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<\/p>\nWell, I ended up with like half a dozen new blog posts that will not become their own posts by this point. I sometimes see people go to conferences and make individual posts for every session, and kudos to them, that\u2019s just impossible for me it seems despite my best intentions.<\/p>\n
– sponsored keynote session, televic education – (I know I\u2019ve lamented before about showing up to what should be an interesting conference session only to be underwhelmed by a sales pitch, but at least we had a bit of warning today).<\/p>\n
The presentation focused mostly on using software to deliver formative pre, post, and distributed formative and summative assessments. The focus seemed to be in industry from what I recall with some applications in training translators as well. The presenter strayed from testing by the end to discuss a new peer review product they were working on, but I\u2019m still stuck on some things from the testing aspect of the presentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cTesting effect\u201d: Testing or evaluation itself has a major and very positive effect on learning or memorizing information<\/b>\u00a0(emphasis mine).<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve blogged a bit about how I use this effect in some of my own personal learning as well as creating courseware. It\u2019s not the only tool available, and there was of course a little pushback on Twitter:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisamblaschke\/status\/1140529260295270401?s=21<\/p>\n
This this tweet relates to the kitchen metaphor the presenter used (although he talked about a marketing kitchen) Assessment is about options, and choosing the right ingredients at the right time.<\/p>\n
Now, to preface all of this the speaker lead in with Ebbinghaus. He\u00a0introduced with the Ebbinghaus\u2019 forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus 1850-1909.) The forgetting curve is something we hear a lot about (or at least frequently) in learning and ed tech, at least I heard it fairly regularly, but seeing those dates on Ebbinghaus today were a bit of a surprise. I\u2019d forgotten how old some of this research is. I\u2019m sure there is newer better research but that\u2019s not what got pointed to. The history and evolution of this forgetting curve narrative would be an interesting piece for a full article post, not just the quick reflections category.<\/p>\n
Steve Wheeler (who mysteriously tweeted audience view pictures and quotes of himself during the presentation) opened with describing the Open University UK, \u201cuniversity of the second chance\u201d. Steve shared story about leaving university because he was terrified of evaluations. Then went to OU.<\/p>\n
Through a few stories he talked about how, in his view, technology would change the work of teachers rather than replace them (the latter being an apparent wish of some technologists). He speculated on how teaching might change in time.<\/p>\n
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For example, Waverly is an in ear translator. Will it make language teachers obsolete? He doesn\u2019t think so. It\u2019s only one piece of the puzzle. However, it undermines current pedagogy which will need to change over time.<\/p>\n
He briefly passes over the term connectivism (I think it got mentioned twice, which is surprising given the title of the talk. I guess I\u2019ve been in enough Canadian based talks on this topic that it actually was jarring to see a distinct lack of names like Downes, Siemens, Cormier, Couros, etc.) Then he talked a bit about the role of content in this sort of new model:<\/p>\n