OLDaily

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

My website has been gaslighting you
Dave Rupert, daverupert.com, 2025/01/21

---

Some fun. "For the last six months," writes Dave Rupert, "I've been incrementally changing the color scheme on my website every single day. I boiled you like a frog! Mu-wa-ha-ha. Don't believe me? Try for yourself..." He then offers a colour wheel that demonstrates the change right away, instead of over days. It's simple and elegant and I want to steal the colour wheel. Via Piccalilli.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Australian children who play Roblox spending average of 139 minutes a day on the gaming app, data shows
Josh Taylor, The Guardian, 2025/01/21

---

The problem isn't 'motivation'. "Australian children who play Roblox are on the app for an average of 139 minutes a day and it is the gaming app most blocked by parents, a new industry report has found." The problem is designing learning technology people want to use as much as they want to use Roblox.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

A Student’s Guide to Not Writing with ChatGPT
Arthur Perret, arthurperret.fr/, 2025/01/21

---

The really fun part about this article isn't the article, nor is it Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT from OpenAI that inspired it. The article is just a bunch of points saying, essentially, "ChatGPT doesn't understand anything and makes mistakes, and you'll stunt your growth." No, it's when we get to the responses to criticisms in the 'further comments' section about three quarters of the way through. For example, we get consideration of the (valid criticism that) "the idea that ChatGPT has no understanding of anything is indeed debatable, depending on how you define 'understanding'." There's also a response generated by ChatGPT (on LinkedIn, so there's no point linking). There's also discussion of 'temperature', the formal definition of 'creativity' used by ChatGPT (cf Boltzmann machines), and the suggestion "Don't try to play it by saying: 'no, creativity is more than that!' If you can't formally define what this more is, then your ideas aren't clearly defined enough." Via Paul R. Pival.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Pluralistic: Canada shouldn’t retaliate with US tariffs; Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 6 – CONCLUSION) (15 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic, 2025/01/21

---

Cory Doctorow considers what sort of cost Canada could extract is the United States decides to rip up the trade agreements between our countries (beyond Doug Ford's suggestion that we simply shut off the electricity) and points to U.S.-style software licensing as a target: "You know what Canada could make? A Canadian App Store. That's a store that Canadian software authors could use to sell Canadian apps to Canadian customers, charging, say, the standard payment processing fee of 5% rather than Apple's 30%." Or, as he suggests, "There's no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors." Via Dan Gillmor.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Library Carpentry: Introduction to Git: All in One View
Library Carpentry, 2025/01/21

---

OK, I like this introduction a lot (and really think there should be a few more installments to take people through the rest of the topic) though I caution that it's not clear enough that git is a command line interface. It just dumps you into it with this: "To start we will check in on our current Git configuration. Open your shell terminal window and type: $ git config --list." No, don't type the $ sign. If you don't know what a 'shell terminal window' is, you'll be lost right away. And the very people this article is written for are the people who might not know this. Is it better to start with the desktop app? No. Start with the shell. But explain to people what they're doing. More from Library Carpentry. Via Alan Levine.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

The UX of drafting in space
Daniel Buschek, 2025/01/21

---

Daniel Buschek outlines an alternative to writing in a linear format. "The best writing tool I've discovered last year was to stop drafting on a page and use a canvas-based user interface (UI) instead." In this article, he writes, "I'll share what motivated this change and reflect on the strategies that help me make the most of it." I think it's telling that one of the first comments in response says "one challenging aspect of writing is to 'serialize' all the bits into a coherent story...  if I connect multiple fragments into a section, can I get an outline generated for me, with reasonable sequencing and transitions?" This is exactly what Buschek is trying to get away from! But I sympathize - I've used Miro, and it's not intuitive, and it's hard to resist the urge to turn it into a story. Via Matthias Melcher.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

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.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed