OLDaily

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

The Caring Subversion of Nel Noddings: An Appreciation
Alfie Kohn, 2023/03/17

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This is a really nice note of appreciation for Nel Noddings along with what amounts to a collection of some her best comments, including: "We cannot enter into dialogue with children when we know that our decision is already made," and "standardized tests are loaded with trivia – questions that most successful adults cannot answer," and "why decide that the road to equity is established by coercing everyone into becoming proficient in mathematics?" I agree with Alfie Kohn when he says, "Noddings was at her best when she challenged us to think twice about ideas that are accepted uncritically." I wish more people would do this. Image: infed.

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Tales from the Departure Lounge podcast takes flight
The PIE News, 2023/03/17

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We don't usually think of an airplane as learning technology, especially since international travel is limited to so few people. No, usually we're thinking, quite properly, of digital technologies like video streaming, RSS, and the fediverse, to name a few. But it's hard for me to deny the influence travel has had on my world view and perspective - from reading the words of Olegas Truchanas on the side of a building in Strahan, Tasmania, watching the cattle-boys of Lesotho, to helping with an EduCamp in Medellin. Even the summer camp I attended as a child and my bikepacking trips have had a profound influence on me. I don't know of anyone who travels who is left unchanged. One of the hopes I have for online learning is that it frees people from the need to learn in some specific place, and allows them to explore the world (using, I would hope, environmentally friendly transportation).

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On chatbots
David Kernohan, Followers of the Apocalypse, 2023/03/17

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This discussion floats between the two poles of AI - on the one pole is the idea that AI reduces to simple instructions ("it is not easy for a computer to grade an essay in anything more than a very functional rubric-informed way") and on the other pole is the idea that AI is simple pattern recognition ("it is designed to give you an output that looks plausible"). Both are caricatures. A grading AI doesn't actually use a rubric; it's a question of 'recognizing' based on ten thousand unnamed parameters) when an essay is an 'A' and when it's an 'F'. And at a certain point, with enough data (and the right data), the 'most plausible' response is almost certainly the 'right response'. But even more to the point - if people don't think that these are the sorts of processes that produce knowledge and intelligence, either in a human or an AI, then what do they think are the right sort of processes? Personally, I think all human intelligence is based on pattern recognition. I would need a very good argument or demonstration to convince me otherwise, especially after seeing what underpowered and data-impoverished pattern-recognition-based computing devices like GPT-4 can do.

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AI Course Creator
Yahya Tür, ProductHunt, 2023/03/17

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Here's what the product page says: "Start with a description and let AI-Assistant offer title and outline suggestions. Once you conclude them, get a complete, highly accurate, comprehensive, ready to share mini-course. Enrich it with questions, images, videos, etc, to make it uniquely yours." I tried it out. Here's the video. It does not create or add images, and it does not suggest or include links. The content for the course I created, on the epistelology of Rene Descartes, wasn't bad, at least as a super-intorductory mini-course. But of course you can decide for yourself. Here's my test minicourse, embedded into OLDaily (might not work in your email or feed reader):

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Baidu unveils ERNIE Bot, its ChatGPT rival | Engadget
Mariella Moon, Engadget, 2023/03/17

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Baidu has introduced its response to ChatGPT, the latest version of ERNIE bot. Here's a short video on Twitter. Though the story reports, Baidu CEO Robin Li "said that 650 companies have already signed up to use ERNIE Bot's technology, but he also admitted that it's not ready for a public debut. Baidu has merely unveiled it early due to market demand brought about by ChatGPT's meteoric rise in popularity." That did not stop the criticism and reported drop in Baidu's share price (though I don't know why we would consider the skittish reactions of irrational professional gamblers to be important, especially when shares bounced right back up the next day). Press coverage was similar - an initial wave of "we're so disappointed" followed by a wave of "we're so impressed."

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Can a technology be true?
Jon Dron, 2023/03/17

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Jon Dron comments on a recent post from Dave Cormier on learning styles, and between the two of them we are offered a novel response to learning styles scepticism. Beginning with the idea that 'learning styles are a myth', which Cormier discusses, we have the insight that a myth need not be 'true' to be useful. Indeed (and this is my contribution) the eliminative materialist would argue that much of what the cognitive psychologist talks about - beliefs, desires, hopes, knowledge - is a myth. No. The whole concept of learning styles, says Dron, can be thought of as a technology - not a statement of fact about the world, but a tool. It doesn't really make sense to talk of a tool being 'true', but at the same time, tools have varying degrees of precision (which may or may not matter), have risks and can create harm, but also have uses and affordances. Learning styles sceptics say that this tool should not be applied for a very specific purpose (specifically, to design direct instruction strategies). Maybe not. But as Cormier says, "we are trying to 'truthify' something that often doesn't respond to true and false statements."

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Freedom is Bad for Creativity
Annie Murphy Paul, 2023/03/17

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I'm not sure whether Annie Murphy Paul comes up with her own headlines, but if so, it should be pointed out that 'freedom' is not merely 'the absence of constraint'. Constrains come in many forms, some voluntary, which is what she is writing about here, and some involuntary, which in some cases infringe on our freedom. Now I agree that constraints are useful and even enjoyable. That's why I cycle. That's why I take my photos on manual. That's why I like the Daily Create. That's why I play No Man's Sky on the hardest setting. SAs she says, "Constraints exert a forcing function: they make us look farther afield, for solutions that will satisfy a particular set of demands. The domains in which we search for those solutions are fewer in number, and so we search those domains more deeply." Quite so. But to voluntarily accept constraints is no impingement on freedom whatsoever. Indeed, it is part of the definition of it.

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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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