OLDaily

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

I'm Back!
2024/08/08

---

I'm back from my cycling adventure. More on that tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's today's newsletter.

Web: [This Post][Share]

Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled
Sergiu Gatlan, BleepingComputer, 2024/08/08

---

Our access to the internet is a lot more fragile than people think. We depend on either a browser or an app. An app gives total control of the experience to the provider, meaning we cannot stop it from (say) tracking us, selling our data, manipulating feeds, or showing us advertisements. That leaves the browser. But most people use Google Chrome, which is slowly becoming more and more like an App, giving Google control over the experience. We see this in this story where Google is now disabling uBlock Origin, the only effective ad blocker. Add to this the concern that Google effectively has a monopoly - sure, there's Firefox, but Firefox depends for 80% of its revenue on Google search (if governments were smart they'd pool their resources to replace this 80% and ensure that Firefox has a non-corporate source of revenue). The major companies - Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and a few others - want to limit your online experience to their closed environments. Control of the browser is key to this.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Explainable AI
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu EU, 2024/08/08

---

I'm adding this post today mostly to flag the European Digital Education Hub call for members of an Explainable AI squad. I can't find the specific source for this quote: "Explainable AI aims to bridge the gap between complex AI algorithms on the one side and educators, learners, and administrators on the other by providing clear insights into how AI systems arrive at their conclusions" (I guess it's somewhere deeper in the site). But I want to comment, because many people call for "explanations" without thinking through what exactly counts as an explanation. The very idea of, say, being able to "see and understand the rationale behind AI-driven decisions, recommendations and actions" is questionable when in fact there may not be a 'rationale' because neither human brains nor AI neural nets work that way.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

django-http-debug, a new Django app mostly written by Claude
Simon Willison, Simon Willison's Weblog, 2024/08/08

---

For the people who say there are few real use cases for AI, a counterpoint: "This is a classic example of a project that I couldn't quite justify building without assistance from an LLM. I wanted it to exist, but I didn't want to spend a whole day building it. Claude 3.5 Sonnet got me 90% of the way to a working first version." The article is complex and technical, so don't worry about it beyond the fact of it's being an example. My point here is that the literature is full of cases like this. There many use cases for AI.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

A Systematic Approach to Evaluate the Use of Chatbots in Educational Contexts: Learning Gains, Engagements and Perceptions
Wei Qiu, et al., EdArXiv, 2024/08/08

---

This paper (15 page PDF) aims "to provide researchers and educators with a replicable framework for a structured approach to evaluating the impact of chatbots on student learning." As the title suggests, the framework is based on measurements of learning gains, engagement and perceptions. The authors build a chatbot to evaluate the framework. It seems like a pretty standard approach (learning gains, for example, are evaluated with a pre-test and post-test). They suggest "the pedagogically designed GenAI chatbot can be an effective tool for enhancing student learning gains, engagement, and perception."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Google Is Shutting Down Its URL Shortener, Breaking All Links
John Gruber, Daring Fireball, 2024/08/08

---

This will of course break links in web pages all over the internet. Once again, it shows the follow of depending on Google for anything like essential infrastructure. Here's the Google link.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

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.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed