OLDaily

Presentation
Sharing and collaborating our way out of the storm
Stephen Downes, May 10, 2021, Time for Action in Shaping HE 4.0, Online, via Zoom

In this webinar, we will identify whether OERs were a solution or being used in the last year in education; and how OERs may be used in the future. In our quest for shaping the future of higher education, do we consider open education a solution and OERs and practices as part of the education ecosystem?  What problems might OERs help educators resolve and how we can harness the value of OERs for higher education?  Can we consider the future of education is open and, if yes, what strategies can we use to make this happen?

[Link] [Slides] [Video]

Obsidian vs. Roam: Which PKM App is Right For You?
Mike Schmitz, The Sweet Setup, 2021/05/10

I keep an eye on personal knowledge management (PKM) applications because of their close relationship to personal learning environments. This article compares two market leaders, Obsidian and Roam.Each of them has a graph view (pictured) but in my experience it's difficult to really use a graph view to do things; rather, to me at least, the grapg is the thing behind the scenes that keeps track of relationships to the application can do just the right thing at the right time

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Deepfake Lips Are Coming to Dubbed Films
Andrew Liszewski, Gizmodo, 2021/05/10

When I edit my photographs, I use an AI image processor called Topaz. I don't consider it cheating at all; it merely removes the pixelation and speckles caused by the digitization process in the first place (in the old days photographers fought 'grain', which is the same sort of thing with similar causes). Similarly, I don't think it's cheating to use AI to change the way the lips more for a speaker being dubbed in another language; it's what they would be doing if they were speaking in that language. And similarly, AI film editors can automate a lot of the tedium of editing, just as AI high dynamic range (HDR) software automatically aligns the three photos being merged to create a single image. There's something like this for every step of the creative process. Our role as creators is shifting from knowing how to do something to deciding what to do.

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Learning from the places where informal and formal change activity meet
Nour Sidawi, Clare Moran, David Buck, 2021/05/10

I can't say how in so many words, but this article really reflects my own experience as someone who works very informally within both a government institution and a field dominated by educational institutions. This article is the first of three parts and focuses on "change makers as insiders and outsiders" while the next two look at "the use and misuse of change communities" and "reflections on making change with the centre of government." I wouldn't even describe this as 'change making', though admittedly, "it is about getting the formal to make space for the informal, and those who think they ‘own’ the space, to recognise that they don’t." On more than one occasion though I've simply concluded than the formal won't change, and that it is better to work outside the institutional framework entirely.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Peer Review: Implementing a "publish, then review" model of publishing
Michael B Eisen, et.al., eLife, 2021/05/10

I'm not going to say it's a turning point, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. "From July 2021 eLife will only review manuscripts already published as preprints, and will focus its editorial process on producing public reviews to be posted alongside the preprints." And here's the real upshot: "It means that for all practical purposes eLife is no longer a publisher: rather, eLife is now an organization that reviews and certifies papers that have already been published." I know that publishers don't want to make this change... but it's sure good for science, and for the wider community. Image: eLife, Preprint Review: A guide for authors

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Why has machine learning become such a toxic field, know-it-all field?
Realistic_Sea_3634, Reddit, 2021/05/10

This is an item from Reddit, so on the down side things are a bit over-stated, but on the plus side, there are (as of this writing) 297 comments, which should offer a good range of perspectives (I say 'should' because I did not read 297 comments). The complaints raised here will be familiar to people working with educational technologists: they feel they can be successful even without subject-matter experts, they don't learn the history and the basics of the field, and there's little focus on practical applications, and they overstate what the technology can do. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, the "fairness/ethics crowd... always point out problems, but never (real) solutions." It's easy to dismiss this post (and this is the author's only post on Reddit, so there's that too) - but this is a complex and many-sided discussion and we need to take a breath and think things through carefully. Image: X is all you need, Reddit.

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