OLDaily

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

Open Pedagogy Portal
Open Education Network, 2023/08/24

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Provided by the Open Education Network and relying on public contributions to the database. "You can browse case studies/renewable assignments and student work product by discipline, search by keywords, or find teaching and learning resources to further your open pedagogy journey."

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RSS Algo
RSS Algo, Legal Innovation and Technology Lab, GitHub, 2023/08/24

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This is a lovely piece of work. Built almost entirely in HTML and Javascript, this application uses local storage in your web browser to run an RSS feed reader. To display the results, it employs an admittedly rudimentary sorting algorithm based on your expressed preferences. To avoid Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) restrictions, it uses a simply server to download and relay the feed contents. Code is here on GitHub.

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Block the Bots that Feed "AI" Models by Scraping Your Website
Neil Clarke, 2023/08/24

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I won't be using this, since I'l happy to teach AIs about the world and my view of it, but if you're of a different mind, and view AI scraping as some sort of content theft, then this article describes how to block (compliant) AI systems from scraping your website. But honestly, I think people who are objecting to content scraping are very much missing the point here; it is in no sense a 'copying' of the content, it is a transformative use, and a use basically the same as that any reader of your site might undertake. Moreover, by blocking scraping, site owners are ensuring that the only AI will be commercial AI, created by companies that can afford to pay for large volumes of content. If we want open AI, we have to have open content.

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The Ready Player One Test: Systems for Personalized Learning
Dagan Bernstein, Getting Smart, 2023/08/24

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This article is a bit of a word salad, drawing from a number of sources and assembling the contents in a linear, though not structurally coherent, manner. But if we were to extrapolate an argument from the article, it would be something like: blockchain and immersive learning technologies can support student-centered learning needs using a model called 'regenerative learning'. It's worth following up the various sources cited: Benjamin Freud's article, The Metaverse; Daniel Wall's Education and Regenerative Cultures; and  Mike Peck's Schools in an Era of Decentralized Learning Networks.

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The viral AI portrait app sweeping across China
Viola Zhou, Rest of World, 2023/08/24

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This article reports that "For $1.40, users can get stylish portraits akin to those from a professional photographer... These viral photos are sweeping across Chinese social media. Miaoya, which means 'fabulous duck' in Chinese, uses artificial intelligence to generate stylish portraits of users that resemble what you'd get from a professional photographer." Based on the samples in the article, the photos are very good, though I can't imagine one of me would be nearly as stylish.

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Introducing The Open Resource Sharing Coalition (OpenRS) | Open Library Foundation
Open Library Foundation, 2023/08/24

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According to this press release, "The Open Library Foundation (OLF) is introducing the Open Resource Sharing Coalition (OpenRS), a resource sharing initiative created in partnership with library consortia, open source developers, and vendors... The project will focus on developing and implementing software systems, protocols, and best practices that foster collaboration and support various library services." Building the software will be a company called Knowledge Integration.

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Introducing the Udacity Community: Building a Path to Digital Transformation | Udacity
Udacity, 2023/08/24

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Udacity has launched an online community "to foster collaboration, support, and meaningful interactions among our students.... to share knowledge, tackle challenges, and build lasting connections that will enrich our students' lives in today's dynamic world." It seems to me this is something they would have wanted to develop a decade ago when they were first getting started, but better late than never, I suppose.

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Embracing Complexity and Emergence in Organisations
Ben Linders, InfoQ, 2023/08/24

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Short summary of a talk by Fred Hebert on embracing complexity in an organization. "As groups attempt to meet individual objectives with their own incomplete views of the whole, the organisation shifts in a dynamic and often uncoordinated manner." This is a good thing; it allows the organization to adapt to changing circumstances not anticipated by managers and directors. "When something happens you don't see reflected in your existing metrics, this is a sign that events and interactions might be more complex than you planned, or that your overall system—which is likely dynamic and rapidly changing—shifted around already."

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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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