OLDaily

The Future Of Learning? Well, It's Personal
Anya Kamenetz, NPR, 2018/11/16

This NPR article on personal and personalized learning (cast here as two types of personalized learning) has a hard focus on U.S. schools sector issues and voices, which is unfortunate. It also lacks some historical depth, and as a result doesn't explore the application and development of personalized learning and competency-based learning in the military (think: Advanced Distributed Learning) and corporate sectors. And for 'evidence' we get Sal Khan's opinions. "We're all learning about factoring polynomials," he says, "but you're doing it in a context of something that interests you, say soccer.. That's not the type that we focus on. There's not evidence it's effective, and it's hard to implement."  It's a well-written but incomplete article and I have quibbles, at the very least.

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Statewide Data on OER Savings
Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/11/16

According to this article, " North Dakota students saved more than $1 million on textbooks after the state invested just $110,000 to help instructors use open educational resources. Audit identifies successes and ongoing challenges." It's based on a report (62 page PDF) from the State Auditor's office. There's a cautionary note, however. "OER are currently limited for certain academic areas of study and lack the same extent of supplementary materials," reads the report.

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Wars of Conflicting Webs
Kicks Condor, 2018/11/16

This is an interesting article (from an unusual and interesting website) showing how many of the leading edge technologies for developing a distributed and decentralized web are at odds with each other. If I had to break it down, I'd say the conflict is between static (think HTML web pages, microformats, and RSS) and dynamic (think wiki and Activity Pub) online content. My approach (with gRSShopper and elsewhere) has always been to do both; static works for larger chunks of content, while dynamic is better for smaller content. The battleground, as always, is where these two intersect - which is around the size of a short blog post.

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Can The Feedback Of A Community Propel Sustainable Innovation? The Case Of Moodle
Moodle News, 2018/11/16

I've always been wary of using community feedback as a guide to software design. I know, this goes against the basic principles of the design process. But in my mind I'm after something pretty specific, and it feels to me like the community would lead me back to creating yet another LMS. So what happens when the question is put to an actual LMS, like Moodle? This article doesn't answer, but it mentions (though does not link to) Moodle's answer: The Moodle User Association’s Project Development Cycle. You can see how Moodle is managing it here (you have to agree to abide by their policies to view it) which kis based on voting and committee review.

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