OLDaily

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

Kinds of Educational Assessment and Public-opinion Survey Items
Adam Sobieski, W3C, 2023/04/28

---

Adam Sobieski points to "an interesting analogy that can be drawn between educational assessment items and public-opinion survey items. Some of the imaginative kinds of items that we might create for educational assessment can also be of use for kinds of public-opinion survey items." These comments are made with respect to the new Civic Technology Community Group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). "This Community Group will bring together those interested in civic technology, open government, and artificial intelligence to share and discuss how to ensure that the Web is well-suited for these applications." Image: State of Mississippi Citzen Portal.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

okieli dokieli
Sarven Capadisli, 2023/04/28

---

dokieli, writes Sarven Capadisli, "is a socially-aware clientside editor for decentralised article publishing, annotations and social interactions with an ocean of open Web standards at its disposal." People may recognize his name (csarven) as a long-time contributor to Tim Berners-Lee's Solid project. This client uses Solid for storage and therefore part of a wider social network that allows for annotations and comments. It's not part of the fediverse (yet) because Solid isn't, though it probably will be some time in the future. In the meantime, developers could learn a lot from it. Related: Get a Pod from a Solid provider. Update: csarvan writes to me to point out that dokieli does support ActivityPub, even if Solid doesn't.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We Are All Going to Die, Thanks to AI
Tim Leberecht, House of Beautiful Business, 2023/04/28

---

There's a lot of good thinking in this article, especially once you get past the 'hallucinating' part of the discussion (tl;dr - hallucinating isn't a bad thing, it's how we think) and into the part where Tim Leberecht ponders AI's place in the world. There are two really good thoughts here: first, whether there's a place 'for the world' at all; and second, replacing 'machines vs. humans' with 'symbiosis'. Because, of course. In the end, though, the article devolves into just another instance of the 'machines cannot to this thing humans do' genre. In this case, it's this: "AI would never write to it itself or for itself. AI writes to serve, to convey information, for the benefit of the reader; it is never aimless, it cannot reflect, it cannot reveal, there are no windows because there is no interior." There's no good reason to believe this, of course, but it's the sort of ending that reassures people.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Google Arts & Culture
2023/04/28

---

I don't know how long this has existed, but it just showed up in my email, and I couldn't resist exploring. There's a lot to like about it - it really does try to draw you in and engage you with arts and culture. It offers a (sort of) learning experience with activities and badges. There's also stuff happening behind the scenes - Thunderbird flatly refused to open the email link (good app, good!) and there's obviously tracking behind the scenes. It also very cleverly led me to vacation opportunities in Georgia (the state, not the country). If the presentation and content changed regularly it might be viable in the long term, but I'm not sure Google has the commitment. Still: worth a look, if only for the ideas.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Learning Tech Trends: Get Ready for Disruption
Dani Johnson, RedThread Research, 2023/04/28

---

Right after reading Jim Groom's post on Reclaim Cloud I followed a rabbit warren from an email down to this presentation (38 page PDF). It's good information, and there's no reason to doubt any of the trends identified (except maybe the idea that the "pandemic shone a light on the importance of managers"). It's an overview of corporate learning very much centered on the corporation, skills development and tracking, analytics, dashboards, and yes, individual learning budgets. This probably is the next generation of corporate learning (and, increasingly, college and university learning). But as an individual, I would be very very hesitant to commit myself to a corporate skills development stream, the utility of which vanishes when the next wave of technology comes. Via Mike Taylor.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Presenting Reclaim Cloud at OER23
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, 2023/04/28

---

I'm fully on board with this vision of cloud technologies for education. Readers know I've been writing about it for some time (and taken my lumps getting it off the ground). It's a "new world of infrastructure that allows us to run our own federated social networks akin to Twitter or Facebook with the click of a button, there is some degree of magic to that," writes Groom. Also take note of his criticism of the alternative version of 'open' offered by Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE), "the idea of collecting student data en masse and ensuring a more invasive and surveillance-ready series of tool integrations... none of these free-flowing efficiencies have resulted in anything resembling better experiences for students, not to say anything about laughable metric of 'success' in this context. Beware the wolf in open sheep's clothing."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Web3 is Self-Certifying
Jay Graber, Medium, 2023/04/28

---

This article is a bit old but it's still worth a share. "There's been a lot of discussion lately about what Web3 is and isn't. Here's my definition: Web3 is user-generated authority, enabled by self-certifying web protocols. These are a superset of technologies that include blockchains, but are not limited to them." Despite all the hype about the Other Subject, the topic of web3 (and therefore ed3) won't go away.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Replacing Exams with Project-Based Assessment: Analysis of Students’ Performance and Experience
Ivan Gratchev, Education Sciences, 2023/04/28

---

Can project-based assignments "lead to better student performance and learning experience compared to traditional examinations?" In the current era of AI-answered exams, it's a good time to consider this question. After a quick literature review of work considering the subject, the author turns to the specific case of a soil management course. The findings? "Compared to the exams, the project-based assignment seems to provide students with a better learning experience, which also leads to better academic performance... (however) preparing different variations of each project (to avoid cheating) and marking it can considerably increase the teaching load." Which, I would suggest, is where educational technology could come in. 10 page PDF. Image: foodtank.

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