OLDaily

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

Anthropic Publishes Model Context Protocol Specification for LLM App Integration
InfoQ, 2024/12/25

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The story: "Anthropic recently released their Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard describing a protocol for integrating external resources and tools with LLM apps. The release includes SDKs implementing the protocol, as well as an open-source repository of reference implementations of MCP." It's important because this is the sort of way learning technology will integrate with AI engines.

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Decolonizing History Curricula Across Canada: Recommendations for (Re)design
Sara Karn, Kristina R. Llewellyn, Penney Clark, Canadian Journal of Education, 2024/12/25

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When I studied history in school, it was told from the perspective of Europeans, as they gradually unveiled the mystery that was new world and the darkness that was Africa. The perspective of Indigenous people, who already knew these places existed, was not represented. Over time this perspective has shifted, but it needs to be more than just additive, write the authors of this paper (32 page PDF). They offer five recommendations: "(1) challenge hegemonic narratives, (2) value Indigenous ways of knowing and being, (3) reflect on privilege and positionality, (4) engage in the ethical dimension, and (5) focus on the future." I note that 'ways of knowing', as presented here, is probably better characterized as 'ways of experiencing'. Image: Donna Ward.

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How AI Works for Education: An Interview with Jon Dron - AACE
Stefanie Panke, AACE, 2024/12/25

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This is a long interview with Jon Dron, and well worth the time it takes to read. It's too rich to summarize, but I found this bit salient: "I have written nothing without AI input for at least 25 years. Every time you run a search in a search engine, or visit a social medium, or use autocorrect you are using AI. AIs have participated in our cognition for a long time."

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OpenAI Announces ‘o3’ Reasoning Model
Andrew Hoblitzell, InfoQ, 2024/12/25

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One of the 'predictions' from yesterday has come true today. It was a pretty easy prediction, given that OpenAI had already entered o3 into competitions. "These models improve reasoning capabilities over prior models, offering developers new opportunities to solve increasingly complex tasks. o3 sets a new benchmark in technical performance, particularly in coding and mathematics."

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Elon Musk takes aim at Wikipedia
James Bickerton, Newsweek, 2024/12/25

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The main takeaway here is that we're lucky Musk can't but Wikipedia, because we know what he would do to it. This article in Newsweek could be a lot more balanced, as it finds only "one self-identified behavioral psychologist" who is not named to respond to the criticisms. Anyhow, I made a point of donating today. Via Fredrik Graver.

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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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