OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Once Again Into the Year With Daily Photos
CogDogBlog, 2023/01/03

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I am a part of this group that creates a photo every day and shares it (by 'every day' I mean 'most days'). Alan Levine writes about his experience with the group, remarking, "It's hardly a community, it's more like strangers engaging in similar pursuit and never talking about it, just doing it. I kind of think this is fascinating." He also describes how he made a video of his 2022 photos (I'm not going to do that; my set of photos will have to stand on its own (though they do have their own blog)). And like him, I'm doing the same in 2023 - taking a photo a day, adding a note about the photo and what I did that day, uploading to Flickr, from which it's automatically reposted to the aforementioned blog and to my personal Twitter feed. Should I send it to Mastodon? No - Mastodon is more for conversations and complaining when I encounter programming problems, not republishing photos.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

AI Tells Me What To Do With My Life
Helen Blunden, Activate Learning Solutions, 2023/01/03

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This article spoke to me because I'm reaching that age where I'm thinking about what comes after my career at NRC (especially in the light of back-to-office orders). Helen Blunden asks chatGPT "about what to do with my life before I 'formally' retire at 65." The response was a perfectly good if bland set of recommendations. What's fun about this post is that Blunden offers by way of comparison what a good response to the question would look like. For example, instead of 'learn a new language' the recommendation should be "fly to New Caledonia and undertake the CREIPAC French immersive program." Instead of 'considering a new career path' a good recommendation would be "take a short course in acting then get yourself on a register and apply for paid and unpaid extra work to be in a video production." Not only are these more specific, they're specific about her context and interests. That's what really good AI would look like, but for it to work  we have to create and share a lot of content about ourselves the AI can use.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Inclusive Learning, Free Images & More: ID Links 1/3/23
Christy Tucker, Experiencing eLearning, 2023/01/03

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I'm linking to this post mostly for the link to the The Inclusive Learning Pledge. The pledge is based on "IDEAL values of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Love". The last one should probably be 'Care', as it reads "We value people over profit or policy and treat people with respect, kindness, empathy, and love." But 'IDEAC' doesn't make a nice acronym, I guess. Christy Tucker also includes a number of other useful items in this post, including links to some free image repositories and, more usefully, a discussion of scenarios and Twine.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Mastodon Toot Bookmarklet
2023/01/03

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This is a lovely piece of work. Enter your Mastodon instance in the box, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar, and then click on the bookmarklet to add a Mastodon post linking to any web page you're viewing. Add text as well by selecting some text on the page. Via Alan Levine.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The Haunted Lecture Hall
Martin Weller, The Ed Techie, 2023/01/03

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Students have a bit more choice than employees, though they too are wondering why we're all gathering in uncomfortable and inconvenient buildings to do things we could do anywhere. Martin Weller writes of the empty classrooms: "Higher education is now at the plot device point in the haunted house story, where the essential question is - why stay? Like in fiction, one reason is the financial imperative to do so.... And as with the 'can't escape' option there is a lot of socio-cultural baggage also that keeps bringing everyone back to the same point."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Educators Field Guide to Preparing for Web3: 3 Steps You Can Take Today, to be Ready for Tomorrow
Mike Peck, Getting Smart, 2023/01/03

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This isn't the greatest article about web3 in the world but I like this approach to making it accessible for educators: "we matched the web3 term with a term or concept more widely used and understood in the education space.They include:

• Decentralization and Trustlessness- Agency;
• Interoperability and Portability- Ownership;
• Community."

OK, the article fails on the third point. My own approach has been to define community as consensus, which is needed to run any sort of decentralized system, and in blockchain-like networks, involves agreement on a single source of truth. But the article isn't deep enough to make the point, though I give it props for trying.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Private and Public Mastodon
Tim Bray, Ongoing, 2023/01/03

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This post isn't as long a read as the table of contents might suggest. We begin with the decision by Mastodon developers and admins to disallow search on the federated social network. There are many reasons for this; privacy is just one concern. And in any case, Tim Bray writes, Mastodon can't prevent search. Its privacy protection, he says, is terrible. Every post has a unique URL that can be accessed on the open web. So what we have here, he says, is not a technical issue, but a social or legal issue. And so he recommends that the fediverse implement some sort of content licensing mechanism. I personally think that's a terrible idea. First of all, the fediverse needs lawyers the way a submarine needs a screen door. Second, content is already protected by existing law, which is simply ignored by scrapers and indexers. Third, licensing just creates a bunch of loopholes for these services to crawl through, just as we have seen in the case of open educational resources. And fourth, creating a whole licensing layer over the fediverse makes it even more difficult to join and use, which is not what it needs right now.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The Illustrated Machine Learning Website
Francesco Di Salvo, GitHub, 2023/01/03

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This is quite a nice resource. "Our goal is to provide a visual aid for students, professionals, and anyone preparing for a technical interview to better understand the underlying concepts of Machine Learning." These aren't illustrations of GTP-3 or AI, they are of more foundational concepts such as regression and clustering. It could be easier to navigate - click on the hamburger icon in the upper left (you may have to click several times to hit the sweet spot) to get the full list of topics. Via Reddit.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

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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