OLDaily

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

Made in Canada
Doug Peterson, doug -- off the record, 2025/02/20

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Like Doug Peterson and some millions of others, I've been more attentive to 'made in Canada' labels recently. I'm not sure it's appreciated south of the border how inappropriate it is to depict Canada as a '51st state' (such as was found in the NY Times recently). We very much do not want to become Americans, as surprising as that may seem to Americans. But I would add to Peterson's remarks by taking note of a Doritos ad I saw yesterday appealing to Canadian nationalism. Doritos is an American brand of flavored tortilla chips produced by Frito-Lay, a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo. We don't need American companies telling us how to be Canadian (especially when it's as full of stereotypes as this ad). It goes to what I've said for years - advertising is the first and most pernicious source of disinformation. Advertising not only misleads, it normalizes the practice of dishonesty in a society.

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A few charts on where AI adoption is going
Tanay Jaipuria, 2025/02/20

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The unsurprising message is that AI capability is improving rapidly. Though some claim that AI has plateaued, there is no real sign of that. The more interesting thing is that costs are decreasing rapidly - "achieving GPT‑4 level performance now costs nearly 1,000 times less than it did just 18 months ago". These costs also reflect resource costs, which should be a relief to those with genuine concerns about the environment. Finally, today's new (to me) term is: 'Wardley map'. "A Wardley map is a way of visualizing all the pieces needed to create and deliver a product and how far along each piece is in its development." The map in this article shows how much of an AI-supporting infrastructure is yet to be completed. Via SAIL.

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We're Finding Out What Humans are Bad At
Steve Newman, Am I Stronger Yet?, 2025/02/20

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Machines are much better than humans at many things: flying, drilling holes, adding numbers. As AI has developed, they're doing more and more things humans aren't so good at. Is there a limit? "I don't believe there is anything that people can do that machines won't eventually be able to do," writes Steve Newman, "because we are fundamentally machines, made out of atoms... it seems unlikely that the human brain represents the ultimate standard of achievement for any particular task." Still, "this leaves open the possibility that there are some areas where machines will never do much better than us." The human brain might be optimized for something, though we are far from being able to determine exactly what that might be.

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The Use of Social Media for Adult Learning and Education in Southern Africa
Linda Daniels, Anna Weekes, MojaAfrica, 2025/02/20

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According to this report (93 page PDF), "Learners are already widely engaged with social media and may become more engaged with ALE if their educators start to use social media in teaching and facilitating ALE courses." Social media "enables learners to access education beyond traditional classroom boundaries." As a participant from Mozambique said, "Social media increases interaction between learners and educators." However, there are "ssues such as digital literacy gaps, privacy concerns, and the potential for distraction."

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Welcome to the LibreVerse
2025/02/20

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LibreTexts is an "open educational resource (OER) platform" that offers "a trusted, user-friendly environment for faculty to create, customize, and share accessible and interactive educational resources." It's several services bundled into one, including subject-specific libraries (such as social sciences), LibreOne Single Sign On, LibreTexts Academy " providing instructor and institution support", and an OER Remixer. View the source for a lot of this on the LibreTexts GitHub. This is a big project with a lot of resources behind it and is being actively maintained.

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Digital Space. How it should be Done
Sergey Shandar, Medium, 2025/02/20

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I know this article was in my big list of DWeb items, but I want to highlight it in its own right, because it speaks to a lot of what I think should really characterize the distributed web, including permanent links, data synchronization, decentralized identity, content authorship, right to name and define, right to ignore, and data transformation.

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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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