Blurts

This post from Amy Ahean offers a futuristic view of higher education. She sees a three-tier model – basic education likely to be free, credentialed skills focused education, and enhanced residential education.

As I understand her model, the reference to iTunes mostly focuses on the middle tier. She cites Lynda.com, SkillsShare, and Ed2Go as present examples. I used Lynda.com for years mostly to develop programming and technology skills – I completed multiple courses focused on PHP, MySQL, CSS, and Dreamweaver. I paid $25 a month for an “all you can eat” approach. Some months I consumed a lot and some nothing at all.

I had not considered what it must be like to create content for these platforms. Is is kind of like teaching online, but your presentations are recorded and there is no actual interaction with students. Perhaps it would be more like authoring a textbook which I do understand. The EdSurge columnist compares more to what a musician experiences when their products are available via iTunes. The platform makes most of the income.

I am out of higher ed now and still teach a course now and then as an adjunct. I understand the feeling of being at the whims of the platform, but I am sure teaching by the course is better than being recorded once and then receiving a compensated based on views. If this is the future of higher education, I am glad I am watching and commenting from the sidelines. No way to make a living even if you already have the income to be comfortable.

I have been an advocate for the Brave browser and ecosystem, but I admit there are a few things about the business model I can’t quite grasp. I like Brave because it seems to solve the independent issues of compensating content creators and providing privacy protection for web users. What I don’t get is why the system has to be based on a cryptocurrency (BAT).

The money to be distributed across the sites of registered content creators is generated in two ways. Content consumers can put in BAT after converting traditional currency to cryptocurrency and consumers can generate BAT by viewing ads through the Brave browser that does not require that personal information be shared. OK. I put in $50 because the generate a contribution by viewing ads was not available when I joined. I also generate a few BAT from allowing ads to appear (not nearly enough to meet the minimum monthly distribution, but still something). Why am I working in BAT and not allocating a few dollars a month and receiving a few cents per ad viewed?

This article seems to offer an explanation, but I am still not certain I understand. I think the explanation is that Brave, ad providers, content creators, and content consumers are all isolated from each other as far as personal information goes. The consumers will see relevant ads without Brave or the ad producers being able to identify them. I hope this is it as putting money into the system is not a task for the casual user/a

If you are taking time this summer to explore possible learning resources for next year, take a look at PBS Learning Media. A media-based company like PBS obviously has a vast store of informative media and PBS has organized relevant content from this collection for classroom use.