Great graphics from Ken Robinson on the changing face of education
Loved this video – especially the stop motion animation. Content remarkably similar to a few Pontydysgu presentations. Ah well! Great minds ….
Here at Pontydysgu HQ, we cannot pretend to be that sorry over the demise of News of the World newspaper. But I can’t help thinking the issues run wider than corrupt journalists from one newpaper group hacking into phone and email accounts. This video shows the issues about concentration of media ownership. But what kind of media do we want for the future.? How (if at all) should the media be regulated? And by whom and in whose interests? This debate is just starting.
I spent an evening this week diiscussing semantic and computational search engines with my friend Jenny Hughes. Jenny is convinced of the potential of computational search engines and was showing me the outcomes of searches using the Wolfram Alpha search engine.
Conrad Wolfram has recently did a TED talk where he suggests that we consider changing the math teaching model, to teach kids to conceptualize problems and use computerized tools to apply solutions, as opposed to the present model of spending inordinate amounts of time teaching how to perform calculations “by hand”. He methodically addresses many misperceived ideas behind today’s approach to math education.
I love this fun video from Alec Couros. It left me smiling.
Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.
I love this video on Dark Matter by PHD Comics. I learned more about physics watching this than I did in six years of school study. Simply brilliant. Shame though, having spent so much time and trouble assembling the drawings, that there is so much background noise on the soundtrack.
Martin Weller has created a great wiki page of user generated content for the Open University LearnAbout Fair. Wewill be featuring some of the videos in coming weeks. This video was produced by Alan Levine, who was collecting together ‘Amazing Stories of Openness’, which, says Marting, demonstrated how being open had led to benefits in people’s working lives. You can see the responses here: Amazing stories of openness.
This is the first in a new weekly series ‘Talking about Data’. As the name implies, each week I shall be publishing data related to education and learning and talking about it. And I hope you will join in the discussions.
This weeks ‘Talking about Data’ focuses on the provision of Careers Information, Advance and Guidance in England. The data source is Wave Six of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. The main objectives of the study are:
This video reports on research by the Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing in Australia which has shown young people are much better prepared to deal with online risks than adults presume and that young people themselves are the most valuable resource for adults concerned about the online safety of their children. The research also reveals significant benefits to young people through social networking, which helps them to build relationships with the world around them and increases their sense of community and belonging.
I particularly like the research approach. “In the Living Lab we inverted the usual power relationships that underpin cybersafety education. Instead of charging adults with the responsibility of educating young people about cybersafety, we put young people in charge” says Dr Amanda Third.
Fabulous short (2 minute) film by Sophie Sherman made on a mobile film. (Why has this only had 791 views – it deserves a much wider audience) . Via Helen Keegan in her presentation from the Bremen Mobile Learning Conference.
I love this video by Howard Rheingold. Not only for the content which is fascinating. But also becuase of the use of video. I am very disappointed in the big push for recording lectures. Lectures have their place in teaching and learning, but the format does not lend itself well to video. This is a ‘made for video’ project by Howard – more work but much more effective. And it doesn’t need a high-tech studio set up.
Howard says: “I’ve become convinced that understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy. This is the first in a series of short videos about how the structure and dynamics of networks influences political freedom, economic wealth creation, and participation in the creation of culture. The first video introduces the importance of understanding networks and explains how the underlying technical architecture of the Internet specifically supports the freedom of network users to innovate.”
I am looking forward to the next videos in the series.
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.
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.