OLDaily

It’s time to expand our thinking about what works in education reform
Patricia Bromley, Minju Choi, Hechinger Report, 2022/09/27

The good part of this article is the first part. There is a widespread belief that systematic reviews of research and evidence will tell us 'what works' in education, write the authors. But "persistent and growing educational failures" tell us this is not enough. "What makes an education system 'good' is as much a moral and cultural question as a technical one." What counts as 'what works' really depends on what you want to do. The second half of the article is a bit of a straw man, depicting these objectives as things like 'gaining political power', 'spending resources' or 'bureaucratic rituals'. But in fact what we think of as 'good' ranges from better grades to employment outcomes to social resilience to ethical and cultural development. Even so, I agree with the authors that we need "discussion of the assumptions and goals underlying reforms" and that "there is no silver bullet or single answer — what works in one time and place and for one community may not be right for another."

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Web3 beyond the hype
Anutosh Banerjee, Robert Byrne, Ian De Bode, Matt Higginson, McKinsey, 2022/09/27

"The core distinctive feature of Web3 is the decentralization of business models," write the report authors. "To that extent, it marks a third phase of the internet (hence "Web3") and a reversal of the current status quo for users." And they argue that it's important to look to this core value despite the "bumpy (ride), with ongoing challenges ranging from poor user experience to fraud". The article outlines these "building blocks", including blockchains, smart contracts, and digital tokens. I think it would be wiser to focus on the functionality, because the enabling technology will probably change: open-data structures, disintermediated functionality, and decentralized ownership. The other part of the article to focus on is the 'risks and challenges', near the bottom, which as a whole (in my view) explain why the enabling technology will probably change: lack of clarity, poor interfaces, unknown risks, transaction costs, etc. Still: "the value proposition for consumers at the heart of it—one that unifies data, functionality, and value, and in doing so creates opportunities for new and more efficient forms of applications and asset ownership."

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Networking tips: Experts reveal how to excel at events
Phillip Othen, PressGazette, 2022/09/27

There is some good advice in this article on networking at events and conferences - the need to initiate contact, how to present yourself, interactions that draw people out, how to remember what they said, etc. One thing I believe is missing from the advice: be clear about why you are networking. What do you hope to accomplish? Are you seeking potential collaborators for research? Are you looking to get hired as a contractor? Are you trying to learn what certain developers were thinking? Are you trying to promote an idea or concept? This is important, because it should also set yourself in a frame where you are considering what they want to accomplish, and how you can best serve that need. This means more listening than talking, usually, to understand where you can help, where you can add value, where you can offer a tangible benefit.

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Google Broke Image Search for Creative Commons and Hardly Anyone Noticed/Cares
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2022/09/27

I can confirm what Alan Levine reports in this post. Doing a Google search for openly licensed images I can find only 9 pictures of cats (he found only 3 dogs). I know this is broken because I alone have published 257 openly licensed images of cats on Flickr. And Google's openly licensed image search does reach Flickr (it just does it very badly, displaying maybe 80 of the 38,000 high-quality CC-licensed photos I've posted). As far as I can determine, most of the different search parameters have been disabled, leaving only 'labeled for commercial reuse' (&tbs=sur:fc) functioning. I tested 'labled for reuse (&tbs=sur:f) and it returns the exact same results as an ordinary search. Why would Google disable its most useful openly licensed

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Digitalisation Booms While Teaching Children About Tech Is At A Standstill
Elisa Nadire Caeli, Thomas Telving, DataEthics, 2022/09/27

As this article notes, "The use of digital humans is spreading rapidly, not just in games and advertising, but also in education, health care, customer service, online sales and much more." It turns out they do human interaction better than humans; "the company UneeQ claims that one of its clients tripled its conversion rate when they started using digital humans." This makes it important for young people to learn about digital humans, but "the subject is currently at a standstill," write Elisa Nadire Caeli and Thomas Telving. There's a need for technology education to keep children prepared for the rapidly changing environment. "One hope could be that the first thing that comes to a child's mind when meeting Miquela Sousa online isn't that she is a super-cool girl, but that she's a robot made by marketers with the sole intention of selling products to her followers."

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