OLDaily

What happens when you put African philosophies at the centre of learning
Yusef Waghid, Faiq Waghid, Zayd Waghid, The Conversation, 2018/05/03

African philosophy is depicted in this article as "the concepts of ubuntu (human interdependence) and ukama (relationality)." These were addressed in a MOOC called Teaching for Change. "At its heart," write the audthors, "it is about respecting others’ rights universally, and about people being reflective and open about their own stories." These are good things, but they are hardly unique to Africa, and more to the point, Africa, as a continent of some 1.3 billion people and 58 countries, is home to multiple philosophies and approaches to learning. Still, I think the effort to move beyond traditionally Euro-centric world views is a good one.

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The Conduit Hypothesis: How Reading Leads to Academic Language Competence
Stephen Krashen, 2018/05/03

Academic Language Proficiency (ALP) is "the mastery of the vocabulary, grammar, and discourse style of language needed for complex and specialized functions." It is typically taught through study and memorization, a process Stephen Krashen disputes. "This approach cannot be correct," he writes. "Most obvious, the system to be mastered is very complex. Scholars, in fact, cannot even agree on the details of the structure of academic writing. Second, there is no clear evidence that anybody has ever mastered more than small bits of pieces of academic language via study." Krashen's reserach is animated through this EdSurge article by Kristen Wolf showing how "a language is something to absorb, not to memorize." See also 88 generalizations about sustained silent reading (SSR). Image: Wikipedia.

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Building Desire Paths: An Online Calendar Smooths the Way for Student Success
Kes Schroer, EDUCAUSE Review, 2018/05/03

This EDUCAUSE article reads a bit like an advertorial for Calendy, a cloud-based calendar, but it's also a pretty good case study of a calendaring implementation project at The George Washington University including the process of planning and mapping the user experience. Why Calendy? Other people may have their reasons, but to me just one would be crucial: "Calendar integrations with Google Calendar, Office 365, Outlook and iCloud." It also integrates with an API and webhooks, which I guess would also be essential to me. Why use a calendar support system? "The system reduced the average student wait time for appointments from two days to 10 seconds, giving students more timely access to our services." That makes sense to me.

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Over 16,000 sound effects made available for free from BBC library
Clarisse Loughrey, Independent, 2018/05/03

It's great to have access to this library of sound effects in a reusable .wav format (though I wish I could download them all at once instead of searching through their library each time). What was most interesting (aside from the effects themselves) was the BBC's use of a RemArc license (instead of, say, Creative Commons). Some sources immediately labeled this as "bad news" because of, for example, a "licence that prohibits using these files in commercial work." Additionally, you can't use the content "for harmful or offensive purposes" and you can't use it to pretend that you are, or are endorsed by, the BBC. This leaves personal and private use wide open, which works for me. Unrelated: internet book image archives with 52 million free-to-use images.

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OpenDOAR is the quality-assured global directory of academic open access repositories.
Jane Anders, Jisc scholarly communications, 2018/05/03

OpenDOAR is a directory of academic open access repositories. This post announces a new updated beta version of OpenDOAR "to develop a simplified and streamlined website with a more modern, responsive design... to work just as well on your smartphone as on your computer." There's also an update to the API (which means I need to fix some code). More: "Future plans include integration with technologies like the Elastic Stack that will allow us to put state-of-the-art search, reporting and visualization tools on our service endpoints."

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