OLDaily

This holiday break, consider restructuring your student newsroom
Barbara Allen, Poynter, 2021/12/06

One of the big differences between student media in the U.S. and that in Canada is the management of student media by the university. This article, for example, describes how David Simpson, the director of student media at Georgia Southern University, reorganized the role of Editor-in-Chief. I can't imagine this sort of direct involvement in student media at a Canadian institution (except, maybe, within the journalism program itself). The majority of Canadian student media is independent, run directly by students, without interference from university staff. We solved workload problems ourselves. Barbara Allen asks, "Are we deluding ourselves into thinking that we’re helping students by placing the burden of making every single decision on them?" It's a question that to me is incomprehensible; student journalism (the way I see it) isn't a burden, it's a freedom.

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Your Power
Julian Stodd, Julian Stodd's Learning Blog, 2021/12/06

Power is often described as a primitive, a thing-in-itself. That's the sense I got reading this article, as Julian Stodd looks at different types of power: his iPod battery, his connections to the world, his power as a Social Leader (his capitalization). Continuing the analogy allows him to write things like "Power rarely flows downhill like water: instead it may clump and cluster, or even become attached to other things, like a magnet." But what is power. I draw inspiration from physics: power is the ability to get work done. The work may be simple, like voting in an election, or difficult, like waging war, or creative, like building a road. You can shape and influence opinions all you want, but it's not power until it gets something done. And my focus is on personal empowerment - being able to get work done myself, as opposed to convincing other people to do it for me.

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Snapchat for media companies
Sofiia Padalko, The Fix, 2021/12/06

I have basically ignored Snapchat in these pages because I wasn't interested in the basic premise: short, time-limited “snaps” and “stories” that disappeared. About a year ago, however, Snapchat launched 'Spotlight', where the items didn't disappear until the user deleted them. This article looks at the use of Snapchat for publishers, both as a place to advertise, as well as a place to sell ads. Also, Snapchat has started rewarding its most viral contributors. Publishers like the Daily Mail, Le Monde and Bild have exploited controversy for views, driving substantial audiences on the platform. I'm still not interested in Snapchat, especially as it is means to mainline marketing media.

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Students’ competencies discovery and assessment using learning analytics and semantic web
Khaled Halimi, Hassina Seridi-Bouchelaghem, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2021/12/06

There's a lot of detailed explanation in this article, and it's not always as clear as it could be (especially as it mixes semantic and learning analytics-based approaches) but it's definitely on the right path, no matter how well this specific application performs. The idea is to analyze what we mean by different competencies, and then perform text-based analytics on students' work to find instances of the use of those competencies in order to assess their competency levels. The authors assert "This experimental study using the SoLearn system has indicated that this approach is efficient in modelling and evaluating students’ competencies." Of course, it needs to be more than just efficient; it needs to be accurate.

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Attention literacy and the value of slow learning
Alastair Creelman, The corridor of uncertainty, 2021/12/06

I covered the post on attentional literacy that appeared on CJLT last week. This post, using the phrase 'attention literacy' instead, summarizes that article. Though the word 'slow' appears in the title of this summary it appears only once in the text of the original article, and so seems a bit misleading as used here. Johannes Plenio also discusses the idea that attentional literacy is a 'macroliteracy' and useful as a strategy for coping with the 100 different models of digital literacies that are out there.

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