OLDaily

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

Of course the attention economy is threatened by the Fediverse
Jon Udell, Jon Udell, 2023/01/20

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My @Downes account on Twitter attracted peaked at 9700 followers and stayed there (plus or minus 25 or so) for several years (I always wondered what would change when I hit 10,000 but I never found out). My Mastodon followers number one tenth of that. For people who depend on large numbers of followers, like (say) newspaper columnists, Mastodon was never going to replace Twitter. And as Jon Udell suggests in this article, their published articles reflect that bias. But for people who "just want to hang out online with people whose words and pictures and ideas intrigue and inspire and delight," the Mastodon experience is a refreshing alternative to Twitter. For now, at least - I'm already seeing signs of hashtag spam and pump and dump marketing and self-promotion happening on Mastodon. It's not yet clear the decentralized social network can be tailored to minimize that. But at least there's a possibility; on Twitter, we never had a chance.

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COVID Brief: Few Students Use Online Tutoring Programs
John Bailey, The 74, 2023/01/20

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With the original story blocked behind a paywall (archived version) it's pretty easy to offer a slanted summary that people can't check. For whatever reason, The 74 wants people to believe online tutoring programs have been ineffective. As the article reports, "Less than 2% of the student body used an opt-in tutoring service... most of those who did log in used it for less than an hour — the median was 29 minutes." But this trend isn't universal; we also read (but not in The 74) that in another district, with a different provider, "From August to December, there were 8,500 tutoring sessions for the 10,000 students eligible to participate... and 200 college admissions essays were reviewed." In The 74 we read that "Opt-in services often falter because some students lack confidence, motivation or clarity about what they need, so they don't sign in." Maybe. But I'm less inclined to pin the blame on students, and to suggest that more important factors likely include how the service is presented, how it's integrated into other work, and how accessible it is.

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Unearthed Ajami script dispels colonial myth
Futurity, 2023/01/20

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This is a great story for a variety of reasons, though I think it's weird to talk of a Boston University researcher having "discovered" Ajami, a modified Arabic script. This announcement would come as a surprise to the people of west Africa using it today (including his own father and a business associate). What's more interesting (and important) is that this community was deemed "illiterate" because they did not read and write French or English. "He found this modified Arabic script everywhere. Shopkeepers kept records with it and poets wrote sprawling verses in it. Ngom discovered religious texts, medical diagnoses, advertisements, love poems, business records, contracts, and writings on astrology, ethics, morality, history, and geography, all from people who were considered illiterate by the official governmental standards of their countries."

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What am I doing here? 1. Credential Engine
Phil Barker, Sharing and learning, 2023/01/20

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Phil Barker is one of those people who has been quietly doing solid technical work for a very long time. This article describes his role providing consultancy to Credential Engine and his work on the Credential Transparency Description Language (CDTL), the latest release of which was last November. "By CTDL," he writes, "we actually mean three related vocabularies:

• CTDL, itself which covers the core of credentials, courses, pathways, organizations;
• CTDL-ASN, an extension of the vocabulary for competency frameworks and related entities developed for the Achievement Standards Network;
• QDATA, for quantitative data about outcomes."

Image: CTDL Handbook.

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An introduction to ChatGPT: uses and what makes it a unique AI chatbot - FutureLearn
FutureLearn, FutureLearn, 2023/01/20

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There has been a number of introductory articles posted about chatGPT over the last few days, including this one. In case you missed it, "ChatGPT is the most advanced chatbot to date, capable of answering complex questions and carrying out many advanced tasks." Another, briefer, article is titled 'Making Sense of AI & ChatGPT in Education.' This GitHub resource, curated by Fatih Kadir Akin, lists "Awesome ChatGPT Prompts." Finally, probably the most interesting take on chatGPT of the last week was Dan Shipper's argument that applications like chatGPT will mean we no longer need to organize our notes; the AI will do it for us. "use intelligence to surface the right note, at the right time, and in the right format for you to use it most effectively. When you have intelligence at your disposal, you don't need to organize." Maybe. But what if organizing your notes isn't just sorting but a learning activity?

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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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