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Explore the voices and resources of ALTC24
#ALTC Blog, 2024/09/06

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What I appreciate about this recap of the just-completed ALT conference is that everything is on one straightforward web page. It allowed me to explore the conference materials with easy and see the work in my own way. What struck me most was how little a role AI played in any of the presentations, as though the community has had a visceral response against it (which I think says more about the community than the technology). Anyhow, some highlights from the presentations (and I really wish they were full presentation pages, minimally like this, and not just Google Slides):

• Hannah John et al. on the role of learning types (could have used a learning type summary slide, so we can have the actual list, plus maybe a type-coding starter pack so we can code our own stuff)
• Lucy Hamilton et al. on a scientific problem solving course (I liked the way the class was presented but was curious about what 'scientific problem solving' actually is
• Lucy Thacker on electronic laboratory notebooks (as in scientific notebooks, which are a specific thing, not personal class notes)
• Stewart Utley on the like button (and more specifically, on social media engagement versus other sorts of learner engagement)
• Rob Lowney on learning analytics for critical data literacy (blending two interesting topics suggested by the Do Not Track web page)

The keynote sessions were presented as videos, featuring two panels (and I always wonder how students are selected for the student panel) and a keynote from Chris Friend (and you can view his presentation page with a transcript (that only marginally resembles the actual talk) and slides). The talk was OK, but I would rather see less restatement of popular arguments (localization, personalization, accessibility, empathy, care) and more on what the 'humane technology framework' actually it looks like.

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Action list to protect universities from budget cuts
Ingrid Robeyns, Crooked Timber, 2024/09/06

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The advice in this post is, frankly, the Usual Playbook: get informed, organize, lobby, campaign. How often I've seen this playbook rolled out. My issue with it is that it treats everything as a political campaign (this needs a name - let's call it 'social cognitivism'). By contrast, I have long argued that if universities want to be funded by the community, then they need to be essential to the community. Not 'essential' in the sense that 'if people only knew what we do they would think of us as essential' but rather 'essential' in the sense that they constitute an important part of everyone's lives. That would entail a very different playbook - and one I would like to read one day.

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ANYONE offering a conference needs to read about this!
Daniel Christian, 2024/09/06

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This post describes and links to some Adobe marketing copy that makes the following claim: " The workflow started in Adobe Premiere Pro, with the writer opening a recording of each session and using the Speech to Text feature to automatically generate a transcript. They saved the transcript as a PDF file and opened it in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Then, using Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant, the writer asked for a session summary." Now what's interesting here is the process, not the tech - after all, when we're working with Adobe, we're talking really expensive software subscriptions. And why would we created a transcript in a PDF, of all things? And the process should be faster - instead of producing an after-conference newsletter, create an in-conference newsletter that publishes once an hour with summaries of the presentations that were just presented (and links to the video recording in the same time frame, so you can watch the buzzworthy session you missed while you're still at the conference.

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What you need to know about UNESCO's new AI competency frameworks for students and teachers
UNESCO, 2024/09/06

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This is a really nice summary of the similar but slightly different competency frameworks in AI for teachers (52 page PDF) and students (80 page PDF). Both emphasize a human-centered mindset, ethics and applications, while students also learn problem-solving while teachers focus on pedagogy and professional development. Via Geoff Cain.

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Calling LLMs from client-side JavaScript, converting PDFs to HTML + weeknotes
Simon Willison, 2024/09/06

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As Simon Willison notes, "Anthropic recently added CORS support to their Claude APIs," which means that you can call their AI using an API from your own web page or service located elsewhere. This sort of functionality is enormously useful. In this post he writes about what can be done with the Google AI studio - uploading a PDF and converting it to semantical HTML. I tested it using my own Google account and it worked perfectly. This would let me do with PDFs things I've only dreamed of in the past - in the test case illustrated here I asked it to translate the text into French. And voila!

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Every webpage deserves to be a place
Matt Webb, Interconnected, 2024/09/06

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The idea here is that when you visit a web page, your cursor is visible to other people as they visit the same web page. More, you can type short temporary messages that follow your cursor around and can again be seen by other visitors who are on the page at the same time. Also, if you highlight text, other people see the highlight for a short time. And yes, there's a 'silent mode' of you want to opt out. Via Taylor Jadin.

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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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