OLDaily

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

Getting an Answer is Not the Same as Coming to an Understanding
Tony Hirst, OUseful.Info, the blog..., 2025/03/06

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So Google Search has started giving me AI-generated 'answers' when I type in a search term, not realizing (apparently) that when I opet to 'search' I am seeking to find documents, not get answers. There's a difference between the two, as Tony Hirst argues: "Being given an answer in response to a shonky natural language prompt is one thing. But it does not help you come to an understanding. Skimming through a set of resources and realising they do not provide the answer tells you something. Search for documents that may help you get to an answer tells you something." The reason why I search is that I want to understand what different people say about the same thing. 

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Innovation Includes Everyone
Laura Gabor, et al., What in the Tech?, 2025/03/06

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This is "an open letter calling on Canada's tech industry to uphold inclusion, equity, and accountability." As the authors write, "Thousands of us — entrepreneurs, marketers, engineers, and support staff— have built Canada into the global tech leader it is today. We did this not by shutting people out, but by welcoming talent from every background." I agree with this. As my own work in knowledge and learning has shown, values like diversity and openness aren't simply moral goods, they are what all individuals and societies to learn, grow, and adapt.

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Opera adds an automated AI agent to its browser
Thomas Claburn, The Register, 2025/03/06

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OK, I don't think anyone needs an agent that will do their online shopping for them. But let's ignore this trivial example and focus on what's interesting: the AI being described here operates in the browser. We're not relying on some third-party cloud AI like Claude or ChatGPT, our data and our interactions stay local. Obviously this is in trial mode, and not all of Opera's innovations achieve wider use (ok, tbh, few of them do) but there's something genuinely useful here, especially if combined with model context protocol (MCPs).

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Bring Parliament to Your Classroom
Teach Magazine, 2025/03/06

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A couple of things from this sponsored post from Canada's Library of Parliament. First, "Parliament: The Classroom Experience is a new travelling classroom program, which takes students into the heart of democracy in virtual reality (VR). Using the provided equipment, learners go on an immersive journey inside Centre Block." And second, "Educators hoping to deepen their understanding of Canadian civics can also apply to the Teachers Institute on Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, (a) week-long professional development opportunity allows teachers to engage directly with parliamentarians."

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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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