OLDaily

Paying for the web
Ben Werdmuller, 2022/08/30

Ben Werdmüller discusses different ways of paying for content on the web. What bothers me about commentaries like this one is that they suppose (a) 'paying for the web' (as in the title) is the same things as 'paying for content', and (b) the suggestion that there wouldn't even be a web as we know it without commercial models. Both of these are really wrong. We already pay for the web when we purchase computer systems, buy a lot of software, and pay for internet access. That's why it's so cheap to distribute content on the web; the consumers pay the cost of transmission! And there was a very robust and active online culture that had developed well before the internet was ever commercialized. There was never any need to pay for content until commercial entities pushed out and replaced our conversations, message boards, helper posts, and everything else. There's no actual need for commercial content. There's just a lot of people selling it who really want you to believe you can't live without it.

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5 Great Speech to Text Apps to Transcribe Audio Recordings
Med Kharbach, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, 2022/08/30

We all know, I think, how important it is to provide transcripts of audio material. This not only helps people whop are hard of hearing but also those who cannot play sound for some reason, for example, a broken computer or a sleeping baby. But transcription has always been expensive and slow - until now. This article mentions five apps that will automate the transcription process - and I would also add Google's sound recorder, which I use on my Pixel 4, which does a great job. Automated transcriptions aren't (yet) perfect and need to be reviewed, but they're one of the best examples of the benefits of machine learning and AI.

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Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General Framework
PhilSci-Archive, 2022/08/30

The idea of 'levels of description' is intuitively appealing. "For example, fundamental physics speaks of particles, fields, and forces; biology speaks of cells, organisms, and ecosystems; psychology speaks of mental states, intentionality, and cognition; and the social sciences speak of institutions, norms, and conventions." But how should we understand what we're doing when we use these levels? Are they just more or less coarse descriptions of the same reality, or does each level correspond to a complete linguistic category? Do lower-level descriptions refer to parts of the same entities, or to different entities entirely? Do facts at higher levels stand on their own, or are they determined by facts at lower levels? Even if you aren't interested in the proposed unifying framework of levels (that starts on page 9) the description of the different perspectives is important and needs to be kept in mind when we talk about learning and cognition.

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Now Featured—Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning
Jennifer M.B. Fugate, Sheila Macrine, The Brains Blog, 2022/08/30

This post introduces a (short) series of blog posts on embodied cognition all based around Macrine and Fugate's book Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning. This trend is especially relevant to those who view learning from a cognitivist perspective. "Cognitive psychology has undergone a paradigm shift in the ways we understand how knowledge is acquired... Learning occurs through the body and is grounded in both perception and action. That is, cognition is deeply dependent upon the learner's physical experiences.  Embodied learning shifts the focus from an exclusively mental effort toward an embodied, sensory-rich experience."

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The End of the Road for Edmodo: Egypt, via China
Phil Hill, Phil on Ed Tech, 2022/08/30

Edmodo, the popular online learning and social networking application widely used in school settings, announced that it was shutting its doors halfway through August, leaving users of the free service a few weeks to gather their content (if they could) and find an alternative. Here is the announcement. Edmodo raised around $100 million in VC funding over the years and eventually sold to a Chinese company for $135 million, who then tried to reach international country-wide sales, starting with Egypt in 2020, so over time, it appears that the company will continue down this path while ending the free offering. If I were purchasing a platform on a country-wide basis I don't think I'd be interested in one without a strong user base, so I don't really see much of a future for Edmodo here.

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