OLDaily

There’s big problems with the market for academic ebooks
Rachel Bickley, WonkHe, 2021/03/30

WonkHe has a couple of items on digital textbooks, this one and another that says the way we buy them needs to change. This article looks back at the Open Letter distributed by the #ebooksos campaign and argues that "that the market is anti-competitive and that it is not working well enough for educational institutions." There is a testy exchange in the comments worth a look. The other article "is published in association with Kortext," an eBook aggregation service providing "access to over a million ebooks from 4,500+ publishers", argues that "some of these books and resources become very expensive when every student needs their own copy" and that "perhaps it is time for other parts of the university (besides libraries) to take a responsibility for these costs." Once again the comments are worth a visit, particularly the unanswered question, "Is this a paid advertisement?

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Introducing Career Coach in Microsoft Teams for Education
Microsoft Education Blog, 2021/03/30

Over the years Microsoft has collected a number of career and professional-focused websites, including Lynda, an online training site, and LinkedIn, a business-focused social network. It has also developed Microsoft Teams to compete against Slack and rolled many many elements from its former Classroom application into Office 365. This puts them in a very good position to combine them and offer a service that helps students "in identifying career goals aligned with their passions, interests, and strengths (and) help them find opportunities to develop real-world skills and connect them with alumni, peers, and faculty." And there's a pitch to institutions" those that "have a LinkedIn Learning campus agreement can provide students access to LinkedIn Learning’s full 16,000+ course library." It's the sort of systemic approach proponents of OER have long dreamed of, but never been able to cooperate sufficiently to do.

Web: [This Post]

200+ Hours of Free Conference Recordings on Online Learning
Heba Ledwon, Class Central, 2021/03/30

I really appreciate it when people take the time and effort to pull together a resource like this. Here, Heba Ledwon has gone out searching through conference websites to find freely accessible session recordings. The large majority of these are videos on YouTube (there are also a few slide presentations) that anybody can view (though without YouTube Premium you may be subjected to advertising). My only complaint is that 200 hours represents only a small fraction of the totality of conference presentations. It would be great to see a much larger percentage recorded, and while we're at it, supplemented with slide decks, audio versions, and transcriptions. This should be standard in any academic field, and especially in the field of education (you can view all my presentation recordings here).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Am I my connectome?
Phil Jaekl, Aeon, 2021/03/30

The concrete part of this is that "each human brain possesses a unique, intricate pattern of 86 billion neurons." That pattern is called the 'connectome'. The question is, what follows from that? We know that even for twins, "grow, learn and experience the world, their brains diverge, and their essential selves become increasingly unique." And we know, because we can revive people who have 'died' in freezing water, "neural electrical activity alone is not essential for the storage of memory in the brain." In my view, consciousness is that active state of experiencing the world, and is influenced by (but not the same as) our memories, which are the actual pattern of connectivity. Anyhow, the question considered in this article is whether we could record the connectome, transfer it to a new medium, like an artificial brain, and start it up again. Would it be the same person? I think this would depend a lot on the conscious experience; we would begin by very strongly believing we are the same person, but if the conscious experience were significantly different, we would be cast into more and more doubt.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Education, widening participation and the digital divide
Alex Blower, Nik Marsdin, WonkHe, 2021/03/30

What I like about this article is the turn it takes about halfway though. It begins with a laptop-and-bandwidth initiative for at-risk students in Lancaster that was essentially ineffective. " After the distribution of devices, engagement remained at nearly exactly the same level." Failure, right? Not exactly. "Fast forward six months and online engagement is currently at 92 per cent." The devices and bandwidth were necessary, but not sufficient. Success "has taken a commitment by the schools to provide holistic wrap around services in partnership with other organisations."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]