OLDaily

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

The power of edtech investors in education
Ben Williamson, Code Acts in Education, 2023/11/03

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I think this article makes some important points about the role of venture capitalists (VC) in education. As Ben Williamson notes, educational technology (edtech) can be profitable for investors, but only if the future of education matches their expectations. So they have an interest in ensuring such a future comes to pass. That wouldn't be so bad, I think, except that they future they imagine is one where they become wealthy, usually at the expense of institutions and students. This also makes them political actors (a phenomenon I've seen a lot over the years).

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Talk is cheap: Why students need immersive experiences to build strong professional networks - Christensen Institute
Robert Markle, Christensen Institute, 2023/11/03

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According to this article, "while traditional educational settings have focused on knowledge acquisition, building social capital requires a shift towards experiential learning." Why is this important? "An estimated 50% of jobs are obtained through personal connections (and) estimates suggest up to 70% of all jobs are not published on job search sites." Actually doing the work in a real environment creates these connections. "Practice and follow-up allowed students to hone their skills in expanding their networks and maintaining those relationships over time as they progress in their careers." This is the advantage that elite institutions provide their students, and why a singleminded focus on discipline and content knowledge in open education shortchanges those without access to those networks.

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On the Futures of Technology in Education: Emerging Trends and Policy Implications
Ilkka Tuomi, Romina Cachia, Daniel Villar Onrubia, JRC Publications Repository, 2023/11/03

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This document (85 page PDF) assesses technology trends with an eye to evaluating their impact on education. In many ways it is similar to the Contact North publication on the same topic. I will confess, though, that I found it hard to read, partially because of the typestyle, and partially because of the writing style, which to me feels very wordy. It's often vague, for example, "6G networks enable the synchronization of the physical and the digital in qualitatively new ways." What ways? "The physical and the digital will become increasingly interconnected in more profound and complex ways." What ways? "The emergence of new generation virtual worlds and so-called metaverses comes with important societal implications, opportunities, and challenges." Such as... what? Or "...dynamics that will link not only innovation and education, but also environmental policies in novel ways." Again, I want more specifics.

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OERSI
Hochschulbibliothekszentrum NRW, 2023/11/03

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This is another nice resource shared by Alan Levine - the Open Educational Resources Search Index (OERSI). "As a link between the individual OER repositories, the index harvests (e.g. daily) the repositories of the federal states, or generally data sources that provide metadata, such as the AV portal, SlideWiki etc... the harvester can be used to read out e.g. the LMS of the universities or a state-wide GitLab instance." It doesn't look like the most simple thing in the world to install (for me, at least, because I don't have experience using Ansible) though there's also a Vagrant/Virtual box option. But it's nothing an experienced sysadmin shouldn't be able to handle. Be sure to follow OERSI on Mastodon.

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Reddit - Dive into anything
Reddit, 2023/11/03

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OK, the source of this is an X/Twitter post from an account associated with some sort of crypto-identity scheme. So, yeah, don't take it as gospel. Don't even take it seriously. But there's just enough plausibility to what's being said that it's worth sharing as a possibility: "OpenAI will release 'agents' that will establish a high level functioning version of AutoGPT/BabyAGI... You will be able to skin your agent and provide it with a set personality. You can customize your agent with limitations. This will be the craze in 2024." Agents would be a giant step forward, and wer're going to get there eventually. If it actually did happen next year and if agents actually worked, it would be sensational. Image: the Generator.

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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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