OLDaily

My part in the battle for Open (universities)
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2017/10/30

I didn't get a chance to see Martin Weller at ICDE last week but I'm still able to enjoy his throughts from the cconference in this post. It's a nice rethinking of his role in the promotion of open, and of large institutions like the Open University in the open learning ecosystem. Some of the thingss he sees as important: reclaiming the history of 'open' (it has, indeed, been appropriated and commodified); redefining what is meant by an 'open university'; advocating for use (as oppozsed to production) of OER; and examining hypotheses around OU course production. 

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CC and ME
Helen DeWaard, Five Flames 4 Learning, 2017/10/30

Helen DeWaard writes, "After viewing the conversations between David Wiley and George Siemens for the #OpenEdMOOC (Week 2 Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) it becomes clear as mud that copyright and Creative Commons licensing has an impact on my work as an educator." I don't think that was the intend of the course (though I confess that the result of my own conversations withDavid Wiley has also been to leave things clear as mud). DeWaard writes, "I’ve crafted a video (AKGTC and CC) to encourage teachers and students to use and apply CC attribution and licensing to their creative works." Fair enough, though I'm not a fan of littering my work with advertisements for Creative Commons. Doug Peterson responds with thoughts about his own approach to licensing. He also points to a case of overzealous enforcement.

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The importance of compression when learning maths
Maggie Hos-McGrane, Tech Transformation, 2017/10/30

This reads to me like pseudoscience. "The process of compression happens because the brain is a highly complex organ with many things to control, and it can focus on only a few uncompressed ideas at one time." Yet it comes, apparently, from Jo Boaler, a Professor of Mathematics Education at Stanford University. Maggie Hos-McGrane expands on the thoeory: "The brain can only compress concepts and not rules - hence students who learn the rules have to struggle to hold onto them - they are unable to be compressed, organized and filed away for later use." This doesn't make sense to me. The brain is not a computer. I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong here, but I really doubt it.

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Dr. Chuck on Inclusive Programming, Online Instructor Involvement and Coursera’s Paywall
Tina Nazerian, EdSurge, 2017/10/30

By "inclusive programming" the article means "teaching programming to everybody". By "online instructor involvement" it means face-to-face meetings with students in courses (made more difficult in MOOCs). By "Coursera's paywall" it means Charles Severance's strategy to redirect students to his home page if they complain about the paywall. It ends with what is actually a neat idea: "to connect with students is through “Teach Out” events, like an upcoming one he’s doing with Douglas Van Houweling. Severance said it will be 'very live and agile' and will 'only be a week.'" This article does not appear to be paid placement, but with EdSurge you never know. 

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