OLDaily

On the trail of OE policy co-creation
Javiera Atenas, Leo Havemann, Open Education Working Group, Open Knowledge Foundation, 2019/08/06

I will be the first to admit that I love those international get-togethers with people of similar interests and affiliations. Thus I have been able to talk about open learning and educational resources with people around the world. But when these turn from creating and sharing resources to developing governance and policy, I am less enthusiastic about gathering self-selected representatives from (shall we say) the 'community'. I wonder what the reaction would be if open education policy were being decided in Brazil with representatives mostly from South America, perhaps funnded by collectives and cooperatives rather than market-focused foundations. I don't doubt anyone's good intentions (least of all my own) and I know how easy it is to sit on the sidelines and say they should be more inclusive. Still. Not everyone can afford to fly to Ireland. If the foundations are going to support policy workshops, they should ensure appropriate representation from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

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Publishers to librarians: Drop dead
adrianhon, Metafilter, 2019/08/06

Coverage and discussion on Metafilter of the publishers' push-back against libraries, especially with respect to eBooks. "When we tell them, 'Sorry, there is only one copy of that e-book, and a waitlist of over 200 people,' they ask the completely reasonable question, 'Why?' In Macmillan's ideal world, that library patron would get frustrated with the library and go purchase the e-book instead." But that logic never worked with physical books, and there's no real reason to expect it to work with eBooks (especially when the price savings are minimal).

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Here’s How Not to Suck at JavaScript
Ilya Suzdalnitski, Better Programming, Medium, 2019/08/06

This is a lot of 'inside baseball' for the Javascript world, but if you're using Javascript, the article contains a lot of helpful advice. "Simple code consumes less mental resources, makes us more efficient, and results in more reliable software. This article along with some of the available JavaScript tooling will help you achieve that!"

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Massive List of MOOC Providers Around The World
Dhawal Shah, Laurie Pickard, Class Central, 2019/08/06

This is one for the people who proclaimed that MOOCs are dead. "By the end of 2018, more than 100 million students had signed up for at least one MOOC. In addition to the larger global platforms (Coursera, edX, FutureLearn), many national governments around the world have launched their own country-specific MOOC platforms, including India, Mexico, Thailand, Italy, and Israel."

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