My Month of May

This month I realised the limitations to using a priority matrix to organise my work. It was not capturing the different facets of my work, such as reporting, online portal, attendance and timetable. I am still organising my work around priorities, I have just taken to representing this in a spreadsheet, therefore allowing me to filter it in various ways. I still am not quite settled on this, but it will do for now

In regards to other aspects of work I was lucky enough to attend a presentation by Hilary Hollingsworth on ACER’s work on reporting. I have also been helping some schools with the implementation of various administrative applications focusing on interviews and excursions. The more I do the more I realise how much of what is ‘transformative’ is built upon a raft of invisible parts that build to make the complex systems, which we so easily take for granted.

On the family front, my girls have taken to belting out duets together, even in the middle of the shops. Although the youngest one cannot keep up with every word of every line, she gives it a go. In general, it is fascinating watching them learn together.

Personally, I have found myself spending more time bookmarking and collecting my thoughts, rather than crafting long forms. It was interesting to read Doug Belshaw reflect upon this with his own writing. I think that Ian O’Byrne captures this best when he explains the interrelated nature of the different spaces.

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

• Finding the Tools to Sing – A Reflection on Big B Blogging: I started writing this post a few months ago in response to Tom Critchlow’s post, but did not get around to finishing it, subsequently my initial notes have lay waiting. I was reminded of it by recent posts from Jim Groom and Alan Levine reflecting on the purpose of blogging. Here then is my contribution to the conversation.

• Sharing Data is Easy with QUERY: There are many challenges to sharing specific data in Google Sheets, some of these can be overcome using the QUERY formula.

Here then are some of the thoughts and ideas that have also left me thinking:

Learning and Teaching

21 simple design elements that will make any School Assessment Task sheet accessible: Haley Tancredi, Jill Willis, Kelli McGraw and Linda Graham reflect on the assessment task sheet so common in the secondary classroom. Responding to the challenge of accessibility, they collect together a number of elements to support all students. This list is organised around visuals, clarity and directions.

Access can be made easier or more difficult depending on the way the assessment task is presented; both in terms of visual presentation and in terms of the language used. The number and type of procedures required can also differentially affect students’ successful completion of the task. This approach to analysis helped us to produce a list of recommended design elements that will be useful to teachers as they plan and write up their assessment tasks.

Civix Releases New Online Media Literacy Videos: Mike Caulfield shares a series of videos summarising his work on Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers. Although it only touches on the basics, it still provides a useful introduction to the ‘Four Moves’ approach. Caulfield has also started a project associated with local newspapers that is worth checking out.

As I say — it’s the internet — you’re not stuck with that one story that comes to you. By going out and actively choosing a better story you will not only filter out false stories but also see the variety of ways an event is being covered.

When words won’t suffice: behavior as communication: Benjamin Doxtdator unpacks behaviour in the classroom. He touches on knowing your child, student choices and systemic inequalities. This is a useful post to read and critically reflect upon various practices and pedagogies. I think that it all starts with the language that we choose. Chris Friend also considers the influence of language in regards to learning management systems and assessment. In regards to behaviour, Riss Leung compares dog training with her classroom experiences.

Just as I try (and sometimes fail) to de-center myself when addressing student misbehavior, I try to de-center myself when I write. The vast majority of the students that I teach won’t be racially profiled in a behavior policy or by the police and that’s why I think it is especially important for me to seek out literature that reflects on those systemic injustices.

Learning for learning’s sake: Austin Kleon responds to the challenge associated with ‘learning for learning’s sake’. He suggests that we need to invest in hobbies and curiosity, just as much as we focus on ‘return on investment’. This reminds me of Amy Burvall’s point that “in order to connect dots, one must first have the dots”. Thinking about luck, Janice Kaplan discusses the importance of engaging with curiosity. Diane Kashen suggests we need more messy play.

Setting aside the importance of hobbies and the amateur spirit, what worries me the most is this faulty idea that you should only spend time learning about things if they have a definite “ROI.” Creative people are curious people, and part of being a creative person is allowing yourself the freedom to let your curiosity lead you down strange, divergent paths. You just cannot predict how what you learn will end up “paying off” later.Who’s to say what is and what isn’t professional development? (An audited calligraphy class winds up changing the design of computers, etc.)

Forget the checkout: what about the plastic clogging supermarket aisles?: Nicola Heath reports on the current plastic crisis in Australia. Although every state has agreed to ban single use bags, the real problem that needs to be addressed is in the aisles and aisles of pre-packaged food. Although the impact of plastics on our ocean has been well reported, it seems that there is a significant impact on our fresh water lakes too. Studies have found microplastics in drinking water, beer and honey. I wonder if the solution starts with school and education?

Some, like the Greens, argue manufacturers and retailers need to take more responsibility for the lifecycle of their packaging. “Product stewardship” and extended producer responsibility (EPR) requires manufacturers to factor the disposal of packaging into its design and production.

The Brick Wall: When I taught robotics I would show my students a video involving the use of a simple Lego kit in a science laboratory as a point of inspiration. The Brick Wall takes these possibilities to a whole new level, providing a collection of videos useful for thinking about what is possible in regards to programming, Lego and robotics. Some other series and collections that I have stumbled upon lately include the New York Times’ podcast Caliphate, which explores the world of ISIS, as well as Amy Burvall’s creativity vlogs as a part of the #LDvid30 project.

Edtech

Better visions of ourselves: Human futures, user data, & The Selfish Ledger: Ian O’Byrne reflects on the internal video produced by Google Project X focusing on speculative design the notion of a ledger that does not actually belong to the user, but managed by some grand AI. Although this was designed as a case of ‘what if’, it is a reminder of what could happen. It therefore provides a useful provocation, especially in light of Cambridge Analytica and GDPR. O’Byrne suggests that this is an opportunity to take ownership of our ledger, something in part captured by the #IndieWeb movement. Not sure what this means for our digitally proficient three year olds. Douglas Rushkoff makes the case for including less on the ledger, not more.

I think there is a reasoned response to technopanic. Perhaps a sense of techno agency is necessary. Now more than ever, faster than ever, technology is driving change. The future is an unknown, and that scares us. However, we can overcome these fears and utilize these new technologies to better equip ourselves and steer us in a positive direction.

How an Algorithmic World Can Be Undermined: danah boyd continues her investigation of algorithms and the way in which our data is being manipulated. She did this at re:publica 2018. This is very much a wicked problem with no clear answer. The Data & Society Research Institute have also published a primer on the topic. I wonder if it starts by being aware of the systemic nature of it all? Alternatively, Jamie Williams and Lena Gunn provide five questions to consider when using algorithms. Om Malik highlights the focus of algorithms focus on most over best. Jim Groom also presented at re:publica 2018 on Domain of One’s Own and Edupunk.

It’s not necessarily their [technologies] intentions but the structure and configuration that causes the pain

Truth in an age of truthiness: when bot-fueled PsyOps meet internet spam: Kris Shaffer continues his work in regards to bots, unpacking the way in which our attention is hijacked through attempts to influence and advertise. It is important to appreciate the mechanics behind these things for they are the same mechanics that those on social media engage with each and every day. One of the points that Shaffer (and Mike Caulfield) make is that whether something is true or not, continual viewing will make such ideas more familiar and strangely closer to the truth.

Harald D. Lasswell wrote that the function of propaganda is to reduce the material cost of power. On a social-media platform, that cost-reduction comes in many forms. By their very existence, the platforms already reduce both the labor and the capital required to access both information and an audience. Automated accounts further reduce the cost of power, for those who know how to game the algorithm and evade detection long enough to carry out a campaign.

Email Is Dangerous: Quinn Norton takes a dive into the mechanics of email. She continues to remind us how everything is broken, Norton gives a history of email and many of its inherent flaws. This comes on the back of the latest discovery of bugs associated with supposed encrypted email.

Email has changed since then, but not much. Most of what’s changed in the last 45 years is email clients—the software we use to access email. They’ve clumsily bolted on new functionality onto the old email, without fixing any of the underlying protocols to support that functionality.

Programming with Scratch – An educator guide: Anthony Speranza provides an introduction to Scratch. An often underrated application, Scratch provides an insight into some of the ways that the web works, particularly in regards to ‘blocks’. Sometimes it feels as if you are not really coding unless you are working with some form of language. The problem is that this is not how the world works. More often than not it is about building on the ideas (and snippets) of others. Look at WordPress’ move to Gutenberg. In addition to this, we interact with ‘blocks’ each and everyday in the applications and sites that we use. One only needs to use something like Mozilla’s X-Ray Goggles to start realising that inherent complexity within the web. For more insight into Scratch, listen to Gary Stager on the Modern Learners podcast.

Scratch is a graphical programming language and online community where users can program and share interactive media such as stories, games and animations. Whilst it is targeted at 8 to 16 year olds, anyone of any age can write a program in Scratch.

The platform patrons: How Facebook and Google became two of the biggest funders of journalism in the world: Mathew Ingram reports on the increasing influence of platforms on the news industry. Google has been really pushing into journalism lately, with the further investment of News Lab and the Digital News Initiative, as well as the ability to subscribe using your Google account. This in part seems to be in response to Facebook’s problems. It is interesting considering this alongside discussions of the history of news and the long association with advertising.

Both Google and Facebook may argue—and may even believe—that they simply want to help increase the supply of quality journalism in the world. But the fact remains that they are not just disinterested observers. They are multibillion-dollar entities that compete directly with media companies for the attention of users, and for the wallets of every advertising company that used to help support the business model of journalism. Their funding and assistance can’t be disentangled from their conflicted interests, no matter how much they wish it could.

Storytelling and Reflection

What We Talk About When We Talk About Digital Capabilities: In a keynote at the UCISA Digital Capabilities event at Warwick University, Donna Lanclos unpacks the effect of analytics and the problems of profiling when trying to identify improvements. A skills approach is an issue when decisions get made on your behalf based on the results of a preconceived checklist. Lanclos suggests that we need to go beyond the inherent judgments of contained within metaphors and deficit models, and instead start with context.

The history of Anthropology tells us that categorizing people is lesser than understanding them. Colonial practices were all about the describing and categorizing, and ultimately, controlling and exploiting. It was in service of empire, and anthropology facilitated that work. It shouldn’t any more, and it doesn’t have to now. You don’t need to compile a typology of students or staff. You need to engage with them.

Citizen of Apple, State of Lego: Julian Stodd explores the evolving idea of ‘citizenship’. Whereas it was defined by geography and culture in the past, Stodd wonders if in the future it will be subscription based. Rather than depending on the state and taxes to provide societies infrastructures, we now rely on the various multi-national platforms, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook and Google. This reminds me of the conversation that was had recently around being a citizen of the #IndieWeb. If states lose their sway, I wonder if this opens up other alternatives? This is something Aral Balkan touches upon. I wonder what this means for rituals or habits.

Imagine a future state, one of multiple citizenships, so i can be a Citizen of the UK, a Citizen of Apple, and a Citizen of Lego, not traversing physical borders to move from one to the other, but rather conceptual, or internalised ones. Each providing real utility, it’s own type of ‘space’, and each giving us it’s own component of culture. Perhaps in this model, ‘Culture’ becomes a meta entity that we each construct, through a combination of our geolocation within space, and our subscriptions online.

School is One Spoke in the Wheel of Learning & Why This is a Critical Insight for the Future of Education: Bernard Bull reflects on what people need to stay current in a job, shift to a similar job, develop skills that transfer to work environments, move into leadership within one’s field, or make a full career shift. To support this, he provides a series of questions to consider. I wonder where the second wave of MOOCs sits within all of this?

If we are looking at learning across the lifetime today, we need to think beyond the teacher/student and schooling constructs. Education is already larger than that. This is no different from recognizing that health and wellness is about so much more than a patient/doctor interaction. These professionals do and will continue to play a valuable role, but limiting many of our conversations about education to these formal contexts is inadequate for the challenges and opportunities of our age. In fact, it has always been inadequate. Formal education has a role to play today and in the future, but it is one of many spokes in the lifelong learning wheel.

The risks of treating ‘academic innovation’ as a discipline: Rolin Moe argues that we need to recognise the often negative history associated with ‘innovation’ in the way that we use it. If we don’t do this we risk the word being simply an emotive tool. This touches upon Audrey Watters message to respect history, rather than live in the ever present that so many try to perpetuate.

Negotiating the future we want with the history we have is vital in order to determine the best structure to support the development of an inventive network for creating research-backed, criticism-engaged and outside-the-box approaches to the future of education. The energy behind what we today call academic innovation needs to be put toward problematizing and unraveling the causes of the obstacles facing the practice of educating people of competence and character, rather than focusing on the promotion of near-future technologies and their effect on symptomatic issues.

12 tips for great speaking: Steve Wheeler provides some useful tips and reflections on the art of the keynote. They include use humour, minimal text, engage with your audience, don’t speak too quickly, repeat key points and only stick to three of them. In part, this reminds me of Presentation Zen and the idea of a minimalist slidedeck, while Emma Cottier also wrote an interesting post share a range of tips and tricks associated with Google Slides. Although not necessarily about ‘keynotes’, Andrew Denton recently shared some tips for a better conversation that I think relate to this conversation, including be respectful and empathise with the interviewee (or audience).

If you are lucky enough to be invited to address an audience of your peers at a conference, a lot will depend on what you say and the manner in which you say it. You want your speech to be memorable, inspiring and thought provoking. You’ll also need to be convincing if you want to put your arguments across effectively. So I’ll share some of the top tips I recommend for keynote speakers.

Burden of Proof: Malcolm Gladwell wonders how much ‘proof’ we need in order to do something about CTE, a neurodegenerative disease found in people who have had multiple head injuries. Gladwell’s focuses on Owen Thomas and his suicide in 2010. In regards to the question of breaking point, there was no reference of Aaron Hernandez, whose case involves murder and suicide. I wonder how long until this becomes a case in AFL?

Sometimes proof is just another word for letting people suffer.

Gonski review reveals another grand plan to overhaul education: but do we really need it?: Glenn Savage has written, recorded and been interviewed about the new Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools. He raises a number of questions, including whether the new report addresses the question of inequality, is ‘personalised teaching’ worth the money and investment, is the educational sector exhausted by continual reform agendas and do the recommendations really address what is happening in the classroom? In other spaces, both Andrea Stringer and Deborah Netolicky have highlighted the potential in providing more time for teachers to collaborate. Greg Miller argues that we need to wrestle with how to assess the capabilities, rather than continue to work where the next silver bullet for literacy and numeracy is. Peter Hutton shares concerns about testing the capabilities. Gabrielle Stroud sees it as the industrial model of accountability rebadged, where a teacher’s relationship with their students is trumped by a test. Netolicky also raises concern about the lack of trust for teachers. Darcy Moore describes the whole affair as a never-ending rebuilding of The Windmill. Ann Caro rues the missed opportunity associated with equitable funding of education in Australia with this clear change in direction.

We need to (once again) question whether the contemporary reform fever does any more than treat symptoms while deeper structural conditions continue to ensure, as the original Gonski report put it, unacceptable links between young people’s socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of achievement. We need to be careful not to stray too far from where the first Gonski report started out. That is: addressing inequalities in Australian schooling through re-distributive funding.

t’s time to be honest with parents about NAPLAN: your child’s report is misleading, here’s how: It was that time of year again, when the whole nation stops for NAPLAN. There has been a range of posts shared. One that stood out was from Nicole Mockler She summarises Margaret Wu’s work around the limitations to NAPLAN in regards to statistical testing. Moving forward, Mockler suggests that NAPLAN should become a sample based test (like PISA) and is better suited as a tool for system wide analysis. To me, there is a strange balance, for on the one hand many agree that NAPLAN is flawed, yet again and again we return to it as a source of ‘truth’.

At the national level, however, the story is different. What NAPLAN is good for, and indeed what it was originally designed for, is to provide a national snapshot of student ability, and conducting comparisons between different groups (for example, students with a language background other than English and students from English-speaking backgrounds) on a national level.
This is important data to have. It tells us where support and resources are needed in particular. But we could collect the data we need this by using a rigorous sampling method, where a smaller number of children are tested (a sample) rather than having every student in every school sit tests every few years. This a move that would be a lot more cost effective, both financially and in terms of other costs to our education system.

FOCUS ON … GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). Adopted on 14 April 2016, it became enforceable on 25 May 2018. Here then is a collection of posts exploring what it all means. Although not exhaustive, it provides a starting point:

• What is the GDPR Privacy Law and Why Should You Care?: Harry Guinness summarises the eight rules associated with GDPR and what they mean for those outside of the EU.
• LA Times among US-based news sites blocking EU users due to GDPR: Alex Hern on the threat that GDPR could ‘Balkinise’ the web, with a range of sites closing off access to EU visitors.
• Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed: Alex Hern reports on Noyb’s test of the new regulations. The case being tested is whether the processing of data for targeted advertising can be argued to be necessary for the fulfilment of a contract to provide services such as social networking or instant messaging.
• The Ultimate Guide to WordPress and GDPR Compliance – Everything You Need to Know – The team at WPBeginner provide a guide for making WordPress compliant, including plugins that store or process data like contact forms, analytics, email marketing, online store and membership sites.
• No one’s ready for GDPR: Sarah Jeong explains why nobody is actually ready. Part of the problem is how companies are set up, and part of it is that “personal information” is a wishy-washy category.
• Can we PLEASE talk about privacy, not GDPR, now?: Sebastian Gregor explains that GDPR is no deadline, it is a process. Now that it is here, lets engage in ever broadening debates on how to treat the personal data of human beings
• Privacy: David Shanske reflects on privacy, the IndieWeb and webmentions. He also added an extended response to a WordPress forum on GDPR.
• 13 things to know about the GDPR: M.J. Kelly breaks down the rights associated with GDPR with a focus on what this all means for Mozilla.
• Good enough, the EU’s data protection regulation and what CryptoKitties can tell us about the future of art:Angela Daly discusses what GDPR might mean for Australia with Antony Funnell on the Future Tense podcast.
• Doctor, I think I have GDPR fatigue:Jordan Erica Webber, Alex Hern and Dr Rachel Birch explore GDPR and its consequences for the health sector.
• GDPR and the marketer’s dilemma: Seth Godin argues that GDPR will create an actual market, where getting permission to send messages to a user requires that marketers make a compelling proposition.
• GDPR will pop the adtech bubble: Doc Searls discusses what he sees as the eminent demise of ‘adtech’ and what will be left afterwards.
• Comments on ClassDojo controversy: Ben Williamson addresses a number of questions leveled at Class Dojo, especially in light of the current concern around data. One of the points that he makes that really stuck out was the notion of ‘sensitive data’. Often this is defined by privacy, however as Williamson explains the collection of data over time actually has the potential to turn the seemingly arbitrary into sensitive data.
• Notes from Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation course: Doug Belshaw shares a series of reflections based on his participation in an online course designed to unpack GDPR.
• There Will be Blood – GDPR and EdTech: Eylan Ezekiel discusses GDPR, making the comparison between data and oil.
• I am a data factory (and so are you): Nicholas Carr reflects on the metaphors that we use and demonstrates some of the flaws, particularly when they are used against us inadvertently. Although not explicitly about GDPR, it has ramifications for the way we talk about it.

READ WRITE RESPOND #029

So that is May 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? Otherwise, for those concerned about privacy and sharing thier email address, archives can be found here.

Cover image via JustLego101.

My Month of November

At work I have been exploring different means of facilitation and knowledge transfer. There are some things in life that are easier to explain than others. I am finding that reporting packages and timetables are always obvious.

Another lesson learned are the dangers associated with leaving things in reach of children. Our youngest decided she wanted some of my freshly brewed coffee and up with burns to her foot and arm. Thankfully, not her face. This has lead to regular visits to the doctor to have her wounds assessed and rebandaged.

On the personal front, I dived into the IndieWeb to try and figure out why I was not getting comments on my site. Not exactly sure what I changed to fix things, but everything seems to be back to normal again. I was also lucky enough to meet up with Alan Levine twice. It is great connecting online and even better being able to connect in person.

Aaron Balancing by cogdogblog is licensed under CC0

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

• Building Solutions Beyond the Code – A reflection on going beyond coding when thinking solutions and the Digital Technologies curriculum.
• Learning Technologies – Often discussions around technologies and transformation focus on tools. Another question to consider is the way technologies entangled with learning.
• Building Digital Workflows – Technology is always adapting and evolving, here are a few of the recent changes to my digital workflows.
• Ongoing Reporting with GSuite – It can be easy to look at an application and provide one answer, the problem with this is that it does not cover all contexts. Here is a collection of ideas associated with GSuite and ongoing reporting and assessment.
• Automating the Summary of Data – My first iteration using Query and Sheets to automate a solution for turning a collection of data into a regular newsletter.
• Zen and the Art of Blog Maintenance. – This is a reflection on my recent challenges associated with maintaining a blog and an explanation of why I persist in doing it.

Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …

Learning and Teaching

How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war – Pankaj Mishra pushes back on the myth that World War I was largely a white European affair, instead suggesting that it was the moment when violent imperial legacies returned home. Along with Nafeez Ahmed’s reflection on Thanksgiving, these critiques remind us of the many forgotten voices during memorial days and national celebrations. Interestingly, TripleJ have decided to move the Hottest 100 Count from Australia Day, ‘a very apprehensive day’ for the Indigenous people of Australia. This is all a part of what Quinn Norton describes as ‘speaking truth’ against racism.

Today, as racism and xenophobia return to the centre of western politics, it is time to remember that the background to the first world war was decades of racist imperialism whose consequences still endure. It is something that is not remembered much, if at all, on Remembrance Day.

Challenge Creator & the Desmos Classroom – Dan Meyer introduces a new feature of his Desmos platform designed to support Mathematics students with problem solving. Students can now submit their own challenges for others to complete. This is also something that Conrad Wolfram touches on in his interview with Bruce Dixon, while Gary Stager suggests caring less about compliance and focusing more on authenticity.

Previously in our activities, students would only complete challenges we created and answer questions we asked. With Challenge Creator, they create challenges for each other and ask each other questions.

Ice Apocalypse – Eric Holthaus explains how rapid collapse of Antarctic glaciers could flood coastal cities by the end of this century. Although there is nothing guarenteed, the challenge is what we are doing about such changes. Jonathan Franzen reflects on the endless political promises that have failed to reach fruition.

Three feet of sea-level rise would be bad, leading to more frequent flooding of U.S. cities such as New Orleans, Houston, New York, and Miami. Pacific Island nations, like the Marshall Islands, would lose most of their territory. Unfortunately, it now seems like three feet is possible only under the rosiest of scenarios.

At six feet, though, around 12 million people in the United States would be displaced, and the world’s most vulnerable megacities, like Shanghai, Mumbai, and Ho Chi Minh City, could be wiped off the map.

At 11 feet, land currently inhabited by hundreds of millions of people worldwide would wind up underwater. South Florida would be largely uninhabitable; floods on the scale of Hurricane Sandy would strike twice a month in New York and New Jersey, as the tug of the moon alone would be enough to send tidewaters into homes and buildings.

A Few Questions to Re-Discover your Essentials – Pernille Ripp reflects on what matters in the classroom. She provides a number of prompts to help reassess and realign our focus. In a similar post, Kath Murdoch shares ten practices for inquiry teachers.

To help you re-discover or discover your essential, you can ask yourself:

• When you set up your classroom, how did you envision your classroom would be?
• What type of learning experiences did you want students to have?
• What is the one thing you want to ensure students experience on a regular basis?
• What is the one area of practice that will make the biggest difference to all of your students?
• What are you spending the most time on right now?
• What do you need to stop doing to give your students more time for something else?
• What do you need to start doing more of?

And finally; are you doing what you said you would

Edtech

Learning Machines by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

Learning Machines – Ben Williamson takes a dive into machine learning. He breaks his discussion down into three key areas: algorithms, hypernudges and personalised learning. Associated with this, Williamson also wrote about wearable brainwave training. Approaching this from the perspective of automating education, Naomi Barnes provides her own thoughts and reflections.

The machine behaviourism of autodidactic algorithm systems, public hypernudge pedagogies and personalized learning have become three of the most significant educational developments of recent years. All are challenging to educational research in related ways.

10 Fascinating Things We Learned When We Asked The World ‘How Connected Are You?’ – Jen Caltrider provides a summary of the results relating to a recent Mozilla survey investigating how connected people are. It provides a useful point of reflection, as well the opportunity to go further using the raw survey data.

Nearly 190,000 people around the world responded. People from the tiny islands of Tuvalu to the huge landmass of China and everywhere in between. (Mozilla released the survey in six languages: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese.) What we learned is fascinating. Like: People in India are more likely to own a smart appliance, whereas people in Argentina are more likely to own a smart TV. And: People everywhere are worried that a more connected future will jeopardize their privacy.

Bingeworthy – Dave Winer has created another application. This time a means of sharing ratings associated with television series worth watching. I find it fascinating as much for watching the growth of the site on Winer’s blog. For more on Winer , the Internet History podcast featured an extensive interview reflecting on the various parts that he has played in regards to the web.

Bingeworthy is a website where you can rate programs on their binge-worthyness. We rank the programs based on what people think of them, and if there’s enough participation, we will also recommend them, based on your and other peoples’ ratings.

No, Facebook isn’t spying on you. At least not with the microphone – Alex Hern looks into the allogations that Facebook is forever watching and listening. He says that this is not necessarily true and instead shines a light on the store of knowledge that Facebook has, as is demonstrated by the recommendations for ‘people you may know’. Kashmir unpacks this in his investigation of Facebook’s shadow profiles, the information that is garnered about you inadvertently from other users. These platforms must be scraping more than our contacts though to work out our location, even when we try to keep it from them.

For a real picture of the extent of Facebook’s knowledge, the best place to turn is the section where it applies its vast banks of data in service of its own aims: the “people you may know” suggestions. That section has outed sex workers, psychiatrists and family secrets, all using as much data as possible to find every single connection in your life and show you that they’re on Facebook. People you may know is also subject to its own, lesser, conspiracy theory: many who have been connected with people they would rather remain invisible to blame location tracking, a feature the company swears it doesn’t use for this purpose. Then there’s the possibility that Facebook shows you people who have been searching for you.

Keeping My Thoughts Out Of Peoples Timeline And In My Domain – Kin Lane discusses being more mindful about social media. Instead of endlessly feeding the stream, Lane has taken to developing his ideas offline before sharing them with the world. In there own way, Migual Guhlin and Kathleen Morris talk about their own blogging journeys.

I’m learning to write down my thoughts. Let them simmer, and mature. I’m learning to stay out of people’s timeline, and publish all of my thoughts to my blog. Then I will share to my timeline.

A Case made for Static HTML over WordPress akin to Mashing Potatoes with a 1998 Ford F-150 – Alan Levine provides a response to the critiques often made of WordPress, such as speed, bloat and security. In an another post, WPBeginners document the changes to the user interface of WordPress. It is so important to recognise that platforms and applications evolve over time. This breaks the marasma of the ‘eternal present’ that is often perpetuated with technology.

There’s a lot to be said for simple static sites. I’m doing more and more of them, and there are some really slick things one can do. I will do that as a first approach. Going without the overhead of database and server setup is key. But it hardly makes for a valid comparison for a static site of fixed pages to compare it to WordPress and all the things it can do and manage. If you are going to mash potatoes, go for the masher, not the pickup truck.

Storytelling and Reflection

Bias Thwarts Innovation by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

Bias Thwarts Innovation – Harold Jarsche explains why gender equity is so important when fostering a culture of innovation as it provides more dots to connect. This is a clarification of an initial post Jarsche wrote about our networked future. I have touched on the importance of gender equity before. Julian Stodd also wrote a useful post that breaks innovation down into six ‘thoughts’.

Innovation requires diversity. Innovation is not so much about having ideas as it is about making connections. You cannot connect the dots if you are only paying attention to half of them. Innovation is a network activity and creating structural holes through gender bias only weakens the network. Innovation is not brilliant flashes of individual insight but collective learning through social networks. Leadership is helping the network make better decisions, so managers should help to weave more diverse networks.

Reframing the ‘Progressive’ vs. ‘Traditionalist’ Debate in Education – Doug Belshaw discusses a model developed by Michael Stephen Schiro for representing perspectives on education. It involves two axis: knowledge and reality. This then provides four quadrants: Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstructivist. Along with Richard Olsen’s post on learning and Gert Biesta’s book on the purpose of education, these pieces provide a useful starting point for exploring pedagogical beliefs.

The four curriculum ideologies identified by Schiro are: Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstructivist. He sees defining these as a way of answering the following questions:

• What do educators conceive their professional aims to be?
• For what kind of clients or ideals do educators believe they work?
• Where do educators’ vested interests lie?
• Do educators see themselves as responsible to a client whose vested interests are other than their own?

47% of jobs will be automated… oh yeah…10 reasons why they won’t…. – Donald Clark takes a second look at the coming threat of automation. After highlighting some of the errors in the original report where the commonly shared statistic is taken from, Clark unpacks ten flaws. Approaching the problem for the point of evidence, Benjamin Doxtdator collates a number of resources on the topic. For me this touches on an important point which David Culberhouse points out, that the future is far from certain.

AI is an ‘idiot savant’, very smart on specific tasks but very stupid and prone to massive error when it goes beyond its narrow domain.

Learning in the time of AI – Mark Scott provides a transcript to his speech for the Education for a Changing World Symposium, an event designed to explore the future of education. This systems thinking reminds me of St. Paul’s work in developing an education worth having. In regards to the symposium, Bianca Hewes’ debriefed on Day 1 and Day 2, while the discussion papers can be found here.

I often feel our best are not waiting for education systems or curriculum authorities to tell them what do. And they know a back-to-basics approach to education makes as little sense as Elon Musk basing his Tesla blueprints on the Model T Ford. We learn from all that has gone before but know we will need different thinking, new approaches, bold innovation and agile design to make the changes we need to find solutions.

Seeking high performance? Frame your day with clarity – Steve Brophy discusses approaching everyday with intention and presence. To support this, he provides a series of questions to frame each day. Talking about a similar topic, Ian O’Byrne discusses focusing on the things that you control in order to expand your circle of influence.

four areas to frame every day:

1. Self – How do you want to describe your ideal self?
2. Skills – What skills do you want to develop and demonstrate?
3. Social – How do you want to behave socially?
4. Service – What service do you want to provide?

In other words, how I do want to act, grow, interact and give every day?

FOCUS ON … Big Data

Math Destruction by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

I was really keen to be a part of Bryan Alexander’s latest book club looking at Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction. Sadly I failed on two fronts. Firstly, I got behind with my reading and secondly, I had no idea how to respond the provocations that Alexander provided. So here are a collection of some of my thoughts associated with ‘big data’ in all its guises:

• ‘Measuring What Doesn’t Matter’ in Flip the System – Dick Van Der Wateren and Audrey Amrein-Beardsley explain some of the ways that value-added modelling is flawed and provide some alternatives to go in its place.

• What National Testing Data can Tell Us: In Margaret Wu’s chapter in National Testing in Schools: An Australian Assessment, she unpacks the mechanics associated with the NAPLAN test to show possibilities and limitations.

• Understanding The Limitations Of NAPLAN – Richard Olsen breaks down the data to highlight the unreliability associated with NAPLAN. He also provides a tool to visualise the data beyond the cold hard scores.

• The Global Education Race – Sam Sellar, Greg Thompson and David Rutkowski call for a critical engagement with testing that aims to help improve the quality of data generated about education systems and support the use of data in valid ways that may improve educational outcomes for all students.

• Counting What Counts – This collection of essays offers many different means of measuring attributes, such as diversity, personality traits, motivation, creativity, entrepreneurship, global competences and social networks, with each critiqued in regards to their strengths and weaknesses as to what they offer.

• Team Human – One approach to dealing with ‘weapons of math destruction’ is to develop alternatives. This is an important part of Rushkoff’s work.

• The End of Average: Todd Rose examines the history associated with averages and puts forward an alternative.

• Divided by Design: Race, Neighborhoods, Wealth and Schools – A conversation with Richard Rothstein on the Have You Heard podcast.

• Teach Like They’re Data – Benjamin Doxtdater looks beyond what the hype around personalisation feed by big data and challenges us to reclaim platforms as something we offer to people so we can better hear their voices, instead of something we can purchase to feed students into.

• On the Educational Numerati & Picking the Wrong Measures in Education – Bernard Bull reflects on some of the problems with big data in education.

• The Radicalization of Utopian Dreams – danah boyd encourages people to reflect on how solutions maybe corrupted and abused, rather than just focusing on the ideals.

• The Importance of Student Privacy in Big Data – Jade Davis talks about the need for frugal innovation so as to do due dilligence and respect student data.

• Critical Questions for Big Data in Education – Ben Williamson collates a number of questions associated with big data. Williamson also has published a book on the topic, Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice.

• Quantum states of Society – Eylan Ezekiel talks about his fears associated with big data and alienating difference.
• Questions for Data: Some more questions to consider when exploring data.

READ WRITE RESPOND #023

So that is November for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.

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Cover image via JustLego101.