Seb Schmoller › Comments

"As we slash services in deeply impoverished communities and reduce school budgets, how can we expect that good teachers alone can improve the lives of poor children? Poverty, of course, can’t be an excuse for lousy teaching. But neither can excellent teaching alone be a solution to poverty." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

The party appears paralysed by two issues: the fact that it started the reforms now being misused by the coalition; and a terror that it will somehow appear backward-looking if it doesn't come up with some shiny new ideas. But it is time to admit that the fragmentation of the school system is running out of control and the inevitable drift into profit-making schools is dangerous. We are where we are with academies and free schools, but a rigorous, fair, locally accountable regulatory structure must be put around all schools, covering everything from non-selective admissions to school improvement and standards. - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

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"One common misinterpretation of management theory goes thus: pit your best people against one another, like dogs in a fight, and the wondrous power of 'competition' will unleash vital energies heretofore unseen in the history of great endeavour. Taking a hard look at the organizations that practice this style of management-by-Mordor, my guess is that the unbridled exaltation of aggression is more like the express train to Sociopath City." - Seb Schmoller

"Of those 26 students, 17 are on free school meals, which gives a good indication of the demographic hardest hit by these changes. I don’t set lower targets for those children but I recognise that many have to achieve far greater rates of progress every year from 11 to 16 than pupils who start year 7 at higher attainment or have English as their first language – and that is what our interventions are designed to overcome." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"The system is purposely designed to gradually distil the most outstanding research through the succession of the Frontiers tiers, evaluated democratically for its academic excellence and social relevance. While climbing up the tier journal system, the research gains more and more visibility and addresses an increasingly broader public." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

Since 1948, the NHS has been the model for universal heathcare on the basis of need and free at the point of use. In 2012, parliament in England passed a law effectively ending the NHS by abolishing the 60-year duty on the government to secure and provide healthcare for all. From 2013, there will be no National Health Service in England, and tax funding will increasingly flow to global healthcare corporations. In contrast, Scotland and Wales will continue to have a publicly accountable national health service. - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"The content in a Udacity course is tidy, structured; but the learning environment -- from forums to meetup groups -- is interpretive, allowing students the opportunity to more fully inhabit their own learning, and this is the direction in which we must continue to innovate. We must create learning environments that are not just about the right learning objects, but about the space around those objects. For learning to happen online, content must be presented with enough space around it to allow for dialogue -- for mediation, inflection, and disruption. Like the improvisation and music of jazz, learning happens when we pay attention to what’s rising, what’s falling, the staccato and the silent." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"The analysis shows that once enrolments in general are taken into account, additional students in the STEM subjects have no impact on growth. It is higher education in general which matters not specific subjects. The science lobby has been pretty effective in convincing decision-makers that subjects like maths, physics and engineering boost growth and this explains why these subjects have been protected in the new funding regime. But there is no evidence to support this claim." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Controversy has been raging. The proponents of different sorts of open access have been fighting it out: greens vs golds in the style of skins vs shirts in an impromptu children's football match, and with the goal equally fluid. Liking, as I do, a good controversy I am tempted to join in, arguing perhaps for some sort of mixed model, greeny-goldish, but I simply have not got the heart for the fight. It is irrelevant. The real action is somewhere else entirely. We are on the edge of a complete transformation in scientific communication that has almost nothing to do with the disintermediation of publishers and everything to do with the ways in which we disseminate research." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Mechanix allows students to sketch planar truss and free body diagrams on their computers just as they would with pencil and paper, and the Mechanix system checks the student’s work against a hand-drawn answer entered by the instructor. The system then returns immediate and detailed feedback to the student. Students can correct any errors in their work and resubmit until the entire content is correct thus reinforcing the critical concepts in the course. Since Mechanix facilitates the grading and feedback processes, instructors are now able to assign free response questions, and this will give the instructor an accurate understanding of student comprehension. Furthermore, the iterative correction process allows students to learn during a test, rather than simply regurgitating memorized information." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"It is in the developing world where the limitations of TED’s techno-humanitarian mentality are most pronounced. In TED world, problems of aid and development are no longer seen as problems of weak and corrupt institutions; they are recast as problems of inadequate connectivity or an insufficiency of gadgets. According to the Khannas, “centuries of colonialism and decades of aid haven’t lifted Africa’s fortunes the way technology can.” Hence the latest urge to bombard Africa with tablets and Kindles—even when an average African kid would find it impossible to repair a damaged Kindle. And the gadgets do drop from the sky—Nicholas Negroponte, having spectacularly failed in his One Laptop Per Child quest, now wants to drop his own tablets from helicopters, which would make it harder for the African savages to say “no” to MIT’s (and TED’s) civilization. This is la mission civilatrice 2.0." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

DW's concluding remarks. Improve your practice for as long as you are working, or go. Focus on the things that make the most difference to learning (thus "no more brain gym", "no more learning styles"). Have each teacher choose what to work on, since they know their jobs and their learners better than anyone else. We need a relentless, slow focus on continuous improvement in teacher practice. Just like in PE, there is no point in comparing teachers with each other. What matters is that teachers are "improving their personal best", bit by bit, year on year.. - Seb Schmoller

"Moreover, this business is still playing out. If the research community can act in concert, there is scope for using open access to ensure that the taxpayer gets better value for money from its research spend on publishing. This is new territory, but with control of the funds, research institutions should seize this opportunity to push for open access at the cheapest possible price. I would not wish to diminish the difficulties faced by UK research institutions in the shift to open access, but it is time for them to be as bold as the government. They can start by breaking their addiction to top-tier journals, which are likely to charge the highest APCs because publishers know that researchers and university managers continue to mis-apply journal reputations (quantified as impact factors) as a measure of the quality of individual researchers or their work." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

Concluding paragraphs:"Tax-supported public schools have been and are social, political, and moral institutions whose job is to help children and youth acquire multiple literacies, enter the labor market well prepared, vote, serve on juries, contribute to their communities, think for themselves, and live full and worthwhile lives. A century ago, these purposes for public schools were obvious; now they remain in the shadows. Few policymakers, philanthropists, technology futurists have challenged (or are willing to challenge) the swelling embrace of online instruction, including “blended learning,” that promise transforming schools into information factories." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Mr. Mazur and his colleagues came up with a novel solution: take students out of the matchmaking. Professors can use their software, called Learning Catalytics and now used at various campuses, to force students to defend their ideas by matching them with classroom partners who have different opinions." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

Excerpt: "Fit, quality, and speed of publication where the most important factors in the authors’ choice of a journal. Open access was less important but a significant factor for many authors in their choice of a journal to publish." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

1. Scientists need to be more open among themselves and with the public and media 2. Greater recognition needs to be given to the value of data gathering, analysis and communication 3. Common standards for sharing information are required to make it widely usable 4. Publishing data in a reusable form to support findings must be mandatory 5. More experts in managing and supporting the use of digital data are required 6. New software tools need to be developed to analyse the growing amount of data being gathered - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

Lesson 1: No president with an activist Board of Governors is now safe if the university does not have a clear institutional strategy for online learning. It’s now become the latest buzzword in post-secondary education. Lesson 2: MOOCs may be the answer – but what is the question? May there be better solutions to the question? And may such solutions exist already but are not being sufficiently supported? Lesson 3: Governments are increasingly not going to accept the status quo or business as usual. In particular, if your institution doesn’t have a meaningful strategy for innovation in teaching, for improving the cost-effectiveness of the organization, and particularly a strategy for online learning, you will become increasingly vulnerable to funding cuts. Lesson 4: Prepare and train your faculty to deal with change and innovation in teaching, and in particular for teaching online. Lesson 5: If public institutions do not respond effectively to the challenge of change, they will eventually be swept aside by the private sector – and will deserve it. - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

We have access to amazing digital resources. And a lot of it is all-you-can-drink, no matter what your income level is. Wikipedia is distributed to the masses. Warren Buffett doesn't have any more Google than I have, or the unemployed person has. When I see that there are five billion mobile-phone subscriptions in the world—well, hey, that is cornucopia. It is important not to lose sight of that." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Online classes are by definition taken at a distance, from the comfort of the student’s home where they are removed from the teacher, the other students, and the academic institution. This distance doesn’t merely allow room for people to get away with dishonest behavior; it creates the psychological distance that allows people to further relax their moral standards. I suspect that it is this aspect of psychological distance, and not simply the ease of pulling it off, that is at the heart of the online cheating problem. There is another important reason why we should care whether the cause for online dishonesty is due to its ease or to a change in the perceived moral meaning of the action. If online cheating is simply a matter of a cost benefit analysis, we can assume that over time online universities will find ways to monitor and supervise students and this way prevent such behavior. However, if we think that the root cause of online cheating is more relaxed internal morals, then time is working against us." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Throughout her work, Lin made it clear that complex and combined social and ecological problems defied simple (or simplistic) institutional solutions. At the biweekly Bloomington Workshop seminars, over which she presided for many years, she would often deny the existence of panaceas." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"If people who understand technology don't claim positions that defend the positive uses of technology, if we don't operate within the realm of traditional power and politics, if we don't speak out for the rights of our technically unsophisticated friends and neighbours, then we will also be lost." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Florida and Spain both had housing bubbles, but when Florida’s bubble burst, retirees could still count on getting their Social Security and Medicare checks from Washington. Spain receives no comparable support. So the burst bubble turned into a fiscal crisis, too." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Humbug. The OLPC project originally had such possibility" - see http://goo.gl/oRRsD - Seb Schmoller

"When I read about the APS Wikipedia Initiative (APS WI) challenge to have students help correct Wikipedia, I thought it sounded like a really neat idea. To write a good Wikipedia article, the students need the same reading and research skills that my old assignment required with the advantage of contributing to the public good." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"The chances that Mr Hollande can deliver such a changed perspective are small.... But he alone of European leaders has the desire and the ability to try." - Seb Schmoller

"The results demonstrated that overall, automated essay scoring was capable of producing scores similar to human scores for extended-response writing items with equal performance for both source-based and traditional writing genre." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

"Scientists have demonstrated they can often 'reidentify' or deanonymize' individuals hidden in anonymized data with astonishing ease..... we have made a mistake, labored beneath a fundamental misunderstanding, which has assured us much less privacy than we have assumed. This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law, regulation, and debate, yet regulators and legal scholars have paid it scant attention." - Seb Schmoller from Bookmarklet

Mike Sharples of nQuire writes: "See also http://www.ispot.org.uk/. Now imagine iSpot meets nQuire." - Seb Schmoller