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

The end of STEM: Why AI-driven education must replace an outdated model
john Johnston, eCampus News, 2025/03/10

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This article blends two separate issues into one challenging argument: "Instead of rigid curricula that fail to evolve alongside industry needs, education must embrace an AI-driven model that continuously adapts to the demands of the modern workforce. An AI-powered educational system would be radically different from STEM-based learning. It would prioritize skills over degrees, eliminating unnecessary coursework and replacing it with real-world, competency-based learning." Now of course this particular article is far too light and far too short to have actually made the case. But there is a case to be made there.

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Hail Mary
Pete Mandik, Drawn to the Void, 2025/03/10

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In response to the session on AI Literacies for Open Educators in which Doug Belshaw said "To be 'literate'... you need to be part of a community" I launched a Mastodon thread of sorts discussing the idea and disagreeing with Belshaw. I won't re-argue that here, but instead point to the similarity with this article that asks whether Mary could know what it's like to experience red before she has ever seen a red thing. "Mary can know what it's like (KWIL) to see red in advance, and this squares perfectly with physicalism's bedrock: nothing mental is fundamental." In the 'literacy requires a community' argument, the corresponding 'mental' is (something like) intentionality.

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Web desktop
Boris Mann, Boris Mann's Homepage, 2025/03/10

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Some interesting thoughts here. The first is the link to Awesome Web Desktops, "the web's biggest curated directory of apps, portfolios and experiments that mimic the appearance and functionality of desktop operating systems." But also, the consideration raised by Jeff Atwood back in 2008, "When you build a 'desktop in the web browser'-style application, you're violating users' unwritten expectations of how a web application should look and behave." Is that true? Well, maybe. The challenge it poses to designers of web applications, though, is how should they operate if they're not going to operate like a desktop? Finally: Daedalos. "The Github README has a massive list of what it supports, including x86 and game emulators, Wasm package management, mapping local directories with Chrome's file support, IPFS support, messaging over Nostr, and much much more."

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The Next Wave
Carlo Iacono, Hybrid Horizons: Exploring Human-AI Collaboration Hybrid Horizons: Exploring Human-AI Collaboration, 2025/03/10

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As I've said before, the easiest way to predict the future is to predict things that are already happening. That's what's happening here as Carlo Iacono is ten-for-ten in this department. Not that this list isn't useful. For many people, the items on this list may come as a surprise. But there's no chance that they won't happen. Some items: AI agents, emotion detection, multimodal AI, AI-generated science, and more. Image: AI-generated future cities.

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How to drink from garden hoses
Mike Monteiro, Mike Monteiro's Good News, 2025/03/10

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OK, I don't completely identify with this, because what I do has always been what my life is, and work has always been a way to pay for that while doing it. If that makes sense. But this I understand: "You will always have more in common with other workers than with your boss." And I know it because of the short times I have been allowed into management meetings, where I discovered (somewhat to my surprise) that the expectation was that I would shift my allegiance from my colleagues to the management group. Always, this was the expectation. And that's the thing I was never able to do. "You will always have more in common with other workers than with your boss. The best time to unionize was twenty years ago. The second-best time to unionize is today." Via Laura Hilliger.

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The language of organs: how faulty communication leads to disease
Jörn Bullwinkel, IDW, 2025/03/10

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I'm including this item mostly for the image, which illustrates the connection between organs in the body, but also as an example of how intelligence is created by connectivity. This article looks specifically at the relation between illness and a change in connectivity. "Our metabolism is closely linked to inflammation, aging and chronic disease. Metabolites can circulate as signaling molecules between tissues, either promoting healing or exacerbating disease." The discipline is called 'metabolomics', and that's our new word for the day.

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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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