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Well here we are, halfway through the year! I’m composing this at lunchtime on Monday, as Hannah and I went away last night after our son’s debut for his new basketball team. They absolutely destroyed the other team in a friendly, and he scored a 3-pointer on the final buzzer, which was pretty special.
The reason we went away was ostensibly it being 21 years tomorrow since I proposed to her on Prince Edward Island in Canada. That was half a lifetime ago for both of us, and we have fond memories. It’s also two years tomorrow since her mum died, so there’s sadness mixed in there too.
The kids stayed with my parents for the first time in a year. Our son doesn’t really need babysitting as he’s 16, but it’s only fair that he goes along with our 12 year-old daughter. It seems they had a good time. Hannah and I certainly did, basically replicating what we did last time we went away: getting an upgrade at the Crowne Plaza and going for dinner and cocktails at Khai Khai.
Last week, my son started doing some work for WAO, ensuring that we have transcripts for all of our podcast episodes. He’s doing a good job so far. We’re recording another couple of episodes today for Season 7, with Laura currently releasing episodes of Season 6 we recorded over the last couple of months.
I started doing some user research for the workers.coop around Member Learning group. We’re following-up on responses to a survey which asked people for their learning preferences, etc. so that we can create targeted, relevant offerings. In related news, I updated a consent form for Bonfire user research, taking into account Hannah’s feedback (she’s a user researcher for NHS England).
WEAll, one of our clients, decided against using Hylo after testing it in May. This was mainly based on our recommendation due to the lack of effective moderation tools. Now, they’re planning to test Discourse, which is a much better option. So John and I were scoping that out.
Anne’s still finishing off her dissertation and final year of uni work, but she’s rejoined us for a couple of days per week. This is good as she’s very organised (not that the rest of us aren’t!) and brings a different angle and energy to our work, particularly with Participate.
In other news, we’ve had more house viewings but no offers yet. Everyone’s expressed how lovely they think it is, but I guess the housing market is a little slow at the moment. I just hope we don’t miss out on the place we want to move to.
This week is the last one of a crazy few weeks of football trials for my daughter. She was offered a place at Sunderland’s ETC with the final trial for Newcastle’s ETC being on Friday. It’s her choice, but I’m keen for her to join the former as she’ll be mixed with girls a year up, and it’s a more established setup. She was in Newcastle’s ETC this last season, and if she’s offered a place and opts to stay there it’s no bad thing.
So this week I’ll be continuing with client work, doing a bit of business development for September, and considering whether to respond to UNESCO’s call for contributions r.e. the definition of algorithm literacy and data literacy. It’s a tight deadline, but Ian O’Byrne and Tom Salmon have expressed an interest in collaborating, so we’ll see. Ideally, I would have read Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI this weekend, but… I didn’t.
The post Weeknote 26/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.I was in Amsterdam from Monday to Friday this week, for MozFest House and a WAO meetup. We ran a session entitled ‘Fostering Transparency and Building a Cooperative Economy’. I also lied about my personal details and preferences to get free iced coffee, hung out on a boat, and melted in the heat.
Our house went on the market while I was away, as things moved more quickly than I envisaged. This is a good thing, as we had five viewings booked in yesterday. I was out with my daughter, who was at a Future Lioness event and then represented East Northumberland in the discus at the area athletics championships. She had to run from that even to take part in the relay, and then pretty much kept on running to do the first leg!
I’m keeping this short as we’re about to go and view a house that would potentially be a backup plan to the one we really want. I published a single blog post this week, other than this one, which I called On the paucity of ‘raising awareness’.
Next week it’s back to work in my home office. I hope it’s not too hot, as the lack of sleep from late nights and being in a really hot room with no openable windows while in Amsterdam really took it out of me.
The post Weeknote 25/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.This post is about philosophy, memes, and taking action. It’s a reflection on an experience I had this week which caused me to reflect on the paucity of ‘awareness raising’ as a tactic.
I studied Philosophy at university a couple of decades ago. One of the courses was on ethics and involved the trolley problem.
The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number. The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway tram or trolley is on course to collide with and kill a number of people (traditionally five) down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track. Then other variations of the runaway vehicle, and analogous life-and-death dilemmas (medical, judicial etc.) are posed, each containing the option to either do nothing, in which case several people will be killed, or intervene and sacrifice one initially “safe” person to save the others.
It’s a powerful tool to generate insights into your own ethical position on certain topics. These days, it’s rolled out to warn about outsourcing decision-making to the systems underpinning self-driving cars. And, of course, it’s now a recognisable meme.
In my experience, most of the trolley problem thought experiments lead towards an understanding of supererogation.
In ethics, an act is supererogatory if it is good but not morally required to be done. It refers to an act that is more than is necessary, when another course of action—involving less—would still be an acceptable action. It differs from a duty, which is an act wrong not to do, and from acts morally neutral. Supererogation may be considered as performing above and beyond a normative course of duty to further benefits and functionality.
Interestingly, in a recent episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, Theron Pummer suggested a twist on this. Pummer, who is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews and Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, has published a book entitled The Rules of Rescue. I haven’t read it yet, but to quote the summary on his own web page about the book:
Pummer argues that we are often morally required to engage in effective altruism, directing altruistic efforts in ways that help the most. Even when the personal sacrifice involved makes it morally permissible not to help at all, he contends, it often remains wrong to provide less help rather than more.
I have issues with Effective Altruism, which I’ll not go into here, but I find Pummer’s framing fascinating. Basically, you don’t have to help others in certain situations; no-one would think it was immoral or illegal to go about your business. However, if you do decide to help, then there’s a minimum amount of help that could reasonably be required.
This week, I was at MozFest House. I had a good time. As with all MozFests I’ve been to, there are exhibits with which you can interact. One of them asked you to use a touch screen to fill in details of the kinds of services you use. It then printed out a long receipt on the type of data that is gathered on you when using them. I asked the PhD students who had come up with the machine what I was supposed to do with this data. They intimated that they were merely raising awareness and didn’t suggest a single thing I could do.
I was left in a worse position than I began. One could say that’s the point of awareness-raising, that it’s about making people feel discomfort so that they take action. But if you’re going to make an intervention I would agree with Theron Pummer’s stance that there’s a certain minimum level of guidance to give. A first step, at least.
Contrast this with another interactive exhibit in which you received tokens for free coffee if you answered a series of questions about yourself. I managed to get three by lying and not providing personal data. Which, of course, could be said to be the point of the exercise: be careful about the data you put out there, especially for scant reward.
Once you see people putting in the minimum effort of ‘awareness raising’ you start seeing it everywhere. It’s particularly prevalent on social media, where it takes a single tap to reshare news and make others aware of something you’ve just seen. As humans, though, we tend to have a bias towards avoiding harm so social media timelines become full of doom.
I’m on a bit of a mission to get some more positivity into my life. Not in a mindless way. Not in an avoiding-reality kind of way. But rather following people who have noticed a problem and are doing something about it. Seeking out those who can take a step back and look at the wider picture. And, of course, those who share some of the wonder of the world around us.
The post On the paucity of ‘raising awareness’ first appeared on Open Thinkering.
I’m composing this from Newcastle Airport on Monday morning. It’s been a busy weekend, so let’s get that out of the way first.
Saturday morning, I went for a run and then spent most of the day with my wife and daughter at a football tournament for the latter’s new team. They expected to win it, and almost did, had it not been for a penalty given against them during extra time in the final. Back home, shower and change. Out to Wagamama, a family favourite, before our son’s football presentation evening at St James Park, home of Newcastle United. He won Player of the Season, which was not at all expected, although he is awesome (even if I do say so myself).
We were tired enough after the events of Saturday, but on Sunday we had to get the house ready for the estate agent’s photographer, who is coming today (Monday). As anyone who has sold a house in the age of Rightmove will know, the photos are effectively what sell it. So it was a bit of a mission to get everything ready. I was dripping with sweat after gardening, cleaning, painting, etc. So much so that I was thankful for the torrential rain that started in the evening.
It was Fathers Day in the UK yesterday, so we went over to my parents. I’d taken my dad and two kids to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Friday evening (amazing!) but also bought him a book I’d heard being recommended on a podcast. When I left the family this morning, with my son now finished his GCSE exams, my daughter still recovering from the tournament (she picked up a slight injury), and my wife preparing for a potentially tricky week of user research interviews at work, everyone looked knackered.
I almost can’t remember what I did before this last weekend. Laura’s been away, so it’s been a weird week at work. I published a couple of blog posts in different places:
Other than that, the majority of my work seemed to revolve around community platforms and setting up user research. For example:
I realised this week need to write a post about the difference between social networks, chat apps, and forums. People tend to conflate them, which is unhelpful, as they serve different purposes.
There’s plenty of other things I did this week, including deciding not to respond to an RfP after attending the Q&A, preparing for an interview for some other potential work, and just generally getting ready for my upcoming trip.
This coming week, I’ll be in Amsterdam to meet up with my WAO colleagues and for us to run a session at MozFest House. I’m back on Thursday afternoon and will almost immediately take my daughter to her second trial for Sunderland’s academy. She’s also going to the Newcastle trials, but being a Sunderland fan, and knowing it’s a better setup, I’m rooting for her switching from one to the other.
Photo of new temperature and humidity sensor in my home office. It ended up going up to 28.8 C so I bought an evaporative cooler, which increased the humidity but meant I could work in there! The awesome TRYING patch is bright orange in real life and came via Dan Sinker.
The post Weeknote 24/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.The ‘photo’ above was generated using a new tool from Secta Labs. Yes, I paid money to feed in 25 real photos and get back 300+ images that it generated. Some looked like my weird American cousin, as in they kind of looked like me, but not really. There were 15 I was happy enough with, so I asked friends and family which ones they liked and then… ended up using a different one! 😂
To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m using scare quotes for ‘photo’ given that most people use their smartphones to take photographs these days, and those have ton of AI processing going on. As far as I’m concerned, the image above represents how I think I look better than any photos that have been taken of me recently.
(Pro tip: you can use DALL-E to generate more of the area around your head if you get something that’s too closely-cropped on one side, as I did.)
Anyway, enough of the narcissism! Back to the introspection.
This week has been in which a lot of things have happened. Some of them have been work-related, so let’s get those out of the way first. I’ve been:
Laura remembered on Thursday lunchtime that she’s not working next week and had booked it off in our calendar towards the beginning of the year. She doesn’t work Fridays, so it was a slightly abrupt “see you in Amsterdam!” 😅
I mentioned last week that my daughter is going to seemingly a million football trials in the month of June. We found out this week that she got into what is the best team in the north east of England for her age group, which she’s delighted about. She also went to an England development pathway event and got a callback, and to a mixed team trial.
About the latter: anyone who’s been a teacher or coach can often tell what’s about to happen next in certain situations. The decision is only whether or not to intervene. And so it was on a unseasonably cool evening that my wife and I, both former teachers, watched someone in charge of 30+ twelve year-olds. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that, despite them offering our daughter a place in their best team, she won’t be going back. I don’t have a lot of time for poor organisational skills.
My son is continuing with his GCSE exams, and will enter his final week of them next week. I think he’s doing alright, but I am a bit concerned about his on again – off again relationship with revision. You can lead 16 year-olds to the waters of study, but you can’t make them drink (as it were).
Just to add more things into the mix, we’re doing a second viewing of a house next week and taking the kids along. Our house isn’t on the market yet, as we said we’d wait until the GCSE exams to be finished.
We’re also thinking of leasing a car to replace our 10 year-old Volvo V60, which has served us really well and I really like. The rear passenger side suspension snapped this week and, although we got it fixed quickly, it just reminded us that we’re in the realms of Serious Things Going Wrong. I took our daughter for a test drive of a Volvo XC40 today, but I’m leaning towards the lovely-looking Cupra Formentor.
Exercise-wise, I’m back to running properly after my ankle injury. I also went swimming for the first time in ages with my son, as he’s doing a lifeguard course next month and needs to get his water fitness back. Both of us used to swim competitively, but that doesn’t mean much as you lose anaerobic stamina super-quickly. Anyway, it was fine, we’ve both got new prescription goggles, and the pool at the new leisure centre is great.
I took my daughter to the gym, ran on the treadmill, did weights, my first 10k outside for a while, and generally started pushing myself a bit more. Weirdly, the thing I found hardest this week was a 20-minute Pilates for Runners routine I did via YouTube. Oh. My. Days.
Next week, as I mentioned, Laura’s away and so I’ve got to prepare for our meetup and MozFest House session in Amsterdam. I’ve also got a list of small things I need to do, writing I need to start / get finished, and things to tidy up. My daughter’s got more trials, my son’s got his last week of exams, so I need to find something that’s acceptable to everyone as a way of celebrating the latter being over.
Busy times, but not overwhelming. I get bored easily, so it’s it’s all good, I guess 🤘
The post Weeknote 23/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.This week has been half-term for the kids. Hannah took the week off as it contained a Bank Holiday and she doesn’t work Fridays; so she got 10 days off in a row by only taking three holiday days.
I’m not sure why I bothered even trying to work, to be honest, especially as I took Monday and Friday off and attended a funeral for an elderly neighbour on Wednesday. All of this explains why I managed a total of 12.5 hours of work this week…
There was a lot of admin (invoicing, paying corporation tax, claiming back expenses, etc.) this week as we crossed the end of May / start of June boundary. I did get to do a bit of work on client projects, though, including launching the free How to set up a worker co-op email course over at workers.coop.
I also did a bit with Laura for Participate relating to their new platform, with John for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance relating to testing their new community platform, and with Ivan on some Bonfire UX stuff. I’ve also been working on transcripts for Season 6 of The Tao of WAO podcast, the first episode of which has just been released.
We’re into football trials month. Except, because it’s junior football, you have to call them ‘open sessions’. Our daughter is going to approximately a million of them, whereas our son switched basketball teams last week but is staying put for his football team. What with it being the middle of GCSE exams, I feel like parenting is my full-time job at the moment and I just work around it.
Next week is back to a bit of normality. Except, I suppose, my son is now on study leave so I’ll have to make sure he’s got some sort of routine…
Photo of Public Enemy #1: a Common Horse Chestnut tree near our house which seems to have a pollen machine-gun.
The post Weeknote 22/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.It’s Bank Holiday Monday and I haven’t yet written last week’s weeknote. That is to say, I’m writing it now, a day late. I haven’t got the energy or inclination to use florid language, so you’re getting bullet points.
Last week, I was mostly:
This week is half-term and Hannah‘s taking time off to spend with the kids. I’ve got today, which I’ve largely wasted by sleeping in, going to the gym, reading, and playing video games. Oh wait, those are the things I enjoy doing 😂
Image from a page of Sarah Bakewell’s excellent Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope, which I’m reading at the moment in hardback. There’s a great interview with her about the book and its origins in this podcast episode.
The post Weeknote 21/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.Early in my career, I remember someone introducing themselves as “a Creative”. I’ve always been blunt, but am rarely outright rude, so I didn’t ask the question in my head (“a Creative” what?)
Creativity is a mercurial, elusive property which people like to turn from a verb into a noun, embodying it things and people rather than processes. But creativity is an everyday activity. It’s just thinking differently about things.
Yesterday, someone on LinkedIn who I don’t know commented on an update I’d shared about my post Time’s Solitary Dance. They intimated that while the AI-generated ‘photos’ were “creative” it wasn’t my creativity. I’d suggest that this person, like so many others, has confused nouns with verbs.
This morning, I made the above image by running on a field near my house while tracking myself using the Garmin app. Or rather, to be boringly precise, I made it using a smartphone app which generated this image with the help of GPS satellites. As you can see, the execution could have been better, but you get the general idea. I think it’s fair to say that there was no intention on the part of the technical tools that created this image.
Now, I could have used an image editing app to spell the word “Bollocks” perfectly. In this case, I wouldn’t have had to do any running. But the image would have been cleaner and clearer. The execution would have been better. The point I’m trying to make is that the creativity isn’t located in my run, in the field, or in my smartphone app. The creative act is the concept, in the spark, in juxtaposing ideas.
The post The everyday essence of creativity first appeared on Open Thinkering.
Imagine we’re all surfers. The ocean we’re in is the educational system, and we’re all trying to ride the wave of knowledge to the shore of understanding. Some of us have master surfers as guides – personal tutors who are right there with us, helping us manoeuvre the currents and ride high on the knowledge wave. They know our strengths, they know our fears, and they ensure we don’t wipe out. These fortunate few reach the shore faster, more smoothly and often with a lot more fun.
Then there are the rest of us. We’re in a giant surf class. There’s one instructor and dozens of us learners. The instructor is doing their best, but they can’t give us all the personalised attention we need. Some of us catch the wave, some of us don’t. This is Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem.
Brought to the fore by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom in the 1980s, the Two Sigma Problem highlights a gap in education. Personal tutoring can propel students’ performance by two standard deviations – like moving from the middle of a class right to the top 2%. The problem is, we can’t give everyone a personal tutor. It’s just not feasible. So, the question is, how do we give each student the benefits of one-on-one instruction, at scale?
Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, in particular, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. I’ve been experimenting with using ChatGPT as a tutor for my son during the revision period for his exams. It’s great at coming up with questions, marking them, and suggesting how to improve. This kind of feedback is absolutely crucial to learning. It’s also great at exploring the world and allowing curiosity to take you in new directions.
So, if we revisit the Two Sigma Problem based on what’s possible with LLMs, it looks like there’s a possible solution with multiple advantages:
No technology is a silver bullet. As an educator, I know that while curiosity and feedback is really important, there’s nothing like another human providing emotional input — including motivation. AI is here to support, not replace, our human guides.
Even though it’s early days, we’re already seeing some really interesting developments in the application of LLMs in education. I’m no fan of Microsoft, but I will acknowledge that a feature they have in development called ‘passage generation’ looks interesting. This tool reviews data to create personalised reading passages based on the words or phonics rules a student finds most challenging. Educators can customise the passage, selecting suggested practice words and generating options, then publish the passage as a new reading assignment. I find this kind of thing really useful in Duolingo for learning Spanish. Context matters.
As a former teacher, I know how important prioritisation can be for the limited amount of time you have with each student. And as a parent, I’m a big believer in the power of deliberate practice for getting better at all kinds of things. Freeing up teachers to be more like coaches than instructors has been the dream ever since someone came up with the pithy phrase “guide on the side, not sage on the stage”.
One of the main concerns I think a lot people have with AI in general is that it will “steal our jobs”. I’d point out here that the main problem here isn’t AI, it’s capitalism. Any tool or system be used for good or for ill. If you’re not sure how we can approach this post-scarcity world, I’d recommend reading Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani. Of course, regulation is and should be an issue, too.
The main issue I see with this is centralised LLMs run by companies running opaque models and beholden to shareholders. That’s why I envisage educational institutions running local LLMs, or at least within a network that only connects to the internet when it needs to. Just as Google Desktop used to allow you to search through your local machine and the web, I can imagine us all having an AI assistant that has full context, while preserving our privacy.
So the way to approach any new tool or service is to ask critical questions such as “who benefits?” but also to fully explore what’s possible with all of this. I’m hugely hopeful that AI won’t lead us into a sci-fi dystopia, but rather help to even out the playing field when it comes to human learning and flourishing.
What do you think? I’d love to hear in the comments!
Image remixed from an original on the SkillUp blog. Text written with the help of ChatGPT (it’s particularly good at coming up with metaphors, I’ve found!)
The post Using AI to help solve Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem first appeared on Open Thinkering.There are many ways of measuring time. These weeknotes are one way. Calendars are another way, with my favourite way of marking the months being the French Republican Calendar. We’re just entering Prairial, my favourite month! As a reminder of this, I subscribe to daily updates from the Republican Calendar bot on the Fediverse. (I also find the Moon Phases bot handy.)
This week, then, there’s been a lot on. My son started his GCSE exams, my wife went away on a work trip, and I gave my daughter a ‘Golden Boot’ trophy for banging in 42 goals in all competitions this season. Yes, I’ve turned into one of those parents, but it’s a form of recognition and encouragement.
Now that I’ve got access to ChatGPT’s plugins and ability to browse the web, I’ve been using it to conversationally explore options for our 20th wedding anniversary in September. The user experience of doing that by having a chat with a chatbot is approximately a million times better than miserably trawling through sites full of ads. Although I’m sure that the advertising will arrive soon.
Work-wise, I continued working on the WAO projects with which I’m currently involved. I can’t talk about the Greenpeace work, sadly (because it’s pretty great), but we’ve been setting up Hylo ready for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance to test as their new community platform. It’s going well so far. I’m waiting for feedback on the three projects for workers.coop, and there hasn’t been loads to do on the stuff for Participate recently. There will be once we get people in the bigger tent on their new platform.
At the suggestion of Joe, from whom we subcontracted some of the work, WAO ran a retrospective on the project for CAST that was funded by Sport England. Although we delivered some really useful stuff, it was a frustrating project to be involved with in many ways. It turns out that was largely to do with change of project leads, staff turn over in the National Governing Bodies (NGBs), and a miscommunication between whether (and how) we should interact with the NGBs directly. Lesson learned.
Laura hit publish on a post we’d been working on together entitled Practical utopias and rewilding work which came out of our last couple of co-op days. It features a graphic that I created with five topics/areas for us to focus on. As ever, it’s the intersections and overlaps that are interesting. Related: Laura, who’s awesome at ensuring things get written-up, published a wiki page entitled Our principles even-over everything else. Even-over statements are powerful things for any group of people.
On the exercise front, my ankle is still bothering me. It’s over three weeks since I went over on it while running through some mud, and then had to keep on going because I was a long way from home. I’ve aggravated it since then by stumbling on an uneven bit of path while looking at my phone, and so recently I’ve been on the exercise bike instead of running. It’s very boring, and with one of the exercise bikes out of action at the gym, like a game of musical chairs but with old people pedalling slowly and reading books.
The weather always gets much better at this time of year, and so I’ve been up at the field at the top of the hill near our house with the kids a few times. We’re accumulating more equipment as my daughter, in particular, gets older and wants to improve her technique. So we had the cones, speed ladder, and ‘top bins’ for free kick accuracy training. It’s good fun, and my job is mostly encouragement, ball retrieval, and giving out tips to which they sometimes listen.
It’s the sharp end of the football season and, although my team (Sunderland) took a 2-1 lead to Kenilworth Road, they were out-muscled on a tiny pitch by Luton Town. It’s a shame, but I’m not too sad; another season in the Championship to build the squad before being promoted to the Premier League is no bad thing. We’re watching all of the football on TV at the moment. Manchester City might have won the league and Southampton been relegated, but it’s otherwise all to play for!
Inspired by the social documentary photography I discussed in my last weeknote, I got out my mirrorless digital camera (a Sony NEX-5 from before smartphone cameras got much better). It reminded me that you can stuff as much AI as you want into a camera, but the lens makes a huge difference. I’ll probably start taking it out and about with me a bit more, but in the meantime, I also had some fun generating some AI art which looks like black and white photographs from last century.
I’ve been messing about with my Steam Deck, finally buying a fitted case and screen protector for it, in addition to the travel case which it comes with. For some reason, I’d never installed the Heroic Launcher so that I could get the Epic Games store, and therefore Rocket League. It’s amazing on that form factor, and because it’s all cross-play, I’ve got six years of progress on there from playing on the PlayStation.
Over at Thought Shrapnel, I posted:
Next week, we’ve got some planning to do as our MozFest House proposal was accepted. We also need to figure out what else we need to get done while in Amsterdam next month. That, for me, includes which Japanese arcades to experience. We also need to do some business development, and discuss whether or not we’re redesigning our website. I think we should aim for radical simplicity, like this (but more design-y).
Photo taken on field near our house on grass-cutting equipment.
The post Weeknote 20/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.This was my last week at work for three weeks. Just as I did in 2022, this year I’m taking three weeks off in April, August, and December, as well as a few days here and there. I find that it’s only in the third week away from work that I can truly unwind.
Unwinding is different to relaxing. I’m not really someone who find pleasure in long periods of relaxation, if I’m perfectly honest. Life is short and I need things to do. So I’ll be spending my time on holiday with Team Belshaw in Scotland, doing DIY, and walking at least half of The Pennine Way. I’ve swapped running for walking 20,000+ steps each day in preparation for the latter. In fact, I’m just back from a walk with the rest of Team Belshaw which encompassed some of the best of Northumberland (mud! beaches! ice cream!)
Talking of exercise, Morpeth Riverside Leisure Centre, which I’ve been to ever since moving here nine years ago, closed on Wednesday. That is because the new leisure centre (also next to the river, just a bit further round!) opens next Wednesday. I’m not sure why they had to have a week inbetween, and they haven’t informed us of a refund. But you can have a look around the new place for yourself (no, it’s not a parody! I like their enthusiasm).
Also on the exercise front, our kids haven’t had any football matches this weekend, nor have they any scheduled for next weekend. As a result, I was up on the field at the top of the hill helping my daughter with various skills. The photo above shows the high-tech solution I came up with to practice getting it in ‘top bins‘. My son has been a little unwell and so hasn’t been playing sport or training this week.
Blog posts continued tumbling out of me this week:
I also finished the resource for Catalyst on Open Working. On the same topic, Anne published a post rounding up the work we did via CAST for Sport England. Adam Freeman-Pask, who is Head of Digital Innovation for Sport England also published a post heavily influenced by the programme. That’s the end of that project, which we started back in May last year.
We’re replacing this work on our roster with three smallish projects for the Member Learning group of workers.coop. We’ll be turning the MVP of the CoTech Digital Candle service into something a bit more fully-featured. In addition, we’re creating an email-based course (see others) on the basis of worker co-ops, as well as doing some user research to see what kind of support existing network members would like.
In addition, I worked on other client projects for Greenpeace, Participate, and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. That involved doing a whole range of things from to figuring out badge pathways, installing and configuring a wiki, booking flights to Badge Summit, and writing more of a digital strategy. I had some interesting conversations including about Navigatr, drafted another email course (on ‘Reframing Recognition’), did some invoicing, and submitted a proposal for ePIC 2023 in December.
Next week I’m on holiday and walking around a lot.
The post Weeknote 13/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.
It’s the first day of my three-week holiday so of course I woke up before 6am and I’m writing a work-related post. The reason for this is that on Hacker News just now, I saw a post entitled He who submits a resume has already lost. It’s not only a great title, but a thought-provoking post.
The author, an anonymous blogger who goes by ‘Resident Contrarian’, points out how sending out CVs and resumes is in no way to the benefit of job-seekers:
An [sic] group of 50 applicants submit resumes for a job. 10 or so of them are delusional, and get cut… Of the remaining 40, 35 are rejected… This leaves five candidates… Four of those candidates will eventually be rejected, leaving a best-of-50 candidate who will be paid as if he’s barely qualified.
Last week, I wrote that ‘hiring is broken’. I stand by that. However, we can at least partially solve this problem with Open Recognition based on Open Badges, and Verifiable Credentials. This approach allows us to not only foreground knowledge, skills, and understanding, but also behaviours, relationships, and experiences. I’ve written about this before, as has Laura, but here’s some additional reasons why we need a different approach to hiring, specifically:
I’d really like to fix hiring so that my own kids don’t have to deal with the soul-crushing reality of applying for jobs as it is in 2023. By embracing a holistic approach to hiring through Open Recognition, I really do think we can create a more equitable, transparent, and more human approach for everyone involved.
If you’re eager to explore this further and discover how you can get involved in the world of Open Badges and Open Recognition, head over to badges.community and join the movement!
The post Reimagining hiring with Open Recognition first appeared on Open Thinkering.At the crossroads of education, social justice, and personal development stands critical pedagogy, a concept associated with the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paolo Freire. His conviction was that education should be egalitarian, democratic, and transformative; his work has had an outsize impact on my educational philosophy. Critical pedagogy emphasises the significance of dialogue, critical thinking, and active participation. The further I delve into the world of of Open Recognition, the clearer the links with Freire, both in essence and practice.
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire states that:
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
Open Recognition, like critical pedagogy, is about empowering individuals to take ownership of their personal and professional development. The approach not only foregrounds knowledge, skills, and understanding, but also behaviours, relationships, and experiences.
Freire believed that through open and honest conversations, individuals could challenge existing power structures, question assumptions, and engage in transformative learning experiences. Similarly, Open Recognition offers a way for individuals to engage in meaningful conversations about their skills, experiences, and aspirations — using language and approaches that make sense to them.
In facilitating dialogue over power dynamics, Open Recognition nurtures a sense of community and belonging. It empowers individuals to share their stories and learn from one another, and this exchange of ideas and experiences not only contributes to personal growth but also fosters a sense of collective responsibility and solidarity
Critical pedagogy is grounded in the belief that education should be a vehicle for social change and empowerment. Open Recognition aligns with this vision by providing ways for individuals make meaningful contributions to their communities, challenge the status quo, and actively participate in shaping their own futures.
So it’s fair to say that Open Recognition and critical pedagogy share a common goal: the empowerment and transformation of individuals through dialogue, inclusion, and active participation. By explicitly embracing the principles of critical pedagogy, it’s my belief that Open Recognition can help create a more inclusive and equitable world.
If you’re interested in Open Recognition, critical pedagogy, and doing something different than the status quo, I’d highly suggest joining badges.community!
The post Open Recognition + Critical Pedagogy = empowerment, dialogue, and inclusion first appeared on Open Thinkering.Earlier this month, Don Presant published a post entitled The Case for Full Spectrum “Inclusive” Credentials in which he mentioned that “people want to work with people, not just collection of skills”.
We are humans, not machines.
Yesterday, on the KBW community call, Amy Daniels-Moehle expressed her appreciation for the story that Anne shared in our Open Education Talks presentation about her experiences. Amy mentioned that the Gen-Z kids she works with had been excited when watching it. They used the metaphor of showing the full electromagnetic spectrum of themselves — more than just the visible light that we usually see.
It’s a useful metaphor. Just as the electromagnetic spectrum extends far beyond the range of visible light, encompassing ultraviolet, infrared, and many other frequencies, the concept of Open Recognition encourages us to broaden our perspective. As I’ve said before, it allows us to recognising not only knowledge, skills, and understanding, but also behaviours, relationships, and experiences
I remember learning in my Physics lessons that, with the electromagnetic spectrum, each frequency band has its unique properties, applications, and value. Visible light allows us to perceive the world around us. Ultraviolet and infrared frequencies have their uses in areas such as medicine, communication, and security. Other creatures, such as bees, can actually see these parts of the spectrum, which means they see the world very differently to us.
Similarly, it’s time for us to see the world in a new light. Open Recognition acknowledges that individuals possess diverse skills, competencies, and experiences that might not be immediately apparent or visible. Like the ultraviolet and infrared frequencies, these hidden talents may hold immense value and potential. Instead of doubling-down on what went before, we should be encouraging environment that embraces and celebrates this diversity. We can unlock untapped potential, create new opportunities, and enable more human flourishing.
In the same way that harnessing the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation has led to groundbreaking discoveries and advancements, I believe that embracing Open Recognition can lead to a more inclusive, equitable, and thriving society. By acknowledging and valuing the myriad skills and talents each person brings, we can better collaborate and learn from one another. What’s not to like about that?
Note: if you’re interested in this, there’s a community of like-minded people you can join!
The post Embracing the Full Spectrum: towards a new era of inclusive, open recognition first appeared on Open Thinkering.
Imagine a formidable fortress standing tall. Long the bastion of formal education, it’s built upon the pillars of ‘standards’ and ‘rigour’. It has provided structure and stability to the learning landscape. These days, it’s being reinforced with smaller building blocks (‘microcredentials’) but the shape and size of the fortress largely remains the same.
However, as the winds of change begin to blow, a new force emerges from the horizon: Open Recognition. Far from seeking to topple the fortress, this powerful idea aims to harmonise with its foundations, creating a more inclusive and adaptive stronghold for learning.
Open Recognition is a movement that values diverse learning experiences and self-directed pathways. So, at first, it may appear to be in direct opposition to the fortress’s rigidity. However, upon closer inspection, rather than seeking to tear down the walls of standards and rigour, Open Recognition seeks to expand and reimagine them. This ensures that the fortress is inclusive: remaining relevant and accessible to all learners.
To create harmony between these seemingly conflicting forces, it’s important to first acknowledge that the fortress of standards and rigour does have its merits. It provides a solid framework for education, ensuring consistency and quality across the board. However, this approach can also be limiting, imposing barriers that prevent many learners from fully realising their potential.
Open Recognition brings flexibility and personalisation to the fortress. By validating the skills and competencies acquired through non-formal and informal learning experiences, Open Recognition allows the fortress to accommodate different sizes and shape of ‘room’, allowing the unique talents and aspirations of each individual to flourish
The key to harmonising these two forces lies in recognising their complementary nature. Open Recognition strengthens the fortress by expanding its boundaries, while standards and rigour provide the structural integrity that ensures the quality and credibility of the learning experiences within.
Educators and employers, as the guardians of the fortress, play a crucial role in fostering this harmony. By embracing Open Recognition, they can cultivate a more inclusive and dynamic learning ecosystem that values and supports diverse pathways to success. In doing so, they not only uphold the principles of standards and rigour but also enrich the fortress with the wealth of experiences and perspectives that Open Recognition brings.
As the fortress of standards and rigour harmonises with Open Recognition, it becomes a thriving stronghold of lifelong learning, identity, and opportunity. Far from crumbling under the weight of change, the fortress is invigorated by the union of these two powerful forces, ensuring its continued relevance and resilience in an ever-evolving world.
The post Reinventing the Fortress: using Open Recognition to enhance ‘standards’ and ‘rigour’ first appeared on Open Thinkering.I’ve been online long enough to know that you should copy to the clipboard text you’re about to post as a comment. That way you don’t lose it. Don Presant’s blog ate my comment on this post, so I’m posting it here.
For context, Brian Mulligan wondered about the burden that employers/institutions face when an application that contains a large number of digital credentials. He wondered whether anyone is working on tools to ease the burden of validating and evaludating the credential.
My response:
Brian, you make good points here – and ones that have been made before. The problem is that both hiring and Higher Education are broken. And by ‘broken’ (as someone has been through the entire system and has a terminal degree) I mean broken.
So we’re now in a situation where people ask a series of questions to candidates before they look at their CV. This is ostensibly for diversity and unconscious bias (which I fully support) but also because CVs do a terrible job at differentiating between candidates.
Given that many microcredentials simply take existing ‘chunky’ credentials such as degrees and diplomas, and break them down into smaller parts, they’re not solving the problem. They’re just allowing universities to make more money by prolonging it.
Instead, we need full-spectrum recognition of individuals. We’ve been at this ever since the start of my career – first with eportfolios, then with badges, then with blockchain, and now with Verifiable Credentials. The issue is that people mistakenly think it’s the credential, badge, or portfolio that needs to be validated. It’s not, it the identity of the individual.
We’re not going to live in a world where everyone has their own domain, sadly, so we need verification systems that allow people to claim and controlled identifiers either publicly or anonymously identify them. If you think about it, you shouldn’t have to apply for jobs, because jobs should come looking for you. I think the systems that are being built now, coupled with some of the AI that Don was talking about, so I think we’re getting closer to solving all of this.
For those dissatisfied with the false dawn of microcredentialing, I’m working on a ‘Reframing Recognition’ email course which I’m hoping to have ready after I get back from holiday. It’ll help people understand why Open Recognition is a much better approach. Come join badges.community to find out why.
The post The old ‘chicken and egg’ problem about microcredentials kind of misses the point first appeared on Open Thinkering.I boiled snow for the first time this morning. Last night, I wild camped somewhere in The Cheviots as the clocks ‘sprang’ forward. Waking up before dawn, I put my iPod on shuffle, skipped one track and listened to Surprise Ice by Kings of Convenience. The song couldn’t have been more apt, given that my tent was covered in snow and ice!
The overnight camp was in preparation for walking at least half of The Pennine Way in a few weeks’ time. I’ve got all the kit I need, so I was just testing the new stuff out and making sure the existing stuff was still in good working order. The good news is that it’s very unlikely to get colder during my walk than it did last night, and I was warm enough to sleep!
This week, I’ve been helping WAO finish off our work (for now) with Passbolt and Sport England, continuing some digital strategy stuff for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, doing some work around Greenpeace and KBW. I updated a resource I’d drafted on open working for Catalyst, and put together a proposal for some badges work under the auspices of Dynamic Skillset.
We had a co-op half day on Tuesday in which we ran, and eventually passed, a proposal about experimenting with a ‘drip release’ model for our content. Essentially, this would mean that we would have patrons (platform TBD) who would get our stuff first, and then everything would be open a few weeks later. This emerged from an activity of us individually coming up with a roadmap for WAO for the next few years. We were amazingly well-aligned, as you’d hope and expect!
This week, I published:
I also helped a little with this post from Laura, and she helped me with one that I’ve written but has yet to be published. I’ve also drafted another couple of posts and an email-based course. I also (with a little help) created a weather app using the OpenWeatherMap API. Which brings us onto…
I’ve continued to find ChatGPT 4 really useful in my work this week. It’s like having a willing assistant always ready. And just like an assistant, it sometimes gets things wrong, makes things up, and a lot of the time you have domain expertise that they don’t. AI-related stuff is all over the place at the moment, especially LinkedIn, and I share the following links mainly for future me looking back.
While I got access to Google Bard a few days ago, the experience Google currently provides feels light years behind OpenAI’s offering. This week there were almost too many AI announcements to keep up with, so I’ll just note that ChatGPT was connected to internet this week. Previously it just relied on a training model that cut off in 2021. Also, OpenAI have announced plugins which look useful, although I don’t seem to have access to them yet.
There are lots of ways to be productive with ChatGPT, and this Hacker News thread gives some examples. I notice that there’s quite a few people giving very personal information to it, with a few using it as a therapist. As Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin point out in the most recent episode of their podcast Your Undivided Attention, AI companies encourage this level of intimacy, as it means more data. However, what are we unleashing? Where are the checks and balances?
Writing in Jacobin, Nathan J. Robinson explains that the problem with AI is the problem with capitalism. Robinson’s attitude reflects my own:
It’s interesting that we talk about jobs being “at risk” of being automated. Under a socialist economic system, automating many jobs would be a good thing: another step down the road to a world in which robots do the hard work and everyone enjoys abundance. We should be able to be excited if legal documents can be written by a computer. Who wants to spend all day writing legal documents? But we can’t be excited about it, because we live under capitalism, and we know that if paralegal work is automated, that’s over three hundred thousand people who face the prospect of trying to find work knowing their years of experience and training are economically useless.
We shouldn’t have to fear AI. Frankly, I’d love it if a machine could edit magazine articles for me and I could sit on the beach. But I’m afraid of it, because I make a living editing magazine articles and need to keep a roof over my head. If someone could make and sell an equally good rival magazine for close to free, I wouldn’t be able to support myself through what I do. The same is true of everyone who works for a living in the present economic system. They have to be terrified by automation, because the value of labor matters a lot, and huge fluctuations in its value put all of one’s hopes and dreams in peril.
If ChatGPT is going to revolutionise the economy, we should probably decide what that should look like. Otherwise, we’re running the risk of Feudalism 2.0. We’ve heard the hyperbole before, but if AI systems are exhibiting ‘sparks’ of artificial general intelligence (AGI) then we shouldn’t be experimenting on the general population. Perhaps Nick Cave is correct and that the problems with the world are “certitude and indifference”.
Next week is my last before taking three weeks off. I’m very much looking forward to a family holiday and am psyching myself up for my long walk. Ideally, I’d like to do the whole 268 miles in one go over a two-week period. But I don’t think my family (or my body!) would be up for that…
The post Weeknote 12/2023 first appeared on Open Thinkering.In a previous blog post, I discussed how microcredentials have deviated from Mozilla’s original Open Badges vision. This post explores some ways in which microcredentials can be realigned with those initial goals and better empower individuals and communities.
Firstly, it’s essential to emphasise the importance of informal and non-formal learning. Experiences such as volunteer work, self-directed online learning, and engaging in communities of practice have immense value. Microcredential issuers should think more widely to recognise a broad range of learning, allowing individuals to showcase not only their knowledge, skills, and understanding, but also their behaviours, relationships, and experiences.
Interoperability and decentralisation are crucial for a thriving microcredential ecosystem. Open standards and protocols can enable seamless sharing and displaying of badges across platforms. Microcredential providers need to think not only about their own issuing, but that of others. How can learners showcase learning that has taken place elsewhere? In addition, how can we use approaches such as Creative Commons licensing to encourage the reuse and remix of badge metadata? The move to Verifiable Credentials will allow badges without images, which will make collaboration around taxonomies even more important.
Thirdly, accessibility and reducing barriers to entry are vital in countering the commercialisation of microcredentials. Universities and other microcredential providers are no doubt feeling the squeeze in the current economy, but free or low-cost learning opportunities make for a more inclusive learning ecosystem. After all, the original vision for Open Badges was to widen participation and recognise different kinds of learning.
Open Recognition plays a key role in realigning microcredentials with the initial Mozilla Open Badges white paper. Along with approaches such as ungrading and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), we can focus on formative aspects such as learner growth and development, rather than solely on traditional summative evaluation methods. This approach can help build trust and ensure microcredentials are meaningful to employers, educators, and learners alike.
Finally, building a diverse ecosystem is essential. At the moment, microcredentialing seems to be almost entirely about the formal education to employment pipeline. However, wider collaboration can ensure the relevance, sustainability, and utility of microcredentials. Community-driven initiatives and partnerships can foster innovation, create new opportunities, and encourage widespread adoption of the original Open Badges vision.
So, in conclusion, realigning microcredentials with the original Open Badges vision has the potential to empower learners, recognise diverse skills, and foster a more accessible recognition ecosystem. By implementing the strategies discussed in this post, we can contribute to the revitalisation of the Open Badges movement and create a better future for learners worldwide.
Image CC BY-ND Visual Thinkery for WAO
The post Realigning Microcredentials with Open Badges first appeared on Open Thinkering.I was talking with someone today who reflected that Open Badges effectively lost its theoretical underpinnings when Mozilla handed over stewardship of the standard in 2017. I think this is true, which is why Open Recognition is a much more interesting space to be now than the monoculture than is microcredentialing.
This post outlines some of what I think has been lost in terms of the extremely fertile period of time from 2011 until 2016. For those not aware, I was involved in the Mozilla community around badges from mid-2011, went to work on the Mozilla Open Badges team, became their Web Literacy Lead, and then have consulted on badge-related projects since leaving Mozilla in 2015.
Here’s my list of how microcredentialing has taken us away from the original vision, especially compared to the Open Badges white paper and subsequent work by Mozilla, HASTAC, and the Connected Learning Alliance:
The people remaining loyal to the original, revolutionary vision of badges are all talking about Open Recognition these days. Microcredentials are ‘dead metaphors‘ which lack power in terms of human agency and individuals and communities being able to tell their story.
I’m looking forward to continuing to fight the good fight.
Image: cropped screenshot taken from homonym.ca
The post 5 reasons why microcredentials are not Open Badges in name, spirit, or ethos first appeared on Open Thinkering.Note: cross-posted at LinkedIn
Sharepidation (noun) A fusion of sharing and trepidation, sharepidation refers to the state or condition in which a person feels anxious, apprehensive, or nervous about disclosing or presenting their work, ideas, or personal creations more widely. This term encapsulates the vulnerable and courageous act of making one’s efforts transparent despite the underlying fear of judgement, criticism, or rejection.
I come across this all of the time in We Are Open Co-op‘s work. People get over it (and flourish!) but it’s a thing. So let’s have a name for it!
Image by Quentin Lagache
The post Sharepidation first appeared on Open Thinkering.
FreshRSS 