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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Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media for ‘worrisome behavior’
Mila Koumpilova, eSchool News, 2022/12/16

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So is this an example of overbearing digital surveillance, or is it a good idea to protect students from harm? "Chicago officials and some educators say that many school conflicts begin or escalate on social media, and they're hoping to help students.... A Canada-based company the district hired started scouring public posts for threats and 'cries for help' last month. District leaders say the program is key in efforts to prevent violence and self-harm." Personally, I don't have a problem with it provided the program doesn't extend to policing student behaviour on social media.  Originally published by Chalkbeat.

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Information Literacy and Generating Fake Citations and Abstracts With ChatGPT
Tony Hirst, OUseful Info, 2022/12/16

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Tony Hirst tries to get chatGPT to generate fake citations (and a long conversation ensues). Michael Feldstein admits he would have cheated in college using chatGPT. "But I wouldn't have thought of it as cheating," he explains. Philip J. Kerr describes a mechanism he and his colleagues developed for creating and delivering personalized instruction using AI "Most of our partner's teaching and testing materials are now quickly and very cheaply generated using GPT-3.5. If you want to see how this is done, check out the work of edugo.AI (a free trial is available)," he writes. In Getting Smart, Nate McClennen and Rachelle Dené Poth summarize a lot of the recent discussion on AI in education. Bryan Alexander offers a list of resources on chatGPT.

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Twitter blocks users from sharing Mastodon links
Tom Gerken, BBC News, 2022/12/16

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Twitter also blocked a number of prominent journalists reporting on the story about Elon's Jet. More. I've had nothing to do this this but have been caught in Twitter's action as I often link to Mastodon in OLDaily (I've also linked to LinkedIn in the past). More coverage: the Verge, PC Mag, Hacker News, Fossbytes, Reddit (first comment is " I bet Mark Zuckerberg is watching all this with a huge robotic smile"). Twitter also closed its Spaces audio conversation service after learning bans weren't effective there. If you want (and why would you?) you can follow Elon's jet on Mastodon.

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