OLDaily

Why ethical debate is crucial in the classroom
Miranda Mowbray, JISC, 2019/04/10

I'm going to use this post as an excuse for discussing the part where I disagreed most with Kate Bowles (see below). She very clearly ties the need for open education with an ethics of care. In a similar manner, I listened to a radio show today connecting our response to climate change with a certain ethical perspective. And I see the reasoning - if only people adopted a certain ethical perspective, then systems would be humane and people would do the right thing. However, my fear here is that if we are putting our trust in ethics (in both education and environment) then we are putting our trust in exactly the wrong thing. We can discuss ethics, we can refer to them - but you can't make people ethical - at least, not in the sense that everybody is ethical in exactly the same way everyone else is ethical. And if you depend on this in order to succeed, you won't succeed.

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Why Kevin Carey is (mostly but not entirely) wrong (again)
Steven D. Krause, 2019/04/10

This post responds to a recent article by Kevin Carey, summarized here. The points where Carey was right: tuition costs too much, and online program management (OPM) is not helping things. So where is he wrong? In three places, says Steven Krause: first, in the idea that MOOCs can cut costs. Second, in the idea that students are not 'repeat customers'. And third, the very idea that corporations are "devouring" education (which may be more Carey-wish-fulfillment than fact). Maybe Krause is right. But from where I sit, universities could have done a lot more to make education affordable, and for whatever reason, they didn't.

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OER19 - Keynote by Kate Bowles and welcome
Kate Bowles, YouTube, OER19, 2019/04/10

I thought it was a good talk overall. The message was essentially this: we are in an era when education is being industrialized. Meanwhile, a lot of education work is being marginalized, and it is only the ethics of care that supports things like, say, open education. But as Geroge Siemens says, education is a system, and systems don't care - only people care. Somehow, says Kate Bowles, we need to turn this around. Systems break down because they ask the most vulnerable people within them to pay the price of changing them. And the university (like the Murray-Darling river system) has broken down. This university is no longer a university. Note: the video opens with a bunch of advertisements, then welcome messages, and at the 33 minute mark the talk actually starts.

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When Workplace Training Goes Very, Very Wrong
Jon Hyman, Chief Learning Officer, 2019/04/10

There are all kinds of wrong with this story. "An Indiana school district, however, had a different idea of how to train its employees to prepare for an active shooter. This employer had its employees shot in the back, execution style, with plastic pellets." I'm tempted to say I'm "so glad we don't have active shooter drills here" but then I realize that it would not surprise me at all were our management to require one. The folly of a fully weaponized population should be obvious, I think - if not from statistics, then from the culture of fear that such an environment creates, and how education for such environments crosses the line from learning into propaganda. I won't watch the video, and I won't take part in active shooter drills, because I refuse to accept an environment in which this is normal.

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Tech Company Drops Conference Swag in Favor of 13,000 School Donations
Emily Tate, EdSurge, 2019/04/10

So OK, I'm glad a tech company donated 13,746 pieces of conference swag to local schools instead of to conference attendees. Though that said, I would have been more impressed had the school division been in a place that needs the help - not San Francisco, but Oklahoma, say. Or even better, Malawi. Or even better, not branded conference swag, but supplies they can actually use. Or even better, spending that effort lobbying governments to properly and equitably fund schools instead of trying to privatize them. But yeah, stress-relief balls to San Francisco schoolchildren. That actually is better than what they're doing now.

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