OLDaily

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

AI Learning Design Workshop: See and Try the ALDA Rapid Prototype
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2023/09/25

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In this post Michael Feldstein introduces a learning design rapid prototype: " I'll show you a demo video of it in action and I'll give you the 'source code' so you can run it," he writes. What's fun about this is the way it was developed. "I asked ChatGPT some questions. We talked it through. Two days later, I had a working demo. ChatGPT and I wrote it together." The 'source code' in question is actually an extended chatGPT prompt, intended to be run with the AI along with an input PDF (he used this one). I wonder, though, whether we're entering a world of 'open source prompts' versus $25K workshops. Both seem to me to be missing the point.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

CC Defends Better Sharing and the Commons in WIPO Conversation on Generative AI - Creative Commons
Creative Commons, 2023/09/25

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So I actually had to ask what Creative Commons meant by 'better sharing' a couple days ago (concerned, of course, that I might not be sharing well enough). Nate Angell kindly responded that it "comes from CC's 2021–2025 strategy: Sharing that is inclusive, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable." In this document I read, "It depicts our vision for the world we want to see: a world where equitable sharing of knowledge and culture purposefully serves the public interest." This does ring a bell, though I can't say it gripped my imagination. Anyhow, in the present document, it's transformed into a statement on AI. "At CC we know generative AI, without proper guardrails, runs the risk of being exploitative and damaging the commons, yet it also has the potential to enhance it like never before." Ultimately, CC tries to follow a middle path: "WIPO should approach this with fairness and sustainability in mind — instead of promoting an expansion of copyright, it should ascertain its intrinsic balance and promote the commons on which all creativity depends."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Expensive, boring, and wrong: Here are all the news publications people canceled and why
Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab, 2023/09/25

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This is from a couple years ago, but I just found it today while looking for an image for another item. I read it "from AdAge to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle." The main reasons for unsubscribing? I found three: price increases, much weaker news coverage, and bias. The core of 'what makes a newspaper' has been hollowed out (not just in the U.S., but worldwide) and yet we're being charge more for it. I felt a sadness in the responses, as each person who unsubscribed recognized that they they were losing (or, more accurately, has already lost) something vital and important. There's a wider lesson here, I think, as the rest of society is being hollowed out in this way - not by technology, but by an ethos.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The Sneaky Conservativism of Ed Tech
Alfie Kohn, 2023/09/25

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Often the questions we ask mask the questions we should be asking. The problem we're solving masks the problem we should be solving. "If you learned that kids were being fed doughnuts for breakfast every day, would your first question be whether we should add rainbow sprinkles?" Such questions help preserve - and conceal - a conservative attitude toward education, argues Alfie Kohn. They don;t address what should be changed, only whether we should use rainbow sprinkles or pixie dust. "Similarly, if we're asking how to personalize learning — a question from which ed tech companies may ultimately stand to profit — then what we're not asking is why a curriculum has been imposed on students and standardized to the point that it has to be personalized. If the learning were personal in the first place, if it emerged from students' own questions about the world, there would be no need to add a separate step of harm mitigation." Image: Seattle Times.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

One big reason webinars suck
Bryan Alexander, 2023/09/25

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On one day I saw Bryan Alexander post about having a bad webinar experience, and on the next I saw him come out with this longish post on bad webinars. Talk about turning a bad experience into something good His main point: if you're not really seeking interaction with your audience, you should just post a video or podcast or whatever. As a follow-up, he offers a good list of the ways webcast hosts discourage audience participation. The worst, to my mind, is when they block the chat backchannel entirely (which is what happened to him the day before). Ostensibly, this is to prevent offensive comments or to get people to pay attention. But ultimately, it simply tells the audience their participation is not valued.

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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