OLDaily

BS-ing about BBS-es
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2020/11/23

One comment in Alan Levine's reminiscences about using bulletin board services (BBS) to connect with students in the late 80s and early 90s: "What we discovered was that the journal gave a voice to silenced or marginalized students. For instance, a student who never spoke in class was very active on the journal, contributing over twenty thousand words in one semester." Around the same time, before I launched my own BBS, I was a regular visitor to local BBSs in Edmonton, including the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission (AADAC)'s EZoot (see also) and saw (and felt) much the same thing. Levine says, "There was a rich culture of text based technology, not just for communication, but for teaching and learning at Maricopa." This is true, and this pattern was repeated to the furthest reaches of the FidoNet (and the SpiderNet, and IMEXNet, and DriftNet, and WorldNet...).

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Eight Ways New Schools Innovate
Tom Vander Ark, Getting Smart, 2020/11/23

The strength of this article is that each of the eight ways is illustrated with a number of examples. Thus, for example, for the way outcomes may be innovative, we see cases looking at different success skills, career pathways, purpose, target populations, and levels. It's also the article's weakness. These examples tend to be private or small-scale, implemented in special circumstances, specially funded, with a limited track record. They should be treated as prototypes, not blueprints. As experiments, not results.

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Everyone you know uses Zoom. That wasn't the plan
Jon Sarlin, CNN, 2020/11/23

This is a longish and fairly detailed account from CNN (full-text plus video) describing the ascent of Zoom and the recent history of videoconferencing generally. The lesson should be obvious to everyone: people want online services that are easy to use (whether or not they are in the enterprise). And they will sacrifice a lot to get that - features, security, suitability. I mean, after all, ask yourself, why did the pivot to remote learning take to Zoom rather than established online learning applications that had been in development over the last 20 years? Why did they turn away in droves from already installed WebEx instances? "Customers grew frustrated with the quality of the product. They wanted (it) to work reliably and more intuitively. And above all else, they wanted video to run seamlessly... No one wants to download an app or sign up for an account if they don't have to. They just want the thing to work."

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State of DevOps Report
Puppet, CircleCI, 2020/11/23

The term DevOps is short for 'development operations' and this report (54 page PDF) describes how institutions are automating routine decision-making and approvals while creating flexibility for unusual and unorthodox cases. Any enterprise that manages digital services is engaged in DevOps and these may range from cloud support to desktop applications. The long term trend is toward self-serve interfaces, and the key trends this year are product-focus (as opposed to a series of stand-alone projects) and change management (that involves testing, automation, and stakeholder involvement). The report ranks different sectors with respect to their DevOps maturity level, and unsurprisingly, education ranks among the lowest and, therefore, least efficient. Here's the launch page, if you want to be giving and fill out the form before downloading, as I did. Via InfoQ.

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What is CryptPad?
CryptPad, 2020/11/23

I just want to note the existence of this product. Basically, it's encrypted cloud storage combined with authoring applications (docs, slides, spreadsheet, whiteboard, kanban) that are encrypted on the client side. Access to the documents can be shared by providing an access key, without which the documents cannot be decrypted. " Because sensitive assets can only be decrypted using user access credentials, CryptPad is less valuable as a target when compared to traditional cloud services." CryptPad Whitepaper.

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From The Block Up
W. Ian O'Byrne, 2020/11/23

This is a good article that will probably not resonate with people who do not believe education is activism (which is probably the majority). Why share it then? It discusses activism and organizing and makes the point that "we must start with understanding and connecting the local before moving to the global." It's tempting to think your activism could go viral and reach a global audience, but first, it probably won't, and second, it probably shouldn't. And it's this second point that is important even to people who do not believe education is activism. We are moving away from a mass society with mass media and toward a networked society with community media. And the calculus of the community is different, as you move beyond organizing everyone who thinks the same as you, to working with people who think differently than you.

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