OLDaily

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

New in Chrome 109: OPFS on Android, new css properties, MathML Core support
2023/01/12

---

Tony Hirst points to this announcement from Google announcing support for MathML in Chrome after a ten-year wait. "One of those things with edu side effects that ripple, and Chrome lock-in side effects. Greeks bearing gifts etc.," Hirst warns. I'm sure that if Google felt it could lock people into a single browser, it would. MathML support enables mathematics symbols to be displayed on web browsers without extensions or images. Read more.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Why scientists are building AI avatars of the dead | WIRED Middle East – Theoreti.ca
Theoreti.ca, 2023/01/12

---

Geoffrey Rockwell links to an article in Wired (may be behind a paywall; I can't tell any more with these adaptive paywalls). "The article talks about digital twin technology designed to create an avatar of a particular person that could serve as a family companion." Despite what the article suggests, we won't get good avatars of our grandparents, though. There's just not enough data from them. That's why I'm trying very hard to make sure there's a large enough body of text, audio and video to create a reasonably accurate avatar of me for the future. My hope is that it will be interesting enough to be worth talking to. Maybe that's the new sort of career ambition to have, rather than wealth or power.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

School Cars: how trains brought classrooms to children in remote communities | CBC Radio
Alisa Siegel, CBC, 2023/01/12

---

I never knew about the school train program in Northern Ontario. "They were known as school cars and schools on wheels. Trains that brought the classroom to children in the most isolated communities of Northern Ontario... The trains spelled new learning for the children, but they also brought medicine, baby supplies, and toys.In the early days, in these remote areas without electricity, the trains brought light. And they brought social opportunities for the adults who were invited aboard the school car in the evenings to listen to radio, to watch movies, and learn English." I'm not sure you'd call this distance education (though it was certainly remote learning). They started in 1926 and continue through to 1967.

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.

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