OLDaily

Ethically Aligned Design, Version 2
The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, 2017/12/12

The term 'Autonomous and Intelligent Systems' (A/IS) stands for what we would commonly call AI and this is an extensive effort to describes the ethics of A/IS system design.   This document (266 page PDF) will take some time to read. Take the time. I applaud the good intentions of the IEEE here but just as you wouldn't want a philosopher to design a bridge, a document that reads to me a bit like "Ethics by Engineers" feels wrong. For example, consider one of the "goals" of the document: "Prioritize metrics of well-being in their design and use." It's a basic error to substitute 'metrics' for outcomes, but they make it here. The "concerns" include automated weapons, safety, affective computing and mixed reality. OK. But where are the concerns about stereotyping and misrepresentation, which are the actual problems today? But beyond any such mundane concerns is "the seminal question of determining the key performance indicators (KPIs) of their success once introduced into society." Sigh. The IEEE website will make you fill in a form to access this document, so I uploaded a copy to my own site so you can access it directly. For more ethics as designed by engineers, see the IEEE Ethics in Action website.

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Open Education and OER - A guide and call to action for policy makers
Maren Deepwell, Martin Weller, Lorna Campbell, Joe Wilson, Association for Learning Technology, 2017/12/12

This short paper (8 page PDF) is a "call to action for policy makers to mandate that publicly funded educational resources are released under open licence to ensure that they reside in the public." Interestingly the document cautions that "the 'open' in MOOCs is very different from the 'open' in OER," though this is the opposite of our intent back in 2008 when we first created them. The writers also assert (correctly) that "It is anomalous that while publicly funded research is mandatorily open there is no similar encouragement for learning resources to be openly available."

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Is Alison The Answer To The World's Education Needs?
Peter High, Forbes, 2017/12/12

Forbes is reporting Alison's oft-debunked claim to have created the world's first MOOCs. It's hard to read this article as anything other than an advertorial (again, I caution people against trusting the traditional media where commercial interests are concerned). I have written to Allison in the past about this but there appears to be no legislation or constraint requiring that they represent themselves honestly. As for the question in the headline, the answer is "no" - free and open online self-study courses have been around since the 1990s (my own on logical fallacies course was published in 1995) and if they were the answer to to the world's education needs they would have solved the problem sometime in the last 22 years. Ditto the self-serve certificate you have to pay them for.

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The Four R’s of Openness and ALMS Analysis: Frameworks for Open Educational Resources
John Hilton III, David Wiley, Jared Stein, Aaron Johnson, Brigham Young University, 2017/12/12

In the ongoing discussion on OER repositories David Wiley suggested today that "While many people are aware of the 5Rs framework for thinking about the legal openness of OER, but far fewer people are aware of the ALMS framework for thinking about the technical openness of OER." It was introduced in 2010 in Open Learning, a Taylor & Francis journal that throws up a subscription barrier if I want to read it. But there are open access copies here and here. The acronym stands for "Access to editing tools, Level of expertise required to revise or remix, Meaningfully editable and Source-file access." The authors write, "technical aspects of OER will affect how ―open‖ they really are. Creators of OER who wish to promote revising and remixing should ensure that OER are designed in such a way that users will have access to editing tools, that the tools needed to will not require a prohibitive level of expertise, and that the OER are meaningfully editable and self-sourced."

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Shaping the university in a networked era
David White, Digital - Learning - Culture, 2017/12/12

I mentioned in a tweet the other dat that David O. White is new to me. But he's not in fact new; he is the same David White who introduced us to the 'visitors and residents' terminology back in 2011. This explains his placement on a panel with Marc Prensky. I've added his feed to my aggregator but since he posts infrequently don't expect to see a lot (his post prior to this one dates from September). Anyhow, this article will give you a sense of his current thinking. "It’s of great interest to me how an institution approaches the networked environments and practices. Most institutions now understand there is value in the network but often kill that value in the process of institutionalising it." he writes."Our challenge is in creating institutional structures (hierarchy) which can encourage and support those approaches while holding them in an open hand."

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Weaving quicksilver: ‘We-searching’ for a pedagogy of small
Tanya Dorey, Small Stories, 2017/12/12

I've been on Mastodon for just over a year; my first post was last December 3. Since then I've written small stories, discussed theory, documented 1500 km of bike rides, and engaged in general banter. What I like about it is that it is a small and informal community I can share with. Some people call it a pedagogy of small. Others call it a pedagogy of slow. If it's a pedagogy at all, it's a pedagogy of harmony (which really, at long last, may be my answer to Friere). Tanya Dorey writes, "With that first step, we are again at an interesting starting point.  Where do we go from here?" This article is a collection of thoughts from her and four others who share the same social space I share on this harmonious platform. P.S. be sure to explore trubox.ca as another interesting alternative form of pedagogical community.

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Internet Pioneers and Leaders Tell the FCC: You Don’t Understand How the Internet Works
Frederick J. Baker, et.al., Pioneers of Net Neutrality, 2017/12/12

I don't know how much damage the end of net neutrality in the United States would cause, but over the long run, it's probably significant. This is in large part because it is based on a flawed understanding of internet technology. In this email Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf, and other internet pioneers release a short letter linking to their earlier submission to the FCC (53 page PDF) in opposition to the ending of net neutrality. Beyond the obvious policy intent, this document is a great short-form introduction to the basics of internet technology, describing the principles on which it was founded, and the changes over the last 15 years. It also provides a significant number of concrete examples of cases where users were harmed in the absence of clearly defined rules.

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