OLDaily

I Am On a Board
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2021/11/12

Alan Levine reports on joining an advisory board for a company called Learnful. It stems from work he did to make H5P more accessible and useful to people. "Anyone can do what I did at Learnful," he writes, "create an account, and use the H5P environment there to both explore the content in the H5P OER hub and also share any H5P content created/imported into Learnful into the hub." He receives no compensation, and he adds that his stance on the board is that "anything ever offered as a free and open service to educators should never be yanked away, downsized in functionality, or converted to a fee-based service.

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Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education
Clayton R. Wright, Stephen's Web, 2021/11/12

Clayton R. Wright writes, "Attached is the 46th version of Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education (previously known as the Educational Technology and Education Conference List). Over time, the list has grown to include many online events which cannot be classified as conferences. I genuinely try to compile a list of events that will give viewers value for their time. But, I may not always succeed. There are a plethora of events listed on conference websites; however, those who use them must choose wisely. 

"As the state of the Covid-19 pandemic is still in flux, some of the planned face-to-face events may change to a hybrid or online format. A significant number of event organizers have postponed their events as they sit on the sidelines waiting for the pandemic to subside - they do not want to knowingly cause the virus to spread or to be sued by those attending their events. Do check dates and locations before making travel arrangements.

"If you are seeking additional professional development opportunities, including stackable micro-credentials, explore these online platforms - they are listed alphabetically: Coursera, EDX/2U, FutureLearn, Khan Academy, LinkedIn Learning, MasterClass, Noodle, Pluralsight, Skillshare, Udacity, Udemy Do take the time to explore the above as you may find a course that may benefit you, your colleagues, and your students. 

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Lakoff - embodied and emotional mind - man of metaphor
Donald Clark, Donald Clark Plan B, 2021/11/12

Donald Clark has had a very productive November, so much so that I'm falling behind in posts of his I'd like to link to. He has been writing sort articles about people influential in the field of learning, and now that he has widened his gaze beyond traditional 'education' researchers he's been covering people who have played key roles over the years, including many who have been influential on my own thought. This post references George Lakoff, who I saw speak in 1990 at the very influential Connectionism conference in Vancouver. It's hard to believe it was only 30 years ago. Here's Clark's summary, in part: "We think in frames and metaphors. Teachers and learners play roles, these are frames. As teachers and learners we also communicate, largely through language which is deeply metaphorical, with varying layers of metaphor."

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An update to dislikes on YouTube
YouTube, 2021/11/12

This is one of those design decisions that is really hard. YouTube announced this week that it will no longer display the number of downvotes on videos. You can still vote 'thumbs down' but viewers will not see the total. The problem with this, of course, is that it removes the information people use to decide whether a video is worth watching, since a ration is more valuable than a raw 'likes' score. But as Google wrote, the change helped "reduce dislike attacks - where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos." Fair enough - but I can't help but think that Google's now-exclusive access to the data may also have informed the decision.

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“Domains in the Cloud” at Vanderbilt
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2021/11/12

I will admit to being a fan of Reclaim Hosting and have performed numerous experiments in Reclaim Cloud as I try to understand what cloud technology can do and what it takes to lead people through the process of deploying cloud services. In this post Jim Groom talks about a recent visit to Vanderbilt University, and at first it reads a bit like a trip report, but almost half way through we read Groom "taking yet another crack and trying to pull together a cogent discussions of cloud computing and the shift of computing resources to a utility model, the rise of next-generation applications beyond the LAMP stack, and the shift to container-based infrastructure," and that's where the post becomes valuable. We get a couple video clips from Stephen Fry and a couple of images and a useful link but what would have been really useful would have been the video and transcript of Groom's actual talk.

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Edtech giant VIPKid gives up its massive stake in China
ICEF Monitor, 2021/11/12

I confess that I had never heard of VIPKid before this news item; it just goes to show how widespread and varied our field is that a $3 billion company can slip between the cracks Anyhow, this current item says that the company's move is "perhaps the highest-profile example of the fallout from the Chinese government’s introduction, in summer 2021, of sweeping regulations (called the shuangjian reforms) to curtail private and online tutoring for Chinese children in the country." VIPKids is a platform that connected "English-speaking tutors (many of whom are American) and Chinese children." It continues to operate in other countries and also to tutor adults in China (as the reforms covered only children). While "many observers speculate that the Chinese government wanted to curtail Western influence on its youngest minds" my own feeling that the official objective of "stopping education operations from putting profits ahead of the welfare of students" is probably more accurate.

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