OLDaily

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

The Intertwined Histories of Artificial Intelligence and Education
Shayan Doroudi, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 2025/02/17

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This is an excellent though opinionated paper on the history of the relation between AI and education. As the author admits, "the focus of AI (and the history presented in this paper) has primarily been on cognition and the cognitive aspects of learning." The history presented is US-centric and it is not until the last few paragraphs of the paper that we are allowed to admit work is happening elsewhere. Still, for insights into this particular community of researchers, this article is invaluable, and should not be missed. Via weblearning.

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The Most Useful Thing AI Has Ever Done
Bernardo Resende, et al., Veritasium, YouTube, 2025/02/17

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This is a video about the development of AlphaFold, the AI system that analyzes, and then produces, protein folding, which is the mechanism used to create new proteins. Even if AI doesn't improve beyond where it is now, says the announcer, we will be reaping the benefits from the scientific advances for decades to come. And when you increase how easy it is do do difficult things by a factor of 100,000 it ultimately changes the nature of what it is exactly that you're doing. Great video, clear and well explained, Via Scott Leslie.

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Agentic AI – the new frontier in GenAI
Akif Kamal, Mohammad Tanvir Ansari, Kaushal Chapaneri, PwC, 2025/02/17

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I'm not a fan of the white text and red highlights on black, but the garish look is intended to convey the core message, which is that there's a new type of AI in town. Agentic AI - which we've discussed a few times over the last few months - is AI that uses tools in a series of self-determined actions in order to attain a desired outcome. Probably the most useful part of this report (22 page PDF) follows all the case studies and is the list of key commercial and open source agentic AI tools (including Microsoft's Autogen and AutoGPT). Via Alex Wang.

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Why the Buzz Around Teaching Facts to Boost Reading is Bigger Than the Evidence for It
Jill Barshay, KQED, 2025/02/17

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Though the question posted in the title is a good one, it's not an accurate description of the article. The first word should be dropped. The article never explains why there's so much buzz, though it hints at it, when the author observes that "It would be nearly impossible for an individual teacher to create the kind of content-packed curriculum that this pro-knowledge branch of education researchers has in mind." There would be no localization, no diversity of curriculum, and content producers would, well, manage what children are taught. But the few studies that examine where content knowledge improves reading underwhelm. This would matter is evidence were relevant to the formation of education policy.

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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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