Month: September 2017

Algorithms and Human Systems

Writing about Facebook, Franklin Foer explores the concept of algorithms to highlight a more human element:

An algorithm is a system, like plumbing or a military chain of command. It takes knowhow, calculation and creativity to make a system work properly. But some systems, like some armies, are much more reliable than others. A system is a human artefact, not a mathematical truism. The origins of the algorithm are unmistakably human, but human fallibility isn’t a quality that we associate with it. source

The post itself is a useful provocation for the wider discussion of digital technologies, hacking and algorithms.

Intimate Spaces

Sometimes the strength of ideas and collaboration comes via the creation of appropriate spaces. Isaac Kohane discusses the importance of intimate spaces where people are about to come together.

Isacc Kohane says. “Even in the era of big science, when researchers spend so much time on the Internet, it’s still so important to create intimate spaces.”A new generation of laboratory architecture has tried to make chance encounters more likely to take place, and the trend has spread in the business world, too. source

Discussing the power of ideas, David Culberhouse talks about the [learning well]

Authentic Dissent

In a discussion of collaboration and group work, Jonah Lehrer highlights the power of disruption in pushing our thinking further. An example of this is the notion of authentic dissent where ideas are generated to purposely disrupt the thinking.

In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” Nemeth says. “It wakes us right up.” Criticism allows people to dig below the surface of the imagination and come up with collective ideas that aren’t predictable. And recognizing the importance of conflicting perspectives in a group raises the issue of what kinds of people will work together best source

Diversity and Perspective

Reflecting on a life within the technology industry, Ellen Ullman shares why diversity is so important:

We need to involve women and minorities and people who come from all social classes because they bring in new sets of values. The newcomers deepen the conversation. They carry in fresh sources of creativity. They enrich our understanding of the relationships between humans and the digital world. They ask new questions: What do we want from all this stuff? And who is included in this definition of “we”? source

This is something that Cathy Davidson touches on with her idea of collaboration by difference:

The whole point of collaboration by difference is that we cannot see our own gorillas. We need one another to help us, and we need a method that allows each of us to express our difference. If we don’t feel comfortable offering an alternative point of view, we don’t. And without such contribution, we continue to be limited or even endangered by our blind spots; we don’t heed the warning signals until it’s too late and an accident is inevitable.source

Julian Stodd suggests that authenticity comes when we are able to tap into the informal and often unheard voices within an organisation:

Stories of difference chart the fragmented truth of our organisation: they may not be pretty, but they help provide perspective. And you can go further, by encouraging response stories, providing further frames to engage in the dialogue, progressively less formal.source

[[Diversity and Resistence]]

Power of Stories

Discussing the social age, Julian Stodd uppacks the power of stories. For him, the question often relates to whom owns the story and how it flows.

Stories are the mechanism of transmission of cultural and tacit knowledge: they are units of information, heavily contextualised, highly magnetic, almost frictionless, and can be very, very, long lived. If i tell a story, i may own it, right up until the point that i share it, but at that time, it takes wings, and becomes real. Stories shared are stories relinquished: despite legal frameworks in which we retain ownership of the husk, the germ of truth that resides within a story is let loose through sharing. The essence of it, the ‘story’ itself, is more than simply © words, and trademarked phrases. Stories are meant to flow. source

Providing his own point of view, Kin Lane says that it would kill him not to be able to tell stories:

I need storytelling to do what I do. To work through ideas. It is how I learn from others.source

Coming at the question from the personal perspective, Aaron Hogan asks what stories define you:

Take a minute and ask yourself those questions: What is your story? Who are you listening to? How is that going?source

Replied to

Your guide was not the issue, I realised that I had pingbacks turned off.

#indieweb replies are not necessarily what I thought they would be. I had this strange idea that they would allow me to leave normal comments on somebody else’s blog. Instead, they just leaves a pingback? I wonder if I am missing something? I am wondering if POSSE plays some part here?

Replied to Pingbacks: hiding in plain sight (cpdin140.wordpress.com)

I’ve never really thought about Pingbacks on blog posts; they just appear. On my own blogs, most of the pingbacks are in fact internal referencing as I link from one post to another. But maybe they’re not as mundane as they might at first appear and in fact they work much harder than I first thought? When someone reads a blog post and is subsequently minded to write their own post, either referencing or extending the ideas in the original, they are extending knowledge. Were it not for the pingback, the link between the two posts would be one way only, from the body of the new post back to the original. The pingback is initiated automatically from within the original post platform and consequently makes this a two-way exchange by providing that link to the new post.

This extending of the knowledge web offers opportunities, but I wonder to what extent people use it? I know that if I write a post which attracts a pingback, I usually follow it up to check out the post and the author. The outcome might be that I learn something new about what I originally thought, or that I find a new blog to follow, or a new person with whom to connect. The interesting part is that it’s an algorithm or script that’s doing that. A nonhuman. My learning is once more being affected and enabled by a nonhuman actor.

Pingbacks seem to be a part of the WordPress architecture. For other platforms, you can use trackbacks. One use case is the #Indieweb and the potential to comment from your own space. Chris Aldrich even demonstrates how you can use such an infrastructure to reply to Twitter.
Replied to Male teachers are an endangered species in Australia: new research (https://theconversation.com)

Male teachers may face extinction in Australian primary schools by the year 2067 unless urgent policy action is taken. In government schools, the year is 2054.

This finding comes from our analysis of more than 50 years of national annual workplace data – the first of its kind in any country.

Kevin McGrath and Penny Van Bergen provides a summary of their paper into gender equity in schools. They predict that by 2067 there will be no more male teachers in primary schools. Other than being an improvement on the argument that robots will take over education, I wonder what the percentage of males and females in leadership would be during this period? I have a hunch that the numbers would still be relatively high.
Replied to A reply to Aaron Davis on setting up IndieWeb replies in WordPress (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)

a tweet by Aaron DavisAaron Davis (Twitter)
#IndieWeb is there any magic in setting up ‘replies’ in WordPress beyond the plugin? Or is it only possible in Known? CC @ChrisAldrich
— Aaron Davis 🏘️ (@mrkrndvs) September 17, 2017

Aaron, there are a couple of different ways to set up …

Thank you Chris for the reply. I did read your post, that is what spurred me to try once again to investigate ‘sending replies’.
Replied to Slice of Life: The Ethical Questions of Ease (Who Pays the Price?) (dogtrax.edublogs.org)

Dang it. I’m sipping the tasty Google juice, and sharing it with my students.

But …I am also regularly talking about tech company’s intentions for gathering data and information about us, as means for making money from advertising and more. I hope that all balances out, and that in my attempt to make my life easier as a teacher I am not putting my students in the crosshairs of a technology behemoth.

Interesting post Kevin. I am particularly intrigued by the question of data. You look at something like Draftback, which plays back a Doc’s revision history. It can be easy to be enamoured by such functionality. What is intriguing is that Google keeps all this data, that is just accessed via API’s to produce the playback. Why?

Another interesting example of the potential is the Classroom Extension. Not only does it allow you to easily set assignments, but when installed by staff and students, it provides the means to send a sight to students. This though is taken to a whole new level by Hapara, which allows teachers to lock a student’s screen. It can be easy to view Hapara poorly, but it only builds on what Google makes possible. This is taken to its zenith with Hapara Analytics.

I will not deny, I have drank the KoolAid (and probably still do). I think though that like with all technology, I am somewhat in awe of the affordances, but also critical of the consequences. I wonder about Martin Weller’s call to ‘rewild edtech’. For me one thing that needs to change is data, as Caulfield suggests, at the least that would be a start.

Replied to Engaging Students’ Parents in a Collaborative Digital Place (rtschuetz.net)

As Karen Mapp says, involvement tends to be passive, falling short of real effectiveness. With digital places like Schoology, we can positively influence students, as Matthew Kraft says, “by engaging parents as partners in the education process.” The research on the benefits of parent engagement and school achievement are indisputable. Our infrastructure is in place, now it’s a matter of creating the expectations and dedicating the time necessary for teachers and parents to collaboratively advance student learning for all.

This is a great post Bob. Engaging with parents is such a wicked educational problem. I remember developing a focus a few years ago as a part of my Google Certified Educator experience:

How Might We ENGAGE PARENTS in a CULTURAL SHIFT to make RELATIONSHIPS and CONNECTIONS the focus of learning?

What I learnt from the experience is that it is not as simple as just inviting parents in.  I developed the eBox blog as a way of engaging, however it never really took. Since then applications like Seesaw have really opened up this space.

Replied to 4 Ways that Google Might be Hurting Education (etale.org)

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This is such an interesting post Bernard. In regards to the ‘commercialisation of educators’, I am a Google Certified Innovator and enjoyed my experience at Google. However, it was the opportunity to work with other passionate educators which was the boon, not the focus on tools.

I was a Google Educator before they changed the program, but my credentials have since lapsed. I could justify completing the credentials as it is a core part of my current work. However, I have concerns about ticking a box. I prefer to use my time to develop my own capacity myself, documented in my monthly newsletter. I think that Rafranz Davis captures some of the issues too.

In regards to the influence of Google, I am more concerned about the influence of GAFA, FANGS or whatever acronym you choose to use. I am happy to support teachers where they are at. I have written about Apple, Adobe and Microsoft. I have also written about open software and managing my own domain. In regards to disclosure, I would like to think that I am transparent, but I guess I could always do better.

Replied to Pickles and Shoe Tying (cogdogblog.com)

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I love this comment Alan:

What I think is worth writing about are things in your day that nibble at your attention. That make you pause, ever so briefly.

I think sometimes I forget this. Interestingly, Kin Lane shared something similar lately to:

It would KILL ME to not be able to tell stories. I need storytelling to do what I do. To work through ideas. It is how I learn from others.

You have both reinvigorated me to stop worrying and just get back to sharing and storytelling.

Silicon Valley Futures

American libertarian activist Patri Friedman thinks that the future of the city-state are ‘seasteads’:

Patri is taking the Silicon Valley mindset and applying it to the nation-state. There are all these things you could now do that didn’t exist when our current system of government was invented, he told me. Constant online direct-democracy voting, building smart-cities, using crypto-currencies. And yet we still use a 19th-century model. source

Although not if French Polynesia has anything to do with it.

An alternative to the floating city maybe reclaiming reefs, such as that which is happening in the South China Sea

Building on the concept of driverless cars is the notion of driverless hotels:

In a Tesla Model S there are only 18 moving parts compared to the 1500 in an average internal combustion engine vehicle. As such it’s predicted that by 2025 all new vehicles produced will be 100% electric and cost much less than the cheapest combustion engine vehicles sold today. This opens endless possibilities to re-imagine vehicles as moving rooms able to cater to a vast array of human experiences and activities: the driverless office, the driverless boardroom, the driverless gym, the driverless bedroom, the driverless bathroom, the driverless cafe, the driverless cinema and the driverless shop. These rooms need not be used in isolation either. They can be dynamic, modular and interconnected with other driverless rooms via an ondemand request. Tap a button or speak a request, and moments later you can have a bathroom or gym module drive itself to your location and autonomously connect to the office module you’re currently working from.
…
Immense vertical skyscrapers can autonomously lift these driverless rooms and their passengers hundreds of meters up, where they’re slotted into position before the wall panels open to reveal other connected room modules.source

Alternatively, Annalee Newitz talks about sky cities (is that a ‘skystead’?) on Venus:

Life on Venus would be wholly unlike Earth. The surface of the planet is unlivable for humans: the intense atmospheric pressure and heat is like being at the bottom of a very deep ocean that’s hot enough to melt lead. So we’d have to live in the clouds, right below the protective ionosphere that sucks up radiation. What’s cool about Venus is that we could build cities inside balloons of breathable atmosphere, and they would float. That’s the idea of a NASA scientist named Geoffrey Landis.

While Jeff Bezos imagines mammoth space stations:

In 2000, Bezos founded his own spaceflight firm, Blue Origin. But Bezos’s view wasn’t quite the sunny New Frontier ethos of Gene Roddenberry; it had a distinctly Malthusian cast. Humanity, he argued, needed to escape the planet in order to save it from utter devastation; he envisioned one day building mammoth space stations complete with farms and trains.

The question that such ideas pose is:

What if Silicon Valley’s core beliefs — even the benign ones — are wrong?source

The Myth of the Nation-State

In his reflections on the city-state, Jamie Barlett explains that:

nation-states are nothing but agreed-upon myths: we give up certain freedoms in order to secure others. But if that transaction no longer works, and we stop agreeing on the myth, it ceases to have power over us. source

This is similar to the ideas of Benedict Anderson and the notion of ‘imagined communities’. It is also interesting to consider this idea in regards to Edward Said’s discussion of ‘coexistence with the preservation of difference’.

📰 Read Write Respond #020

My Month of August

Another month has flown on by. In regards to work, I have continued to explore reporting, this included being lucky enough to attend a collective looking at ongoing reporting. Biannual reporting is such an intriguing area and seems to be a barometer of innovation and change. I was also lucky enough to run a session on flipped learning using flipped learning focusing on Global2. It seems that creating an environment that provides time, support and autonomy can work.

On the family front, the coughs and sneezes associated with the long winter have continued on. Apparently warnings have also gone out that this Spring will be bad for hay fever …

In regards to my writing, here was my month in posts:

Here are some of the ideas that have left me thinking …

Learning and Teaching

“‘Using Visitors and Residents to visualise digital practices’” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

Using ‘Visitors and Residents’ to visualise digital practices – David White and Alison Le Cornu have published a paper continuing their exploration of digital belonging and the problems with age-based categorisations. One interesting point made was the blur that has come to the fore between organisations and individuals. It is interesting to consider this model next to White’s work in regards to lurkers, as well as the ability to ‘return the tools’ without inadvertently leaving some sort of trace.

While it is tempting to work as if we were operating with two dichotomies, Visitor and Resident, and personal and professional, such an approach would overlook the ubiquity of the Web and the fact that many people now do what we have loosely called ‘professional’ activities at home, and indeed, may also do what we have termed ‘personal’ Web-based activities at work or during formal learning sessions. The key point here is that the digital amplifies the ability to shift context beyond the constraints of our immediate, physical architectural environment (Fisher, 2009; Wittkower, 2016). In the same way, people can appear to be operating in one mode of engagement when in reality they’re doing something entirely different. They might appear to be participating in a class activity using a social media app, for example — a typically Resident approach — while in reality they’re filling in a job application online on a secure site: a predominantly Visitor approach. This is significant because it indicates a type of blurring, where the physical architectural environment no longer imposes the same degree of ‘authority’ as it once did in terms of behaviour or modes of engagement. In other words, the Web makes it possible to undertake activities that once could only be done in specific physical places.

Feedback, It’s Emotional – Deborah Netolicky weaves together some insights into the emotional nature of feedback, supporting her thoughts with an array of evidence. I have written about feedback before, however Netolicky’s work highlights the personal nature of it all.

It is through seeing our work through the eyes of others, and by being open to criticism, that we can figure out how to push our work forward, improve it incrementally, take it in a new direction, or defend it more vigorously.

Are We Eager For Change? – Grant Lichtman provides a number of short activities to start the conversation around change. For Matt Esterman, the challenge is setting in place a series of digestible chunks to facilitate rapid evolution. Maybe this is encompassed by the idea of agile sprints?

What if the school leader is alone in understanding the “why”, or if other community stakeholders, particularly large groups of the faculty, do not see the need to change what they have done in the past? How do we get this conversation started in ways that nurture the possibility of change?

Build Labeling Games with Quizlet Diagrams – Tony Vincent unpacks the recent changes to Quizlet which allows users to add interactive diagrams. These can be used as an activity or an interactive resource. This new feature provides an additional interactive layer to an image. Vincent sees potential in students creating their own diagrams to demonstrate knowledge and understanding.

It’s true: with Quizlet Diagrams, a teacher has the ability to create study aids for their students. However, I think students learn better by creating the diagrams themselves.

Young and eSafe – Developed by the eSafety Commision, Young and Safe provides advice by young people, for young people. This includes a five part video series, stories of young people’s experiences and expert advice from people in the know.

Young & eSafe is an initiative of the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. The eSafety Office works to keep Australians safer online by providing resources, programs and services which promote positive online behaviour.

Edtech

“What Do You Want to Know about Blogging?” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

What Do You Want to Know about Blogging? – Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano responds to number of questions about blogging, such as how to start out in the classroom, setup precautions, develop a habit and extend your thinking beyond the simple view of blogging. Kathleen Morris’ post on why every educator should blog, Marina Rodriguez’ tips for student blogging and Doug Belshaw’s guide how to write a blog post add to this discussion.

I have found that the more pressure I put on myself to blog, the more stressed I get and the less I write. Blogging is a pleasure for me that becomes a burden, when I give myself deadlines. Another technique that seems to work for me is that I create lots and lots of drafts. I start with titles and save them as drafts, then continue to add to these drafts, as I find little time here and a little time there. Then suddenly, I realize that one of the drafts is ready to publish

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – Jean Twenge explores some of the statistics around the use of smartphones and social media by teens. It would be easy to say take phones off teens. Joshua Kim suggests that every big technological leap seems to engender a new set of worries and things often work out fine, while Alexander Samuel argues that it is parents, not teens, that we should be worried. Another approach maybe exploring the impact of notifications. Overall, Katie Davis, Emily Weinstein and Howard Gardner warn against simplistic narratives.

Social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation. Teens who visit social-networking sites every day but see their friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Teens’ feelings of loneliness spiked in 2013 and have remained high since.

How ready is your school for digital age learning? Building School Capacity – Christine Haynes shares D-LIFE, a framework designed to support schools with the implementation of technology. It revolves around ten categories: leadership, infrastructure, services, implementation, policies, quality, resources, environment, learning and community.

D-LIFE provides a framework to evaluate current levels of implementation, and determine areas where school growth is required. D-LIFE can also be used to guide leaders to ask the questions of other stakeholders, like technicians, parents, and faculty to ensure educational goals remain the priority of technical initiatives.

Decentralize It! – Paul Ford discusses the benefits of setting up your own server and the lessons one is able to learn through the process. This is a topic that Dave Winer also touches upon. Coming from the perspective of a domain of one’s own, this feels like a continuation of the narrative. Mike Caulfield adds a word of caution that if such choices are driven by a sense of activism that it is how tools are used, rather than what tools, which matters.

I look at Raspberry Pi Zeros with Wi-Fi built in and I keep thinking, what would it take to just have a little web server that was only for three or four people, at home? Instead of borrowing computer time from other people I could just buy a $10 computer the size of a stick of gum. Which next year could be a $7 computer, and eventually a $1 computer. It could run a Dropbox-alike, something like OwnCloud. It’s easy in theory but kind of a pain in practice.I’d need to know how to open ports on my home router.I’d need to be able to get the headless device onto WiFi.I’d need a place to plug it in, plugs are hard to come by.It needs to physically be somewhere.It would need a case.You need to buy an SD card with Linux on it.And on and on.The world doesn’t want us to run web servers at home. But I do. I really think we should run web servers from gumstick computers at home.

Social Media isn’t for Learning – Benjamin Doxtdator considers a number of challenges and concerns around using social media for learning. Whether it be the extractive nature of platforms or the inherent discrimination built in, Doxtdator questions the use of such platforms as Facebook and Twitter as a means of engaging with the open web. On top of this, he wonders how receptive we are when students do not respond the way we might like or expect, something Bryan Alexander also talks about. Personally, I wonder if an answer is to support through the use of managed spaces that offer a sense of control. I also think that whatever solution is adopted, it is an imperative to apply a critical lense, rather than solely focus on the ease of use.

For social media to make a real difference in schools, rather than end up on the heap of ed tech that has failed to live up to its revolutionary potential, we have to be willing to accept the real risks: that students might challenge us with their voices and say things we disagree with, and that not all students navigate the digital world with the same mix of privileges and vulnerabilities.

Storytelling and Reflection

“On Ditching the (Dangerous) Dichotomy Between Content Knowledge and Creativity @amyburvall” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

#rawthought: On Ditching the (Dangerous) Dichotomy Between Content Knowledge and Creativity – Amy Burvall explains that the key to joining the dots is having dots to join in the first place. Reflecting on the dichotomy between creativity and critical thinking, Burvall illustrates arts dependency on knowledge and skills. The challenge is supporting students in making this learning experience stick. Deb Netolicky also discusses some of these points in here discussion of ‘21st Century Learning’, while Bill Ferriter questions what comes first.

Virtually every piece of media we are confronted with (from pop songs to poetry, from TV shows to classic texts), makes assumptions that the audience knows certain references. It’s our jobs as teachers and parents to help the young people in our care to gather their knowledge “dots”, find a place for them in the recesses of their memory, and grow agile in making connections between them.

Teach History – Audrey Watters argues that instead of teaching love, we need to teach that the past is not past, but rather still very much a part of the present. To understand what happened in Charlottesville you need to know something about the histories and legacies that they are built upon. Associated with this, Grant Lichtman argues that educating students about the situation needs to be a priority in every classroom. Anna Kamenetz collates a number of resources to support people, while Xian Franzinger Barrett outlines seven ways teachers can respond. Sam Dastiyari also warns that this is not just a problem unique to the USA.

We have to fundamentally alter how we teach history – and that means teaching about hate, not just love. It means teaching about American evils, not just American exceptionalism. It means teaching about resistance too, not just oppression. And it means rethinking all the practices tied up in our educational institutions – systemic and interpersonal practices that perpetuate this weekend’s violence.

How thinking of myself as a ‘Human API’ helped me get over my ego – Doug Belshaw uses the idea of an API to appreciate the interactions that are a part of being a consultant. As Belshaw explains, an API does not complain unless provided invalid input, it provides an expected output for a given input, are (usually) well documented, are inclusive and don’t discriminate between users. Not only is this useful in appreciating various choices and decisions, it also provides a concrete way of explaining APIs. I also wonder how such thinking fits with the idea of assemblages?

Thinking about life in Human API terms can be liberating. It forces you to think about what you’re willing to accept as an input, what you’re providing as an output, and what overall puzzle you’re helping solve. I think it’s a great metaphor and it’s one I’ll be using more often.

There Will be Blood – GDPR and EdTech – Eylan Ezekiel discusses the changes to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. This includes the right to access data, to have questions answered, the right to have data erased and the right to object to personal data being used to build a profile. The fear that it is too late, as companies like Amazon and Google explore the potential of automation and the data that comes with that, while John Grubar highlights another example of how our data is surreptitiously siphoned off by websites and applications. From an educational point of view, Ben Williamson demonstrates how platforms, like Class Dojo, influence the way data is collected in the classroom, which has a flow-on effect on the development of policy. Coming from the perspective of practice, Amy Collier provides seven strategies for treating data with more care, while Emily Talmage worries that data is destroying schools.

If Data is the new ‘Oil’ – then the GDPR is an attempt to bring regulation on the wild oil rush that has been going on across many sectors, before those industries take too much control over the geology of our privacy.

FOCUS ON … NAPLAN

“‘What National Testing Data can Tell us’” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

It is that time again, when the NAPLAN results are released and the media goes gaga about the state of education. Here is a collection of some more reasoned responses:

For a further discussion of NAPLAN, I recommend National Testing in Schools, An Australian assessment edited by Bob Lingard, Greg Thompson and Sam Sellar. It provides a historical context, as well as unpacks many of the effects associated with the program, including media responses, pressures on schools, impact on various educators and the experience of students.

READ WRITE RESPOND #020

So that is August for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear. Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest or maybe you want to subscribe?

Cover image via Justlego101