OLDaily

Five steps to stamp out gender inequality in education
World Education Blog, 2019/07/08

This article summarizes a recent UNESCO report  (69 page PDF) on eliminating gender inequality in schools. It says some things that are hard to say in an international context. For example, "we will not achieve gender equality in education unless we challenge harmful social norms about women’s role in society." And "countries must make sure they are building education systems with gender equality in mind. This includes addressing school-related gender-based violence in schools, providing comprehensive sexuality education."

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Facebook may be 'pivoting' to something worse
Dave Lee, BBC News, 2019/07/08

Facebook's original business plan was based on creating public spaces for individuals to connect. This worked out poorly, because it facilitated things like online harassment, the creation of hate groups and fake news. Now it is pivoting in such a way as to move toward a more private social network, "one which focuses on closed spaces, like groups or messaging, rather than the public News Feed." This, argues the author, would be worse. But I don't know. What's the alternative - make social networks impossible altogether?

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What does success look like? card-playing edition
Dave Cormier, Dave’s Educational Blog, 2019/07/08

I am constantly grappling with the question of what success looks like, so this discussion of defining success in card games makes a lot of sense to me. Is success at cards defined by winning? Or is it defined by spending quality time with they people you're playing with? In other avenues of life the question is a lot more subtle. It's easy to say "success is being with family" or some such thing, but if you're Ludwig Wittgenstein - say - then defining success isn't quite so easy. In education the system defines success for us in terms of grades and rankings, but being successful this way doesn't feel very successful.

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Spotify is a Prison for Podcasts
Peter Rukavina, Ruk, 2019/07/08

This article is relevant because Spotify has acquired some podcast companies recently - Parcast, Gimlet and Anchor. So there is a lot of concern that it will attempt to lock down podcasting and convert it to a proprietary content network. Could it work? Sure it could. Here's why it would be bad. "Let this be a warning to you: if you use Spotify as your podcast app, you are a prisoner to Spotify, and if you decide to switch to another podcast app there isn’t any way to get your data out of Spotify."

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Do not impose one's own standard on the work of others
Doug Belshaw, Thought Shrapnel, 2019/07/08

Good post outlining approaches to cooperative decision-making. I really like the overview of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)'s approach, as enshrined in a document from 2014. Says Doug Belshaw, "What the IETF calls 'rough consensus' I think I'd probably call 'alignment'. You don't all have to agree that a proposal is without problems, but those problems should be surmountable." Similarly his discussion of sociocracy and left-libertarianism. I wouldn't give myself any of those labels, but I would start from here as well: "you can start from a basis of personal autonomy, but end with an egalitarian approach to the world where resources (especially natural resources) are collectively owned."
 

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