OLDaily

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

Depowering education
Brian McGrail, Teaching Matters, 2024/11/26

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I'll give Brian McGrail credit for trying. His critique of the concept of 'empowerment' raises a salient point: "who is it that does the giving and the making (of)  the authority or power to do something and/or make (someone) stronger and more confident?" (Lightly edited to remove unneeded quotation marks). But that's as far as it goes. McGrail doesn't consider that 'empowerment' doesn't mean 'to give power' but instead to 'let go' or 'stop oppressing'. And he's really off the mark when he quotes Tom Markus to define power as "control of one person by another." No. What we're after is 'control of oneself by oneself'. A 'school without power' of the sort he describes. It's like a classroom without a seating arrangement. There will be one - but who sits where? 'Empowerment as agency' is a valid concept, and one that doesn't need permission from the powers that be to engage.

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AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching
Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Coursera, 2024/11/26

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I've only taken the first module of four, and I wouldn't even mention it here except I ran a link for it a few days ago, but I have to express my disappointment. Module 1 consists of a 10 minute video in which they do exactly one ChatGPT operation (and then mostly ignore the result). The first set of readings are to dry dry dry ChatGPT docs and FAQs. The second set is one technical paper (Attention is all you Need) far beyond most readers, and an unbalanced set of studies. At one point in the video they recommend hand-written test booklets. There is of course no student interaction or community (though you can see ChatGPT recommending it in the background). So disappointing.

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Block Contributes Digital Identity Components to the Decentralized Identity Foundation
Decentralized Identity Foundation - Blog, 2024/11/26

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I personally view this development in the light of Bluesky's (currently proprietary) implementation of distributed identities (DID). "Block is contributing foundational components developed under the Web5 umbrella to the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF). For the past several years, Block has been developing a number of open source components to push decentralized identity... This contribution includes open source repositories for Decentralized Identity (including the did:dht DID method), Verifiable Credentials, and Decentralized Web Nodes (DWNs)."

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Dynamicland
Bret Victor, 2024/11/26

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This project is daunting in its ambition. It's based on a programming environment called Realtalk, which is a mechanism for interpreting real world objects as computer programs. This includes Realtalk itself, which is basically a bulletin board or poster. Objects themselves are marked up or represented as cards that people manipulate in a real work space; the first of these spaces was called Dynamicland. "Whatever it is, everyone can see the whole thing, and anyone can change anything at any time. It's just part of the space." The goal is to advance a new kkind of literacy. "Democracy requires universal literacy. And democracy in the 21st century is going to require a new kind of literacy, for understanding and discussing systems that can't be captured in words and pictures."

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On Tasting Old Time Social Bookmarking
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2024/11/26

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Yes, I too would like to see a nice reliable open bookmarking service like Delicious used to be. Something that I could easily host myself or something I could sign into. But the challenge of course would be bots and spam. Who wants to spend their life moderating bookmark sites? I haven't tried Hoarder but it looks intriguing.

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Confronting Education in a Time of Complexity, Chaos and Collapse
Will Richardson, 2024/11/26

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Will Richardson posted his Manifesto on LinkedIn but I've taken the liberty of providing a copy here (34 page PDF) so readers will not have to log in to the closed website. As a manifesto it's a bit wordy, but it's hard to disagree with the core thesis: the world is facing a series of existential crises, and the education system has not adapted to meet them successfully. Instead, it is locked in to supporting the same traditional systems and incentives that are leading global society to collapse. The sorts of solutions he envisions look like the Agora concept in the Netherlands and a set of Inner Development Goals, modeled after the Sustainable Development Goals, and resembling (in my opinion) an expansive form of virtue ethics. I don't think these are the right solutions, but there is no doubt that he has identified the right problem.

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Think-Pair-GenAI-Share
Alec Couros, Google Docs, 2024/11/26

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The standard Think-Pair-Share (TPS) activity will be familiar to most educators. Here, Alec Couros adds an extra step and includes some additional reflection in the final stage. These are based on adding ChatGPT (or alternatives) into the mix. The objective, he writes, is to "introduce an AI-generated perspective to broaden understanding and stimulate critical thinking... AI can introduce new information to advance the conversation if peer discussions are at an impasse due to limited knowledge." Two-page Google Docs document.

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Video Responses with Padlet — Learning in Hand with Tony Vincent
Tony Vincent, Learning in Hand, 2024/11/26

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As Tony Vincent writes, "Microsoft is discontinuing the Flip app and website." For people looking for a replacement, he says, there's Padlet. "A teacher can create a padlet with a discussion question. Students can respond with a video with Padlet's built-in video recorder." There's a two-minute limit in the free version. Vincent links to a Padlet template by Rana Wilds teachers can use and also to this guide to using Padlet as a Flip alternative. Those looking for an open soruce alternative might consider Mindwendel, which you would host yourself.

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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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