OLDaily

Microsoft Teams meeting creation now available in Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology, Brightspace, and itsLearning
Mark Baroth, Microsoft Education, 2020/03/24

We ran a videoconference meeting in Microsoft Teams this morning and it went pretty well. At first it doesn't appear as slick as Zoom, but (to my mind) the automated video-captioning stole the show, accurately providing captions to a number of different speakers with quite different accents. One positive side-effect of the new work environment is that NRC has embraced a number of previously verboten technologies, and so for non-confidential work (which, frankly, is most of it) we've been working with things like Teams, Slack, Zoom and WebEx quite a bit. This is all being depicted as temporary, and it might be, but I think people will find it very hard to go back to the pre-cloud world.

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Try our latest Test Pilot, Firefox for a Better Web, offering privacy and faster access to great content
Matt Grimes, Mozilla Blog, 2020/03/24

OK, that's a really bad three-line headline that doesn't say anything. Here's the gist: Firefox has partnered with a company called Scroll to collect a monthly fee (currently $5US/month) to pay to publishers in lieu of web advertisements. The site says the pilot works in the U.S. only but I was able to get to the part where you pay here in Canada as well. but I didn't pay; I'm stopped by the idea of "Scroll’s network of outstanding publishers", which certainly doesn't include me or anyone like me. Why should only some of the sites benefit from centrally collected revenue? Sorry, no. Democratize, or nothing.

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Current Research into Student Interaction Networks (the first of a series)
Gerald Ardito, Inventing Learning, 2020/03/24

This is a thoughtful summary of word designed to answer two questions:

1. What types of patterns of interactions can we see in teachers and teacher candidates using a social learning platform?
2. What types of learning networks emerge in teachers and teacher candidates using a social learning platform?

"What was supposed to happen, of course, was that my students would be so empowered by this type of learning environment that they would throw off their shackles, so to speak, and embrace the opportunity of autonomy supportive learning. After all, that is exactly what happened to two cohorts of eighth graders when I did something similar in their biology class. At you might guess, for these teachers and teacher candidates, not so much."

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Online Learning in a Hurry
Dave Cormier, Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor, 2020/03/24

Dave Cormier has created a series of videos (up to ten now) helping people get started with online learning in a hurry. It's practical and realistic. For example: "My first oliah blog post had to do with prioritizing the establishment of clear lines of communications with students when you are trying to create online learning in a hurry. Once you have that out of the way I think the next step is still not the development of instructional content." Also available as a YouTube playlist.

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The Coming Era of Decision Machines
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2020/03/24

This is a technology that will have an impact on education and development, Automated decision systems will evaluate individual competences based on public performance and will most like prescribe training or development activities. What factors need to be taken into consideration. Irving Wladawsky-Berger points to recent work by David Parkes addressing the need, and summarizes it under five headings: how algorithmic decisions are interpreted, how outcomes are monitored and assessed, how such systems are regulated, education and workforce implications, and algorithm research.

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