OLDaily

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

AI for Educators
University of Sydney, 2025/03/27

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From the website: "This site is a resource designed for educators by educators, created to support the productive and responsible use of generative artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at the University of Sydney and beyond. This site complements our 'AI in Education' site which is designed for students by students, and contains resources and advice." The content all appears to be open access (and licensed CC-by NC) but you'll need a university ID to login to any of the course services. Via Danny Liu.

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Rediscovering Education's Purpose in the AI Age
Carlo Iacono, 2025/03/27

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"While we're busy worrying about AI detection," writes Carlo Iacono, "we're forgetting what education is actually for." That's fair enough, but I'm not sure there exactly widespread agreement on this. Iacono writes, "Education at its best has always been about transformation." Things like "learning how to learn", "frameworks for ethical decision-making", "understanding oneself," and so on. But do the people looking for graduates to fill jobs really think this? Do students simply seeking a better life believe this?

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41 Startup Ideas Blueprinting the Future of Learning and Work
Sarah Morin, Ben Kornell, Alex Sarlin, Jen Lapaz, Edtech Insiders, 2025/03/27

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OK, it's a nice list, neatly summarized in the image, but it's generally just 'AI this' and 'AI that'. And sure, some of these will be successful, and many will fail. Where the real innovation will happen in the future, though, is where the startups aren't based essentially on AI. That's partially because of practical economics - most of the money in AI will be made by big AI companies - and partially because the best opportunities are always 'blue ocean' opportunities - fields that are not crowded with competitors.

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CommonsDB
CommonsDB, 2025/03/27

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Received via email: "The CommonsDB initiative is building a public registry for Public Domain and openly licensed works, and its website is now live. The site outlines how the registry will be developed over the next 18 months." This is all future work; the registry doesn't exist yet, but there is a blog. I'm a bit curious to learn how a registry for these works improves upon simply licensing them, and how works will be selected for inclusion (I can't imaging them taking my 43,493 openly licensed photos, for example)

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From My to Me
Olia Lialina, INTERFACECRITIQUE, 2025/03/27

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This is a long reflection on how websites have evolved from their 'golden age' in 1996. The transition in the title refers to a change from where websites were about something - about Star Trek, about pets, about writing Javascript - to where the the subject of a website is 'me' (as reflected in the rise to prominence of the 'About Me' link over the years. So the call to action is two-fold: first, leave the platforms that won't let you post links and turn your browsing experience into an algorithmic timeline; and second, "get away from Me, from the idea that you are the centre of your online presence," by linking to other people and talking about other things. Via Jim Groom.

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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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