OLDaily

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

This ad-free Facebook app made my feed enjoyable again for the first time in years
Jack Wallen, ZDNet, 2025/12/31

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The irony is that this page somehow managed to blast a video ad with super-loud sound as soon as I opened it (though UBlock seems to have blocked it the second time). Anyhow, the article describes the application Nobook, which is a reader for Facebook, which removes all the advertisements and recommended posts. As the author notes, "I could immediately view posts from friends and groups that I follow without being bombarded by the things that tend to get in the way." The app is interesting, first, because it's the private project of a single individual, and second, because it's basically a web browser that 'wraps' around Facebook and then delivers only the content users want to see. I think this will be a point of contention in the future, as services seek to clamp down on the freedom people have to use browsers - rather than proprietary apps - to view their content.

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The HTML Elements Time Forgot
Declan Chidlow, 2025/12/31

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This is a fun read, especially since I remember all these obsolete tags that ought never have been created in the first place - though I did get a lot of mileage out of frames and tables. "These stumblings have made HTML what it is today. No, they weren't perfect, but it is mistakes that we learn from. These obsolete tags represent experiments in web development - some more successful than others. They're a reminder that the web platform we use today is the result of decades of trial, error, and evolution."

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Why I care about running a private, resilient blog
Doug Belshaw, Open Thinkering, 2025/12/31

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Part of my plan for this year's holidays was to migrate all my stuff to a single virtual private server (VPS) in an effort to reduce my spending on cloud services. I wrote an RSS reader instead and have been uploading Iceland photos. So much for planning :p Still, what I intend is something similar to Doug Belshaw's setup, which he describes here: "what follows is the stack I currently use, why I chose it, and some ideas for how you might borrow ideas for your own site. This, of course, is not the only way to do it, but it is a concrete plan and running in production on my blog." As I set up my own new stack I'll document it. My efforts are amateurish compared to people who know what they're doing, like Luc Belliveau and Dave Lane, but I think I'll get it closer to right this time.

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AI and higher education in 2025
Bryan Alexander, AI, academia, and the Future AI, academia, and the Future, 2025/12/31

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By far the most interesting part of this post is in the second half where Bryan Alexander discusses how he used AI in authoring the post. To summarize a longer description, he wrote a draft, improved it with AI, and used AI for the image. I don't judge people according to whether or not they use AI. I focus on the results. The post is fine, so far as it goes, but as Alexander himself notes, it's still a bit long. It's a bit of judgement call, though, between preserving the original voice, which might be a bit wordy, and tightening it up with AI, which may push the article to the mediocre middle. As for the predictions: well, I think Alexander needs to read more broadly outside 'traditional' US-based education media. He says, "Not discussed very much (as far as I've seen) is the possible impact of agentic AI on higher education" and points to four very basic posts. I counted more than 60 references to AI Agents in OLDaily in 2025. The dearth of a wider background makes prognostication very difficult.

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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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