OLDaily

Fragment: Towards the Age of Coveillance?
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2020/04/20

From this article on coveillance - the surveillance we do of each other. "It seems reasonable to posit that the shift to an information-rich, publicity-oriented environment would affect the collective understanding of selfhood. Many theorists of the networked information society argue that the relationship between self and society is undergoing fundamental change." As always, I ask whether this applies to myself. And I think it does and it doesn't. But I grew up in a small town where everybody knew everybody, and to me the fear of surveillance feels like a very urban concern. To me, the similarities between (say) Twitter and high school are striking, for example, "the emergence and increasing primacy of forms of collective consciousness that are 'tribal,' or essentialized and politicized."

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Common Ground in the Quest for Global Research
Glenn Hampson, OSI Policy Perspectives, 2020/04/20

The premise of this report is that "Rebuilding our quest for open research on solid, common ground instead of on narrow and fractured ideological ground is both possible and promising. Ample common already ground exists in this community and the need for a common ground approach to address this complex system’s many challenges is compelling." So where is that common ground? There's some suggestion of it 19 pages into the document, but mostly the authors are saying that the right stakeholders need to be brought to the table in order to find that common ground. Fair enough, but I've been around long enough to know that "stakeholder" often means "those who can pay". Finding genuine common ground means finding a way to provide seats at the table for everybody who might have an interest - researchers, students, global south, the general public. That said, this document represents a ton of work in this direction, and it's not to be lightly disregarded.

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Online pivot & the absence of a magic button
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2020/04/20

Martin Weller reports that people are asking “How do we push the Go Online button? Can you push it for us?” His response: "I’m sorry to tell you – there is no Go Online button." True enough, especially if what you're trying to do is duplicate your offline activities in an online mode. He also cautions: "the temptation will be to outsource this headache to companies that offer, nay guarantee, a really fine, but expensive, Go Online button. See Durham’s approach for example. ... these OPM solutions are going to be pitched hard. There may be some use in them in the short term, but a better solution is to invest in staff (and here institutions might want to get expertise in to help), use OER for content, and make strategic decisions that have as their basis the belief that online, distance ed is a useful, valid form of education.

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Tsinghua launches intl version of its online education platform
Zou Shuo, China Daily, 2020/04/20

According to this article, "XuetangX, China's first and largest massive online open course platform initiated by Tsinghua University, launched its international version on Monday." This comes during a significant expansion in Chinese online learning. "As of early April, a total of 1,454 colleges and universities have opened online courses and more than 950,000 teachers have offered 942,000 online courses, with 1.18 billion students participating in such courses, according to the Ministry of Education. The number of online MOOC courses on China's online education platforms increased by 5,000 to 23,000 in the first quarter of this year, the ministry said."

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The Downes, Siemens and Lamb debate: Two Internets and Two-Cultures
Mark William Johnson, Improvisation Blog, 2020/04/20

I haven't followed up on the 'unstructured and unplanned' debate because it began to drift (but if you want to, here's Brian Lamb's post, and here's George Siemens's reponse, and my main reaction is gratitude that they cared enough to be honest and clear in what they said). But I did like this summary of the discussion from an arm's length perspective, and I'm sympathetic with the argument. "Lockdown will give them plenty of food for thought about the differences between their online experiences. It may lead them to consider whether they might learn more from the creativity of TikTok or Houseparty, making music videos or publishing art on Instagram, than in the hair-shirt of Internet-1. University leaders and teachers would do well to consider this question too with some urgency: their future may depend on it."

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It's Time To Build
Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz, 2020/04/20

I will focus on one paragraph of Marc Andreesen's screed (described as "Tech Twitter's favorite thing to talk about. All. Weekend. Long."): "The left starts out with a stronger bias toward the public sector in many of these areas. To which I say, prove the superior model! Demonstrate that the public sector can build better hospitals, better schools, better transportation, better cities, better housing." I recommend Andreesen look to the north to Canada where public education produces consistently better results, public health care the same, and where peaceful, progressive and modern cities should serve to inspire.

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Guest Post: What Are We Talking About When We Talk About ‘Care’?
Hannah McGregor, Hook & Eye, 2020/04/20

This post captures the tenor of the times. "Suddenly, everywhere, it seems like care trumps structure," writes Hannah McGregor. Maintaining academic rigidity seems out of touch with the current environment. Still, "feelings, especially feelings that cluster around the concepts of compassion, empathy, and care, can be used as justification for great violence." And "care as deployed by corporations or by the state in the interests of oppressive systems will not save us." We need to be careful how we wield the ethics of care. "We need to be suspicious when institutions claim to care, and when care is being used to maintain, rather than dismantle, fundamentally dehumanizing systems."

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