OLDaily

Presentation
What Comes After Phase 3?
Stephen Downes, Jun 16, 2020, ,

This is a conversation with some people from the health care industry in the U.S. asking about what I expect to see after the current wave of technology. The current wave, which I discussed in my E-Learning 3.0 course, involves things like consensus, cloud and blockchain. What's the longer term future (looking out 15 or 20 years)? Embodied computing. In talk about what that means and imagine some of the consequences for education. Audio only.

[Audio]

Washington Post public editor: Jeff Bezos could solve pay equality tomorrow. He makes token gestures instead.
Hamilton Nolan, Columbia Journalism Review, 2020/06/16

I have my own slogan for the Washington Post: "Democracy dies behind a paywall." Like so many other things Jeff Bezos does, the paywall isn't something he does alone (the NY Times, as one, of course; so does the Chronicle of Higher Education, which today hid a story about "Higher Ed’s Reckoning With Race"). But democracy also dies in work camps, in fast food joints, and in warehouses, where workers don't earn enough money to eat, let alone take part in civic discourse, even when their lives are on the line. A comeuppance is coming. And democracy dies on college campus, where only the privileged get to attend and where a low-paid underclass does most of the work. And on many campuses, they could address inequality tomorrow without even missing the money. But they won't. And as Hamilton Nolan says, "that’s all you need to know." Photo: me, in the rain and the thunder snow at Occupy Wall Street, October 29, 2011.

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Connected North: Distance Learning, Virtual Field Trips, and a World of Opportunity
Willa Black, Cisco Blogs, 2020/06/16

This is mostly Cisco patting itself on the back for some education projects in Canada's north, but I do appreciate how the author spent the time needed to see the north firsthand and to listen to what people told her. This doesn't by itself some things like inequality and poor bandwidth and gaps in social services, but it creates a context for addressing these. Anyhow, the article introduces the Connected North project and Connected North Network and these seem to me similarly to be a start and a context. And it set the stage for a launching Connected North@Home in late March in response to the pandemic.

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Connection
Chris Friend, Sherri Spelic, Hybrid Pedagogy, 2020/06/16

This post links to an episode of HybridPod - you can read the transcript here. The topic is 'connection' and the episode describes the ways a teacher connects with her student using video. But what's really important are the little lessons. Like being the one to tell children to go outside. Like using so many exclamation marks (because it feels flat without them). Like using whatever you have around the house. Like speaking to them directly, using "I" and "You" in your language. These are what creates connection. And it's interesting - I misread the original post when I read it, thinking it said "How do we maintain the connection with students we created during the pandemic?" I think that this, rather than the original question, might be the more relevant one.

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Getting Wiser
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2020/06/16

I can't say I've ever given much thought to the concept of being wise, perhaps because I've never thought of "wisdom as a stretch goal." I guess I've always felt that wisdom is what it is, and that if you put in the work, it will emerge as part of your character. Here, though, Clark Quinn is trying to find the "characteristics of wise people" - things like kindness, contentment, etc. But I don't think it's like that at all. If I had to say wisdom is anything, I would say that it is being in such harmony with your self and your environment that you fit together as one. That involves various quantities of such things as  acceptance, attentiveness, agency, agility and amiability (it's just coincidence that they all start with A). But I would never try to define it and measure these - for each person, in each environment, wisdom is something different. Image: omaok.com

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Undress or fail: Instagram’s algorithm strong-arms users into showing skin
Judith Duportail, Nicolas Kayser-Bril, Kira Schacht, Édouard Richard, Algorithm Watch, 2020/06/16

Mark Zuckerberg says "people should decide what is credible, not tech companies." But his platforms have been making those decisions for us for years, through their algorithms, and not in a good way. Consider this report on the Instagram algorithm. "Instagram’s guidelines state that nudity is “not allowed” on the service, but favors posts that show skin. The subtle difference between what is encouraged and what is forbidden is decided by unaudited, and likely biased, computer vision algorithms... abusive removal of content was common. Just how common such occurrences are, and whether People of Color and women are disproportionately affected, is impossible to say."

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