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

Presentation
Introduction to AI Policies, Guidelines, and Frameworks
Stephen Downes, Nov 16, 2023,

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This workshop looks at recent policies, guidelines and frameworks developed by governments and institutions for the ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence. How are they created, and what things do they address? Participants have the opportunity to identify important values and principles in order to develop a starting point for discussion relevant to their own context. (Slides will be available shortly)

The science of (artificial) intelligence
Herbert Roitblat, TechTalks, 2023/11/16

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I think this post asks the right question: "Do we, can we, have a science of intelligence?" Without this, it would be impossible to have a science of artificial intelligence. The argument offered here brings to mind a paper called Textbooks are all you need, shared again today by George Siemens. The claim is "Despite this small scale, phi-1 (trained on textbook-quality data) attains pass@1 accuracy 50.6% on HumanEval and 55.5% on MBPP." The paper was widely shared but I was at a loss to find any reference online defining what "pass@1 accuracy" was - chatGPT (3.5, the free one) eventually told me it "indicates that the system is evaluated based on whether the correct item or information is present in the top position of the recommended list." But it couldn't (or wouldn't) provide a source. And it's a meaningless measure. What we have here is the "focus on leaderboards" and formalism criticized by Roitblat. And he's not wrong, especially when he criticizes the idea that "Intelligence is the same thing as language ability." It's not, of course, and we'll have to wait for GPTs to have real world experience before we expect real world intelligence. But definitions like this, proposed later in the paper, are just circular: "Successful intelligence is defined as one's ability to set and accomplish personally meaningful goals in one's life, given one's cultural context." 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

International Comparison of Recommended File Formats
Open Preservation Foundation, Google Sheets, 2023/11/16

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This is a large spreadsheet of recommended file formats by international media preservation organizations. I found it interesting reading. The left hand column is a comprehensive list of file formats, divided by category (audio, video, spreahsheet, etc) and across the top are the different organizations. Each organization gives the file formats a rating; these ratings are aggregated and can be found in the right-hand column. Mostly, the ratings are what you would expect, but there are some surprises (to me, at least). It's still a work in progress with organizations having another month to contribute.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

How we can use AI to make education amazing
Google Slides, 2023/11/16

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Slides from the keynote offered my Martin Dougiamas at last week's ICDE meetings. Describes the OET 'Assistant', which is essentially a personal learning environment. Related: minutes from the OpenEdTech meeting where he shared these and also the Moodle AI Principles. Plus: OET Matrix channel. Discussion today illustrated a tension between an institutional approach and a community approach; in a lot of his plans, Dougiamas focuses on courses and programs, and devices like the iPhone, whereas I think much more broadly in terms of learning and resource networks connected to actual professional communities. There may be common ground there, but I'm not sure how far he will go to seek it.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Development Education Resources
DevelopmentEducation.ie, 2023/11/16

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I found this while working on a democracy education project. This resource list by an Irish organization is focused especially on development education. I liked it not only for the 632 resources listed but also for the neat and accessible way the resources are presented, with easy listing by categories such as media type, topic, or sustainable development goal; (SDG). You can also fill in a form to "add your resources or recommend education resources, videos and materials for the online resources library" (I assume they're curated but the site doesn't say).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Digital Pedagogy Toolbox: Integrating Digital Literacy Practices
Taruna Goel, BCcampus, 2023/11/16

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This post introduces the Digital Literacy Framework, part of the overall B.C. Digital Learning Strategy, and offers strategies for implementation (with a notice that "ChatGPT, an AI-powered language model, was used to assist in building on the key ideas by the author" - I wonder how long it will be before we either ignore or omit such warnings). It offers eight 'themes' featuring "Professor Emily," who "teaches an undergraduate science course," and "Alex... an undergraduate student with a thirst for knowledge." My own sense of critical literacy takjes note of the power imbalance inherent in this way of naming the two characters.

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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