OLDaily

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

A Primer on the Inner Workings of Transformer-based Language Models
Javier Ferrando, Gabriele Sarti, Arianna Bisazza, Marta R. Costa-jussà, arXiv.org, 2024/10/18

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This is a very technical paper but a lovely read if you're really interested in the deep details of today's transformer-based language models like ChatGPT and others. This to me is what a real science of learning looks like. GPTs are by no means the last word, and indeed, the paper is very careful to identify the shortcomings and limitations (one highlight here is the warning not to trust a LLM when it offers an explanation of its own result, specifically, "the tendency of LMs to produce explanations that are very plausible according to human intuition, but unfaithful to model inner workings"). As an aside, I think there's a PhD dissertation to be had in identifying the mechanisms described in this paper and mapping them to social learning, that is, how people in a society interact in order to help society as a whole learn new things.

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Relationships As A Resource: When The Science Of Learning Meets The EdTech Industry
Natalia I. Kucirkova, The Learning Agency, 2024/10/18

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The Science of Learning (SoL) is a relatively new name attached to methods associated with direct instruction. Read about it here. It has its critics (and I am one), for example, this argument that "the Science of Learning is misleading when it refers exclusively to cognitive science, memory management, and the brain." The article highlighted here represents an attempt by supporters of the Science of Learning to enlist the EdTech Industry to their cause. It might be a tough sell. As Joel Walsh says succinctly in the Learning Engineering forum, "I can say with certainty that the "learning sciences" people would take major issue with being associated with the "Science of Learning" people, and are often in direct conflict with these people."

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AI Chatbot File Compatibility for Educators
Miguel Guhlin, TechNotes Blog, 2024/10/18

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Miguel Guhlin focuses on a pretty specific need with this post: knowing what types of files differenct AI chatbots will accept (there's a handy grid) and offering advice on how to convert what you have to a format your favourite chatbot will accept.

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You should be using an RSS reader
Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 2024/10/18

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It's an old message but it bears repeating, so Cory Doctorow repeats it: RSS is the way we get to have a decentralized web that doesn't depend on centralized services like Twitter and Facebook. "RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading." It was, indeed, quite an act of marketing to convince people that RSS isn't what they want.

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Amazon signs agreements for innovative nuclear energy projects to address growing energy demands
Amazon, 2024/10/18

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Small Modular Reactors (SMR) have been in development for years, but they're making a splash this week as first Google, and now Amazon, has announced they will deploy SMRs to power their data centres. "One of the fastest ways to address climate change is by transitioning our society to carbon-free energy sources, and nuclear energy is both carbon-free and able to scale." As I said earlier this week, I am supportive of the idea. Plans have been underway for the last couple of years for SMRs at Darlington in Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Alberta.

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Are ChatGPT, Claude & NotebookLM *Really* Disrupting Education?
Philippa Hardman, Dr Phil's Newsletter, Powered by DOMS AI, 2024/10/18

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The value of this article is that it looks at three current AI engines and compares how they manage educational tasks like summarizing and explaining core concepts, themes, and methods. But it is also illustrative of the real issue with the use of AI in education: the tendency to reinforce old-fashioned instructivist models of education with no consideration of context, community and engagement. It's not that AI can't be helpful in these areas; it's that many supporters of AI just don't even think of them as relevant.

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Video Archive
2024/10/18

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We're finally getting to the point where conference videos are becoming more widely available. I've been sitting on one site featuring 300+ talks from The Conference exploring complexity in a digital world. Now we also have videos from the XOXO conference. How many of all these videos have I watched? None. I need to convert them to podcasts so I can listen to them while driving or biking.

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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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