OLDaily

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

Deontological Ethics
Larry Alexander, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2024/12/18

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I referenced an article recommending a return to 'duty' earlier this week and just by coincidence we also have a revised article on 'duty' published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It's a pretty simple and straightforward article as these articles go, and I appreciated the author's focus. The bulk of the article is focused on agent-based duty and patient-based duty. There are also some considerations around duty and consequences, and duty when outcomes are uncertain. Image: Wikipedia's article on duty.

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Perplexity, not Google, is now the best search engine
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, The Register, 2024/12/18

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This short article documents the decline of Google search (the once-useful tool has become so encrusted with advertising it's impossible to find the useful results). Steven Vaughan-Nichols identifies the major competitor not as Bing but as the AI search engine Perplexity. "AI answers are still wrong far too often for you to rely on. But, armed with the research Perplexity used to come up with those answers, you can work out the real answers." There's still a lot of improving to do, and we may never return to the glory days when Google could (or world) find anything, but at least we can hope for something better than what we have now.

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How Children Fail (Slides)
Scott Mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, 2024/12/18

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I read John Holt's How Children Fail a very long time ago - before I was even involved in online learning and educational technology - and it resonated deeply with me. It was like John Holt had been spying on my public and high school classes! Here Scott McLeod has put together a set of 52 slides with relevant quotes from the book. Some are a bit long, but the collection will give readers a good idea of the message. 

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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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