OLDaily

Times which Require Greater Care: Ethos in Online Learning
Sean Michael Morris, Critical Digital Pedagogy, 2020/03/11

Sean Michael Morris argues, "jumping into online offerings the way so many universities are wont to do these days is unhealthy for faculty and students alike. That move must be considered, careful, slow, and deliberate." Now is not the time. We've had 25 years to be considered, careful, slow, and deliberate. Now it's time to just start doing it. Figure it out. Make it work. Yes - of course it should be done with care. But it no longer works to say "oh oh oh it might not be perfect". And people in the field need to stop reacting like this is the most difficult thing anyone could ever do. People in online learning should be encouraging rather than warning people that they're making all kinds of mistakes.

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Why Coronavirus Looks Like a ‘Black Swan’ Moment for Higher Ed
Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020/03/11

I know, there's a gazillion articles on the impact of the pandemic. I won't be covring all of them. My interest is in learning technology, not pandemics. But I did want to link to this item, mostly because it says this: "when you look at how quickly colleges are moving to convert their face-to-face teaching into remote formats — the most immediate visible response — it seems clear that the reaction to this emerging national emergency will be more than a blip, even after the particular risks of Covid-19 have passed. I say this because once colleges develop the ability to serve their students via technology, there’s little reason for them to abandon it."

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How Corporations Force Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
Jeff Bryant, OurFuture, 2020/03/11

This is a short article on the subject, followed by a much longer 'Part 2' (Amazon is Coming to a School Near You) on National Education Policy Center's website. The message is the same in both parts: the blending of corporate interests and the education system results in a redesign of the system to meet narrow private sector needs at the expense of individual education, and also, corporations take much more out of the system than they put back into it. "These are the very same companies that have structured our economy in ways that keep my students in poverty,” Clark explained. “And now they’re going to come into my school and tell me they want to sell me something that will create equal opportunity for my students?"

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Tone.js Interactive Music Web Framework
Dylan Schiemann, InfoQ, 2020/03/11

This short article introduces readers to the Tone.js Javascript web music framework. This is a set of functions that application developers can use to create interactive music in their applications. If you sample the demo apps you can get a sense of what's possible. The framework is open source and you can view the source on GitHub.

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One Course, Three Platforms: How a Popular Programming MOOC Differs on Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn
Pat Bowden, Class Central, 2020/03/11

This is a fun (and light) read. The same course, taught by none other than Charles Severence, is offered on the three different MOOC platforms. How do they compare? The best bit of the article is the table comparing things like 'ease of use' and 'forums'. The results will make the designers of FutureLearn happy, though having seem all three platforms, I can't say I'm surprised. "FutureLearn makes discussions a central part of each course. Each course page includes a discussion section, shortening the distance between material and questions. And this seems to work: there were many participants and a very knowledgeable mentor."

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Alec Couros was used by scammers to catfish thousands of women and he's a victim too
Bridget Judd, ABC News, 2020/03/11

The truly sad thing about this story is that it's running in 2000, some 13 years after Alec Couros's photos first started to be used in catfishing scams ('catfishing' is where a person assumes a fake ID and pretends to be a potential romantic partner in an effort to defraud you). He "estimates the number of victims to be in the thousands." Though social networks claim to be taking action against it, I've watched Couros's efforts over the years to stop the problem come to no avail. Via Aaron Davis, who recommends more reading: posts by Alan Levine, Dean Shareski and Alec Couros himself. Also the case of Lydia Abdelmalek provides another detailed case.

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