OLDaily

WPR Source Demographic Survey Shows Need For Improvement
Hannah Haynes, Jennifer Dargan, Wisconsin Public Radio, 2020/09/16

This is a good exercise for anyone to do at home. Take your local newspaper, cable news broadcaster, or ed tech publication and ask yourself, "who do they talk to?" My own experience is that we see a preponderance of corporate spokespeople, politicians, executives, other journalists, and 'experts' represented by agents and publicists. And be sure to look at the different sections - who are journalists talking to in the business section? In entertainment? Journalists don't go out looking for sources any more, they just scan the daily feed of press releases. But don't take my word for it; do what this public radio station did and conduct a survey for yourself - just be sure to ask about more than just race, gender or postal code - these are important, but they don't tell the whole story.

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Meet the High School Journalists Who Kept Publishing in a Pandemic
Maxim Gushchin, Jonell Pantlitz, Anya Singh, Isabel Sternthal, J-Source, 2020/09/16

This is a report from three Ontario high school journalists involved with the Canadian Youth Journalism Project who have kept their publications running even in the midst of Covid. They have been exactly what has been needed: La Silhouette, one high school newspaper, "has been uniquely suited to provide our student body with school news, entertainment, a space to share opinions and resources," writes Maxim Gushchin. Similarly with Jonell Pantlitz at the Toronto Caribbean newspaper: "my articles have allowed me to include the voices of other students and teenagers so that their views can be better understood by our newspaper’s mature audience." Meanwhile Anya Singh strives "to create an interconnected community by empowering students to form opinions, find their own voices and express themselves" through CNXN, her Toronto-based magazine.

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The Effect of Covid-19 on Education in Africa and its Implications for the Use of Technology
E-Learning Africa, 2020/09/16

Rebecca Stromeyer writes, "we received detailed survey responses from over 1600 education and technology practitioners, experts, policy makers, administrators and investors.... They took the trouble to answer our questions in detail, to tell us what happened to them and give us their opinions." The result is this detailed report (81 page PDF) on the impact of Covid on education in Africa. Not surprisingly, when in-person classes were shut down (which they were very quickly) most in Africa struggled to respond. " Survey respondents were clear in highlighting the three main obstacles for learners in the midst of school shutdown: a lack of access to technology, an unsuitable home learning environment, and a lack of access to learning materials." The report offers a series of recommendations (pp. 39-44) that are worth a look.

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Governance of the Ecosystem of educational communities
Ismael Peña-López, ICTlogy, 2020/09/16

This post offers a useful insight into how distributed learning communities are governed. It is, of course, a form of distributed governance. It identifies four major communities: disciplinary, centres (or institutions), learning, and environment. These are co-managed by various organizations, including OER, LMS and educational services, facilities, and boards of education. They are accessed by families and civil society. As a whole, the model offers "a third option —besides just keeping schools open and just keeping kids in front of computers while burdening their parents— ... to work collectively towards education. This option turns upside down priorities, from teaching to learning, and then tries to find the resources where they are. But not only: it also aims at strengthening those resources."

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