OLDaily

Why I Changed My Mind on Teaching Thinking Skills
Larry Cuban, 2022/10/17

"After the two weeks of direct instruction in skills, I plunged into the Coming of the American Revolution and subsequent history material," writes Larry Cuban. But this didn't work. "The concept of teaching these skills isolated from the historical content–as I did–undermined the very goal I wanted to achieve." Now it could be a problem of 'transferring' these skills to a specific application like history. Or (as I would suggest) it could be that a two-week introductory module is simply insufficient for teaching critical thinking skills. Imagine we taught math that way! Or reading!

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Microsoft partners with Meta to bring Teams, Office, Windows, and Xbox to VR
Tom Warren, The Verge, 2022/10/17

Maybe one day it will be pleasant to work with documents and spreadsheets in virtual reality (VR) but my current experience with Oculus headsets suggests it would be a nightmare. So I see this announcement as nothing more than PR at this point, with a hint of some of the necessary research that's going to have to be undertaken to make working with productivity applications in VR a pleasant experience.

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Students Are Using AI to Write Their Papers, Because Of Course They Are
Claire Woodcock, Motherboard, 2022/10/17

My favourite part of this article is the headline. Other than that, the story is a straightforward presentation describing how innovate_rye, a straight A student, uses AI to write essays. "Without AI, innovate_rye says the homework they consider 'busywork' would take them two hours. Now homework assignments like this take them 20 minutes." If the homework is indeed 'busywork' then one wonders why it was assigned. But maybe it's the deliberate practice required to achieve expertise? To me, it's not really about whether AI-generated text can be flagged by plagiarism checking software. I mean, who cares? It's about whether innovate_rye is getting the most from their education.

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How to become an expert
Roger L Kneebone, Psyche, 2022/10/17

"The path to mastery is long, winding and hugely fulfilling," writes Roger L Kneebone. But you have to do more than just put in the time. "You have to commit to continually improve." This article offers a 'framework' for becoming an expert. It describes (superficially) "the experiences we all go through as we move along the path towards mastery, the things we get wrong and the resilience we develop along the way." I'm not sure I would endorse the content of this article but I though it was worth reflecting on.

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Unplugged institutions: towards a localization of the cloud for Learning Analytics privacy enhancement
Daniel Amo-Filvà, David Fonseca, Marc Alier, Francisco José García-Peñalvo, Mª José Casañ, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2022/10/17

"Considering data capitalism," write the authors in this short concept paper (6 page PDF), "we argue that it is hopelessly impossible to solve the privacy problem, nor even mitigate it." It's just too tempting a target; "cloud computing implies permanent and uncontrolled access to information from anywhere and by unknown actors." Their response, though, is weak. "We must forbid cloud computing." And do what, then? They offer nothing. They should at the very least mention edge analytics, which localizes data collection and processing, coordinating with other services only for an exchange of insights.

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Open Your CC Image Search Eyes to Openverse
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2022/10/17

As Alan Levine reported Google's open access image search is broken. It finds only a handful of openly licensed images even for popular search terms. Also, "unless you stuck to reliable sources in the results, I ended up dipping into a slimy pit of public domain leech sources". So he suggests using Openverse as an alternative. "It takes way any uncertainty on the usage of the images," he writes. "No guessing the license. No being served up media from sites that do not give credit to the author." It does have its faults, though: I found it redefines my search for "Downes" as a search for "down". This produces odd results: my search for "Stephen Downes birds" produces a slew of images of helicopters and motorcycles. Still, even this is better than Google's image search.

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