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TLDR 64

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 64

Published: 2016-09-22 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to issue 64 of the TL;DR Newsletter. In TL;DR I'm synthesizing what I read and learned this week in literacy, technology, and education. If this is your first time here...សូមស្វាគមន៍

This week we consider whether it is your duty to be digitally ready.

You can review archives of the newsletter. Alternatively you can also check out TL;DR on Medium.

This week I worked on the following:

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Another great video from The School of Life YouTube Channel.

From 5 or 6 years of age, we start indoctrinating children with our conceptions about what they're supposed to do with their lives, and the sense of "duty." In this, we create this dichotomy between pleasure and pain, and how this intersects with work.

No wonder we cannot think about what we actually want to do with our lives because we spend so much time thinking about "duty" and what we're "supposed" to do.

📚 Read

Important new research from the Pew Research Center. This latest report focuses on digital literacy and learning in the U. S. In the report they frame most of their thinking by operationalizing a new term, "digital readiness". This is defined as digital skills, trust, and use.

The findings are very interesting, and a bit disconcerting. They identify two major sections, with five groups across the population. The "relatively hesitant" group is comprised of "the unprepared", the "traditional learner: and "the reluctant." The "relatively more prepared" group is comprised of the "cautious clickers" and then the "digitally ready."

What is interesting is that individuals that identify as more "digitally ready" tend to use and build these skills for personal learning in online spaces. Furthermore, greater digital readiness translates to higher level of use of technology in learning.

Put simply, if we believe we're digitally ready, we're more likely to use and expand on our digital readiness and use these tools and spaces for learning. If we don't believe that we're digitally ready...

There are a few reports that I wait each year to review as I make sense of what is happening in literacy, technology, and education. Anything from Pew obviously pops up on my radar. The internet trends report from Mary Meeker is another. Finally, the yearly Horizon report is a telling sign of where we've been...and where we're (possibly) headed.

The 2016 K-12 edition (PDF here) surveys a global population to identify six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments.

What is most exciting to me is that this latest report started to make the shift from students as consumers, to students as creators of content. I've been trying to make the case that educators and students need to move from creation of online content, to curation, to finally construction/creation of content. I'm hoping that this trend does pick up speed as kids code, make, and remix as they learn.

If you're interested...please use Hypothes.is with me to annotate and mark up the report here.

Great post from Kevin Hodgson looking at the changes we'd like see in our educational system...and perhaps it's been there all along in the form of YouTube. Kevin's account begins by chronicling recent events in which he listens to George Couros talk about how discussed with a student their ability to learn how to build a car from YouTube. This extends to a series of moments in which Kevin realizes that all along he (and his students) have been learning from YouTube all along.

As I shared this link it was interesting to see the responses from colleagues and friends as we all documented things that we've learned over the years all thanks to YouTube.

I've changed the water heater in my house, changed the water pump on our car, rooted and hacked several dozen phones/tablets/computers, learned how to build in WordPress. My son watches YouTube to watch dance moves from Missy Elliot videos, walkthroughs from video games, and Minecraft mods. My Wife pays attention to makeup videos and pop culture before/after playing Sesame Street videos on YouTube for our daughter. My family regularly learns through YouTube every day.

A great guest post on the Scientific American blog looking at new research into neuroscientists' understanding of the complexities of language processing.

Of interest to me is that the researchers aren't using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to identify what areas of the brain light up during specific cognitive activities. Instead what they're examining is what they're labeling "neural decoding." They are seeing a pattern of brain activation that occurs across the brain and try to understand what gave rise to it.

The analogy they provide is very interesting:

As an analogy, consider walking through a forest and seeing an animal footprint in the mud. By looking at the pattern in the mud, i.e. the shape of the footprint, we might be able to figure out which animal made it. But in order to do that, we first need to learn what the footprints of different animals tend to look like, and, harder still, learn how to decode these footprints even when the mud is smudged or the imprint is faint.

In this, the animal footprints refer to stimuli the brain receives in the forms of word and sentences. It's intriguing to consider how this might shed light on other aspects of cognition.

This link spread like wildfire this soon after I shared it out. It was usually followed with a series of comments, affirmations, and "I told you so..."

The post from Inside Higher Ed shares results from a meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness.

The abstract of the study indicates:

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) ratings are used to evaluate faculty's teaching effectiveness based on a widespread belief that students learn more from highly rated professors. The key evidence cited in support of this belief are meta-analyses of multisection studies showing small-to-moderate correlations between SET ratings and student achievement (e.g., 0095 and 0100; Feldman, 1989). We re-analyzed previously published meta-analyses of the multisection studies and found that their findings were an artifact of small sample sized studies and publication bias. Whereas the small sample sized studies showed large and moderate correlation, the large sample sized studies showed no or only minimal correlation between SET ratings and learning. Our up-to-date meta-analysis of all multisection studies revealed no significant correlations between the SET ratings and learning. These findings suggest that institutions focused on student learning and career success may want to abandon SET ratings as a measure of faculty's teaching effectiveness.

It will be interesting to see if this has any impact on evaluations of educators.

🔨 Do

Post by Keegan Long-Walker detailing his attempts to create a game using Twine, an open-source tool for developing text-based games.

You can learn how to use Twine at the following YouTube playlist. You can also follow along at the professional development activity set up by Keegan and John Stewart.

Finally, you can play the game, Healing Words, that Keegan details in his post.

🤔 Consider

"Love is a better teacher than duty." — Albert Einstein

This week: your duty to be digitally ready.

Daily gratitude journal template part to-do list part reflection, logic models for grant proposals. School of Life on dangers of being dutiful - no wonder we cannot think about what we actually want to do with our lives. Pew Research digital readiness five groups unprepared to digitally ready - put simply, if we believe we're ready we expand our readiness. Horizon K-12 report - what is most exciting to me is shift from consumers to creators, annotate with Hypothes.is. Kevin Hodgson on YouTube as innovative engine - my family regularly learns through YouTube every day, I've changed water heater and car water pump. Brain neural decoding footprints analogy intriguing for other cognition aspects. Student evaluations zero correlation with learning - this link spread like wildfire with I told you so responses. Keegan Long-Walker first Twine game Healing Words.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

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Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.