University World News liked my post about MOOCs, which was nice of them since I criticized their previous writer so much. They wanted me to expand on a few things for their commentary section. We went through a few iterations, and the resulting op-ed is an almost entirely different piece, found on their site.
Relax, Higher Education Won’t Be Killed By MOOCs
“My argument is that to the extent that a MOOC focuses on content, like a traditional course, it begins to fail. A MOOC should focus on the connections, not the content.” — Stephen Downes
I read University World News frequently, and find it a great place to keep abreast of what’s happening in higher education in other countries, especially in the low and middle income countries covered by their Africa edition. But that doesn’t mean everything they print is necessarily entirely on point, and a recent case in point is their commentary Yes, MOOC is the global higher education game changer, by Simon Marginson from the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.
Given Prof. Marginson’s impressive resume, I was surprised that this piece had factual inaccuracies, even from the very first sentence. Firstly, “MOOC” doesn’t stand for “Free Massive Open Online Courseware”, it stands for “Massive Open Online Course”. Courseware is something a bit different, and while MOOCs might make use of open courseware, and while the same institution might offer both (most famously MIT), they’re not the same thing.
Secondly, the MOOC offered by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig late last year was a great success which rightfully got a lot of attention, but it wasn’t the first MOOC. It’s tough to draw a bright line here, but the real first one was probably one offered in 2008 by George Siemens and Stephen Downes through Athabasca University.
Thirdly — and I’ll admit that this point is more in the realm of opinion and prediction — the idea that MOOCs will spell the death of higher education as we know it may be exciting to say, but there are some fundamental barriers involved that will be pretty challenging to overcome. As someone who’s worked in online education for a long time, I can assure you that not everyone wants to learn online, even if from a well-regarded school. Another is that MOOCs from prestigious universities do not lead to academic credit, and this is an important drawback to them that their cheerleaders need to consider a little more closely. Moreover, if I may be allowed a prediction, they never will lead to credit, especially from top universities. Education is not a university’s true product, prestigious credentials are. When employers start accepting MOOC certificates of completion as the equivalent to a university degree, then one will be able to consider them a substitute. Until then, one simply cannot.
Don’t get me wrong, MOOCs are a great new tool in the toolbox of adult education. I’m glad schools are offering them, in fact I’m doing one myself later this year. But as exciting as they are, they cannot be all things to all people, and local universities are in no danger whatsoever of being supplanted by them any time soon.
Don’t Believe Everything You Read
“I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.” — Aneurin Bevan
I admit it: I’m a news junkie. Every day I catch up on what’s happening around the world and in the field of eLearning thanks to various news outlets that scour the globe to find out the latest goings on. Sure, sometimes the mainstream media doesn’t cover something important, and independent media have to pick up the slack, but that’s just how it is. No industry is perfect, after all, and for the most part the news media does a lot more good than harm.
Right, for the most part. But these are tough times for news media. The Internet has not been kind to newspapers in particular, or even television news. At the same time, it’s not like Internet-only news sources tend to have a large number of actual journalists writing stories. As a result, many news outlets have cut back on their reporting staff levels, filling pages with stories that were obtained as cheaply as possible from third parties rather than going out to find out firsthand what’s really happening.
Unfortunately, this can be dangerous. Recently I saw a supposed news story on Yahoo! News that is so irresponsible that it makes me pretty angry. It’s a press release from a notorious diploma mill called MUST University that has scammed many people. No journalist sat down and wrote this article, or even checked it out before it went up on Yahoo! News. It was simply written by the scammers themselves, submitted to a company that they paid to promote it as a real press release, and then picked up and published online without any review for accuracy.
When you’re a prospective student looking for the right school through which you can earn a degree by eLearning, it’s hard enough even choosing a college or university from all the real choices out there. But when this sort of deliberate misinformation is added into the mix, things are downright dangerous! But there are a few things one can do to minimize the risk of being taken in by this sort of scam. First, remember that just because it looks like news doesn’t mean you can trust it. Second, if a school wants you to make a one time payment in exchange for a degree, with nothing more required, that’s not a “life experience degree”, that’s just a fake.
Shall We Play A Game?
“Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.” — Steven Wright
One of the problems with usually being busy is that it means that I don’t have enough time for games. At various times in my life I’ve been more interested in games than others. For example, I’ve had friends who were into games of chance. I joined two friends for a night at a casino once, and while my luck wasn’t very good it was worth it as the price of admission into a different world. Nowadays that sort of thing is all over the Internet too, of course. The U.S. government and its various state subsidiaries would rather Americans didn’t gamble online, but of course millions do anyway. Fortunately there are are great sites for online gaming in Europe and other places that are willing to offer people the fun that they actually want.
I really liked stand up video games when I was a kid, way back when not only were there still arcades, but all the games inside were playable for a quarter. I didn’t really get into video gaming at home, I liked some of those games, especially the Civilization series, and a few others like it. In fact Civilization is one of the few things I sort of miss having been on Linux for so long. There are people who get the Windows versions of the game running just fine on Linux using WINE, and I’ve thought about it, but not only would it take a while to get all of that configured, once I’d succeeded I know myself well enough to realize I’d spend way too many hours getting all my roads converted to railroads, or trying to take key cities from the evil Babylonians next door. Better to avoid temptation!
When I was a kid, and intermittently ever since, I’ve found the time for role playing games. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons ever since its first edition, and as an old hand at it I come down firmly in favor of Pathfinder as opposed to Hasbro’s disastrous fourth edition. My friends at the time and I played a number of lesser known ones as well, Paranoia, Shadowrun, and my all time favorite, Space: 1889, which offered a Victorian science fiction setting where the invention of ether flyers allowed the British Empire and its rivals to vie for influence throughout the swamps of Venus and beside the canals of Mars.
Getting back to playing cards, this one is actually pretty special to me, because the boys and I literally have our own game. Called BattleCards, it’s sort of like those collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh in terms of strategy and game mechanics, but it uses a normal deck of cards instead of custom cards that you have to keep buying and buying and buying to remain a competitive player. I more or less designed it over a long period of time, and the boys have helped me playtest it. Anyone who like those sorts of games really ought to check it out.
Also in the low tech area are board games, and the two that see the most action in my house are Risk and its grown up alternative, Axis & Allies. After all, if you’re going to play a board game, the fate of the world may as well be at stake! And then there’s Scrabble, which Adella got me into long ago, and while it may not seem to offer similar stakes to global domination, it’s still taken very seriously in my house. After all, if you’re playing me at Scrabble, it’s your word against mine, and really, what could be more intriguing?
Another Insult From Verizon
I almost deleted the email as probable spam, but then I actually read it:
Thank you for being a loyal Verizon customer. At Verizon, we are committed to bring you the best suite of products and the most current capabilities, while providing the value and quality of service that you expect. From time to time, we must make changes to our product offering to meet these goals. Beginning May 6, 2012, we will no longer offer High Speed Internet without local voice service on the same account.
Let me get this straight — to reward my loyalty, and as part of their commitment to bringing me the value I expect, Verizon has decided that if I ever move and want to retain their DSL service I must also pay them every month for a landline phone that I don’t want and can’t use? I think “ridiculous” is among the nicer words I can use to describe that scenario. And even if I had enough use for a land line to get one, it surely wouldn’t be their outrageously overpriced service, it would be something like magicJack Plus which offers effectively the same thing for a tiny fraction of the price.
I guess I’m not the only one who refuses to overpay for a land line, and I suspect the problem here is that Verizon executives have clumsily responded to minimal demand for this overpriced service by holding the services people actually do want hostage. I don’t think that will work, and it surely won’t work on me. I’m grandfathered in, apparently, and hopefully that means as long as I stay at this address. But in a few years we’ll move, and if this policy is still in play at that time, that will be the last straw that finally pushes us to a different Internet service provider.
I wish all these telecommunications companies and other media companies would get it that people want a single telecommunications connection that’s reliable and fairly priced, and they want to use that single pipe as the conduit for all the other applications, whether voice, TV, or other, that they can then get from a competitive marketplace. Perhaps it’s because the few large companies in the telecommuncations space are a cartel supported by municipal guarantees of monopoly that they’re so slow to adapt to what their customers actually want, or perhaps they realize in an efficient system, they can’t compete, but whatever the reason, the end of companies like Verizon thinking that customers can be coerced like this is long overdue.
My Son The Ringleader
“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.” — V, in V for Vendetta
I have four kids, Duncan is 15, Fiona is 12½, Fenris is 11, and Noah is 7. While they’re close knit, they’re all very different from one another, and some of them are better at attracting attention than others. In fact, typically Duncan, Fiona, and Noah get the most attention, usually through error, and poor Fenris, who even gets called “the good one” from time to time, often hears from us the least. In fact, sometimes he’s so well behaved that I wonder whether he takes after me in temperament at all, or whether he really just takes after his mild-mannered mom.
It seems however, that there’s an anti-authoritarian streak in him after all. As a fifth grader, he’s in the uppermost class at his elementary school, which means this is his sixth and final year there. Recently the school changed their procedure for where kids sit during lunch, making it more restrictive and having them all sit in a row rather than where they can face one another and socialize while eating. It was an unpopular change among students, and Fenris took it upon himself to resist it.
His first step was to draft a petition calling on school administrators to return to the previous lunch seating arrangement, getting many of his fellow students to sign it, and even getting the signature of one of the teachers. On delivering this petition to administrators, he discovered what most activists soon discover — when the will of the people can be easily ignore by authority figures, the smart money bets that the people will be disregarded by those in authority.
Undaunted, he organized his friends to take chalk with them to recess, and write what he described as “V for Vendetta” symbols on the blacktop as a continuing protest. The only response was that they were told not to use the school’s chalk for such a purpose. Still undaunted, he then got his friends to bring chalk from home so they could continue to express their opinion without being accused of misusing school resources.
It was at this point that he was sent to the principal’s office, because he was identified as a “ringleader” of what was happening. He wasn’t suspended or expelled or anything like that, but they did confiscate his chalk (his chalk, mind you) telling him that what he and his friends were doing was “vandalism” — even though rain would wash it away and even though strangely it wasn’t considered vandalism when other students would draw on the blacktop with chalk for reasons other than expressing their opinion about school policy, e.g., drawing squares for hopscotch and the like. In fairness, he also got an explanation for the change in lunch seating procedure, although he wasn’t particularly impressed by its reasoning.
Now, I have the feeling he’s gone as far as he wants to go with this, and that’s his call. But even though his mother was appalled, I told him that I was proud of him for not being intimidated by authority figures. In the long run, he’ll be much better off if he’s not swayed by those who want to bend him to their will, and in particular doesn’t let those who are supposed to be educating him steal his dreams.
Busting A Move
“I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights, so it looks like I’m the only one moving.” — Steven Wright
Over on the resume page I’ve updated my address, and I suppose that calls for a bit of explanation!
One of the most fun things in life is to move from one house to another. Well, okay, it’s not really all that much fun. But it is a pretty big experience, at least. I say this because this past weekend my family and I moved houses. Even since my oldest son came to live with me it had seemed like there was just one room too few to meet everyone’s needs. In particular, I’d really noticed the lack of a space of my own, however small, that no one else ever touched. It didn’t help that we’d been there for five years — which means little things just accumulated over time until the house felt like it was bursting at the seams.
We only moved two blocks, and from one townhouse to another, so there are a number of comparisons to be made. It’s unquestionably a good move, but as with most things in life, there are tradeoffs. The old house had less space, but it was closer to the trail along Holmes Run that is a great place for walking. The parking lot for the old house was never full, but at the new house parking is pretty limited for visitors. The old house was part of a large complex consisting entirely of townhouses where a lot of us shared a fairly large courtyard. The new house is right on the street, although it has a back yard that’s fenced off and consists almost entirely of a huge deck under a large holly tree, which is very pleasant.
But most importantly, the new place is much larger. In particular it has a basement, the new lair of my teenager, although part of the deal for him to get that kind of space was that when his siblings are around that’s the place that will be their containment area. The living room on the main floor is large enough that it would serve well for entertaining, although the parking situation will mitigate that. But most importantly, to me, there are enough rooms that one of them is my office, where I can leave things knowing no one will move them, and where I can concentrate without hearing what’s going on elsewhere in the house. Similarly, Adella likes the kitchen so much she’s taking the breakfast nook over as her own workspace.
So there we are. We actually took the opportunity to get rid of a lot of extra stuff while we were packing, and I think we’ll manage to divest ourselves of a bit more during what is turning out to be a fairly lengthy unpacking process. And if we can figure out where people would park we do hope to have a housewarming party in the near future — although in the interest of not ending up in the same boat it will definitely be a gift-free one!
Who’d Get Your Billion Dollars?
Recently someone asked online “If you had a billion dollars to give either to the Ludwig von Mises Institute or the Cato Institute, which would it be?”
The question got a lot of responses, and each of the two institutions had its defenders. I thought about it, but I realized that I don’t really love either of them enough to drop them a billion dollars.
I think Cato’s job is to influence those who make decisions, but that corporate money completely drowns them out. Sometimes they have free lectures on a topic that interests me, and I’ve gone to those. I’m glad they’re there, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as important as they like to think.
And the Mises Institute may be really strident on issues that few others address directly, like sound money and copyright. I appreciate that. But I’ve been led to believe that their chairman is the real author of the loathsome stuff from Ron Paul’s old newsletters, and I just can’t imagine handing that guy a sum that amounts to the annual GDP of the Seychelles. Besides, like Cato, they may say the right things, but ultimately, what good does that do if the only people who hear them are those who already agree?
So I said that I would use it to set up a fund to support entrepreneurs, or failing that, I’d give it to FLOW. My argument was that entrepreneurs do a lot more good for people than any libertarian talking shop, and that it’s pretty tough to become an entrepreneur without finding out good and hard what a hindrance government really is.
Unfortunately for FLOW, I don’t actually have an extra billion dollars lying around. But it’s fun to think about what sort of change one might be able to promote with that level of effort. So… who’d get your billion dollars for change?
Let’s Get Rid Of “Deadbeat Dads”
I live in Alexandria, Virginia, and in my particular area of town the member of the House of Delegates (the lower chamber of the state legislature) is Charniele Herring, a Democrat who I understand typically takes fairly left-learning positions. Now, that’s par for the course around here, so normally I don’t think twice about her. But I do receive her periodic email newsletter, and while normally there are plenty of things with which I disagree, it’s only in today’s that I finally read something that made me genuinely angry.
Specifically, I was very disappointed by Ms. Herring’s use of the use of the derogatory term “deadbeat dads” in her recent newsletter to constituents. This hateful phrase deserves to be scrapped for two reasons.
First, not all parents who aren’t able to make their child support payments are “deadbeats”. There are all sorts of reasons that a parent may not be able to live up to his or her court-determined financial obligations. Unwillingness is one, yes, but others include unemployment, underemployment, other family emergencies, unexpected tax liabilities, illness or other disability, and so forth.
In many cases, a parent who has fallen seriously behind financially faces the prospect of six months in prison for contempt of court. Since this is not technically a criminal matter, the parent doesn’t even have the right to legal representation. Is a child really better off with that parent behind bars? And is a society for which imprisonment is the first resort really the one in which we want to live?
Second, not all parents who aren’t able to make their child support payments are dads. While the majority of non-custodial parents may indeed be fathers, so too are there mothers who for whatever reason are the ones whose children primarily reside with the other parent. I would have thought this would go without saying in the 21st century, particularly from someone such as Ms. Herring who otherwise comes across as progressive. Sadly, it would seem this is not yet the case.
This term may be a convenient way to score cheap political points, but at its heart it’s a way to demonize yet another segment of our population, people who in many instances may actually need help rather than scorn and punishment if they’re to regain the ability to meet their children’s needs. Child support enforcement could well use far reaching reform in Virginia, but that reform should be based on the idea of focusing on what’s best for the child rather than what’s worst for the non-compliant parent. Let’s hope that Ms. Herring’s unfortunate turn of phrase doesn’t mean she advocates going in the wrong direction.
Testing For Purple Belt
“Yay, burpees!” — Unofficial Potomac Kempo slogan
Last June, I signed up to study Shaolin Kempo Karate at Potomac Kempo. Two of my sons had been studying there for about half a year at that point, and the dojo offered a special, through which dads of current students could join and study for the month of June for free. I had been fascinated by watching my kids learn this art, so I decided that since it was free — my favorite price for things! — I would go ahead and check it out from the inside.
Tonight, seven months later, I will test to try to earn my purple belt, the fourth step on a journey where the black belt is the twelfth step. And yes, I’m counting white belt as the first step even though they hand you one on your way in the door — after all, making the decision even to walk through the door for the first time is a step, and a big one at that. Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve at least learned enough to know some of what I don’t know, and maybe have some insight into the road ahead. For one thing, while many people talk about earning a black belt in a martial art, that is not the destination, it is simply an important milestone on a journey that never ends.
That brings me to goals. What are my goals as a martial artist? I know a few things that may sound like they would be goals, but at least in my case they’re really not. One is to “level up” by earning belts. The belt itself isn’t the point to me, it’s the knowledge of the art that accompanies it. Put another way, if everything at Potomac Kempo were exactly the same, except with no belt system, I would still stick around.
Another thing that’s not a goal for me is to become better at actual fighting. That may sound strange considering that I’m studying a martial art, but thanks to delightfully sheltered upbringing, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to fight someone physically, and don’t really expect to be in that sort of situation in the future. Being prepared for unexpected situations is always nice, but the likelihood seems pretty remote.
Similarly, I’m not in this to try to be better at it than other people. Sparring is a common activity in class, and a featured event at our semi-annual tournaments. But I find I learn more sparring someone more advanced than I, someone who could easily take me out with three limbs tied behind his back, than I do from tagging white belts.
So if those aren’t my goals what are? Well, whenever a sensei asks in class why we’re doing a particular thing, there are only two answers guaranteed to be correct. One is “to get better at kempo!” The other is “to help other people get better at kempo!” That sounds good, and conveniently it’s even true, but saying that I’m doing kempo because I want to get better at kempo is uselessly circular unless I also explain what kempo really is, at least to me.
Kempo is physical, and mental. Kempo is science, and art. Kempo is the asymptotic pursuit of perfection. The closer you get to the speed of light, the more energy it takes to accelerate. The better one gets at kempo, the more discipline it takes to improve. This is not a drawback, it is a feature. Kempo means learning things that are brand new. Kempo means uncovering things one has always known. Kempo is not an event, it is a process. Kempo is cooperation with other people. Kempo is struggle against oneself.
But some of those things I can simply see from here, as I said, I’m only testing for purple belt. And at a basic level such as mine, the study of kempo is a balance of mental strength and physical strength. In keeping with that I’m gearing up both mentally and physically for my test this evening. Mentally, I’m remaining as low stress as possible, something that I’ve found is a bit easier the more diligently I attend class. Indeed, there have been times when I was upset about something or another, and spending an hour focusing on kempo made a difference — and not just because I was too tired to care afterward! In order to perform moves properly, especially in an environment where other people are initiating a pattern with a strike or kick, it takes a focus that doesn’t leave room for stray thoughts about outside matters. It’s not exactly meditation, although we do that also (albeit briefly), but it’s still a good way to hit the mental reset button. And it takes mental strength to overcome the natural instinct during sparring to back up, and instead try to get as close as possible to someone whose job is to hit you.
For tonight I’ve prepared by scheduling a lesson for last night to bone up on the moves I should know, and they seem reasonably good, although always with room for improvement. Throughout the day I’m taking the advice so often shared among those of us who have done belt tests before, and that is first and foremost to drink lots of water throughout the day. But that’s just regarding this evening. Overall, I’ve noticed a number of physical benefits from my months of kempo. I can do at least a few pushups now, and when I first started the idea of me doing pushups was solely useful for entertainment value. I have endurance when it comes to running — even though I hadn’t gone on a run in nearly a year, when I did so a month or so ago I was able to jog a 5K without stopping or even being overly fatigued. I believe I am more a bit more agile than before. My feet are finally figuring out why step dragging makes sense, and I occasionally twist around to catch objects, reach for items, etc., in a way that may not sound like a big deal, but is still sort of cool.
For this, I have to thank Sensei Chris Santillo, Sensei Cassie Frost, Senpai Charles Murphy, assorted other occasional instructors, innumerable sparring partners, and last but not least, my mom. I appreciate all of the cooperation you’ve provided to make the struggle possible.
So I suppose that’s a snapshot of where I am with kempo at this point. Tonight, if all goes well, I’ll earn a change of uniform, as my current orange belt means I wear a white uniform, but as a purple belt I will wear a black one signifying having reached the lofty point of not being entirely being clueless. Between there and there I’ll have the chance to demonstrate the moves I can do. And of course, there will be burpees. Oh yes, there will be burpees. Yay!