OLDaily

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

AI In Education
Inclusive Design Research Centre, 2025/04/02

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The Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE) project has put together a collection of articles on AI in education from a set of well-known education and edtech writers. From OpenStax (now in a partnership with Google) Richard Baraniuk writes, "to create Responsible AI for education, we must build it on an open, equitable foundation." Beth Rabbitt suggests AI should be a public good for education. Jutta Treviranus warns "Because AI is a powerful statistical pattern replicator, it is poised to make every other harm even worse for people who are already struggling," calling this phenomenon 'statistical discrimination'. Anne-Marie Scott points to legal issues and references the OSI definition of 'open AI'. Sarah Johnson focuses on he usability of AI products. And so on, with more authors. FLOE is a project of from The Inclusive Design Research Centre and OCAD University.

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New SRAM Code hydraulic brake install - cut cable, Stealth-a-majig, install on bike, bleed brake
YouTube, Chasing My Freedom, 2025/04/02

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OK, this is a 40 minute video on how to install a hydraulic brake on a bicycle. I just watched it beginning to end. It paced me nicely through the process, clearly showing me the tools used, step by step process, and what the result should look like. It's an example of direct instruction done the way it should be. Now I wouldn't say I have learned how to install the brake until I did one on my own, but I feel I could probably manage it after watching this. Now (with a nod to Kirschner) I wouldn't want to attempt this without prior instruction. It's too complex, there are too many steps that could go wrong, and the cost of failure is too high. Yet it has to be noted, there's no way I'm going to sit riveted with interest in this video without the prior experience of riding my bicycle and developing a very specific need for this knowledge. It also helps (a lot!) that this video and many others like it are available for free online.

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Markdown and the Slow Fade of the Formatting Fetish
iA, 2025/04/02

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This is an interesting article though I don't exactly agree with it. It describes 'markdown', a system some text editors use to allow writers to create bold, italics, lists, headers and links without using complex HTML or even more complex .docx formats. Though the article attributes markdown to John Gruber and Aaron Swartz, it draws on conventions people used for decades in text-only editors, for example, **bold** for bold. What makes it different is you can run markdown text through an interpreter and it will produce nice HTML format for you. The article says "As a professional writer, you probably don't care much about bold, italics, and underline, while you write," but from my on perspective, I care quite a lot about formatting. Via Stephen Harlow.

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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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