Group items tagged

Author states "this has been a long, rambling article....My basic thesis is that IoT technology can be a tool for behaviour change for social and environmental benefit, through involving people in making systems which address problems that are meaningful for them, and which improve understanding of the wider systems they're engaging with. "We're heading into a world of increasingly complex engineered systems in everyday life... "Yet there is a disconnect between the potential quality of life benefits for society, and people's understanding of these - often invisible - systems around us." Worth a read to inspire several thoughts and arguments.

" Design is how it works and sketching in code is the only natural way to prototype a dynamic system. Building even the simplest of data visualizations means hours of work in languages like R, Julia or Python. When your content is data, poking around in Photoshop simply makes no sense. In some way, it's the direct opposite of design: prettifying without context. One important aspect of modern design products is their increasing demand for temporal logic, where a linear narrative is replaced by a set of complex states."

The accumulation of multiple, seemingly redundant, bacterial quorum-sensing systems is promoted by facultative cheating behavior; the strain with multiple systems cheats its single quorum-sensing system ancestor as a minority but returns to cooperation when in the majority.

""I think this next generation of systems is really going to be about data and analytics and relationship management," LeBlanc said. "The whole shift in conversation, it seems to me, is about student-centeredness."" How to reconcile those two statements?

"active learning feed" "active learning" "Student responses system" "polling" "large classes" "edtech" "instructional technology"

"In this "nothing left to take away" version, the LMS becomes the smooth, brown, plastic oval of Mr. Potato Head. All of the traditional "features" of the LMS are independent, swappable components that plug in via LTI - the way Mr. Potato Head's happy eyes are swappable for his angry eyes. Or, if you prefer a more technical analogy, the LMS becomes an operating system like iOS (but hopefully WAY more open) and all previous system features become apps that you can install and uninstall as you will."

"My research focuses on the development of AI tools to augment user creativity, especially in casual or playful audiences. I specialize in designing and implementing systems that assist users in quickly moving through the possibility space of a creative problem, a genre I call Casual Creators. These systems which have included a design tool for 3D printable necklaces, music visualizations animations, laser-cut robots, and gameplay for a game to crowdsource network security."

Over the last decade, neuroscientists distinguished two systems of attention and associated thought. One is directed outward, as when you scroll through your email or play Candy Crush. The other is directed inward, as when you daydream, plan what you'll do tomorrow, or reflect on the past. Clearly, most digital activities call for outwardly directed attention. These two modes of attention work like a toggle switch; when one is on, the other is off. In fact, when attention is outwardly directed, the inwardly directed attention system is somewhat suppressed. Given the amount of time people spend with digital devices, that sounds ominous. Will we actually lose our ability to daydream? Let's hope not.

"We build software that shapes our cities. More specifically, (1) we create micro-institutions in physical space, (2) we design social processes that allow others to replicate and evolve those micro-institutions, and (3) we write software that enables those social processes. We use this process to create more robust, decentralized, human-scale systems in our cities. We are particularly focused on reinventing our current systems for learning, agriculture, and transportation."

Worth tracking...

I wish I could automate some things like this in rampages . . . like if you do a bare URL that doesn't link . . . I'd like to auto comment with some directions on how to make a link. Seems doable in terms of programming.

"The Science through Technology Enhanced Play project (STEP) engages 6-8 year old students in a series of playful inquiry activities situated within a Augmented Reality environment. Tested at two schools and across two very different science topics-states of matter and the complex system of honey bee pollination-we have pioneered a new way for young students to engage in scientific inquiry and modeling in developmentally appropriate ways that breaks the mold of one-student-one computer. The big idea of STEP is to engage young children in an activity they are experts at, socio-dramatic play, in such a way that play becomes a form of scientific modeling and collective inquiry."

"Yet on the level of thinking of our Silicon Valley overlords, aspects of my cognitive abilities that are absolutely central to my educational success are taken to have literally no value at all. In educational research, perhaps the greatest danger lies in thinking "that which I cannot measure is not real." The disruption fetishists have amplified this danger, now evincing the attitude "teaching that cannot be said to lead to the immediate acquisition of rote, mechanical skills has no value." But absolutely every aspect of my educational journey - as a student, as a teacher, and as a researcher - demonstrates the folly of this approach to learning." True I think but echoed to greater and lesser extend by the educational system which helped create those who run Silicon Valley. h/t Dan Meyer

"The right LMS is the one that most closely aligns with empowering students to create and collaborate.  This is contrary to most learning MANAGEMENT systems.  Managing learning is the last thing that is really needed.  Tasks and abilities are limited so that the process can be managed.  Learning is a messy process. Managing learning frustrates the learner and the instructor. "

"Many view Blackboard as the embodiment of everything wrong with education technology: it's old-fashioned, it's hard to use, and once a school system has bought into it, it's even harder to get rid of."

Maybe there's hope?????? "Which is why, since joining the company in 2012, Bhatt has vowed to refocus Blackboard's products to serve the students who use them and not just the IT administrators who buy them. Now he's ready to show the world just how he plans to do that. Later today, Bhatt will take the stage at the company's annual BbWorld Conference, where he will announce the launch of the company's redesigned core products and the introduction of new ones, all of which aim to make Blackboard a service that its 100 million existing users actually want to use."

Assessment, or testing, was still administered, but now it was used as an integral part of the learning process. As a result, when he eventually took his spot on Toyota's production line, Spear was able to assemble his part the first time and every time. In other words, assessment was used both for and of learning. Toyota doesn't have to treat formative and summative assessments as two different things-just as we don't have to do so in education when we move to a truly competency-based system.

"If we've let the fickleness of history and public policy describe the bizarre set of standards (looking at you, Math) and therefore the metrics that we'll measure all students against, you'll end up with a system designed for those metrics. Instead, if you define your own measures, and actually study longitudinally their validity, we'll end up in a place where perhaps we'll value the emotional-intelligence development of a teenager above their ability to comply with outdated curricula. Maybe we'll come to value the nuance of entrepreneurial thought opposed to attempting to cram a line of reasoning they stole wholesale from Reddit into five paragraphs 20 minutes before the paper is due. "

"The best performing teacher in the whole system was a woman named Zenaida Tan. Up until that report, she was completely unheralded. The skills she possessed were invisible. Meanwhile, less important traits were measured on her evaluations (three times she was late to pick up students from recess). In part, Lemov is talking about the skill of herding cats. The master of cat herding senses when attention is about to wander, knows how fast to move a diverse group, senses the rhythm between lecturing and class participation, varies the emotional tone. This is a performance skill that surely is relevant beyond education. This raises an important point. As the economy changes, the skills required to thrive in it change, too, and it takes a while before these new skills are defined and acknowledged. For example, in today's loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value. Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friendships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks. People with social courage are extroverted in issuing invitations but introverted in conversation - willing to listen 70 percent of the time"