OLDaily

Announcing: Internet of Education DAO Research & Development
Gabriel Sage, Internet of Education, Learning Economy, 2022/02/01

According to this announcement, the Learning Economy Foundation (LEF) "has been awarded 2 grants by the like-minded innovators of DEVxDAO to do a definitive applied study and taxonomy on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The research will result in a detailed final report and playbook, a social research Hub, and an open source Internet of Education DAO framework that can be forked for use governing Internet of Education related decentralized projects and organizations." A lot of what I see on the website reads like people who know about blockchain but who are looking at education for the first time. Nothing new there, I guess. Still, I'm keeping an eye on the initiative. P.S. readers will also want to have a look at this slide deck as well.

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The Lessons of Endings
Nancy White, Full Circle Associates, 2022/02/01

Nancy White reflects on an old post in Scott Rosenberg’s personal blog on the relation between content and community. "Don’t think of 'conversation' and 'community' as subsidiaries to 'content.' They aren’t after-thoughts, add-ons, or sidebars. They are the point of the Web." And she remarks, in passing, "we still do worship content over conversation and community, albeit now in the guise of simply 'social media.'" Maybe. But it made me ask myself what the difference is between content and conversation, or content and community. I mean, I suppose you could imagine, say, a conversation without content, but I find it difficult to imagine exactly what it would look like.

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AI’s J-curve and upcoming productivity boom
Ben Dickson, TechTalks, 2022/02/01

I read an interesting report from the Christensen Institute today about lowing production costs and increasing yield by employing technology and other innovations in rice production in Nigeria. The suggestion was that the result would be more affordable rice in a region that could really use the help. But why would we suppose the price would go down? It's far more likely the producers would keep the price the same, extract increased profits, extend their hold on the market, and put a lot of people out of work without producing any real benefit for society. Because price is not based on cost, it is based on the buyer's willingness to pay. The same thinking applies to artificial intelligence, discussed here. The J-curve signifies an eventual huge increase in productivity. That's great... for the producer. For the rest of us, "We’re in this period right now where we’re making a lot of that painful transition, restructuring work... You have hundreds of billions of dollars of human capital, of skills walking out the door."

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How microcredentials can solve the skills gap
Cecil Banhan, eCampus News, 2022/02/01

The main contribution here is to rebrand the 'skills gap' as a 'skills canyon'. I have no doubt there's a skills gap, but if companies want it to be addressed they need to do two things: increase their support for public, free and accessible learning opportunities; and pay employees enough to make the considerable investment of time and effort to acquire high-level skills worthwhile. Sure, adopting a microcredentials system might help with this. But it would be a mistake to think that microcredentials can make up for shortfalls in investment and remuneration.

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State of Higher Ed LMS Market for US and Canada: Year-End 2021 Edition
Phil Hill, Phil on EdTech, 2022/02/01

The main trend to note is that both Blackboard and Moodle are declining, while Canvas continues to do very well. D2L's Brightspace increased modestly, and will increase more once the institutions from the SUNY system are added. The same trends are reflected whether you count LMS usage according to institutions or according to overall enrollment. It's probably not possible, but it would be interesting to see a combined chart for MOOC platforms alongside LMSs, and corporate MOOC and LMSs as well.

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