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Data in schools: Why gathering reliable data is so important
Timothy Lynch, BERA Blog, 2023/02/22

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I'm not sure who is responsible for the headline, but it gives the appearance of conflasting validity with reliability. Lynch is writing about validity. Using a test designed foir summative evaluation as a pre-test, he says, is a case where the test isn't measuring what it is supposed to. So "Baseline testing is deeply flawed. It will damage children and schools," Lynch writes. "Giving an end-of-term summative assessment test at the beginning of the term before the children have covered the content, is using a test (summative assessment) against its purpose – it is not assessing what it is designed to do." Well, it is assessing math knowledge, but at a time when (presumably) students don't yet have that knowledge. That doesn't make it invalid.

p.s. for clarification, "Generally speaking, reliability means the extent to which 2 assessments of something are the same... Validity means the extent to which our inspections and judgements assess what they're supposed to. Both reliability and validity matter" (Finch, 2019).

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Entangled Brains
Luiz Pessoa, The Brains Blog, 2023/02/22

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This is a short post from the author of The Entangled Brain arguing that we need to understand the brain as a complex, entangled system (I haven't read the book, because money). "The sense of entangled is one in which brain parts dynamically assemble into coalitions that support complex cognitive-emotional behaviors, coalitions comprised of parts that jointly do their job." How complex? "It is the coordination between the multiple parts that leads to the behaviors of interest, not a master 'controller' that dictates the function of the system. In many 'sophisticated' systems, and the brain is no exception, it is instinctive to think that many of its important functions depend on centralized processes."

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DoMore.ai
DoMore.ai, 2023/02/22

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Found on Reddit: "I'm creating https://domore.ai/ - a catalog of 1000+ AI tools. The goal is to provide individuals and organizations with the latest information on AI tools. The catalog also includes the education category. I'd love to hear any feedback you have for me, so feel free to share your thoughts." This post is to let you know that the website exists; it isn't sufficiently developed yet to warrant an endorsement. There's a category for educational tools.

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Let's Make Friends with ChatGPT
Gwen Nguyen, BCcampus, 2023/02/22

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This is a nice post built around the idea of 'making friends' with chatGPT (and presumably, other AI). " Our new friend ChatGPT is friendly, talented, and useful. It came to life from all of us and our work after years of engineering and training.... I suggest meeting ChatGPT with a beginner's mind, as only with this openness can you think and move forward together with future generation of students and AI." I agree. I add just one note about the parochialism of teaching and education. Gwen Nguyen advises "promoting new academic integrity" and "creating alternative assessment activities". My first thought was that integrity in general, not just academic integrity, is important. It's natural for educators to focus on academic integrity, but they shouldn't. The same with assessment. The emergence of AI brings with it questions about how we present ourselves in general, not just to teachers. This is what we should focus on, not just redesigning tests.

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Uh-oh! DeepL in the classroom; it's already here
Victor Mair, Language Log, 2023/02/22

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A student used an AI system called DeepL to translate from Literary Sinitic / Classical Chinese (LSCC) into English. Surprisingly, it worked quite well. Too well, maybe. Victor Mair writes, "I did not chastise her in the slightest for using DeepL, because she exercised good judgement in choosing the most 'intelligent' part of what DeepL had to offer. In other words, my opinion is that we should regard DeepL and its AI kindred, not as enemies of our own production, but as resources that we can draw on like dictionaries, concordances, indices, thesauruses, and so forth." Also, note, the student wasn't sneaky about it, but instead was honest. There's nothing wrong with using a tool, except with an assertion that we didn't. Image: Wikipedia.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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