OLDaily

Platform Power to the People
Sanjay Pinto, Beth Gutelius, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2020/11/12

OK, honestly, I'm including this because the image. Still, this resonates, doesn't it? "In this article, we examine how worker-centered digital tools and approaches to digital engagement might fit within a larger set of strategies for shifting power in the economy and ensuring that all people have access to 'decent work' that provides fair income, social protections, and the freedom to organize, among other measures." But let's be clear: technology neither gives this nor takes it away. Technology gives us more opportunities than ever to to achieve social equity, including in education and learning... but we have to decide to use it that way.

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Open Practice in Practice
Lorna M Campbell, Open World, 2020/11/12

This is a short post on a presentation, but I mostly want to quote it to share these resources (quoted):

1. OEP to Build Community – which included the examples of Femedtech and Equity Unbound.
2. Open Pedagogy –  including All Aboard Digital Skills in HE, the National Forum Open Licensing Toolkit, Open Pedagogy Notebook, and University of Windsor Tool Parade. 
3. Open Practice for Authentic Assessment – covering Wikimedia in Education and Open Assessment Practices.
4. Open Practice and Policy – with examples of open policies for learning and teaching from the University of Edinburgh. 

Good stuff, and reflective of the different dimensions of open learning.

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Using Docker to deliver virtual computing environments (VCEs) to distance education students
Tony Hirst, GitHub, 2020/11/12

This is a long and detailed presentation (and such a contrast with the stuff I'm seeing this week at the Open Education conference). But it's also very readable and you won't need to know all about virtual environments to benehfit from this - if anything, this is a good place for you to get up to speed with the subject in a hurry, if you're willing to spend some time reading it carefully. Tony Hirst writes, "Although Docker was still far from ready to be put to such purposes in any meaningful way at that time, particularly in terms of robust cross-platform/desktop support, I think a potential adoption path was already identifiable at the time. Over five years on, it seems we're finally starting to explore how effective this might be in practice."

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'Unfair surveillance'? Online exam software sparks global student revolt
Avi Asher-Schapiro, Thomson Reuters Foundation, 2020/11/12

Student pushback against intrusive online proctoring systems is reaching mainstream news. As they should. In this item (via MediaSmarts) we read about a system complaining "Due to poor lighting we are unable to identify your face." In a Washington Post article (which may be dying in darkness behind a paywall) the warning reads "'A student in 6 minutes had 776 head and eye movements,' adding later, 'I would hate to have to write you up.'" If you think this is ridiculous, you're not alone. "'How the hell are we [supposed] to control our eyes,' one student wrote — and Brown shared the email in a tweet that quickly got administrators’ attention, as well as more than 100,000 likes."

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Kits: Building the NGDLE Outside the LMS
2020/11/12

This is from last year but I only saw it today and it still seems worth passing along, even if it is in large part marketing for Duke University (that's about as lukewarm an intro as I have ever written, I think, but this really is an interesting item). The article introduces Toolkits, Duke's application based on Internet2's Grouper. "Toolkits is a group management solution that allows course groups to be created once and then shared with integrated learning applications." The idea is that you create a course, then add the tools you want to use in the course from a 'Kits App Store'. Apps are integrated using the Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) specification. You can find their code in their GitHub repository.

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Educational Technology and a Few Education Conferences for December 2020 to June 2021, Edition #44
Clayton R. Wright, Stephen's Web, 2020/11/12

This is the latest edition of the inimitable conference listing from Clayton R. Wright. He writes, "As the world turns to online or remote learning, it is an excellent time for educators to improve their e-learning skills by participating in one or more virtual professional development opportunities. Many conferences and symposia that were previously available only in a face-to-face format are now accessible via the Internet. Often, the registration fees are most inviting as they are less than the registration fees associated with previous face-to-face events. (Some are free!) In addition, no transportation or accommodation costs need to be taken into account.  

"Events currently listed to take place in a face-to-face format may be converted to an online format at a later date. Events that have been converted from a face-to-face to an online format, may occur over a shorter or longer period than the original posted time. Thus, check the event websites carefully.  Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a significant number (about 22%) of organizations are still deciding whether to hold an event in 2021." Image: Alan Levine.

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