OLDaily

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

To create living AI, replace neural networks with neural matrices
Alex Kostikov, TechTalks - Technology solving problems... and creating new ones, 2023/10/13

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I have no idea how to evaluate the argument made in this paper, but it's definitely an interesting perspective. Alex Kostikov notes that "the basis for the plasticity of living neural networks is not the structure of the network as a set of synapses and neurons, but a special class of transmembrane proteins that form ion channels on the surface of each individual neuron." These allow neurons to be "carriers of their own individuality, capable of changing their own attitude to the incoming signal in real time... it shows how a matrix of preferences is formed from billions of individually special neurons." The question is, are there patterns in this matrix of preferences that we can describe, as Kostikov seems to suggest, or is any such matrix fundamentally ineffable by virtue of its complexity?

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How ChatGPT and other AI tools could disrupt scientific publishing
Gemma Conroy, Nature, 2023/10/13

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This discussion focuses on academic publishing but readers should see the similarity between this and the future of open educational resources: "In the age of LLMs, Eisen pictures a future in which findings are published in an interactive, 'paper on demand' format rather than as a static, one-size-fits-all product. In this model, users could use a generative AI tool to ask queries about the experiments, data and analyses, which would allow them to drill into the aspects of a study that are most relevant to them. It would also allow users to access a description of the results that is tailored to their needs. 'I think it's only a matter of time before we stop using single narratives as the interface between people and the results of scientific studies,' says Eisen."

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Scaffolding "Secret" Knowledge: An analogy for teachers of thinkers, creators, readers, and writers
Chris Aldrich, BoffoSocko.com, 2023/10/13

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It takes a bit to get to the main point, but it's in there: "Teachers, including Adler, should prefer to show their work or scaffold their knowledge more often so that students can see how they they did their trick." I think that as students gain more and more assistance through cooperation with others and with AI in producing papers and projects, we will be more interested in evaluating the process rather than the final published result. But they - and we - need to know what these good processes are, and the only way to show that is to work openly.

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The Misunderstanding About Education That Cost Mark Zuckerberg $100 Million
Dan Meyer, Mathworlds, 2023/10/13

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I think Dan Meyer is exactly right in his analysis of why the ChanZuckerberg personalized learning initiative investments failed (covered here previously). "Students don't particularly enjoy learning alone with laptops within social spaces like classrooms. That learning fails to answer their questions about their social identity. It contributes to their feelings of alienation and disbelonging " Meyer describes a form of personal learning as an alternative, one that is social, interactive, and develops a personal understanding in each student. He describes it as taking place in the classroom, but of course, it can take place anywhere.

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Built for Privacy: Partnering to Deploy Oblivious HTTP and Prio in Firefox | The Mozilla Blog
Bobby Holley, 2023/10/13

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This article will add to our ever-expanding list of technical terms and acronyms. But it's for a good cause. "We want aggregate data, but the naive way to get it involves collecting sensitive information about individual people. The solution is to develop technology that delivers the same insights while keeping information about any individual person verifiably private... (developing) two such technologies — Oblivious HTTP and the Prio-based Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP)." The first routes encrypted requests through a proxy, so you don't know where ti came from. The second splits the data into two parts and sends each part separately.

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New report: Generative Artificial Intelligence in Canadian Post-Secondary Education
George Veletsianos, 2023/10/13

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George Veletsianos updates us on a report (21 page PDF) released yesterday that he wrote in conjunction with D2L. There's also a U.S. version. It describes a "Pan-Canadian Digital Learning Survey (that) received responses from 438 administrators and faculty members, located at 126 unique institutions across Canada" and "examines faculty member and administrator perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)." I'm not a huge fan of 'faculty perception' studies (which are in effect multi-authored opinion pieces). The results are about what we would expect: "leaders should further publicize the institutional stance, guidance, and/or policies to faculty members and administrators", "continue engaging in conversations around the limitations and biases of AI", and "continue engaging in conversations that center the question "What do preferable education futures look like?"

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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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