OLDaily

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

languageXchange
behicsakar, New Chapter Tech, 2024/02/21

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Nice. The developer writes "I've created a free and 100% Open Source Alternative to Tandem app called languageXchange, which functions similarly to Tandem but still in beta phase, we update daily with a focus on language exchange and practice." Haven't tried it, can't vouch for it, but I like it in principle.

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Reflections on a Conversation about a US National Open Education Policy – improving learning
David Wiley, improving learning, 2024/02/21

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The main message from David Wiley here is "it's impossible to create effective (open education) policy without a clear goal that you're trying to achieve with the policy." But I'm not sure it's true that "No one knows what the purpose of such a policy would be." My vision statement articulates a pretty clear purpose, and I would imagine most proponents of open education will adhere to something similar. I also can't imagine an open education policy that doesn't take generative AI into account, and I know that people are talking about the need for open models and open data. It is true that "a national zero textbook cost policy would be the beginning of the end for the OER movement as we know it," but I wouldn't personally mourn the loss of large and somewhat commercially focused initiatives like "OpenStax and other large OER publishers, who sustain their efforts through sales of related products like homework systems." Nor do I see it as 'backfiring' if institutions can no longer charge students for 'open' learning resources.

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AI Will Be Boring
Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff, 2024/02/21

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How often have I read that "learning is and always will be a human process, not a robotic one"? Too many times, and there's no particular reason to believe it's true. But humans and AI can teach, and both humans and AI can learn. But of course what we're interested in in education is human learning, so it a sense saying 'learning will always be human' is a bit tautological. But I've learned tons just puttering with my computer (or with my bicycle, or with my camera, or out in the woods), so it seems silly to say I will always need some other human in order to learn. But this is probably quite true: "most kids will gain far more from building and programming their own robots, like the one in the photo, instead of interacting with robotic tutors." Well, yeah. But that's because tutoring (properly so called) isn't really what most learners actually need.

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10 Key Technological Developments Accelerating and Changing Teaching, Learning, Assessment, Student Support and Research
2024/02/21

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Not a bad article, though it would be nice to see more depth. The ten key trends are all applications of artificial intelligence, which I think is a bit narrow a projection, but also, not wrong. The most interesting part is toward the end, where the author describes what these key developments can lead to" an end to 'batch' teaching, an end to time as a learning metric, an end to exams, increased feedback, and (my greatest hope) greater accessibility.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

“Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter”: Toward an Epistemology of Care, Touch, and Celebration in Education
Wilson K. Okello, Shawn S. Savage, Education Sciences, 2024/02/21

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This is a challenging read, especially for an old white guy like me who sees "an epistemology of wholeness with care, touch, and celebration" as consisting of faraway concepts practised by other peoples in other contexts. Explored through the text of Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, this mode of Black refusal "calls forth alternative forms of being and caring for one another beyond state control, force, and surveillance," suggesting alternative ways to consider and reform existing forms of governance and structure. "Structures of care, touch, and celebration... intervene on anti-Black attitudes, actions, and behaviors and invite models of safety, trust, and respect. In order to foster these imperatives, those in positions of power must ask themselves how they might cultivate practices of deep sharing, vulnerability, and connectivity."

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In search of a digital town square
L. Jeffrey Zeldman, Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design, 2024/02/21

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Here's how Zeldman introduces it: "Ever since an infantile fascist billionaire (hereafter, the IFB) decided to turn Twitter over to the racially hostile anti-science set, folks who previously used that network daily to discuss and amplify topics they cared about have either given up on the very premise of a shared digital commons, continued to post to Twitter while holding their noses, or sought a new digital place to call their own. This post is for the seekers, to compare notes." I don't think he really gets town squares - the most important feature of which is that there is one for every town. We don't need to go to The (Wholly Owned) Capital to talk to each other. If anything (in my view) the search for a town square is being propelled mostly by the gradual erosion and enclosure of email, and especially the conversion of mailing and discussion lists into proprietary platforms. There's no discussion of these here, though if you ask me, most of what's really interesting is happening on platforms ranging from Blogs to Discourse to Discord to Matrix.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

A Guide for Social Science Journal Editors on Easing into Open Science
Priya Silverstein, et al., OSF Preprints, 2024/02/21

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As I've commented before, too much research lurks behind paywalls. This protects it from public scrutiny, sheltering shoddy methodology and questionable data. The tide is now turning, but it hasn't been an easy transition for many. This guide (68 page PDF) helps. It is based on Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, articulated at the top of the document, "a modular system of eight domains of transparency (citation standards, data transparency, analytic methods (code) transparency, research materials transparency, design and analysis transparency, study preregistration, analysis plan preregistration, and replication). The entire document is structured in a series of what-why-how-worries grids, a unique approach, the first time I've even see something like this.

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How Google is killing independent sites like ours
Glen Allsopp, HouseFresh, 2024/02/21

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I don't really care about review sites (beyond saying that you really should not trust the ones that show up on Google, but I think everyone knows that). What I do care about is the gradual but inexorable compression of the publicly discoverable web to a few commercial services. Sixteen companies dominate Google search results (see more) and they do because they pay for it. That's how Google makes its money. This is a result not unique to Google; as documented by Cory Doctorow the other day, we see the same sort of trend on social media as individual content is replaced with advertorial. Because I rely on mailing lists and RSS and personal connections I am mostly insulated from this (good news for readers! however few of you are left). But most people are not. Via Dan Gillmor.

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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