OLDaily

Presentation
Supporting Everyday Learning
Stephen Downes, Apr 19, 2021, Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) 2021, Online, via Zoom

(Workshop)

Stephen Downes, National Research Council Canada (workshop)

Description: When we think of supporting learning, even everyday learning, most of us think in terms of supporting traditional students in online or in-person class environments, where the work being supported consists of subject matter acquisition, projects and labwork, discussions, assignments, and exam preparation.

Yet for most of us, this mode of learning ceases the day we are handed our diplomas. And all of us, whether traditional students or not, engage in a much more casual everyday sort of learning, sometimes called informal learning, and sometimes called self-managed learning. Based on two decades’ experience supporting everyday learning for professionals and practitioners, this workshop focuses on the thinking behind providing learning on an everyday basis where there are no classes, projects or assignments.

Based on an actual and active online learning initiative that includes occasional courses, newsletters, videos and presentations, this workshop will outline the thinking behind the design of an everyday learning experience, describe the technology used to acquire learning materials, organize them, and provide them in such a way as to offer day-to-day value for learners.

Learning Objectives: The objective of this workshop is two-fold: first, to provide participants with the chance to look at the tools needed to support everyday learning, and second, to provide participants with a sufficient insight into the thinking and model behind everyday learning so they can help subject matter experts at their own institution put it into practice.

The tools to be explored include:

• Content acquisition tools such as RSS readers, discussion boards, and IFTTT
• Authoring and presenting tools such as WordPress, SoundCloud and YouTube
• Dissemination tools such as RSS, MailChimp, social media and IFTTT

By the end of the workshop participants will have experienced at least one tool from each category

[Link]

WordPress wants to automatically block FloC
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Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Automatically Detecting Cognitive Engagement beyond Behavioral Indicators: A Case of Online Professional Learning Community
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Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea
Bennett Cyphers, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2021/04/19

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Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Google Developer Profiles
2021/04/19

While I was following up the news about Feedly I was given a prompt to crate a 'Google Developer Profile', which I did. It felt a lot like signing up for Google+ to me, though my social network was more developer focused (yes GitHub account, no Facebook account). It's still in beta and there isn't a lot so far, but what I did notice is the focus on 'Learn', which makes sense. It offers different pathways (you might need to sign in to see the link) with options to build for cloud, maps, apps, neural networks and chatbots. Again, the big risk of working with Google technology is the company's tendency to discontinue things - lots of things - without any real explanation.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Upcoming changes to FeedBurner
Google Search Central Blog, 2021/04/19

This doesn't impact me at all because I learned long ago not to depend on Google for essential infrastructure. But it will impact FeedBurner users, and may be of interest to people who try to read the Google tea leaves to predict what's ahead. It's this: FeedBurner is discontinuing email subscriptions. Here's the official 'explanation': "we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure... we will be turning down most non-core feed management features, including email subscriptions." That's it. Now, given that email is the most stable infrastructure of all time, we can discount the 'explanation'. On the website it says "Feedburner is going into maintenance mode." What does it really mean? Here I can only speculate...

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]