OLDaily

The Facebook emails
Ben Werdmuller, 2018/12/05

The Facebook emails (250 page PDF) have been publiched. To me the only thing surprising is that anyone is surprised. Fart of the reveal is that Facebook traded access to data in exchange for ad spending (aka 'neko'). At least one Canadian bank is mentioned (RBC Royal Bank) as being "one of the biggest neko campaigns ever run in Canada" (p. 123). Another part of the reveal is that Facebook would block access to companies if they were getting competitive - for example, when they cut off Vine's access to the API the day it enabled 6-second videos. This is why we can't have nice things.

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Hacking History: Redressing Gender Inequities on Wikipedia Through an Editathon
Nina Hood, Allison Littlejohn, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2018/12/05

This article explores the "experiences of nine participants of an editathon at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of the Edinburgh Seven, who were the first women to attend medical school in 19th century United Kingdom." The authors argue "it was through the act of moving from consumer to contributor and becoming part of the community of editors, that participants could not only more fully understand issues of bias and structural inequities on Wikipedia, but also actively challenge and address these issues." It makes me think of the slogan: "no knowing without doing." Image: HeadStuff.

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Companion robot trialled in Victorian classrooms
Campbell Kwan, ZD Net, 2018/12/05

It's another story about robot teachers. "La Trobe University has teamed up with Waratah Special Developmental School in Victoria to trial a robot called Matilda as a classroom companion for students with special needs...  at a time when the implementation of robotics and coding technology in schools... has become a growing and controversial trend in education across North America and Europe." It's not clear where the limits will be for robot teachers. "Matilda can recognise human voices and faces, detect emotions, read and recite text, dance, and play music." The story also notes that "a robot teacher is also being trialled to help students living in isolated locations, ABC News reported in June." Image: La Trobe.

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SoTL: the party that no one really wants to go to
Kathleen Bortolin, University Affairs, 2018/12/05

The subhead asks, "Why does the scholarship of teaching and learning remain a hard sell to faculty?" I've always thought that the answer was pretty evident: because they spent ten years of their lives studying and earning a PhD in something else. Which is what they're actually interested in. This particular article looks specifically at teaching-focused universities, but here I think the same answer still suffices, only more so - if you're not able to spend time researching the thing that really interests you, why would you spend time researching something that doesn't?

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