OLDaily

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

3D revivification in dinosaur museum
Reddit, 2025/11/17

---

The video credit is to 索林林和小橡果 and I can't find the original source but I definitely want to share this use of holographcs to demonstrate the evolution of flight in the Shanghai Natural History Museum. They even get the shadows right! It's a long way from this. See more from the museum website.

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

AI country artist hits #1 on Billboard digital songs chart
Brandon Vigliarolo, The Register, 2025/11/17

---

Here's the story: "Breaking Rust, an AI "band" that appeared on the internet in the middle of October based on its presence on Instagram, topped the chart last week with a song called Walk My Walk." I listened to this song and another of others, and it's not for me - they all sound the same and it's not really my style. Then again, very little of what tops the Billboard charts is my style. And people have been complaining about musical slop since the age of disco. But still - topping the chart is a real achievement, and we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss it.

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

Marketplaces in the Age of AI
Olivia Moore, a16z, 2025/11/17

---

In the early days of the internet people thought we would see the emergence of digital service marketplaces. For the most part, this didn't happen, because (as this article recounts) it was too hard to attract customers, resulting in low demand, and it cost too much to follow up repeat business. AI can change this, argues Olivia Moore. But I don't think the examples were thought through. Consider, for example, "Jack and Jill and Dex, both marketplaces for high-skill talent, use AI to speak at length to candidates and employers, collect preferences and characteristics, and make matches." But will people want to have long conversations with an AI? Or this suggestion: "There's no reason why you can't now call every customer monthly with a follow-up that is specific to them." Yes there is! How many people want monthly calls from their gutter-cleaners? I think that for AI to be useful in anything related to marketing (including in education) I think it has to be consumer-driven, not provider-driven. 

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

Generalization bias in large language model summarization of scientific research
Uwe Peters, Benjamin Chin-Yee, Royal Society, 2025/11/17

---

As I commented on LinkedIn: The article states, "chatbots may overlook uncertainties, limitations, and nuances in original research by omitting qualifiers and oversimplifying text, leading to overgeneralizations." In my experience, this is exactly the problem with a lot of traditional media reporting on scientific findings. We might find that this is a problem with popularizing science in general, and not specifically a problem with AI doing it.

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

AI was supposed to fix the job search. It's breaking it instead
Deborah Kearns, Quartz, 2025/11/17

---

I have often said, based on the ability of AI to evaluate learning and development, that 'the credential of the future will be a job offer'. So how do we come to this instead. Here's what's happening: "AI kind of creates a sea of sameness," said New York-based career coach Eliana Goldstein. "It automates everything, and it makes everybody sound the same - and sound robotic." Sofia Mishina, a talent acquisition director at AI Digital, agrees. "I see resumes that are perfectly formatted and perfectly forgettable - the same buzzwords, same tone, no proof of work." To me, what that says is that the resume format is broken. It doesn't - and never has - differentiated between differently qualified applicants. AI - and employers - need much more complete and detailed data than that, both about prospective employees, and about the positions they are intended to fill.

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

Aligning Educational Stakeholder Perceptions of Learner Profiling with Explainable AI
Abdelkader Ouared, Madeth May, Claudine Piau-Toffolon, Nicolas Dugué, 2025/11/17

---

There's some really smart thinking and sharp analysis in this paper (18 page PDF). Here's the gist (and I'm eliding a lot of the detail): we create learner profiles (LP) in order to make predictions about their learning needs, but these models are based on assessors observations and intuitions, which may be misled by the complexity and multi-dimensionality of actual learner models. Hence, for example, we might see repeated attempts to solve a problem and conclude that a learner is engaged, but a deeper machine learning (ML) analysis may read the same data as an indication that the student is not engaged. Hence, there is a need for validation of these models, and this paper proposes a framework establishing "a bidirectional mapping between stakeholder requirements for LP analysis and ML-driven learner profiles."

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

Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education For November 17, 2025 to May 31, 2026, Edition #54
2025/11/17

---

Once again we present Clayton R Wright's inimitable list of upcoming conferences. Download the 362 page MS Word document here. He writes, "The 54th edition contains selected professional development opportunities that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration." Also, "Take the time to conduct your own due diligence for any events you want to attend or submit a paper to. You could consider using the checklists at Think Check Attend".

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 Bluesky
• Read OLDaily as a LinkedIn Newsletter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed