OLDaily

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

Feature Article
A Less Capable Technology is Developing Faster than a Stable Dominant Technology
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2023/10/06

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Matt Crosslin reports having missed one of my posts from last fall in which I comment on something he wrote in his blog, and now that he has seen it, he also reports being "a bit confused by it as well." This post has the objective of making things clearer. I argue: "You can't just deny that AI creates something new. There are many ways for AI to create something new - from the image of an otter on an airplane to application of a model to a novel domain to artwork that becomes more and more abstract over time."

[Link] [Local copy]

TikTok's Star Teacher: Florida Educator's Videos Streamed 4 Million Times
Sierra Lyons, The 74, 2023/10/06

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The 74 plugs Yennifer Castillo's TikTok feed as she "makes classroom a safe haven with elaborate decorations, weekly life skills projects & a 'Take What You Need' bin." She is popular, " with more than 4 million likes on TikTok and more than 100,000 followers." My own tastes, meanwhile run to teacher Steve Boots and his Boots on the Ground videos and TikTok feed. He checks in at 164,100 followers, but his is definitely not the sort of content the 74 would ever publicize and support. I don't agree with everything Boots says, but it's well above 90%. The main lesson, of course, is that you need to be sceptical about the 'star teachers' touted by the media. You don't get to be a 'star' unless you're in line with the agenda (and that applies to stars and award winners generally, I think).

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Introducing Open Data Editor (beta): Towards a No-Code Data App for Everyone
Open Knowledge Foundation, 2023/10/06

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Oh, this is so cool. "Open Data Editor (beta) isn't just another software tool; it's a catalyst for change, designed with a purpose—to foster openness by design, in communities, organisations, governments, and scientific communities. It's not just about efficiency; it's about empowering individuals and communities to access, understand, and share data for the common good." I need to explore it more (it's Friday afternoon before a long weekend so I'm not starting anything just now) but the concept is great. And I really like how OKF doesn't just talk 'open', it does open.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Using Open Recognition to Map Real-World Skills and Attributes
Doug Belshaw, We Are Open Co-op, 2023/10/06

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OK, I wouldn't do this. The process being proposed, essentially, is to send your contacts a form where they comment on your skills and attributes, and then use an AI to standardize the responses into some sort of more formal taxonomy, against which you can be awarded badges or some such thing. I wouldn't get past the first step; I wouldn't want to ask my contacts what they think of me - this is just second-hand information, and probably not very accurate (I mean, I know how I filled out Doug Belshaw's request, and I have no idea how accurate it is). I would prefer my competences be assessed directly through inspection of my body of work online, and others' opinions assessed based on what they post online. This, first, creates a source of truth(*) about my skills and abilities, and second, allows for multiple taxonomies to be applied, so each potential employer (or whatever) can see my skills from the perspective of their own needs and interests. (* We could talk about what this means, exactly).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Radicle Civics
Fang-Jui Chang, Indy Johar, 2023/10/06

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I found this item via Joss Colchester on LinkedIn. It's a proposal for social reorganization (and of course would force us to rethink education in that context). According to the Introduction (61 page PDF) (summary version) the plan focuses "on pathways which encourage distributed agency and participation from a super-diverse public to challenge concentrations of power and responsibility." Now I think there's a lot of merit to such an approach. But I would encoutrage readers to see this document as describing what could be. A decentralized form of governance would, by necessity, grow organically. We can't say in advance whether we would want objects (like forests and bodies of water) to be self-owning and have rights. We don't know whether we want "the ability to view the world from multiple perspectives (as) essential for tackling complex, interconnected challenges" or to "expand the subject/object dichotomy to include intersubjective, interobjective, and nondual perspectives." You can talk more with them on Discord.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Why I'm advising that people stop assigning essays, and it's not just because of AI
Dave Cormier, Dave's Educational Blog, 2023/10/06

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"The essay, I'm arguing here, no longer forces students to learn how to research," writes Dave Cormier. Consequently, "I'm increasingly starting to think that we need to re-evaluate what the basic epistemic skills are that we think people need to make meaning with all this abundance and all the GenAI out there." It's even worse than that. Cormier describes a process where he would "write down a bunch of possible articles/books on a piece of paper, go around the library and find said resources, settle in at a table to go through them. I had to read them." That's what I did. That's what I still do, only digitally (that's where OLDaily originated). But today people don't read the essays, they do a 'literature search' and pull out a set of articles essentially at random based on a keyword (or AI-supported) search. That becomes 'research'. Now, I don't think we 'make meaning' as suggested by Cormier. But I do suggest that the process is rather more than just search. But if educators don't do that, they can't describe it.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

New tools are available to help reduce the energy that AI models devour
Kylie Foy, MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2023/10/06

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I've seen this argument made a lot and I'm seeing it again here: "The majority of electricity powering data centers comes from fossil fuels, and water used for cooling is contributing to stressed watersheds." But while this article describes "tools to reduce data center energy use by power-capping hardware and by improving the efficiency with which models are trained" they're missing the main point: electricity shouldn't be generated using fossil fuels. Where I live, in Ontario, Canada, more than 93% of electricity is produced using non-fossil fuels. Europe, too, has dramatically reduced reliance on fossil fuels. MIT has a $24 billion endowment; why doesn't it just build non-fossil electricity sources? I don't want to hear about band-aids from the world's rishest institutions. They're not taking the issue seriously, and it's the rest of us who pay. Via Tara Calishain.

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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