OLDaily

Microsoft patented a chatbot that would let you talk to dead people. It was too disturbing for production
Clare Duffy, CNN, 2021/01/28

It may be too disturbing now but give it a generation or two and I would imagine we'll be ready for it. I have to say, I want people to be able to talk to me after I'm dead. I've done my best to prepare; I've created a large archive of posts on all manner of subjects, and there's a lot of audio and video samples a chatbot could select from to emulate my voice and appearance. So an AI should be able to project a fairly decent version of artificial me.

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Examining Learning Experiences During COVID
Alex Usher, Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2021/01/28

This is a bit of a promo for a report you have to pay for, but I thought some of the information shared in this post was worth considering. Particularly this: "Fully 20% said they would prefer to stick with a mostly/entirely online format...  nationally, we are talking about 200,000 to 400,000 students who might be open to making remote education a permanent part of their education." That's a lot of people, and given that only 26 percent of those surveyed opted for '100% in-person education' it would appear that there is a major role for online learning in Canada in the future (and it's also worth noting that these numbers might go up even more if we were to survey people who aren't already students).

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Use Cases for Learning Metadata
Tom Worthington, Higher Education Whisperer, 2021/01/28

This post proposes some use cases for learning resource metadata, and in passing points to some pretty significant resources, including a database of 1,300 recognized vocational qualifications, the 16,000 units of competency they are assembled from and who provides them. Use cases mentioned include the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) as well as micro-credentials, referenced in the Blockchain Challenges for Australia report.

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An important distance learning resource for teachers, students, & parents
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2021/01/28

This article points to Wide Open School, which we read "is a fruit of a partnership with more than 80 leading educational organizations and services including Kahoot, Google, Khan Academy, National Geographic, PBS, Scholastic, Smithsonian, TED Ed, and many more." Basically it's a daily list of resources and activities sorted according to subject and grade range. The quality is variable but overall not bad. The real questions are related to content selection. I'm pretty sure it doesn't sync with curricula; it couldn't, with one set of resources for so many school jurisdictions. The only filter for region or culture is via language selection (but you still get the same resources, and they're still in English). But there does appear to be a genuine effort to include representations of diverse cultures and world views. And there's James Earl Jones.

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Cognit.ca: a one-stop shop to bring researchers and industry partners together
Matthew Halliday, University Affairs, 2021/01/28

I've seen dozens of these 'matching' websites come and go over the years. Some never get beyond the proposal stage, others wind up as empty shells. This one, which will "bring together researchers and industry partners," actually exists, which is great, and it's quite ambitious, combining records from hundreds of institutions across Canada. In its current form, though, it has a long way to go before it can be a success. The search is fairly limited and not at all intelligent, and the records are incomplete and can be quite old. I tried a search for "e-learning" - it searched for "e learning", which while it returned a lot of results was less helpful than it may have seemed. Norm Friesen, for example, is listed as a Canada Research Chair at Thompson Rivers University, which he was, ten years ago, but if you want to find him now you have to contact him at Boise State.

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