Stephen Downes

These days this feels a bit like a blast from the past, though in some circles (especially corporate learning circles) these are still very current. For readers who are relatively new to OLDaily (which used to cover such things a lot more closely) SCORM and AICC are learning resource packaging formats, while xAPI is a specification for recording learning activities. Craig Weiss discusses these and more in this interview.

What I like about the InfoQ trends reports is that they begin by considering what they wrote last year, being clear about where they've changed terminology (for example, "the topic of 'privacy engineering' is more precise than 'design for security')." This results in an analysis that is consistent year over year; trends don't suddenly appear, disappear and appear again. Having said that, what counts as a 'trend' depends very much on your point of view. This list identifies trends from a technology and development perspective.

Lorna Campbell summarizes the open educational resources conference from last week in Ireland. If I can be a curmudgeon for a moment, let me say I can remember when it was about open learning and open resources, not a grab-bag of all the social justice and ethics issues there are in the world. Don't get me wrong; I actually support a progressive stance on most of these matters (I'm not that much of a curmudgeon). But the internet is not dead, there is still some justice out there, and for many in the world things are getting better, not worse. We are doing some good. Let's not forget that. We need empowerment, not direction. We need resources, not tenets. We don't need to be told what's right and what's good. We already know, each of us. The hard work of discovery, creativity, industry and cooperation is what lies ahead. Let's put aside the pulpits and put down our pamphlets and pick up our tools, and build the world we want to see.

I'm always pretty sceptical of the practitioner notes 'what is already known about this topic' segment. For example, here we read that "No study has explored the influential factors in peer upvoting within social annotation-based learning." A quick look at Google Scholar says otherwise. And anyways, how could this be true when the previous 'what is already known' states, "receiving upvotes from peers is not only a type of feedback but also a form of motivation, social interaction and social validation." How could we know this if there were no studies? We also read, "This study was the first to examine social annotations through the lens of the community of inquiry framework." But again, Google Scholar provides the counterexamples. Instead of journals forcing these stilted and often wrong 'practitioner notes' they should just let the authors write their papers and allow them to be taken at face value. The real question being studied here is "Are there any differences in cognitive and social presence between students receiving a high and low number of upvotes?" We don't need to artificially frame it. It's interesting enough on its own. 14 page PDF.

As used here, 'shadow education' "usually indicates academic fee-paid tutoring administered outside schools." This paper (18 page PDF) overviews major sources and evolving themes in shadow educ ation research. "Theoretically," write the authors, with emphasis, "probably due to our selection criteria, influential articles along the major evolution path of the citation network mainly regard shadow education as a supplement to mainstream education." On the other hand, "shadow education may replace its mainstream counterpart because some students regard the former as more effective." This missing too much relevant literature (the authors even admit "the knowledge dissemination network of SER is likely to form a network closure").

An increasing number of education writers are setting up on Substack - just as Substack is about to tank. "The Wrap details how Substack's decision to implement a new 'follow' feature...  Jeanna Kadlec wrote on Threads. 'Every writer I know is seeing our subscriptions plummet as our 'follower' count rises.'" The problem is that while subscribers sign up to an email list, followers have to stay on the Substack site to read content. Also, a subscriber list is portable, while a Substack follower list is not even visible to authors, let alone portable. It's all about making it difficult for writers to move (in the business world this is called 'lock in'). But once writers can't move, the squeeze begins... Via Dan Gillmor.