What We Talk about When We Talk about Networking — from michelleweise.substack.com by Dr. Michelle Weise, Julia Freeland Fisher, and Nitzan Pelman
Networking, Social Capital & the Goldilocks Ask

I recently had a chance to sit down with Julia Freeland Fisher, Director of Education at the Christensen Institute, and Nitzan Pelman, CEO of Climb Together and founder of Climb Hire, for a live CGN webinar on tapping into our networks (some of you may recall, I wrote about these two phenomenal women in my post, “Who You Know … A Little Bit: The Power of Weak Ties”).

I love getting to learn from their constantly evolving thinking on cultivating and mobilizing social capital. And in this episode, we get super tactical on the how-to’s of networking for young people.

From DSC:
Tell your kids or grandkids to watch this. I didn’t have a CLUE about networking when I graduated from high school — and even from college. It took me years to get an accurate understanding of the place and power of networking. And that it’s not all about looking out for #1 and taking from/manipulating/exploiting others. But it’s about sharing resources, learning and connecting with others, helping others connect with relevant others, and more.

I hope that we can produce more items like this to help the next generation get started and navigate their careers.

 

For Teens Online, Conspiracy Theories Are Commonplace. Media Literacy Is Not. — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

If you’re a teen, you could be exposed to conspiracy theories and a host of other pieces of misinformation as frequently as every day while scrolling through your social media feeds.

That’s according to a new study by the News Literacy Project, which also found that teens struggle with identifying false information online. This comes at a time when media literacy education isn’t available to most students, the report finds, and their ability to distinguish between objective and biased information sources is weak. The findings are based on responses from more than 1,000 teens ages 13 to 18.

“News literacy is fundamental to preparing students to become active, critically thinking members of our civic life — which should be one of the primary goals of a public education,” Kim Bowman, News Literacy Project senior research manager and author of the report, said in an email interview. “If we don’t teach young people the skills they need to evaluate information, they will be left at a civic and personal disadvantage their entire lives. News literacy instruction is as important as core subjects like reading and math.”


To help teach your students about news and media literacy, I highly recommend my sister Sue Ellen Christian’s work out at Wonder Media.

Wonder Media -- a site to teach your students about Media and News Literacy
.

.

.

There you will find numerous resources for libraries, schools, families and individuals. Suggestions of books, articles, other websites, and online materials to assist you in growing your media literacy and news media literacy are also included there.

 

LinkedIn launches its first AI agent to take on the role of job recruiters — from techcrunch.com by Ingrid Lunden

LinkedIn, the social platform used by professionals to connect with others in their field, hunt for jobs, and develop skills, is taking the wraps off its latest effort to build artificial intelligence tools for users. Hiring Assistant is a new product designed to take on a wide array of recruitment tasks, from ingesting scrappy notes and thoughts to turn into longer job descriptions to sourcing candidates and engaging with them.

LinkedIn is describing Hiring Assistant as a milestone in its AI trajectory: It is, per the Microsoft-owned company, its first “AI agent” and one that happens to be targeting one of LinkedIn’s most lucrative categories of users — recruiters.


Also relevant/see:

 

Students Speak Out: How to Make High Schools Places Where They Want to Learn — from the74million.org by Beth Fertig
Too many high school students complain that school is boring. Students share what makes school enjoyable.

.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

.
Solving chronic absenteeism involves tackling big structural problems like transportation and infrastructure. But we also have to make our schools places where young people want to learn. Too many teens, in particular, had negative feelings about school even before the pandemic. Yale researchers conducting a national survey of high school students found most teens spent their days “tired,” “stressed,” and “bored.” Fewer than 3 in 100 reported feeling interested while in school.

Decades of research prove that students learn more when they experience high levels of academic engagement and social belonging in school.

Students at all four schools experience internships, work-based learning and partnerships with community organizations, which they said make classwork feel more relevant. 


Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

 

Where a developing, new kind of learning ecosystem is likely headed [Christian]

From DSC:
As I’ve long stated on the Learning from the Living [Class]Room vision, we are heading toward a new AI-empowered learning platform — where humans play a critically important role in making this new learning ecosystem work.

Along these lines, I ran into this site out on X/Twitter. We’ll see how this unfolds, but it will be an interesting space to watch.

Project Chiron's vision: Our vision for education Every child will soon have a super-intelligent AI teacher by their side. We want to make sure they instill a love of learning in children.


From DSC:
This future learning platform will also focus on developing skills and competencies. Along those lines, see:

Scale for Skills-First — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
An ed-tech giant’s ambitious moves into digital credentialing and learner records.

A Digital Canvas for Skills
Instructure was a player in the skills and credentials space before its recent acquisition of Parchment, a digital transcript company. But that $800M move made many observers wonder if Instructure can develop digital records of skills that learners, colleges, and employers might actually use broadly.

Ultimately, he says, the CLR approach will allow students to bring these various learning types into a coherent format for employers.

Instructure seeks a leadership role in working with other organizations to establish common standards for credentials and learner records, to help create consistency. The company collaborates closely with 1EdTech. And last month it helped launch the 1EdTech TrustEd Microcredential Coalition, which aims to increase quality and trust in digital credentials.

Paul also links to 1EDTECH’s page regarding the Comprehensive Learning Record

 

Will one of our future learning ecosystems look like a Discord server type of service? [Christian]

 

Some example components of a learning ecosystem [Christian]

A learning ecosystem is composed of people, tools, technologies, content, processes, culture, strategies, and any other resource that helps one learn. Learning ecosystems can be at an individual level as well as at an organizational level.

Some example components:

  • Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) such as faculty, staff, teachers, trainers, parents, coaches, directors, and others
  • Fellow employees
  • L&D/Training professionals
  • Managers
  • Instructional Designers
  • Librarians
  • Consultants
  • Types of learning
    • Active learning
    • Adult learning
    • PreK-12 education
    • Training/corporate learning
    • Vocational learning
    • Experiential learning
    • Competency-based learning
    • Self-directed learning (i.e., heutagogy)
    • Mobile learning
    • Online learning
    • Face-to-face-based learning
    • Hybrid/blended learning
    • Hyflex-based learning
    • Game-based learning
    • XR-based learning (AR, MR, and VR)
    • Informal learning
    • Formal learning
    • Lifelong learning
    • Microlearning
    • Personalized/customized learning
    • Play-based learning
  • Cloud-based learning apps
  • Coaching & mentoring
  • Peer feedback
  • Job aids/performance tools and other on-demand content
  • Websites
  • Conferences
  • Professional development
  • Professional organizations
  • Social networking
  • Social media – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook/Meta, other
  • Communities of practice
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) — including ChatGPT, learning agents, learner profiles, 
  • LMS/CMS/Learning Experience Platforms
  • Tutorials
  • Videos — including on YouTube, Vimeo, other
  • Job-aids
  • E-learning-based resources
  • Books, digital textbooks, journals, and manuals
  • Enterprise social networks/tools
  • RSS feeds and blogging
  • Podcasts/vodcasts
  • Videoconferencing/audio-conferencing/virtual meetings
  • Capturing and sharing content
  • Tagging/rating/curating content
  • Decision support tools
  • Getting feedback
  • Webinars
  • In-person workshops
  • Discussion boards/forums
  • Chat/IM
  • VOIP
  • Online-based resources (periodicals, journals, magazines, newspapers, and others)
  • Learning spaces
  • Learning hubs
  • Learning preferences
  • Learning theories
  • Microschools
  • MOOCs
  • Open courseware
  • Portals
  • Wikis
  • Wikipedia
  • Slideshare
  • TED talks
  • …and many more components.

These people, tools, technologies, etc. are constantly morphing — as well as coming and going in and out of our lives.

 

 

Discovering Autism and Community Later in Life — from aane.org by Brenda Dater, Executive Director

Excerpt:

This month we are discussing autism and aging. Many older adults in AANE’s community were children in the 1950s, 60s and 70s when the diagnosis of autism as we understand it today didn’t exist. Some were misdiagnosed with conditions like childhood schizophrenia, but many were just harmfully labeled as odd or having behavior problems. Because of the lack of awareness and understanding about autism, many have come to their diagnosis, or self-understanding, in their fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond, often after many years of being misunderstood or not fitting in at school, work, or socially. The stories they tell about feeling relief to have an explanation for their experience and finally…finally feeling like they belong warms my heart.

 

What factors help active learning classrooms succeed? — from rtalbert.org Robert Talbert

Excerpt:

The idea that the space in which you do something, affects the thing you do is the basic premise behind active learning classrooms (ALCs).

The biggest message I get from this study is that in order to have success with active learning classrooms, you can’t just build them — they have to be introduced as part of an ecosystem that touches almost all parts of the daily function of a university: faculty teaching, faculty development and support, facilities, and the Registrar’s Office to name a few. Without that ecosystem before you build an ALC, it seems hard to have success with students after it’s built. You’re more likely to have an expensive showcase that looks good but ultimately does not fulfill its main purpose: Promoting and amplifying active learning, and moving the culture of a campus toward active engagement in the classroom.

From DSC:
Thank you Robert for your article/posting here! And thank you for being one of the few faculty members who:

  • Regularly share information out on LinkedIn, Twitter, and your blog (something that is all too rare for faculty members throughout higher education)
  • Took a sabbatical to go work at a company that designs and develops numerous options for implementing active learning setups throughout the worlds of higher education, K12 education, and the corporate world as well. You are taking your skills to help contribute to the corporate world, while learning things out in the corporate world, and then  taking these learnings back into the world of higher education.

This presupposes something controversial: That the institution will take a stand on the issue that there is a preferred way to teach, namely active learning, and that the institution will be moving toward making active learning the default pedagogy at the institution. Putting this stake in the ground, and then investing not only in facilities but in professional development and faculty incentives to make it happen, again calls for vigorous, sustained leadership — at the top, and especially by the teaching/learning center director.

Robert Talbert


 

behance.net/live/   <— Check out our revamped schedule!

Join us in the morning for Adobe Express streams — If you are an aspiring creative, small business owner, or looking to kickstart a side hustle – these live streams are for you!

Then level up your skills with Creative Challenges, Bootcamps, and Pro-Tips. Get inspired by artists from all over the world during our live learning events. Tune in to connect directly with your instructors and other creatives just like you.

In the afternoon, join creatives in their own Community Streams! Laugh and create along side other Adobe Live Community members on Behance, Youtube and Twitch!

For weekly updates on the Adobe Live schedule + insight into upcoming guests and content, join our discord communities!

Watch Adobe Live Now!

 

From DSC:
Perhaps such a network type of setup could provide audio-visual-based links that people could provide to one another.

 

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Security, Cryptocurrency, Web, and More

Excerpt:

This month’s news has been overshadowed by the implosion of SBF’s TFX and the possible implosion of Elon Musk’s Twitter. All the noise doesn’t mean that important things aren’t happening. Many companies, organizations, and individuals are wrestling with the copyright implications of generative AI. Google is playing a long game: they believe that the goal isn’t to imitate art works, but to build better user interfaces for humans to collaborate with AI so they can create something new. Facebook’s AI for playing Diplomacy is an exciting new development. Diplomacy requires players to negotiate with other players, assess their mental state, and decide whether or not to honor their commitments. None of these are easy tasks for an AI. And IBM now has a 433 Qubit quantum chip–an important step towards making a useful quantum processor.

 

From DSC:
Ryan Tracey (from Australia) posted the following Tweet:

To which Dan Laurence (also from Australia) replied:

It took some finding, but you’ll find it was one G. H. Reavis 1937 in a children’s picture book entitled ‘The Animal School’. Reavis was a school principal in the south of the US. Layers of contextual conotations here.

And there were a couple of other people who replied as well. And here I am in Michigan (USA) learning about the origins of this image/graphic. I just like the web-based collaboration going on here. There are opportunities to network and to learn from each other via social media.

For now, I still like using Twitter and I still benefit from using it — and I hope that continues.

 

An obituary for education—or not? — from brookings.edu by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Jennifer M. Zosh, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Elias Blinkoff, and Molly Scott

Excerpt:

MAKING SCHOOLS WORK
The science of learning offers a blueprint of how children in our future can and will succeed. For the last three decades, researchers made enormous progress in understanding how human brains learn. If we can teach in a way that capitalizes on these findings—if we can apply the science to the classrooms—we will have evidence-based ways of helping children grow the suite of skills that will make them successful in today’s classrooms and the workplaces of tomorrow. Our Brookings report, A New Path to Educational Reform and our book Making Schools Work: Bringing the Science of Learning to Joyful Classroom Practice, detail how this research in the science of learning can offer a scalable, evidenced based path to re-invigorating and re-imagining education for our time.

Children learn when they are active, not passive observers of what is taught. Children learn when they are engaged in the material and not distracted, when the information is meaningfully connected to their knowledge in ways that are culturally responsive. They learn best in social contexts, when there are strong teacher-student and peer relationships, when the information is iteratively presented multiple times in slightly different ways, and when the learning is joyful. Yes, it is possible to have joyful teaching that affords deeper learning. When we teach in ways that the brain learns, the learning “sticks” and generalizes to new problems and new solutions.

 

It’s time to redesign organized learning — from chieflearningofficer.com by Eric Albertini

Excerpt:

Organizations will need to think about three layers of learning content and access methods:

  • Thoughtfully curated by the organization for business fit.
  • Semi-curated with the learner having some control of what they learn.
  • Open for all, where the learner makes all the choices of what and how they learn.

Employee-centric learning approach. There must be a match of learning to organizational objectives as well. Non-curated, open content on platforms is great for focused and deeply aware employees but may not work for everyone, especially in cultures where self-direction is not very strong. Moreover, too much open, non-curated content, driven by non-contextual algorithms, is as detrimental to choice-making for the learner as is too little quality content.

To enable effective learning, technology must be part of a more systemic learning eco-system that includes things such as rewards (the “what’s in it for me”), building blocks from one intervention to the next and post-learning support.  

Also from chieflearningofficer.com, see:

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian