Stephen Downes

Meta (aka Facebook) has just released its new AI assistant, Meta AI, Built With Llama 3. Time Bray asks it a simple question, which it gets very wrong. "The problem isn't that these answers are really, really wrong (which they are). The problem is that they are terrifyingly plausible, and presented in a tone of serene confidence." I asked it a question about myself and got a short answer that wasn't wrong so much as very misrepresentative of my actual beliefs (see the image). Note that I didn't need to sign in to Facebook to use it (though I'm sure this will change).

Though this is mostly an exercise in taxonomy, and though it is also badly titled, this post on what Carlos Ortegon, Matthias Decuypere, and Ben Williamson call 'edtech brokers' is an interesting glimpse into an infrequently-discussed branch of the field. Edtech brokers position themselves between educational institutions and the (usually commercial) vendors and services that support them. The authors identify three types of edtech brokers: ambassadors, which act as representatives for specific brands; service engines, that function as search portals offering such things as 'what works' indices; and data brokers, that manage data flows between institutions and vendors. They mediate edtech in three ways: by supporting infrastructure building and standards development, by producing evidence of 'impact' and 'efficacy', and by 'professionally shaping' via development and training programs. I think both taxonomies could be extended with a little thought. See the full paper, Mediating educational technologies (17 page PDF).

According to the authors, "studies on teacher-student interaction (TSI) support tools often focus on teacher needs while neglecting student needs and autonomy." This raises the question of how to enable student needs to be expressed during a class session. They describe the development and testing of a tool called NaMemo2 (built on NaMemo, a tool for remembering student names) to address this need. In so doing they propose a TSI framework called STUDIER (i.e., Sparking, Targeting & Understanding, Designing & Implementing, Evaluating & Refining). NaMemo2 is based on an augmented reality (AR) tool "that allows students to convey their willingness to interact to the teacher as well as show their names to the teacher in physical classrooms." 36 page PDF.

Beatriz Toscano writes about the Kinderstadt or Ottopia project in Magdeburg, Germany. You can read more about it here (the article is in German but easily translated using your browser). "For two weeks, up to 450 children in around 40 trades were able to pursue professions, start-ups, learn at the Children's University – and rule the city." If you want to learn about democracy, the best way is to practice democracy. "Do systems built by the so-called innocent lead to more just and equal societies, or do they devolve into selfishness and corruption?" asks Toscano. "Ottopia offers a playground for these experiments, with children experiencing governance firsthand."

This article describes a project called Student Hubs, which "exists to empower university students to become active citizens, equipping them with the tools, behaviours, and skills they need to make a positive change." In addition to the sorts of skills and attitudes needed to become successful later in life, a project like this also builds connections between the students with each other and the community, which can be vital in creating opportunities for further employment and personal development. This is the sort of thing elite universities excel at (Student Hubs began at Oxford and was inspired by a similar project at Cambridge) and what we should be thinking about beyond simple grades and content knowledge when we talk about equity in education.

The scikit-learn module is a set of machine learning algorithms for Python, and scikit-lego is built on top of that. But that's not the important bit here; no, what we have is an engaging story of how the author got engaged with and learned about scikit-lego. "I often found/find myself looking up at the source code of the libraries I use, trying to understand how specific features work and how they are implemented," writes Francesco Bruzzesi. "This is certainly not necessary, but it works for me as a way to learn and understand better the tools I use when in doubt about something." It's an example of advice I gave on Reddit recently.