OLDaily

OLDaily will be on hiatius until August 30
2021/08/06

I have a bikepacking trip planned for the rest of August and will have minimal internet access during that time. You can click on the link to see my planning and route. So I'm announcing a hiatus for the rest of the month. Now of course a million things can still go wrong; this is a real stretch for both me and my bike. But I'll never know unless I try. Now, although I'm on hiatus, you might still see some stuff in OLDaily. If you're reading the email newsletter or RSS, you'll benefit for a while from links I've preloaded. I might also post from the road (but zero guarantees). Enjoy your august, and remember to take that break you need.

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A moment that changed me: I realised I had become a masochist – and quit Twitter
Laura Snapes, The Guardian, 2021/08/06

Let's take this post on memes from 2018 as a starting point. I confess I hadn't seen it before, but hey, one can't see everything. Just so, one can't be everything, and I think that's the point of this article. And that's what Twitter - or maybe life in general - demands. "I didn’t consider my articles complete without a reaction. Twitter, teeming with peers, mattered more than a general comments section." Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it's this need for approval generally. It's a hard skill to learn, to be happy with your work without the benefit of external validation. Sometimes I feel I've mastered it (as when I ran a radio station for several years with no listeners). Sometimes, not so much.

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New License Enforcement Principles for Public Comment
Cable Green, Creative Commons, 2021/08/06

This post references a new Creative Commons declaration regarding the enforcement of CC licenses. I see this as once again the unwelcome intrusion of commercial interests into the domain of sharing; my own interest in enforcing licenses is minimal - less than minimal, even. So principles that suggest I make "a public commitment to enforcement in line with these principles to reassure reusers" or "require uploaders to agree that they will enforce copyrights of their works" is exactly the opposite of what I want to see in a licensing scheme - especially (as seems always to be the case) is the offender is a large company that will push me into the poorhouse if I contemplate such a thing. Image: John, on Flickr.

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Book Review: An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era
David Alexander Porter, 2021/08/06

This is the second edition of the book by Martha Cleveland-Innes and Randy Garrison, two of the leading voices in distance education (and the reviewer David Porter is no slouch himself). In this review (4 page PDF) we only get a hint of the slate of individual chapter authors, but again, those named (Richard Schwier, who wrote a froward, and Phil Ice, and Melissa Layne, who wrote on blockchain and AI) suggest a similar pedigree. And yet as I read the review there's a deep sense in me that they don't get it. No, it's not the lack of currency (though Porter notes "the scarcity of research citations beyond 2015, with the majority of the research cited coming from pre-2010"). It's that distance education isn't about $160 textbooks any more, and that's what this is. Sure, you can get an overpriced ebook, but the field as a whole has moved on, led for example by Tony Bates's open textbook Teaching in a Digital Age. No matter how qualified someone is, I can't take them seriously as a commentator in this field if they're publishing books behind paywalls.

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Achieving Community Development through an Agricultural Extension Programme: Technology Dissemination for Mushroom Farmers
Nilantha De Silva, Mahinda Wijeratne, 2021/08/06

Most people don't know this, but I worked on a mushroom farm for a time. It's what I was doing instead of attending my Grade 12 graduation (I have a perfect record of never having attended any of my graduation ceremonies). My brother worked at the same farm for something like 32 years before being unceremoniously laid off. Jerks. So anyhow, I have an affinity for mushroom workers. And I have a sense of the value of mushroom farming, and also some of the complexity of it, including the importance to things like sterilization. This article (14 page PDF) sits nicely at the intersection of technology, education and development as it studies a Life Long Learning for Farmers (L3F) Programme in Sri Lanka. It shows how the program improved mushroom farming along a number of dimensions, ultimately benefiting the farmers themselves by increasing yields and productivity.

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E-Learning Essentials 2020
Robert Power, et.al., PressBooks, 2021/08/06

This is a comprehensive resource authored by participants in EDUC5104G: Analysis and Design of Web-Based Learning Tools offered through Ontario Tech University. As cogdog summarizes, "It includes chapters on Instructional Design Theories (e.g. Social Learning Theory 1, Experiential Learning Theory, Constructivism Theory, and 25 more), plus 14 chapters on Instructional Design Principles, and 28 Tool Reviews." The 56 chapters are brief - very brief, almost too brief, and follow a standard format that presents information but doesn't go into a lot of depth. Still, I applaud the effort as a great example of a student-produced OER.

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Concept Maps and Learning
Clark Quinn, Learnlets, 2021/08/06

The useful bit of this article is the distinction Clark Quinn draws between mindmaps and concept maps: " the main separation between mindmaps and concept maps is labels. Specifically, concept maps have labels that indicate the meaning of connections between concepts." Labels, he says, are important, because otherwise "the terms and connections don’t necessarily make sense." He also links to Jerry's Brain, a huge mindmap. Quinn's concern in this post is that the use of mindmaps or concept maps in a class does not ensure coverage. He is also concerned that they don't lead to comprehension. "History isn’t about learning facts, it’s about learning to think like a historian. You may need the cultural literacy first, but then you need to be able to use those elements to make comparisons, criticisms, and more." I agree.

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