Join us for a day of disruptive dialogue about Artificial Intelligence and 21st Century Education in Ottawa, an annual international symposium hosted by the University of Ottawa in collaboration with Carleton University, St. Paul University, Algonquin College, La Cité, and the Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pedagogique (CFORP).
Category: Education
🔖 Approaching E-Learning 3.0 | Stephen Downes
The course is titled 'E-Learning 3.0' and could be subtitled 'Distributed Learning Technology'. This is a course about the next generation of learning technology. It's a broad and challenging domain that I've broken down into the following topics: data, cloud, graph, community, identity, resources, recognition, experience, agency.
I'm designing the course so that each week is one of these self-contained topics. This topic can then be approached from different directions, at different levels. The content is a starting point. I will provide a series of reflections. But I will be learning about each of these topics along with everyone else.
❤️ Downes tweet: The panel I’m on at #E21Sym will be live streamed any minute now
The panel I'm on at #E21Sym will be live streamed any minute now #el30 (running 5 or so minutes late) - https://t.co/44idQAaAdy
— Downes (@Downes) October 22, 2018
❤️ Downes tweet: I’m at “Education in the 21st Century: A Symposium on Artificial Intelligence” today at the University of Ottawa.
I'm at "Education in the 21st Century: A Symposium on Artificial Intelligence" today at the University of Ottawa. #E21SYM #el30 Live Stream: https://t.co/09K0QKvnM7
— Downes (@Downes) October 22, 2018
👓 Michael Nielsen On Volitional Philanthropy | Facebook
T. E. Lawrence, the English soldier, diplomat and writer, possessed what one of his biographers called a capacity for enablement: he enabled others to make use of abilities they had always possessed but, until their acquaintance with him, had failed to realize. People would come into contact with Lawrence, sometimes for just a few minutes, and their lives would change, often dramatically, as they activated talents they did not know they had.
Most of us have had similar experiences. A wise friend or acquaintance will look deeply into us, and see some latent aspiration, perhaps more clearly than we do ourselves. And they will see that we are capable of taking action to achieve that aspiration, and hold up a mirror showing us that capability in crystalline form. The usual self-doubts are silenced, and we realize with conviction: “yes, I can do this”.
This is an instance of volitional philanthropy: helping expand the range of ways people can act on the world.
I am fascinated by institutions which scale up this act of volitional philanthropy.
Y Combinator is known as a startup incubator. When friends began participating in early batches, I noticed they often came back changed. Even if their company failed, they were more themselves, more confident, more capable of acting on the world. This was a gift of the program to participants [1]. And so I think of Y Combinator as volitional philanthropists.
For a year I worked as a Research Fellow at the Recurse Center. It's a three-month long “writer's retreat for programmers”. It's unstructured: participants are not told what to do. Rather, they must pick projects for themselves, and structure their own path. This is challenging. But the floundering around and difficulty in picking a path is essential for growing one's sense of choice, and of responsibility for choice. And so creating that space is, again, a form of volitional philanthropy.
There are institutions which think they're in the volitional philanthropy game, but which are not. Many educators believe they are. In non-compulsory education that's often true. But compulsory education is built around fundamental denials of volition: the student is denied choice about where they are, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. With these choices denied, compulsory education shrinks and constrains a student's sense of volition, no matter how progressive it may appear in other ways.
There is something paradoxical in the notion of helping someone develop their volition. By its nature, volition is not something which can be given; it must be taken. Nor do I think “rah-rah” encouragement helps much, since it does nothing to permanently expand the recipient's sense of self. Rather, I suspect the key lies in a kind of listening-for-enablement, as a way of helping people discover what they perhaps do not already know is in themselves. And then explaining honestly and realistically (and with an understanding that one may be in error) what it is one sees. It is interesting to ask both how to develop that ability in ourselves, and in institutions which can scale it up.
[1] It is a median effect. I know people who start companies who become first consumed and then eventually diminished by the role. But most people I've known have been enlarged.
Note, by the way, that I work at Y Combinator Research, which perhaps colours my impression. On the other hand, I've used YC as an example of volitional philanthropy since (I think) 2010, years before I started working for YCR.
🔖 academicpages is a ready-to-fork GitHub Pages template for academic personal websites
This is the front page of a website that is powered by the academicpages template and hosted on GitHub pages. GitHub pages is a free service in which websites are built and hosted from code and data stored in a GitHub repository, automatically updating when a new commit is made to the respository. This template was forked from the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll Themecreated by Michael Rose, and then extended to support the kinds of content that academics have: publications, talks, teaching, a portfolio, blog posts, and a dynamically-generated CV. You can fork this repository right now, modify the configuration and markdown files, add your own PDFs and other content, and have your own site for free, with no ads! An older version of this template powers my own personal website at stuartgeiger.com, which uses this Github repository.
❤️ staeiou tweet: GitHub pages template supporting CV-style content for academics
Academics who need a personal website, check out my https://t.co/onrqJPt3Nq project, a ready-to-fork GitHub pages template supporting CV-style content. Difficulty is more than using Wordpress but lower than building your own site from scratch. Over 2,500 people have tried it out!
— Stuart Geiger (@staeiou) October 17, 2018
👓 The Harvard Trial Doesn’t Matter | The Atlantic
The lawyers challenging the university are testing out their arguments to see which ones stick ahead of a potential appeal to the Supreme Court.
👓 School Closings and “Draconian” Budget Cuts Dominate Pasadena School Board Meeting | Pasadena Now
Hundreds of angry and saddened students, staff, parents, and teachers packed the Pasadena Unified School District Board chambers, overflow meeting rooms and hallways Thursday, while the award-winning Wilson Middle School Lion Drum Corps performed outside in formation in the parking lot. The PUSD Board had convened a special meeting Thursday to discuss the District’s Financial Stabilization Plan and proposed budget reductions for the upcoming three school years.
👓 City Takes Close Look at Chandler School’s Plans to Build New 3-Story Classroom, Laboratory | Pasadena Now
Pasadena’s Historic Preservation Commission will conduct a Special Meeting Tuesday to review the proposed project site for a new addition to Chandler School’s campus at 1005 Armada Drive in Pasadena – a new three-story building that will house classrooms and the school’s innovation laboratory.
👓 Young African American Male Conference | Black News | Pasadena Journal
The Young African American Male Conference is here again. The Conference is designed to expose young Black men to the various professions and serves as a one day mentoring event. The conference began in 2003 and is a product of the Metropolitan Community Action Services Corporation. It is generally held at Pasadena City College. This year will be held on October 20, 2018.
👓 Pasadena Busing Controversy, 9/14/70 | ColoradoBoulevard.net
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the 1970s and 1980s, under federal court supervision, many school districts implemented mandatory busing plans within their district.
Reply to Pasadena Busing Controversy: Sept. 14, 1970 by Roxanne Elhachem
I’m curious what the numbers for the city’s public and private schools are? Perhaps a follow up with some graphs, charts, and further analysis would be worthwhile? I’m definitely curious.
In the meanwhile, the topic reminded me of this relatively recent segment of Jon Oliver’s show which focused on school segregation and which also featured Ronald Reagan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8yiYCHMAlM