OLDaily

Figure it out
Matthias Melcher, x28's New Blog, 2022/03/25

Matthias Melcher offers a critique of: Stephen P. Anderson; Karl Fast; Christina Wodtke. Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding. It sounds like a good read, though it's a book you have to pay for, so I don't expect to read it any time soon. But there are some good thoughts here. Like this: "the notion of information as a resource that can be interacted with. And this interaction is not the usual sequential one such as in: 'action and then the response' (p. 255), or read then think then write, or the question then answer dialog by teachers (or their digital simulation in H5P interactivity, which may help retention but perhaps nothing else). Rather, it is simultaneous and a 'tight coupling'..

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Open Badges
Doug Belshaw, Google Slides, 2022/03/25

Doug Belshaw made the most of a chance to revise his presentation on digital badges this week and the result is an informative slide show featuring a lot of examples. I like one of the 'spare slides' after the end: "A certificate is just an offline badge."

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Europe's plan to rein in Big Tech will require Apple to open up iMessage
Ben Brody, Protocol, 2022/03/25

As this article relates, "European regulators on Thursday revealed their plan to rein in the anti-competitive practices of Big Tech." It includes things like requiring messaging systems to interoperate and eliminating the Google and Apple App Store tax. It would also prohibit "combining personal data for targeted advertising" without explicit consent. These are all things that should have to be regulated, but the commercial sector is notorious for its anti-competitive behaviour. Passage of these measures, meanwhile, would benefit educational technology as it would open new ways to reach students without requiring that they buy proprietary technology.

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Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3
Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly, 2022/03/25

According to Tim O'Reilly, " "Web3" as we think of it today was introduced in 2014 by Gavin Wood, one of the cocreators of Ethereum. Wood's compact definition of Web3, as he put it in a recent Wired interview, is simple: 'Less trust, more truth.'" Well, that's one way to put it. As O'Reilly explains, "Wood's point is that the blockchain replaces trust in the good intentions of others with transparency and irrevocability built into the technology." I'm in agreement with that as a basic statement of intention; after all, if we have to depend on the good intentions of others to progress, then we won't progress. But there's more to web3 than that; there's the whole question of decentralization, and as O'Reilly remarks, "Blockchain developers believe that this time they've found a structural answer to recentralization, but I tend to doubt it... the rapid consolidation of bitcoin mining into a small number of hands by way of lower energy costs for computation indicates one kind of recentralization. There will be others."

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What using RSS feeds feels like - It feels good
Giles Turnbull, gilest.org, 2022/03/25

As the author writes, "If you already use RSS, this post is not for you. You know this already. This is for people who don't already use RSS." People have been touting email newsletters as the Next Big Thing. Well. My newsletter reaches about 1500 people by email. It costs me roughly $45 per month to send, and despite the use of a commercial service I still have ongoing issues with spam filters. It reaches many times more people by RSS and Twitter. I couldn't afford to reach everyone by email, not without running my own email server (which I used to do in the past; not recommended). For readers, the RSS experience especially is smooth and reliable. As Giles Turnbull writes, "It's just better than the endless scroll of a social media feed." It's not an algorithm. You're not being force fed ads, or being manipulated by the platform. You chose who and what you read.

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