OLDaily

Google Is Aiming to Train 40 Million People with Google Cloud Skills Boost
Steef-Jan Wiggers, InfoQ, 2021/10/25

To be clear, Google isn't being altruistic here. It is offering a one month free preview (which I signed up for, because I'm eternally curious) but after that I would suppose it will cost money. What's more significant, though, is that if they reach their target of 40 million people, that's 40 million people who are not studying this at a college or university. "People looking to learn more about the capabilities of the Google Cloud Platform can have access to more than 700 hands-on labs, role-based courses, skill badges, and certification resources, including 16 new learning paths available on-demand globally on Google Cloud Skills Boost." Google should make it all free. After all, "Other public cloud providers like Microsoft and AWS also offer learning capabilities. For example, Microsoft Learn offers various learning paths and modules for free on Azure."

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Tips for collaborating with scientists, from a philosopher
Michael Paul Nelson, Nature, 2021/10/25

This is good advice for people crossing disciplinary boundaries generally, and not just between philosophy and science. Being inclusive, for example: "‘Enquiry’ and ‘research’ are inclusive terms because they apply to the arts and humanities as well as to science, and they acknowledge that there are other ways to know and experience the forest." Also, recognizing difference in outputs: "Artists and humanities scholars have different ‘units of work’ on which they are judged. Artists aim to put on shows and performances; philosophers and historians tend to think in units of books, in addition to research articles and chapters."

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The Facebook Trap
2021/10/25

This is a pretty good article, perhaps more kind toward Facebook than I would be, but also one that gets to the core of the issue with Facebook. The 'Facebook trap' referenced in the title is familiar to most: Facebook is incentivized to create more and more connections between people, and especially between people and strangers, advertisers, professional content producers, and politicians. But to solve its problems of toxicity and misinformation, Facebook needs to work against that incentive. My thinking is that the problem is with the algorithmic connections; they serve Facebook interests, not user interests, and they incentivize volume over quality. But the HBS article also looks at user-originated connections, which it suggests here is in need of content moderation. But, in my view, the problem of misinformation and trolls is much more serious when it is amplified algorithmically.

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#ethics21 (Technical:) Graph
Matthias Melcher, x28's New Blog, 2021/10/25

It's probably a good thing that I don't have thousands of people in my ethics course. Having a small number of very forgiving participants allows me to develop the idea I'm exploring as the course progresses. Matthias Melcher has offered support at a critical point. Modules 2 and 3 are essentially a catalogue of all types of applications (ie., uses) of AI and analytics in learning, and of all types of ethical issues raised. Described here is an activity where participants draw the connections between them. Sure, I could just write an algorithm to draw these connections; that's what most of analytics and AI is about. But I'm interested in how people draw these connections, thinking of society (or in this case, the small number of forgiving participants) act as the analytics engine. You can try this out for yourself; To create a connection, click on a node and then use alt-drag to draw the line; to export, right-click and select 'export'. If you send me the result I'll add it to the course.

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High schoolers, educators decry split focus of hybrid learning model
Jessica Wong, CBC News, 2021/10/25

Conventional wisdom is that if you're offering a class, you can offer it online, or in person, but not both - at least, not without a lot of technical and class management support. But conventional wisdom is not being followed right now in schools. "Ultimately, the persistence of the hybrid model is a consequence of funding decisions made at the provincial level, says Bonnie Stewart... boards can afford to do it because they're getting teachers to do two jobs at once. 'When you refuse to fund virtual, but you mandate school boards to offer virtual, you are basically setting up a situation where you're asking them to do what they can do on the cheap.'"

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Strategic Vision for the Open Education Conference
Open Education Conference, 2021/10/25

With clarity and brevity rare in our field, the Open Education Conference strategic planning committee has released its vision for the future of the conference, the 2021 edition of which has just concluded. "Our mission," it begins, "is to provide a welcoming space for members of the wider open education community to convene at an annual conference that strives to build trust, foster relationships, strengthen skills,"

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