OLDaily

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

AI and the future of education: disruptions, dilemmas and directions
UNESCO, 2025/09/03

---

This is a collection of essays of which (as of this writing) I have only read the first, but I have to post now because I love love love Báyò Akómoláfé's take on AI and education. "The call for 'ethics-by-design' often arrives with the sheen of accountability, but underneath its surface glows a deep desire to keep the human firmly in charge, to domesticate the unknown, to render disruption tolerable, and to maintain the fiction of sovereign authorship. While there is value in creating protective frames, I worry that such architectures of 'ethical safety' are often animated by anthropocentric fear, a managerial rationality, a sneaking-in-of-anthropocentrism via the backdoor, a refusal to be displaced, a reluctance to be altered by what exceeds our moral grammars." In other words, a deep conservatism that refuses to accept that there may be any changes in the existing structures of knowledge and power. (Alas, the rest of the volume does not live up to the promise of the first chapter, as we are offered a number of well-worn critiques of AI where critiques of education would be rather more appropriate).

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

If You Can Make Yorkshire Puddings, You Can Understand AI
Rose Luckin, YouTube, 2025/09/03

---

"If you can make Yorkshire puddings, you can understand AI". So says Rose Luckin in the first of her video series on AI. As she explains on LinkedIn, " I'm bringing that perspective to a new format that combines two of my passions: explaining complex AI concepts and cooking." Well, I do love Yorkshire pudding - we used to have it with a roast every Sunday - and I can appreciate the analogy. "The best way to explain concept concepts is to use familiar things." 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

The Language on GenAI: A Critical Exploration of Personification Metaphors in UNESCO’s Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research
Bruna Damiana Heinsfeld, George Veletsianos, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2025/09/03

---

This is an interesting paper (13 page PDF) that looks at three major types of metaphor people use to describe generative AI: biological, reasoning, and leadership. Obviously there's some cross-categorization here (they all describe AI in terms of human function) but the discussion is generally well-grounded and considered. Still - I think the authors focus a bit too much on the differences between the original and the metaphor, where the real importance lies in how they are the same. I do mostly agree, though, with the proposed characterization: " describing GenAI as a "library that retrieves and recombines information based on patterns" (noting that the term 'library' itself is also a metaphor). 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Inside the University of 2030?
Carlo Iacono, Hybrid Horizons, 2025/09/03

---

Readers will know I like most of what Carlo Iacono writes but I'm not so keen on the example he offers here: "For ninety minutes, no devices, no AI, just Marcus and eleven others wrestling with a paradox their professor has posed about consciousness and measurement. They diagram on whiteboards, argue, get frustrated, break through, argue again." He suggests that the students are developing "what researchers call naked cognition" but they're doing (to my mind) nothing of the sort. What's being described here is like recommending that we conduct driving school without any cars or simulations - we'll call it "naked self-mobilization" - where the students learn by walking. Sure, they'll get better at walking. But the skill they really need can't be learned that way - it depends on the equipment and the instrumentation.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

Five Rules for 2025-26
Alex Usher, HESA, 2025/09/03

---

"It's going to be a tough year ahead" for universities in Canada, writes Alex Usher, as he offers five rules for success. The rules amount to what I'll call 'the Columbia Strategy' - that is, cave to whatever it is government wants you to do. Now I'm not saying there isn't sense to some of the recommendations - universities should be seen as a means to an end, not an end in themselves, and there's no reason why outside institutions should care about universities' internal tenure process. But recommendations like "fire up your friend-raising and fund-raising," "act as an institution and not just as a sack full of cats," and "do less" are not sound strategies, notwithstanding Usher's continued misunderstanding of the term enshittifcation.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post][Share]

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.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed