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.

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What I did in 2022 | Tony Bates
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2022/12/15

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Tony Bates offers an overview of the main developments in online and distance learning in 2022 and here offers a "more personal review" of his activity. What caught my eye was this: "Several conferences made use of my free, pre-recorded keynotes hosted by the Commonwealth of Learning." Because I like to create them from scratch, it's hard for me to imagine pre-recording keynotes (though conferences are certainly welcome to draw from my video archive). On the other hand, maybe co-watching a video keynote is a useful conference activity (especially for an online conference).

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Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Simon Galperin, Nieman Lab, 2022/12/15

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Simon Galperin writes, "It's time for journalism philanthropy to ditch corporate media sellouts and double-down on supporting and expanding the non-commercial journalism sector." He points to things like the Community Info Coop that's creating "a new layer of engaged, hyperlocal public media." Can you imagine if that also happened in the education sector? Imagine all that money being diverted away from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc., and turned toward non-profit cooperative learning projects.

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An Objection to Chalmers's Fading Qualia Argument
Eric Schwitzgebel, The Splintered Mind, 2022/12/15

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Is conscious experience something that separates humans from artificial intelligences? "Would a neuron-for-neuron silicon isomorph of you have conscious experiences? Or is there something special about the biology of neurons?" This article offers an analysis of David Chalmers's "fading qualia" argument that there's nothing in principle special about neurons. The idea is that if you replaced each human neuron one by one with a silicon neuron you'd never notice the difference. "If your consciousness were fading away," argues Chalmers, "you would notice it." In response, Eric Schwitzgebel describes what he calls the "audience problem" - "the intended audience remains unconvinced by this apparent introspective testimony." So the human-turned-robot claims to be conscious. Why should we believe it?

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Here's a framework to help fill the 'human gap' in your story
Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog, 2022/12/15

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I often draw comparisons between journalism and teaching, and that's because I think they are to a large degree doing the same job, just on different topics and to sometimes different audiences. hence this article about how to provide full coverage is I feel as relevant to educators to journalists. Are you telling the full story, or are you just quoting people in power. Have things changed as a result of the information or events? How do you find the right human sources to turn a set of facts into a full-fledged story? This article offers a framework to ensure completeness of coverage. "Devote some time to expanding your contacts book between stories, and reading up on newsgathering techniques for finding experts or case studies, witnesses or representatives - or the people that ultimately need to be held to account."

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A reckoning with why trust in news is so low » Nieman Journalism Lab
Alan Henry, Nieman Lab, 2022/12/15

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I think educational institutions face the same issues as media, and the cause is very similar. "Outlets are struggling with internal conflicts between wealthy owners, publishers, and mastheads versus their younger, more diverse journalists, on-the-ground writers and editors." What readers - and students, and potential students - want are institution that serve them rather than an elite and disconnected upper class. Too often that's not the case, and so during a funding crisis when institutions seek support from the public, it's not there.

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BSI - Long-term storage with preservation of evidence TR-ESOR
Federal Office for Information Security, 2022/12/15

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Seismographix describes this as follows: "Cryptography is useful when done the right way. TR-ESOR by the BSI is some kind of remote cousin of blockchain tech. :) At least it has a Merkle hash tree and #signatures (timestamp signatures). But the owner of a public key can be identified by certificate in contrast to the average blockchain project. Successfully used at the federal job agency in Germany." Not for beginners: I read through the document but fully understanding it would take more study.

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When a remote proctoring company offers teaching advice | Sarah E. Silverman
Sarah E. Silverman, Sarah E. Silverman, 2022/12/15

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"Even though the overall state of the educational technology industry is grim, I still believe that there are technologies that while not perfect, do support learning," writes Sarah Silverman. "Remote proctoring is not one of these technologies." And that's why she expresses concern "as remote proctoring companies have been trying to get into the game of providing pedagogical advice to instructors," pointing to a recent eBook and blog post from Honorlock. Such resources are "an attempt to cloud the arguments of educators who have suggested authentic assessments as an alternative to proctored assessments."

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