OLDaily
by Stephen Downes
April 28, 2014
The Open Education Consortium
Mary Lou Forward,
The Open Education Consortium,
April 28, 2014
By email I learn today that The OpenCourseWare Consortium has changed its name to The Open Education Consortium. Nice new logo and new website. "This change reflects developments in OER and open education and recognizes that the Consortium has broadened its scope of work over the past several years to include support for many types of open education projects around the world," writes Mary Lou Forward. You can also get the procveedings of the (last) OCWC meetings here.
Aligning Repository Networks Meeting 2014
Various authors,
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR),
April 28, 2014
The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) has undertaken an initiative to align open access repositories. This post summarizes the results of a meeting directed toward that objective. "t will give the repository community a stronger global voice and raise the visibility of the role of repositories as critical research infrastructure." 14 page PDF. See also the communiqué.
Why Disney is pushing further into the preschool mobile space
Jeremy Dickson,
iKids,
April 28, 2014
If Disney were a benign entertainer (and maybe even educator) of children I wouldn't be so concerned. But one of the risks of a major corporation marketing directly to children is that it becomes the vehicle for even more marketing. Surely, for example, the name 'Doc McStuffins' isn't just coincidentally the name of a certain fast food place that also markets to children. This advertising has long-term impacts (it is interesting to map the advertising on children's 'Superman' radio broadcasts in the late 1940s and early 50s to values expressed in the 60s). What does Disney market? Princesses and rich uncles and an us-versus-them view of the world. And so I'm concerned. As are others.
Selecting a Learning Management System: Advice from an Academic Perspective
Clayton R. Wright, Valerie Lopes, T. Craig Montgomerie, Sunday Reju, Seb Schmoller,
EDUCAUSE Review,
April 28, 2014
It's a bit old school, but many institutions are still going through the LMS selection process. This article is a good guide. "This article stresses the importance of involving all stakeholders in the selection process, offers a step-by-step guide to LMS selection, and enables readers to develop a customized list of LMS features that align with their institution's instructional and learning priorities." See also the appendix containing 305 questions or features to consider during the selection process.
Open Textbooks Toolkit
Various authors,
B.C. Campus,
April 28, 2014
From BCcampus: "The BCcampus Open Textbook Toolkit is your starting point on how to change education with just one textbook. It provides a list of our open textbooks, information and guidelines for adopting and assigning an open textbook."
Editor's Blog Lamarckian Inheritance: Passing what you have learned to your children
Josh Mitteldorf,
Humanity+,
April 28, 2014
I'm still a step away from endorsing this argument, but it's interesting, and the background information is well worth knowing. The story is this: the idea of evolution was widely discussed long before Charles Darwin (including by his grandfather Erasmus) and by Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Unlike Darwin's theory, which suggests that natural selection works through random variation, Lamarckian evolution suggests that lifetime experiences also influence selection. Thus, for example, trauma in one generation results in physical effects over the next few generations. In this post, the evidence that there might actually be something correct in Lamarckian evolution is presented and discussed. Not only is this a fascinating read, it makes clear even (perhaps especially) landmark ideas are the not creation of one individual with one key book far ahead of anyone else, but rather, are the creation of a community over time.
Greewich Connect connects with us on a number of levels
Terry Anderson,
Virtual Canuck,
April 27, 2014
Terry Anderson links to a recent conference paper from the University of Greenwich about an initiative, similar to Athabasca Landing, "designed to induce a variety of open and social programs to the university teaching and learning communities." He reports obstacles similar to those encountered at Athabasca which sometimes "seem intractable." They are:
- Resistance manifested itself as both an active form of change blocking and in more passive forms of intransigence
- Governance itself became an activity rather than a means to implement activity
- Sharing of resources and artifacts happened only on Moodle, which is a closed system
- Academic staff felt they had no time to effectively learn about and embed open content
Yeah. So much easier to just assign a $200 textbook and be done with it.
Techniques and Tools: How To Visualize Your Network
Beth Kanter,
Beth's Blog,
April 27, 2014
I had some fun Sunday afternoon watching the Blue Jays win and playing with some network graphs opf my contacts. Here's my LinkedIn network showing a lot of connections in Latin America, the UK and India (guess I'll have to return there, hm,?), Australia and the U.S. Then, following the Carvin example, I used Netviz to analyze my Facebook connections, and and used software called Gephi to produce my Facebook network map.
Biology’s Shameful Refusal to Disown the Machine-Organism
Stephen L. Talbott,
The Nature Institute,
April 27, 2014
The metaphors we live by shape the expectations we have. But if the metaphor is inappropriate, so are our expectations. Such is the case with the 'body as machine' metaphor, writes Steven Talbott in this excellent essay. Take even something so simple as the 'heart as pump' metaphor. It conjures a single engine pushing blood through a system of pipes. But most circulatory fluid is outside the popes and the whole body contributes to circulation, a process that resembles tidal ebb and flow more than movement through a pipe. In the same way, I would argue, the 'mind as computer' metaphor is equally misleading, representing cognition as a set of individual data stores, when in fact even a simple concept like 'Paris' is more like a wave of interconnected neural activations, an activation that takes place in the very same body of water as the next wave (which may be 'plaster' or 'France' or 'Hilton' or whatever).
How the FCC Plans to Save the Internet By Destroying It: An Explainer
Ryan Singel,
Medium.com,
April 26, 2014
Everybody and their dog has already covered the FCC's recent decision to end net neutrality (their feeble objections notwithstanding). It's a U.S. decision but as we know once enshrined into American law a campaign will then follow to entrench it into world trade legislation, requiring countries to pay penalties for lost profits should they attempt to enact net neutrality, as Brazil has done (just as a Canadian company is demanding $200 million from El Salvador over a mine it was not allowed to build). It will destroy the internet as we know it, reducing it to a set of network-provided pablum services. Just like television. Meanwhile, stuff we need (like education) will be reduced to a crawl, unless governments compensate telecoms for not throttling non-profit and public good internet traffic. Via Hack Education.
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