OLDaily

Extraordinary Stories of Open and Online in the Covid-19 Era
Alan Levine, 2020/05/06

Alan Levine is collecting stories (using a SPLOT, so there are no logins or cruft) on your experiences during the pandemic. So far there are 39 stories in three collections. He writes, "What we seek is something short and inspiring that shows how educators are helping learners in this time, along with an image to represent it, and perhaps a link to find more information. Extraordinary does not mean huge or epic, as now everything is beyond ordinary. Small, personal stories are welcome." Share a story now.

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DfE sets out best practice for remote learning
Amy Gibbons, tes, 2020/05/06

The British government "has issued new advice on adapting the curriculum and adjusting teaching practices during the coronavirus shutdown," according to this report. The advice is based on a series of case studies from successful schools. Wisely, "these things aren't being published as expectations for schools; these are just kind of examples of things that are happening around the country that we are highlighting, a spokesperson said... the DfE adds that the schools informing the guidance have been developing their practices in 'a variety of different circumstances'. However, it says most of the examples given are from schools that already had some infrastructure or technology in place." Some might say the advice should have been offered sooner.

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COnnecting REpositories
CORE, 2020/05/06

In an email today CORE announced that it is in the process of expanding its ambassadors network internationally. "CORE wants to optimise its services in your area and increase the amount of free of cost open access research content that can be accessed by researchers, students, librarians and lifelong learners." This is a good opportunity to get connected into the global open access network. The COnnecting REpositories (CORE) initiative bills itself as "the world’s largest collection of open access research papers" and offers a search interface to 186,266,176 papers (as of this writing). I tried it out and got some immediately useful results. Its services include an API for analytical searches and processing. It is a not-for-profit run by Jisc.

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Five Journeys: STEM-educated Immigrant Women in Canada
Randa Tukan, TechGirls Canada, 2020/05/06

This is "a collaborative online exhibition that shares the stories of five STEM-educated women who immigrated from their home countries of India, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to build a new life for themselves and their families, and to continue to develop their own careers." The objective of the collection, composed of text and audio clips, is "to encourage a larger conversation about how new immigrants, potential employers, the settlement and government sectors, and the general public can look beyond jobs and job-finding processes to reflect on issues of fairness and belonging through increased understanding, empathy, and inclusivity."

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Credit Hours
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2020/05/06

Alex Usher's style of writing is quite annoying when you disagree with him, but quite fun when he's more aligned with your point of view. Today's post falls into the latter category. Credit-hours and credits, he writes, "as currently designed are a flaming garbage heap of a concept and it would be great if we could re-design them from the ground up." They never made sense when I was a student and make even less sense today. Usher also recommends Robert Wagenaar’s "excellent new short history" of the European Credit Transfer System along with Dave Cormier's "excellent survey of re-thinking the course hour in the age of asynchronous learning."

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Remote Work Is Sinking In: And The Impact Is Bigger Than We Realized
Josh Bersin, 2020/05/06

I'm in the eighth week of working from home, or as they call it these days, 'remote work'. Because I've spent a lifetime working on the internet, it's a pretty natural fit, and I'm actually more connected with my colleagues now that they're remote working as well. One of the side-effects of remote learning is noted in this article - "Companies tell me their learning catalog is 'flying off the shelf' and the demand for video-based learning on work practices, personal fitness and leadership, and all sorts of information about the virus and safety is huge." Remote working and remote learning go together hand-in-hand.

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Engineering To Death in COVID-19
tante, Model View Culture, 2020/05/06

The premise here and in this associated MIT Tech Review article is that the current crisis "has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation," suggesting that it reveals "our diminished ability to innovate in areas that truly count, like health care and climate change." I agree, to a certain extent, especially with this: "tech supremacy is a form of learned apoliticism: If everything is an engineering problem, political arguments and ideals have no real meaning and impact." Think 'learning engineering'. But let's not forget that the internet has perfomed brilliantly during this crisis. Look at these stats from ASU (and I've seen similar stats from elsewhere). Moreover, if we find a vaccine for Covid, it will be as a result of online research and collaboration. Anyhow, don't miss the article by tante (and see his other work). Perfect? No. Gaps exposed? Absolutely! Trust Silicon Valley executives? Not a chance. The key here in all of this is to remember that we - society - built the internet. It was designed to keep society functioning during wartime, and has to a large degree fulfilled that function.

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