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Infrastructuring Educational Genomics: Associations, Architectures, and Apparatuses
Ben Williamson, Dimitra Kotouza, Martyn Pickersgill, Jessica Pykett, Postdigital Science and Education, 2024/02/09

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You don't want to miss this article (30 page PDF). "Technoscientific developments in genomic methodologies have been promoted as a 'genomic revolution' for educational research and policy since around 2010," write the authors. "Behavior geneticists have begun studying what are taken to be traits and outcomes relevant to education, including cognitive ability, intelligence, educational attainment, achievement, and noncognitive skills." This article is a detailed examination of the traits being studied, the processes being used to study them, and the sorts of outcomes they're looking at (so detailed that it would benefit from an expanded and more accessible presentation than the typical journal publication allows). But is this research actually discovering any such correlations? The authors observe, "The knowledge claims of educational genomics are possible only due to the construction and operations of an underpinning scientific knowledge infrastructure." In particular, "social and environmental factors that underpin social and educational inequalities can be treated as biological qualities that are discoverable in the body." Moreover, "educational genomics privileges algorithmic correlations over causal biological explanations." See also: Darya Gaysina (2016) and the NY Times (2018) touting the idea; Philip Kerr on educational genomics (2018). Ben Williamson, also in 2018 (also here (OLDaily link)). James J. Lee, et al., polygenic prediction, in Nature, 2018, and a follow-up (2022). Image by Emily Willoughby.

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Katherine Ryan's Untold Story: From Hooters Waitress To Comedy Stardom
Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, High Performance, YouTube, 2024/02/09

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Long-term readers will know how much I love comedy, and Katherine Ryan is one of my favourite comedians. This video is not a comedy show but rather an interview asking her how you live a 'high performance' life. Not only is she Canadian, which grants her a readily acknowledged privilege, she's authentic and unrelenting, and this comes through in her response. "In this episode, Katherine takes us behind the scenes of her comedy path, reflecting on her journey from scraping by as a single mom to her decision to create space for women in the industry by stepping away from Mock the Week. She offers insights into finding positivity in life and leading with gratitude, and sheds light on the reality of hard work." It's interesting how much overlap I found between her responses and would I would respond if asked a similar question. I don't know how good this channel is in general - there's a certain attitude that might either work or not work with other people - but I'll probably listen to more episodes.

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Ring video doorbell customers angry at 43% price hike
BBC, 2024/02/09

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I can't understand why anyone would buy a doorbell that requires a subscription. Anyhow, the inevitable has happened: a 43% price increase. Here's the announcement from Ring (owned by Amazon). This follows similar increases in 2022. We seem to need to learn the same lesson about corporate provision of basic services over and over again. Here in Canada, despite profits of $382 million in the last quarter, BCE/Bell Media is cutting news programming and laying off 4800 people (9 percent of its workforce). It's a "garbage decision". Things like news and telecom are essential services in a democratic society. But it's like the order of importance is exactly backward for commercial entities: provide essential services, provide employment for society, produce more profits for shareholders. When we point out that things like health and education are essential services, and the order of priorities can't be upended, the lesson should be clear. Clear as a doorbell. And yet...

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Education for Sustainability – Are we Forgetting the Economic Dimension?
Ozeias Rodrigues da Rocha, Daniel Kamphambale, Jon-Hans Coetzer, Cormac H. MacMahon, Lucia Morales, Irish Journal of Academic Progress, 2024/02/09

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The history of sustainable development is a history that reflects the built-in tensions in the Brundtland Commission's original definition: "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." One tension is the obvious tension between the needs of the present and of the future. Another is the less obvious tension between the needs of the economy and the needs of the environment or of wider society. These tensions are reflected in discussions about education for sustainable development, both in terms of how education is provided, and in terms of what educators should teach. "Educational can foster sustainable living, reduce poverty and exclusion, and equip individuals for the labour market (but) education is not devoid of interests and it is subject to the control by dominant social actors, making the educational process biased and permeated by practices that are not always in line with socio-economic or environmental needs." That is the focus of this article (25 page PDF), and indeed, of this special issue as a whole. Image: Nektarina.

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Creeped Out
Sara Bernstein, Daniel Nolan, PhilPapers, 2024/02/09

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What is it for something to be 'creepy'? How about: "For something to be creepy is for it to be disposed to elicit a reaction of being creeped out from appropriate observers in suitable circumstances." But what does it even mean to say 'disposed to elicit a reaction of'? Isn't this more a property of the person being creeped out, rather than a property of the thing being called 'creepy'? This paper (19 page PDF) explores this question. It's an important question  because the same sort of logic applies to response-dependent properties in general: something is red, something is funny, something is unexpected, something is a priority, something is unethical, for example. When we make such a claim we (arguably) say more about ourselves than about the thing in question.

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The case for open source AI
Nathan Benaich, Alex Chalmers, Air Street Press, 2024/02/09

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Imagine a web today where users "face a binary choice: AT&T's broadband or AOL's antiquated dial-up." Imagine an internet dominated by Microsoft web servers and an antique Internet Explorer browser. This is the web without open source, write the authors as they depict the history of technology as "one of a struggle between openness and its enemies." Now the same struggle in being played out in the arena of AI. "Opponents of open source aren't merely expressing concern, they're acting. Well-funded AI safety organizations have lobbied for sweeping rules that would ban existing open source models." I agree - no small part of today's push for AI ethics is intended specifically to achieve regulatory capture, though ironically most of the dangers of AI are posed directly by commercial entities that would benefit as a result. Image from the State of AI report from Air Street Capital, a 163 page Google slide deck that is strongly recommended (it was my breakfast reading for today)

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Metaphors in Educational Videos
Michele Norscini, Linda Daniela, MDPI, 2024/02/09

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This paper (19 page PDF) reports, "Our results highlighted that the use of metaphor can stimulate engagement and facilitate the educational mediation, as long as the metaphor is shared and perceived as coherent by users." There's an interesting sidebar in this one in which the authors suggest that "the absence of studies on metaphorical educational videos and the rarity of reflections between educational videos and metaphors is due to a possible interpretation of the cognitive load that underlies the Cognitive Multimedia Learning Theory (CMLT)." In particular, "one might think that the use of metaphors is an unnecessary and harmful burden on extrinsic cognitive load." The authors argue that it isn't, though I might suggests that it is, but it doesn't matter than it is, because metaphors make broader understanding more accessible. Related: Martin Weller, Dangers of tech metaphors in nature. It reminds us that "as stated by Lakoff and Johnson... every metaphor tends to illuminate certain aspects while obscuring others."

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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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