OLDaily

Uncertain evidence for online tutoring
Jill Barshay, Hechinger Report, 2022/02/17

Some companies make grand claims about the benefit of online tutoring, but their claims should be treated with caution, according to this article. I completely agree. I spent seven years tutoring by telephone for Athabasca University, and sometimes it really worked, and sometimes it did noting. “We haven’t proven that online tutoring is guaranteed to work,” said Matthew Kraft, an economist at Brown University who led the Chicago study (5 page PDF). “But we haven’t gotten evidence to say this is really going to tank... Trust but verify... It’s probably true that some kids make huge gains. Whether all kids did is maybe a different question, and not the one that they’re trying to convince you they answered."

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Google Does Some Evil and Franchises Blame to Individual Web Sites
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2022/02/17

This is just a small thing, but something I've also run into in my own development work, and these considerations apply not only to Google Fonts, but also other content delivery network (CDN) resources such as Javascript libraries, such as jQuery or React, and things like Font-Awesome. The issue is this: the resource provider gathers individual data from the CDN. "Google sponges user data via its fonts on my site, and I am subject to possible blame," writes Alan Levine, referring to things like the GDPR, which prohibits such data gathering. Now you could download and install these fonts and services on your own website, but it's not trivial, especially if you want to keep them up to date and secure (there are tools that do this, but installing them isn't trivial, and I still haven't figured how to put this all together in, say, a self-assembling Docker container).

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‘IDs don’t belong on the open web’: the pragmatic publisher’s case for privacy-first ads
Ronan Shields, Digiday, 2022/02/17

“IDs don’t belong on the open web,” argues Insider Inc.'s Jana Meron. “I like seller-defined audiences and all of these different things, but really the ID belongs where you have to log in... Publisher data is the most valuable thing for an advertiser.” There's merit to this argument. You shouldn't have to hold your ID out for everyone to see as you browse the web. That's the problem with tracking cookies, and it's the problem with some of the post-cookie proposals. But it's not, I think, an argument for some other form of tracking either. We should be able to self-identify with a single click, but it should be a zero-knowledge sort of self-identification, where you don't actually share personal data with the website. And advertisements - and educational applications - should respect that.

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A whole new world: Education meets the metaverse
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Jennifer M. Zosh, Helen Shwe Hadani, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kevin Clark, Chip Donohue, Ellen Wartella, Brookings Institute, 2022/02/17

This is actually a pretty good report (14 page PDF) right up to the point in the last few pages; this is where the evidence thins and the article argues that children learn best from their parents. Even if this is true, it is orthogonal to the main point of the article, which makes it stand out as spin. Up to that point, though, the authors present a compelling scenario describing how VR could help students learn how we know about ancient Greece, offers some examples of projects, and offer a list of principles (learning should be active, engaging, meaningful, social and iterative) describing some good lessons from the study of apps created in the e-learning 2.0 era. It also describes a list of skills - creativity, critical thinking, etc) needed in a digital world. Via EdScoop, which with its headline (Education in the metaverse needs human connection, Brookings argues) made sure readers did not miss the spin.

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Micro-credentials: An interview with George Ubachs
Dilek Şenocak, Şeyda Kır, 2022/02/17

In this interview George Ubachs defines micro-credentials in two ways: according to the European Commission, “Micro-credential’ means the record of the learning outcomes that a learner has acquired following a small volume of learning"; and according to the MICROBOL project, “A micro-credential is a small volume of learning certified by a credential." He also describes the European MOOC Consortium (EMC) Common Microcredential Framework (CMF). "CMF micro-credentials offer short, flexible, and scalable online education for working learners who need upskilling and reskilling," he says. "Unlike most certificates and badges, micro-credentials are a true qualification that provides transparency through evidence of learning outcomes achieved."

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Why e-learning requires Wi-Fi optimization
Roger Sands, eSchool News, 2022/02/17

For me the internet's great leap forward happened in 1998 in Brandon when I got always-on cable internet after years of doing dial-up. Forward 20 years and a move to rural Ontario and I'm still on cable internet and my office in Ottawa is in a wireless dead zone. Connectivity was and is the major hurdle. So though the topic of this article may seem obvious, I would say that in practice it's not realized. Think of it like lighting; you can't have lights that are too dim or that are always flickering.  Before the learning management systems, before the pedagogy and best practices, the money needs to be spent on always-on rock solid internet access.

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