OLDaily

Reducing Friction and Expanding Participation in the Continuous Improvement of OER
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2020/01/31

David Wiley writes (correctly) that when people find it hard to participate, they don't participate. So, for example, many improvements to open educational resources (OER) never get made, because they're too hard to suggest. So he describes a process where "There’s a new button at the bottom of every page of content. It says 'Improve this page.' When a student or teacher or other user from the public web clicks the button, they’re linked directly to a Google Doc which includes all the content from the page. The Google doc is shared publicly and has Track Changes turned on. So you can just begin typing or commenting immediately." Right. This is good. I've been using Google Docs to write papers recently, sharing my work as I go. It's easy to comment, and I get some comments, but there's still more needed to make sharing and participation more popular.

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The Distributed Data Mesh as a Solution to Centralized Data Monoliths
Thomas Betts, InfoQ, 2020/01/31

This is a quick summary of a paper and presentation. "Instead of building large, centralized data platforms, enterprise data architects should create distributed data meshes," says Zhamak Dehghani, principal technology consultant at ThoughtWorks. She adds, "as data becomes ever more ubiquitous, traditional architectures of data warehouses and data lakes become overwhelmed, and are unable to scale efficiently." I think that this is especially the case for learning technology and learning resources, and we should work toward data mesh technology to help us share and scale leanring opportunities without requiring the high overhead and questionable security of large centralized systems.

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Our New Role: Bringing Kindness To Work
Josh Bersin, 2020/01/31

For people in the north part of northern hemisphere this is probably the most difficult time of the year as we struggle with illness and weather and darkness. It reminds us that, as Josh Bersin says, "the most important things in our lives are compassion, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, mindfulness, social connection, and awe. These are all human issues, and all revolve around kindness." There's a tendency to blame things like lonliness and lack of compassion on our devices, but I think financial pressures, work demands, and other external stresses are playing a large role. Learning and pedagogy shouldn't be based on that harsh capitalist model of acquiring stuff - it should keep a "consistent focus on supporting people, understanding people, and giving people the opportunity to grow."

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