OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Why can't our tech billionaires learn anything new?
Dave Karpf, The Future, Now and Then, 2023/10/18

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This is a response to Marc Andreessen's "techno-optimist manifesto", covered here previously. It quite correctly points out that the techno-optimists have been in charge over the last 30 years. What do we have to show for it? "What we've been left with is the largest wealth gap since the 1920s. It turns out that when we stopped taxing the billionaires' preferred investment vehicles, we ended up with a lot more billionaires.... Economic inequality does not solve itself. Markets are not perfect, self-correcting mechanisms." The multiple crises we face today, from inequality to war to environmental degradation, represent the failure of this pro-capitalist manifesto. Interestingly, the article also refers back to the old Wired pro-business techno-optimist turn that I criticized at length here in 1998.

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Pragmatist Thinking for a Populist Moment: Democratic Contingency and Racial Re-Valuing in Education Governance
Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen M. Sellers, Democracy & Education, 2023/10/18

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In what must be one of the larger understatements of the week, Knight-Abowitz and Sellars write, "Educational governance in the U.S. is often a source of frustration among democracy theorists and education reformers alike." Here we consider two articles that consider education governance in the context of Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory (described as a straw man proxy for any discussions of race and equity), Pragmatist Thinking for a Populist Moment, which (to elide a lot) criticizes populist movements for being overly emotional ("Populist expression is the ability of groups to articulate urgent need for reform, but such expression always requires scrutiny"), and Social Movements, Deliberation, and Educational Governance, by Ellis Reid, which responds that "political slogans and other kinds of broad language certainly constitute part of the movement's rhetoric. However, we can't simply assume that this rhetoric exhausts the kinds of conversations going on within the movement. I believe that many affiliated with BLM and other similar movements regularly engage in meaningful deliberation about political issues." I am reminded of the educational movement that sprang up around Occupy Wall Street, and of course there's a longer history of the 'teach-in' movement in generally. Anyhow, save these for a good weekend read. Image: The Week.

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TechScape: Threads and Bluesky need to figure out what they want to be
Josh Taylor, The Guardian, 2023/10/18

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I find it weird that this article describing "the Twitter alternatives" for news media focuses only on Threads (by meta) and BlueSky (by former Twitter people), and does not even mention Mastodon. Is there something about a decentralized social network that makes it anathema to news media?

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School vouchers are even worse than you think
Lisa Needham, Public Notice, 2023/10/18

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This article argues that "Republicans in states like Texas complain that public schools are failing, then starve them under the guise of 'choice.'" The argument: "The important thing to understand about school vouchers is that they're a redistribution of wealth to people with enough money to already be sending their children to private schools." You don't need privaye schools to support choice; it can be supported by a public system, and as such, provide genuine opportunity for people living in poorer districts. Via Tim Stahmer.

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On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems
Michael L. Wong, Carol E. Cleland, Daniel Arend Jr., Robert M. Hazen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023/10/18

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Phys.org calls this finding "nature's missing evolutionary law". You know of course that I want to somehow relate it to Connectivism. This would obviously be a stretch, but it's tantalizing. The researchers identify three major traits of evolving systems: "Each system is formed from numerous interacting units; in each of these systems, ongoing processes generate large numbers of different configurations; some configurations, by virtue of their stability or other "competitive" advantage, are more likely to persist." Such systems demonstrate three "orders" of selection: first order selection, which is stability; second order, "core functions" such as "dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and information processing"; and third, novelty, "adding new functions that promote the persistence of the core functions essentially raises a dynamic system's 'kinetic barrier' against decay toward equilibrium." "Accordingly,"write the authors, "we propose a 'law of increasing functional information': The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions." Also here, with more authors listed. See also: Neuroscience news. Silicon Republic, Interesting Engineering.

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Making the Most of Cognitive Surplus: Descriptive Case Studies of Student-Generated Open Educational Resources
Mais Fatayer, Eseta Tualaulelei, Education Sciences, 2023/10/18

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I'd classify this paper as offering an example of the benefits of reusing 'cognitive surplus'. "the descriptive case studies illustrate how student-generated OER, guided by an OER development model, positively benefited learners and educators (and) balances these benefits against some of the challenges experienced in the process." The example is presented within a constructivist framework, which I don't think is strictly necessary, and which I don't think really advances the narrative (why do educational writers so often feel they need to select some or another theory or framework as a 'lens' through which to view the example?).

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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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