OLDaily

Opensource Apps for Educators
2018/11/30

I explored this after the link was passed along to me on Mastodon. The idea is that you can log into the service and quickly launch any of a large number of open source applications. It was set up by a group of people in British Columbia (Grant Potter, Tannis Morgan Brian Lamb, Clink Lalonde. The choices range from RocketChat to EtherPad to Wordpress and more. I signed in with Google, click once to open the app marketplace, and clicked one more time to install and launch a fully functioning WordPress site. The service runs on Sandstorm, an open source application, and you can install your own version for your own school or university.

Here's what Grant Potter says, "If we did not have Sandstorm, we would be significantly limited in the range of applications we could offer to BC faculty and be burdened by layers of required administrative and technical oversight." Lovely. For more on this whole idea, read this page about Open ETC. Brian Lamb comments, "We have gotten this underway in a low-key, organic way... but we're growing steadily and we have some cool stuff seeded and ready to sprout."

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Education Blockchain Market Map
HolonIQ, 2018/11/30

Though dated last June this market map appeared in my inbox from Holon only today. It reports five sectors of the education blockchain market: credentials and certifications (the largest by far), peer-to-peer ecosystems, payments, knowledge and marketplace. The website describes each briefly and links to some representative startups. The site reports, "Blockchain’s significant potential in education – from powering efficiency to collapsing costs or disrupting the current system – is becoming clearer to technologists, educationalists and governments alike."

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Everything on Social Media Is for Sale
Taylor Lorenz, The Atlantic, 2018/11/30

Everything described in this article is also true of the education social media scene, to more or less a degree. Certainly there are repost and retweet networks, paid placements, 'guest' articles, and more. Microfinance is well-entrenched, with websites (yes, even this one) asking for donations. There are commerce networks, such as TeachersPayTeachers. It's all about earning large numbers of followers and then monetizing them. How widespread is it? It's hard to say - a lot of this microcommerce takes place behind the scenes.

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Teens and social media: Study finds connections and support outweigh the drama and pressure
Frank Catalano, GeekWire, 2018/11/30

According to this article, "A new Pew Research Center study of youth ages 13 to 18 released on Wednesday finds teens credit online platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook with strengthening friendships (81 percent), letting them interact with a more diverse group (69 percent), and feeling as if they’ll have support during tough times (68 percent)."

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Autograding System Goes Awry, Students Fume
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2018/11/30

This article describes the failings of an autograding system in use in a computing science class in Berkeley. The use of autograders in computer sciences is a natural development, as programs can be tested by debuggers and efficiency algorithms to determine not only whether they run at all, but also how well they run. This article records what happens when they fail, but it's more useful reading when looked at from the context of what should happen when they run successfully (which is what they usually do).

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