Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Education

  • Attention is Everything All At Once

    I’ve been basing grades in my classes on what I call Attention Units (AU=gold, get it?). Since studying 37.5 hours over a semester (15 weeks, 90 min class and 45 homework) is not measurable for proficiency, and because I run a class with a lot of individualization (personalized, differentiated), I can’t measure them on a specific set of language points or skills. I also find I can’t accurately measure how hard they work, which is a common fallback for language teaching. That leaves me with Attention, a more specific aspect of the “working hard” school of grading. I believe, especially these days with mobile and online learning, that this has become a viable option, both for measurement and curriculum. Let me explain.

    Some research about attention and it’s sibling, ignoring.

    Via Kottke and How to weather the storm.

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  • Women and Men in University

    In this newsletter (blog post) Celeste Davis looks at the reasons why fewer men are going to college in the US.

    For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!

    This is also reflected in certain “Male” jobs and “Women’s” jobs. With the new political weather in the US, it will be interesting to see if this trend slows or accelerates. I’m guessing on the second.

    I’m hoping women will not give up and continue to “take over” more universities and departments and whole careers and career paths.

  • Fake Research

    The Whole Earth Catalog was vetted. Not so for many journals.

    Is caused by an evaluation process much like Google’s PageRank, where a paper is rated by how many links there are to and from it. That’s how over 400,000 research articles in the last 20 years are probably fake, created by Paper Mills. From Nature.

  • Dron on AI for Learning

    This interview of Jon Dron on using AI for education is not typical. His stance is clear. It makes sense. It doesn’t go overboard. He admits when he is not sure of something.

    He is against LMSs, even though he developed some big ones for the Canadian educational system.

    (Via Stephen Downes, of course)

  • From the mouths of babes

    From the mouths of babes

    I’ve never seen a 7-year-old give a TED talk, but Molly does a great job. She even has an assistant Airi, with HIS assistant father, help out. This video has important lessons for child development, presented in a clear way that is easy to understand. So put away those iPads and phones, and PAY ATTENTION.