Just Trying to Help

woman online

She just wants to help me online.


I have been getting more emails sent to my blogs (I have 9 including this one - which is just ridiculous) offering "help" and also posts I might want to use.

Here's a recent example:

My name is [deleted], I'm a writer and blogger at IvyPanda. Recently I've been working on an article about communication skills and I visited your website while researching. There's a great post named "PowerPointless" (https://www.serendipity35.net/index.php?/archives/210-PowerPointless.html) I enjoyed reading!
Unfortunately, I noticed a broken link there. Here it is: 
https://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp

Since my brand new article is out, I think you can use it for updating your page. It has 27 tips to overcome public speaking anxiety and a bonus list of great courses available online. It's going to be an excellent replacement! 
Here's the link: https://ivypanda.com/blog/public-speaking-anxiety-tips
What do you think? Just trying to help ;-)
Warm regards,
**   writer & blogger

There is software that can scan sites for broken external links. So, these people find a broken link and use that as a way to email and help you fix your site - which is useful - and then the email will always suggest a related link that I might use which comes from their site.

The first time I received one of these emails, I made the change and used their link and replied with a thank-you. But after receiving a dozen or so similar ones I had decided that this was just a way to place links on other websites.

This particular email I shared also offered links to her Facebook page. Yes, it was a woman, and on all the ones I have received, it was a woman - and an attractive woman at that. (Not the woman shown above.)  I wonder if female bloggers get emails from male helpers? is she a real person? Is this a scam, and if so is it harmful? 

This has a name. It is called "broken link building." This is a link building tactic. You find a broken link, recreate the dead content, then tell anyone linking to the dead resource to instead link to your recreated content. When it works - and I'm sure it often does - it is because you don't want dead links on your website.

You can feel some pride if you get one of these emails because websites targeted have a good following. They target you because they are trying to raise their own search engine optimization which is at least partially based on the ranking of the sites that link to you.

Did I fix my "PowerPointless" post here on Serendipity35because of that email? Yes. I got rid of the broken link, added a new one (not the one that was provided) and fixed a broken image. So, thanks.

Credit Hours and Personalized Learning

classroomCredit hours are something that still wield a lot of power in education. It plays a role in high schools, but it really rules in higher education.

Credit hours were once known as Carnegie Units. It goes back to 1906, but it was not designed as a way of measuring learning. It was meant as a method to calculate faculty workloads in order to formulate pensions.

Earlier, admission to colleges was by examinations which varied greatly among colleges, but the method was unreliable. Charles W. Eliot at Harvard University devised a contact-hour standard for secondary education, and also the original credit-hour collegiate post-secondary standard. This is where we get our 3 credit course based on 3 contact hours per week. But the widespread adoption of the 120-hour secondary standard did not occur until the Carnegie Foundation began to provide retirement pensions (now known as TIAA-CREF) for university professors. A stipulation of the pensions was that the universities needed to enforce the 120-hour secondary standard in their admissions.

It only took four years for nearly all secondary institutions in the United States to use the "Carnegie Unit" as a measure of secondary course work. 

The Carnegie Foundation also established that both high school preparation and college "work" would include a minimum of four years of study. But the Carnegie Foundation did not intend the Units to "measure, inform or improve the quality of teaching or learning."

Unfortunately, the credit hour became the standard way to measure the student's workload and progress through those four years in secondary and higher education. Should these credit units be revised or abandoned?

The Carnegie Foundation said in 2012 that "technology has revealed the potential of personalized learning," and that "it is time to consider how a revised unit, based on competency rather than time, could improve teaching and learning in high schools, colleges and universities."

Personalized learning is sometimes suggested as a way to replace the Carnegie Unit and credit hours because it could be based on competency rather than time

But what personalized learning means seems to vary by practitioner. Even the term used to describe the practice varies. Personalized learning is sometimes called individualized instruction, differentiated instruction, direct instruction or a personal learning environment. Though they are not all the same things, they are all used to describe education that is adjusted to meet the needs of different students.

Edutopia published an article on several "myths" about personalized learning that are worth considering in any discussion of changing the way we measure workload and progress.

Because many efforts in personalized learning in the 21st century involved computers and software that allowed students to work at their own pace, personalized learning is associated with technology-based instruction.

The "personalized" part of learning is often thought to mean that students work independently. In a class of 25 students it is unlikely that there will need to be 25 distinct learning paths. Students will often work on collaborative competencies along with individual competencies focused on content and skills. Student interests shared with others in the classroom will form affinity groups for group projects and learning experiences.

Personalized learning is about learners moving at their own pace which is why students demonstrating mastery of content fits into a competency-based system.

Truly personalized learning also involves learners in setting goals and being involved in the planning and learning process. This may be the most radically different aspect of personalized learning. It is very "student-centered" so learners can select their resources and explore different ways to learn in flexible learning spaces. They may also connect their learning to their interests and passions, and even have a voice in how their learning will be assessed.

What has not changed in most personalized learning settings today are the competencies that must be met.

Personalized learning allows for self-pacing, but when students move through competencies at different speeds "credit hours" are irrelevant. If one student moves through a course set of competencies in half the "normal" time should they receive all or half the credit. Obviously, they should receive all the credit. What if they move through all the competencies in a program (degree) in two years? Do they graduate?

Personalized learning is an approach to learning — not a set program. And it is still being formulated and experimented with at different grade levels. But our learning experiments should be combined with experimentation in how we measure movement through learning. 

Are You Prometheus or Zeus?

Prometheus Brings Fire by Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Prometheus Brings Fire by Heinrich Friedrich Füger, 1817

 

Do you know the myth of Prometheus and his argument with Zeus?  I am reading Stephen Fry's books that are retellings of the myths of Ancient Greece, Mythos and the companion volume Heroes, and he has suggested that we are approaching a similar moment in our history. 

I don't know if you can see yourself as Jason aboard the Argo ques ting for the Golden Fleece, or as Oedipus solving the riddle of the Sphinx. But I think we might divide all of us into two groups by deciding on which side we stand when it comes to artificial intelligence as "personified" by any robot with a human appearance and advanced artificial intelligence.

The myth that applies is the story of Prometheus and his argument with Zeus.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus, whose name means "forethought" is credited with the creation of man from clay, and also the one who defies Zeus by stealing fire and giving it to humanity.

To humans, his theft is heroic. Fire, perhaps our first technology, enabled progress, civilization and the human arts and sciences.

Prometheus believed that humans needed and deserved fire. Zeus did not.

In Hesiod's version of the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire it is clear that Zeus withheld not only fire from humanity, but also "the means of life." Zeus feared that if humans had fire and all that it would lead them to, they would no longer need the gods.

Fry writes that “The Titan Prometheus made human beings in clay. The spit of Zeus and the breath of Athena gave them life. But Zeus refused to allow us to have fire. And I think fire means both literal fire – to allow us to become Bronze Age man, to create weapons and to cook meat. To frighten the fierce animals and become the strongest, physically and technically. But also the internal fire of self-consciousness and creativity. The divine fire. Zeus did not want us to have it. And Prometheus stole fire from heaven and gave it to man.”

If we think about a modern Prometheus, perhaps we can make him into a scientist who has created a very powerful android.

It is fitting that the word "android" was coined from the Greek andr-, meaning "man" (male, as opposed to anthr?p-, meaning human being) and the suffix -oid, meaning "having the form or likeness of. (We use "android" to refer to any human-looking robot, but a robot with a female appearance can also be referred to as a "gynoid.")

Our Prometheus the AI scientist is ready to give his android to the world. But his boss, Mr. Zeus, is opposed. What will happen when the android become sapient?" Zeus asks. Sapience is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment. "And what if these androids also become sentient?" Zeus asks. Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.

Stephen Fry takes up that argument:

"In a hundred years time, we can guarantee there will be sapient beings on this earth that have been intelligently designed. You could call them robots, you could call them compounds of augmented biology and artificial intelligence, but they will exist. The future is enormous, it has never been more existentially transformative.

Will the Prometheus who makes the first piece of really impressive robotic AI – like Frankenstein or the Prometheus back in the Greek myth – have the question: do we give it fire? Do we give these creatures self-knowledge, self-consciousness? An autonomy that is greater than any other machine has ever had and would be similar to ours? In other words: shall we be Zeus and deny them fire because we are afraid of them? Because they will destroy us? The Greeks, and the human beings, did destroy the gods. They no longer needed them. And it is very possible that we will create a race of sapient beings who will not need us.”

So, are you like Prometheus wanting mankind to have these highly evolved robots? Or do you agree with Zeus that they will eventually destroy us?

 

Here is an excerpt concerning this idea from an interview Stephen Fry did in Holland.
(Full interview at https://dewerelddraaitdoor.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/de-twee-kanten-van-stephen-fry)

The Rules for Online Learning

online learnerRegulators who make the rules for higher education accreditation are being closely watched now for the rules governing online learning. Three industry groups who are concerned have put forward their own policy recommendations. The groups are the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET).

The recommendations are concerned with competency-based education (CBE), regular and substantive interaction, and state authorization. The Department of Education's ongoing accreditation rulemaking session (which may also require congressional action) may develop outcomes-based Title IV eligibility standards for gauging colleges' effectiveness with a wider range of instructional modalities.

One big topic of discussion concerns the current rules around regular and substantive interaction. This is the measure of how much contact instructors and students must have in online courses. Some educators feel the current rules put online learning at a "competitive disadvantage" relative to on-campus instruction.

One of the test cases has been the DoE's case against Western Governors University. But in January 2019 it canceled a $713 million fine owed by WGA that came out of a 2017 audit that concluded that the school's CBE model was not in compliance with federal standards for online education. In its January reversal, the DoE determined that the fully online nonprofit university "made a reasonable and good faith effort" to apply the rules to its model.

The DoE further stated that it is "hopeful that further clarification [around distance learning] will be part of future regulations that will help spur the growth of high-quality innovative programs."

According to Inside Higher Ed, a third of all higher education students take at least one online course. Many of those students live on campus or within a two-hour radius of the college, so that the older term of "distance education" has become far less relevant.

But online learning is still growing in higher education. For example, Florida International University now offers more than 100 degrees fully online, and added more than 15 degrees in the past year. Those offerings include 20+ STEM programs at the graduate and undergraduate level, and new bachelors’ degrees in economics, writing and rhetoric.

Not all universities and educators are as strong in pushing online learning. Researchers at George Mason University and the Urban Institute say students who lack strong academic preparation tend to struggle in an online-only environment. But that research has been questioned by others. And the discussons continue at many levels.