’t all belong to the same person or company. Instead, the workload is spread across the computers of users and anyone else who makes their computer systems available." The attribution of work and payment is handled by smart contracts and blockchain. The advantage is that dApps are difficult to corrupt or hack, and they are tolerant of machine failure.

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Why publishers are starting to ditch Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Charlotte Tobitt, PressGazette, 2022/02/09

Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) were intended to provide a better offline and mobile reading experience, but mostly felt like a way to divert us away from the open web and toward a Google-centric experience. And they weren't good user experiences, in the end. "It offers a worse experience for paying readers who can find themselves being asked repeatedly to log in and missing out on personalisation."

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New Map of Meaning in the Brain Changes Ideas About Memory
Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta, 2022/02/09

What this research 'changes' about your ideas about memory depends a lot on what your ideas about memory were before reading the article. Here's what the work shows, according to the article: "a memory isn’t a facsimile of past perceptions that gets replayed. Instead, it is more like a reconstruction of the original experience, based on its semantic content." I think we mostly agree that memory is a reconstruction, not a literal replaying. I think it's less certain (by a wide margin) that it's based on semantic content (though of course this depends a lot on what you mean by 'semantic content'). Anyhow, interesting article. Love the brain graphic.

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