Libraries are still important
June 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
A passionate defence of libraries by Patrick Ness. Read it in full!
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Archive for the ‘uncategorized’ Category
Using BuddyPress in education
June 17th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
This is a useful introduction to the use of BuddyPress in education, written by Mathew Gold, the founding Director of the Cuny Academic Commons.
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University education – just for the rich?
June 7th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
I have often been accused of being alarmist in claiming that the UK government is attempting to priovatise the education system.
The latest move to set up a private humanities univeristy in London charging £18000 a year shows quite clearly the path policy makers are pursuing. The present policy caps fees at £9000 a year and even with loans this will be an insuperable barrier to many potentail students from pooer families. But I suspect the annoucnement of the private university was with the full knowledge of the governement who see it as another step to saying the univeristies can charge what they like and apply for a subsidy from public expenditure.
Not only will this result in a two tier system but will ultimaltely result in a university system only open to the rich.
It does seem somewhat of a cheek that the curriculum has been plagiarised from a publicly funded body.
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Deconstructing a tweet
June 4th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
I am fascinated by this blog post by Ismael Perfia Lopez. Isamel deconstructs Brian Lamb’s tweet saying “Decoding it definitely requires much more than what the usual definition of digital literacy implies, but a complex set of skills or competences as the one described above:”
He includes in these skills and competences technological literacy, Informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness concluding: “Now, those are 126 characters charged with meaning. If a single simple tweet requires so much digital competence, what is needed for living your daily live at full throttle? What for the exercise of democracy and citizen participation? What for health? What for education? What for love and friendship?”.
Ismael puts forward a seductive argument though I wonder if it is just that the original tweet is clever but too obscure.
He includes in these skills and competences technological literacy, Informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness concluding: “Now, those are 126 characters charged with meaning. If a single simple tweet requires so much digital competence, what is needed for living your daily live at full throttle? What for the exercise of democracy and citizen participation? What for health? What for education? What for love and friendship?”.
Ismael puts forward a seductive argument though I wonder if it is just that the original tweet is clever but too obscure.
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Mobile phones and learning
May 31st, 2011 by Graham Attwell
A good blog post from FurtureLab, providing practical examples of how mobile phones can be used for learning.
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Problem Based Learning and microblogging
May 27th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
This is a great blog post, focusing not on the technological wonders of edmodo, but providing practical help in how to pedagogically develop Problem Based Learning using the microblogging tool.
Bianca put forward five reasons why PBL plus edmodo is awesome:
1. PBL is about collaboration
2. PBL is about formative and summative assessment
3. PBL is about creating products and conducting investigations as a team
4. PBL is about real-world audiences
5. PBL is about planning for success and reflecting on learning
Bianca put forward five reasons why PBL plus edmodo is awesome:
1. PBL is about collaboration
2. PBL is about formative and summative assessment
3. PBL is about creating products and conducting investigations as a team
4. PBL is about real-world audiences
5. PBL is about planning for success and reflecting on learning
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How Open Data, data literacy and Linked Data will revolutionise higher education
May 25th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
This paper is an excellent introduction to the potentially transformation role of Open and Linked Data in education and research. Derek McAuley, Hanif Rahemtulla, James Goulding and Catherine Souch point to the importance of data literacy – defined as “the ability to identify, retrieve, evaluate and use information to both ask and answer meaningful questions.
They quote Meltzoff et al.who reported that “insights from many different fields are converging to create a new science of learning that may transform education practice.”
Linked data, they believe, will be central to such a transformation.
However they point to many challenges that have to be overcome citing Bechhofer who argues that we must bring our attention to bear on publishing requirements such as data provenance, quality and attribution.
They quote Meltzoff et al.who reported that “insights from many different fields are converging to create a new science of learning that may transform education practice.”
Linked data, they believe, will be central to such a transformation.
However they point to many challenges that have to be overcome citing Bechhofer who argues that we must bring our attention to bear on publishing requirements such as data provenance, quality and attribution.
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Social and informal learning in the workplace
May 24th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
Useful article by jane Hart looking at the recent NIACE paper on workplace learning and summarising her won and her colleagues in the Internet Times Alliance’s work on informal and social learning in the workplace
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The Post-PC era and informal learning
May 18th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
This report looks to the future of computers. I am particularly interested in the suggested movement from the formal to informal. This is going to have considerable significance for learning…..
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Class the major detrminant of career apsirations
May 18th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
Yet another report confirming that social class is the major determinant for young people in career aspirations.
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Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
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