OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics. We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed

First Open Source Copyright Lawsuit Chal­lenges GitHub Copi­lot
Renato Losio, InfoQ, 2022/11/18

---

The gist of the lawsuit is that Microsoft's use of open source code as input data for it's AI-powered 'Copilot' software authoring tool violates the open source licenses attached to the code. I think we can see pretty clearly how this line of reasoning would apply to other types of AI that use publicly available data such as user photos and images, comments and blog posts, classwork and test responses, and more. Can this line of reasoning work? It's really hard to say; it's a classic problem of composition: no one contribution is responsible for the final outcome, but the final outcome is not possible without all the contributions. There's also an argument by analogy that applies: as individual people, we are influenced by millions of data sources, including private conversations, public acts, and copyright content. Do those sources therefore have a claim on whatever we produce as output? Well, no - but as I've argued in the past, maybe we don't have the claim to originality and ownership over whatever we create that we thought. More: the Verge.

 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Digest #167: Should we give up on growth mindset?
Cindy Nebel, The Learning Scientists, 2022/11/18

---

This article points to two new meta-analyses analyzing growth mindset interventions. According to one of them, "This systematic review and meta-analysis suggest that, despite the popularity of growth mindset interventions in schools, positive results are rare and possibly spurious due to inadequately designed interventions, reporting flaws, and bias." The other review is more positive. But it does sound spurious to me, the idea that 'if you believe you can grow, you become better at learning'. Sort of like The Secret's 'thoughts become things'. Anyhow, there is a list of additional articles discussing the growth mindset theory, and as Cindy Nebel writes, "If you are a parent or educator, please do some careful reading before trying to implement an educational trend with students."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Mapping or Visualizing The Fediverse and Mastodon
Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner, 2022/11/18

---

Today's Mastodon/Twitter update. The site fediverse.space came out a couple days ago with a nice interactive visualization of the network of Mastodon instances. In this post Miguel Guhlin points to a Mapstodon, from comeetie ("at the link, comeetie also shares the notebook behind the app if you are interested in the code"). In other Mastodon news, here's a toot bookmarklet you can use while browsing; also, your 'Twitter go bag' to make your escape; also, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," goes the saying, and as Michael Veale says, "right now, it feels like we're waiting to find out our product status." Though that said, "Even if you're paying for the product, you're the product," Cory Doctorow wrote on discovering Apple privacy violations. Meanwhile, Dave Truss reflects on fifteen years of Twitter. Finally, after a week on Mastodon Zoe Williams asks, "Could this be Twitter without the toxic slurry?"

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Stacking and Micro-credentials | HESA
Jonathan McQuarrie, HESA, 2022/11/18

---

A short post from Jonathan McQuarrie arguing that "for incredibly frustrating reasons, Canada has chosen to go the other way and deliberately put barriers in the way of making micro-credentials stackable into larger credentials." This feels like an Elon Musk sort of approach - we'll just force it to work this way because I say so. In fact, there are more subtleties to microcredentials. As Gavin Moodie says in a comment, "micro credentials are stackable into substantial credentials only by incorporating strong sequencing material and principles, which compromises their purported focus and flexibility." In other words (and this is my paraphrase, not his), if you force it (like Elon Musk) you break it (like Elon Musk). This, he says, is explained in his article Credentialing micro-credentials (14 page PDF).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Unboxing micro-credentials: an inside, upside and downside view
Mark Brown, Mairéad Nic-Giolla-Mhichil, Culture and Education, 2022/11/18

---

Mostly I wish this paper (37 page PDF) went into more depth on the different dimensions of microcredentials in this literature review. The authors make the point that the concept is not new, because short courses and programs have been around for a long time. The renewed emphasis is new, though, but varies across cultures: in Europe, the focus is on lifelong learning, while in the Americas and Asia-Pacific, the focus is on employability. Questions also arise regarding the role of providers, and whether microcredentials are part of a movement to replace public education with private providers (I'm paraphrasing quite a bit here). The paper is presented in English and Spanish.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

FTX's new CEO is steering the bankruptcy with experienced help
Scott Nover, Quartz, 2022/11/18

---

I think that the main lesson to be drawn from the multi-billion dollar collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX isn't that blockchain is bad but rather than these companies need regulation. "FTX had no accounting department and reimbursements were processed with emoji," we read. John Ray III, who oversaw Enron's bankruptcy, comments of FTX, "never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here." Regulations aren't just 'red tape'. They're necessary protection against the automated excesses that can happen in any tech industry.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Track explorer
UTS Open, 2022/11/18

---

Interesting application, just launched by the University of Technology Sydney's UTS Open. "Here's how it works: Create an account; Map your current skills; Choose the areas you're most interested in; See your skills gaps and view the UTS courses that will help you fill them." They've chosen to focus on data careers to start, but obviously the idea could be extended. Additionally, the tool lists courses from only one university, but (and here's the real challenge) ideally it would list courses across the entire college and university system.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]