OLDaily

The Dance of the Not Commons
David Wiley, iterating toward openness, 2020/02/17

David Wiley argues, "The problems the open education community faces with regard to OER are not the problems of common pool resources – problems of overuse and depletion that we solve through shared governance and accountability." Quite so. We doesn't actually need 'governance' of OER at all. People can license their content however they want, and people can use whatever they're licensed to use. Wiley continues: "The problems we face with OER are the problems of public goods – issues related to under-production and free-riding." All we need to make OER work are OER - and if there's a shortage (as Wiley says there is, but I'm less sure) then all we need is public investment, as we do for other public goods.

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Apprenticeships: Guardian’s editorial falls far short
Martin Allen, Education, Economy and Society, 2020/02/17

I think  Martin Allen makes a valuable point on the key difference between German apprenticeships and those in other countries. The German model "continues to be based on a ‘social partnership’ where employers, trade unions and local state institutions work together to plan skill and employment targets, but also take implicit responsibility for young people’s transition from school to work." This contrasts sharply with a model where "being operated on a free market ‘business knows best’ approach has led to inappropriate use of funding by individual employers." More at the Guardian.

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Cultivating a learning culture
Catherine Lombardozzi, Learning 4 Learning Professionals, 2020/02/17

I think there's a lot to be said for the idea of creating a learning culture (or perhaps better, growing a learning culture). But near the end, this article goes right off the rails. Under 'foundations for cultivating learning culture' we read: "Purpose: establish shared vision; ensure leadership engagement and support; align learning to organizational business plan and initiatives." No. No no no. You're describing propaganda. Go back to Senge: "organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire." A learning culture is not about getting all your employees aligned to your vision, it's about getting to the point where they don't need your vision.

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What is Experience Design?
nick shackleton-jones, aconventional, 2020/02/17

In a sense, says Nick Shackleton-Jones, we are always designing experiences, whether we are designing conversatiopns or websites. But there's an elevated sense of 'experience design', for example, in a Heston Blumenthal, where every part of the experience is considered. And this is what is usually meant by 'user experience design', "the careful design of an experience to achieve a particular outcome." Well, OK. But my observation is that (a) this often takes design far beyond what is necessary, and (b) this typically doubles the price, or worse. Sure, every experience could be an Apple experience. But who would want to live in such a world? Who could afford it?

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Recording All the Melodies
Jason Kottke, kottke.org, 2020/02/17

Who are the creators of AI-generated art — programmers or machines? We may want to say that it’s the programmers, or at least, the people who own to requipment. That’s the precedent that was set when a court ruled that the human owner of a camera, not the monkey that took the photo, owned the copyright. But what would we say about this: Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin “designed and wrote a program to record every possible 8-note, 12-beat melody and released the results — all 68+ billion melodies, 2.6 terabytes of data — into the public domain.” Here's all the music. What would we say if Disney had done it and copyrighted the melodies?

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Mapping Skills and Capability
Emily Webber, InfoQ, 2020/02/17

Video presentation by Emily Webber, author of Building Successful Communities of Practice. People answer questions about their own skills and qualifiecations very differently depending on how the question is asked. So how the question is asked matters. It may make more sense to focus on capabilities - a combination of knowledge, experience and skills. And to look at capability profiles of individuals, practice and of teams. In this presentation, Webber looks at how we ask these questions, and how we should (for example: what do we do day-to-day in our roles, what should we do, what skills do we need to do these things well?). The desired outcome? "A collection of connected specialists."

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