OLDaily

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

CC Open Education Platform Activities: 2023 in Review
Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons, 2024/01/31

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Summary of Creative Commons education platform activities for 2023 (for Creative Commons, a 'platform' is like a special interest group). Items of note: the Lightning Talks, Citizen Education textbook (in Spanish, but your browser will translate), and a climate change project website.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Did The Future Already Happen?
Jason Kottke, kottke.org, 2024/01/31

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Jason Kottke links to Kurzgesagt's latest video on the paradox of time. It presents the 'box' theory of time, which asserts that the past, present and future are all equally real (as they would have to be, given Einstein's theory of relativity). It's a great explainer and presents the ideas in a way that is intuitive and accessible. It's a subject that has long interested me. This video is (or contains, I can't be sure) an advertisement for Brilliant, an online learning service that may or may not have produced the video (I mean, who knows?). I would add that the video is very well sourced, with a long list of supporting resources. P.S. if you have an hour, you can watch the 4.5 billion years of the history of Earth.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

A student newspaper in Iowa just bought two local weeklies
Hanaa' Tameez, Nieman Lab, 2024/01/31

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I cannot emphasize how much I like this. The story is contained in the headline: "The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa's independent student newspaper, has purchased two weekly local newspapers in the state, per an announcement on Monday." The newspapers will keep their existing staff and continue to publish as before, but "the university's School of Journalism and Mass Communication will help operate the papers to "provide student journalists with opportunities to contribute to the publications and gain local reporting experience." This item is a continuation of a national trend that benefits both the university students and local news coverage. See also this article about the Oglethorpe Echo in Georgia.

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Hitting Backspace: Critical Digital Pedagogy and AI
Sean Michael Morris, 2024/01/31

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I think this is a good article even if the central metaphor is false. AI does hit backspace - I remember watching a live automated translation on a screen in Spain as it constantly backed up and corrected itself as the speaker continued to speak. The backspace might be hidden (just as it is when the author posts a blog post online) but it's there. Fortunately this does not undermine the main point: "I am not proposing that we adapt our teaching to generative AI, but rather because of generative AI, with the anticipation that it will change students' circumstances." Because "No learning happens online. It all happens in a real place somewhere, where there are hands and fingers, feet and toes, a breathing person with a heartbeat." We need to consider actual students in actual circumstances, as they are, not as we would like them to be.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What Can be Done in 59 Seconds: An Opportunity (and a Crisis)
Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing, 2024/01/31

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I'm not exactly convinced by the 59 second example, because the five screens Ethan Mollick populates are all on different topics. More convincing would be a multi-faceted set of media assets all around the same thing - the presentation, text, backgrounder, etc., for a funding proposal or online course. Still, he's not wrong about about the ability of AI to get you quickly from zero to something decent to work with. And when he says "many people are not ready for what happens next" I think he's right.

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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