OLDaily

Qualified to Succeed: Building a 14 -19 education system of choice, diversity and opportunity
Pearson, 2022/03/22

This report (61 page PDF) is undated, but based on the website and other coverage, it appears to have come out yesterday. It outlines Pearson's inquiry into into the future of qualifications and assessment in England. Not surprisingly there's a focus on the seven recommendations but the text of the report is interesting reading in its own right. For example: "assessments no longer test students' abilities but rather force them to demonstrate feats of memory or 'how much more you can study and regurgitate'. A participant from our Expert Panel noted many assessment practices are 'fact-based' at the expense of independent learning and critical thinking skills." There's much more criticism, and whether or not you agree with the recommendations there's still a lot to think about here.

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Discovering Bilibili, China’s YouTube
Rui Ma, Class Central, 2022/03/22

Yes, you can watch Bilibili (at least, here in Canada you can) and yes, the site is a lot like YouTube, but of course, much more Chinese. Still, while some of the content is impenetrable to me, a lot of things (such as the music videos) make perfect sense. As Rui Ma says, "You can watch Chinese stand up and beatboxing, learn to cook, and even study with Coursera-style lectures on philosophy, computer science, and other topics." Something to explore on a Sunday afternoon.

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Six months in, El Salvador’s bitcoin gamble is crumbling
Anna-Cat Brigida, Leo Schwartz, Rest of World, 2022/03/22

This story offers a fair warning to those eager to jump in too quickly on the crypto side of web3 and the metaverse. A half year after making BitCoin an official currency, El Salvador is finding that the infrastructure has to work and the value has to be (more or less) stable in order for it to play a key role in the economy. And it does not offer the independence from institutions some people hope. "At some point, as a participant in the economy, you have to cede some control and trust someone else, whether it is the developer of an app, a bank, or a government."

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Learning How to Blend Online and Offline Teaching
Robert Ubell, EdSurge, 2022/03/22

The key to understanding this post is to note that Robert Ubell uses the terms 'online' and 'offline' in an idiosyncratic manner: "Since these words derived from Greek can be off-putting technical jargon, I'm proposing 'online' instruction as a substitute for synchronous and 'offline' for asynchronous." Um, no, because 'synchronous' instruction can happen both online and offline, and for 'asynchronous' the same is true. And it becomes really confusing when he says things like "Most of us don't think remote students can flip from online to offline and back again—students are either offline or online." Read most charitably, the article is about giving students time to work on their own during live online instruction; for example, we have Jenn Hayslett saying "I try to give learners an opportunity to reflect every time I pose a question." Now maybe there's something to be said here, but changing the meanings of widely used words isn't the way to get at it.

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