OLDaily

Web3 and the Trap of ‘For Good’
Scott Smith, Lina Srivastava, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2022/03/08

A number of projects and causes working 'for good' have taken to web3 technology, write Scott Smith and Lina Srivastava. For example, the World Wildlife Federation-UK is selling NFT "Tokens for Nature". But there are "three linked challenges baked into Web3 that any proponent of positive social impact must solve," say the authors (paraphrased):

1. Decentralized tech doesn't equal distributed power; equitable power structures must be proactively designed in Web3 systems.
2. Existing power holders are already building their Web3 business models on exploitation and extraction and do so without addressing these concerns in their core business model.
3. These systems say they address issues of trust, but building trust requires, among other actions, deep listening and honest engagement.

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New Modern Campus Tool Offers Personalized Web Experiences
Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology, 2022/03/08

This feels a bit like an advertorial, but i should note that this exists: a company called Modern Campus has launched Instinct, "a new personalization engine within its Omni CMS web content management system that enables colleges and universities to engage learners with digital experiences that are designed for their individual interests and needs." According to the article, "Using data from the student information system or constituent relationship management system, institutions can build personalized web content for specific groups such as new students, alumni or other target audiences." It's not clear to me that students want their information used this way (especially the alumni). Here's the company's press release, which was the source for much of the Campus Technology article.

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Naked Capitalism/Our Schools: How Corporations Use Public School Workforce ‘Pipelines’ to Harvest Students’ Data and Train Narrowly Skilled, Exploitable Staff
Yves Smith, Jeff Bryant, Velislava Hillman, National Education Policy Center, 2022/03/08

According to this article, "Nearly all public schools in the United States (98 percent) offer some form of career and technical education (CTE), and these programs, which were previously called vocational education or voc-ed, aren't new to public schools. But what is new is the extent to which CTE programs have become exploited by big businesses and powerful actors in the marketplace to serve their own needs rather than those of students." The contrast here with well-respected programs such as those in Germany, according to the article, is that "these programs too often give the students only narrow skills that are very likely to have a short term life in the workplace." My observation also is that in Germany you see a much greater involvement by trade unions in the development of these programs.

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Journalists tend to understate — not exaggerate — scientific findings, study finds
Angela Fu, Poynter, 2022/03/08

This is another one of those studies where the answer you get it really depends on how you ask the question. We've all seen journalists couch researchers' findings in the language of probability, hesitating (as they should) to state that they are certain about their results. Hence, for example, "the findings presented in the science news are actually lower than the certainty of the same scientific findings presented in the paper extracts." At the same time, however, we've also seen journalists present one single study as being widely descriptive, instead of narrow and narrowly focused. So I think there's a lot more at work here that simply 'certainty levels'. There's also a link to the original study (53 page PDF - the paper is 9 pages, and there are 40 pages of data).

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Technology Behavior Model—Beyond Your Sight with Extended Reality in Surgery
Xiaoxue Gong, Poh Soon JosephNg, Applied System Innovation, 2022/03/08

This article (19 page PDF) describes the adoption of Extended Reality Smart Glasses (XRSG) to support surgeons. It's not directly related to learning technology, but I felt it was relevant because of its use of the technology acceptance model (TAM) to describe, for example, "the usefulness and ease of use of extended reality, medical framing methods, interactive technology, operational specifications, and clarity of use," all of which have direct application to learning technology adoption. The study was conducted at five hospitals in Malaysia. Ease of use and usefulness had the most significant impact on technology adoption, while interaction design had the greatest impact on performance.

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Fundamental Design of Flood Management Educational Games Using Virtual Reality Technology
Rismayani, Alders Paliling, Asma Nurhidayani, Martina Pineng, International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering, 2022/03/08

Though some say phone-based virtual reality (VR) is over, it lives on in projects like this (and probably in places where the phone is the only ubiquitous computing device). This article (14 page PDF)  describes a flood awareness training program for residents of Makassar on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. It allows users to play through three flood levels and has them learn what they should do in those different cases.

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