OLDaily

Seeing and somethingness
Nicholas Humphrey, Aeon, 2022/10/06

This article begins with an assessment of a phenomenon called 'blindsight' and from there moves toward a more general response to the question of how animals (and especially humans) can learn to construct representations of the world. It's quite clever. "To discover 'what's happening to me', the animal has only to monitor 'what I'm doing about it'... the animal can begin to get a feel for the stimulus by accessing the information already implicit in its own response."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Human Capital: The Value of Work Experience and Continuous Learning
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2022/10/06

I hate the term 'human capital' because it represents a view of people as commodities. And the term is a lead-in to a lot of very bad economic theory. Like this: "The value of human capital can be approximated by an individual's lifetime earnings, and represents roughly two-thirds of their total wealth." Not true. A person's productivity far exceeds what they are paid. People by and large receive only a small fraction of the value of what they produce. But what the author is mainly trying to show is that (a) work experience generates a large part of 'human capital', and (b) workers should look for opportunities that produce the largest amount of work experience. Sure, maybe. But again, most of the value of this work experience will be retained by the employer. That's why people are mostly looking for better pay and work environments. See also this report from McKinsey.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Publishers: 10 things you should know about AI in journalism
Mattia Peretti, What's New in Publishing, 2022/10/06

I would imagine journalists will feel a lot better after reading this article (just as educators will feel better after reading similar articles in their field in the months to come). It says things like "AI in journalism is...  more similar to a spreadsheet than to any kind of robot." And "artificial intelligence is not nearly as intelligent as it would need to be to replace you." And "You may not need AI". But don't be lulled by this. These may be true today, but they won't be true for long. That's why you need to heed the second half of the ten points - things like "you need a space to experiment", "understand AI to report on it", and "we have a transformational opportunity."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Innovative EdTech approaches to provide education to hard-to-reach learners
World Education Blog, 2022/10/06

This blog post "contains a summary of responses from innovators who were asked by All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD) to share how their EdTech solutions address challenges in relation to equity and inclusion." Four companies are featured, all of which offer reading resources to underserved populations: Little Thinking Minds and Integrated International's Qysas; SIL-LEAD's Bloom; Benetech's Bookshare India; and Curious Learning's Feed the Monster.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Equity, Inclusiveness, and Zero Embargo Public Access
Robert Harington, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2022/10/06

Publishers are twisting themselves in knots trying to explain why open access without an embargo is a bad idea. Here we have a representative from the American Mathematical Society (AMS), which publishes some 25 journals, 80 books per year. "(We) even have our own print shop and warehouse for our books and journals — print still being a vital part of mathematical culture," writes Robert Harington. "Publishing accounts for 70% of operational revenues." Now all that - from my perspective - is the problem, not something to be proud of. Anyhow, his main argument is that open access makes it hard for junior academics to publish, because of article processing fees (APC). Maybe. But expensive print publications make it a lot harder for them. Maybe it's time for the AMS to shut down its printing press and stop holding back the field and use that remaining 30% to offer fees-free open academic publications.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

LMS with Purpose: Finding Meaning —and Communicating it— in Learning Management Systems
Melissa Robertson, eLearn Magazine, 2022/10/06

The title makes a lot of promises the article doesn't deliver. This is a very introductory article describing the learning management system (LMS) and while it offers a decent and brief overview, it doesn't really address the whole question of finding meaning. But that's OK; you don't need to find meaning in an LMS.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]