Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

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Vision Statement

Stephen Downes works with the Digital Technologies Research Centre at the National Research Council of Canada specializing in new instructional media and personal learning technology. His degrees are in Philosophy, specializing in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. He has taught for the University of Alberta, Athabasca University, Grand Prairie Regional College and Assiniboine Community College. His background includes expertise in journalism and media, both as a prominent blogger and as founder of the Moncton Free Press online news cooperative. He is one of the originators of the first Massive Open Online Course, has published frequently about online and networked learning, has authored learning management and content syndication software, and is the author of the widely read e-learning newsletter OLDaily. Downes is a member of NRC's Research Ethics Board. He is a popular keynote speaker and has spoken at conferences around the world.

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Stephen Downes, stephen@downes.ca, Casselman Canada

The Different (and Modern) Ways To Toggle Content
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I spend a lot of time thinking about how to display and hide things on a web page. This article looks at some of the modern ways to do that, with an emphasis disclosures using "the Dialog API, the Popover API, and more." This is a bit of an insight into the whole world of html and javacript  APIs which I have been learning about recently.

Today: 202 Total: 202 Daniel Schwarz, CSS-Tricks, 2024/11/08 [Direct Link]
Stature and status: Height, ability, and labor market outcomes - PMC
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According to this article, "height is positively associated with cognitive ability, which is rewarded in the labor market." I would speculate that any such correlation would have to do with nutrition and health prebirth and in childhood. You want better learning outcomes? Ensure children are well-nourished. But there's a darker side to this argument, as in this report we read about height being used to screen applicants to higher education programs in Vietnam, where the restriction has generated outrage. "The school announced that female students must be at least 1.58 meters tall and male students at least 1.65 meters to be considered for admission this year." Both items via HESA.

Today: 239 Total: 239 Anne Case, Christina Paxson, PubMed Central, 2024/11/08 [Direct Link]
ChatGPT is transforming peer review — how can we use it responsibly?
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According to this article, "at major computer-science publication venues, up to 17% of the peer reviews are now written by artificial intelligence." Of course, the detection of AI writing isn't totally reliable, but as James Zou writes, "reviews penned by AI tools stand out because of their formal tone and verbosity — traits commonly associated with the writing style of large language models (LLMs)." The article has the usual caveats that AI should not replace human reviewers and that "guardrails" should be in place. But "the tidal wave of LLM use in academic writing and peer review cannot be stopped." Via Daily Nous.

Today: 238 Total: 238 James Zou, Nature, 2024/11/08 [Direct Link]
OpenAI defeats news outlets' copyright lawsuit over AI training, for now
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This will be all over the tech news today, but it's important to note that this is just the first step in what will certainly be a long legal process as the case works through appeals. But the finding is still significant. As Donald Clark summarizes, "Generative AI 'synthesises', it does not copy. This is central. It's a bit like our brains, we see, hear and read stuff but memory isn't copying, it's a process of synthesis and recall is reconstructive." More: VentureBeat, Engadget. Here is the full opinion.

Today: 424 Total: 424 Blake Brittain, Reuters, 2024/11/08 [Direct Link]
Open Web UI Installer for Reclaim Cloud
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I had a ton of fun this afternoon following along with the top video and setting up a Web UI website in Reclaim Cloud. The point of this video was to highlight the new installer, which makes it pretty easy to set up the interface. What the interface does is to give you a window where you can access an AI interface (such as ChatGPT) or run an AI model locally as well as additional tools, functions, prompts and models. You can even build your own knowledge base. This isn't strictly a how-to video; it's more the two participants exploring the installer and the functions, and there are tangents and side-quests. At the same time, there are some really useful bits, like knowing you have to set the image dimensions properly (eg. 1024x1024) for the image generation to work.

Today: 42 Total: 288 Meredith Hoffman, Taylor Jadin, Reclaim the Blog, 2024/11/07 [Direct Link]
The duty to explain: a positive defence of academic freedom in the social sciences
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This paper (13 page PDF) argues that it is "unhelpful" to think of "academic freedom as a stark division between those who believe in 'balance' or 'neutrality', and others who insist on the right of the university teacher to express their personal beliefs without regard to their impact on the independent intellectual development of others." Why should professors get special rights to express beliefs that others do not have? Instead, it argues that the basis for academic freedom lies in the same principle as 'informed consent' found in other professions; providing the client with all the information they need to make an informed decision constitutes a part of the 'duty of care' that forms an ethical basis for these professions

Today: 42 Total: 395 Bruce Macfarlane, Xiao Han, Teaching in Higher Education, 2024/11/07 [Direct Link]

Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 08, 2024 6:37 p.m.

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