Stephen Downes

I don't have the space to give this post the attention it deserves, but I'll highlight a couple of points: first, the need to invest in people first, technology second; and second, the question of ethics with respect to an educational instituition's operational side (ie., the but that runs the buildings, in frastructure and technology). "Shifting 'institutional cultures towards greater ambition, experimentation and the sharing of/ learning from that experimentation' will not happen by buying everyone a license for . That's the worst kind of esssentialist and instrumentalist thinking. Organisational culture work is people centered work and requires us to grapple with complexity and human messiness."

"There might be a silent normalization process in which it becomes a matter of fact that academics accept money from commercial parties," writes Lisa Herzog in the context of the Alliance of European science academies (ALLEA) statement on ethical problems in collaborations between academia and commercial parties. "And that would, in the long run, be extremely dangerous – especially for the humanities, but arguably also for many other fields." ALLEA also published a response to the attacks on academic freedom and academic institutions that are currently happening in the U.S.

"Campuses need more respectful, scaffolded environments where students can practice constructive disagreement, honing skills like intellectual humility, perspective-taking, and critical thinking," write Simon Cullen and Nicholas DiBella. I'm not sure that's exactly what the problem is these days, though I applaude their effort to address the problem. I haven't tried it, but here's their platform called Sway. "Sway connects pairs of students who disagree over topics chosen by their instructor and then uses AI to facilitate more open, reasonable conversations between them." More artificial pairing, which doesn't speak to me. 

This article doesn't refer to the 'Zelensky moment' as the disgrace it was. No, instead it compares it favourably to cuts at the U.S. department of education and says both were "Forward looking, solutions focussed." The new education agenda turns its back on public education. Public funds will now be used to support private schools. And lest there be anyone around to track the impact of the change, that research, too, was cut. If nothing else, the moment brings clarity to what was an oft-denied 'hidden agenda' on the part of the education reform movement in the U.S. Decades of lobbying, 'research' groups, foundation projects, and 'journalism' like the Forza newsletter, have brought us to this point. The American people will pay the price, and I feel for them.

I know it's a nice appealing theory. "(Social Media services) all built not on engagement, connection, conversation or discussion but on distraction via little hits of dopamine." We're fed little bits of happiness and we go after them more and more - and then we're hooked. But how well does this theory apply to real-world examples. Tim Klapdor offers a chart of other things reflecting 'the rise of dopamine culture' showing an evolution from 'slow' to 'fast' to 'dopamine' in things ranging from athletics to video ro relationships. But I don't really think the chart holds up - not, at least, unless you feel slow-culture artifacts like newspapers, film, and handwritten letters are intrinsically better than the alternatives. And I don't.

I'm just using this link to go on about how much I hate Think-Pair-Share (TPS) activities. They're bad enough as a classroom activity, and even worse when foisted on an unsuspecting audience at a conference session. It's not that I have nothing to say on a subject, nor that I can't have conversations, it's the imposition of a specific sort of conversation or interaction that bothers me. Conservations are personal, private, and sometimes should never happen at all, and shouldn't be used just to further some pedagogical purpose. At least, that's my take on them, as a learner.