OLDaily

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

Why high-talent teams still underperform
Chief Learning Officer, 2026/03/24

---

According to this article, "Teams can face challenges simply because everyone approaches work differently. Variations in work styles can manifest in planning and organization, decision-making speed and follow-through, communication style and preferred levels of collaboration." Wait a minute. If there are no learning styles (or so we're told over and over) how can there be working styles? The article is credited to 'Aperian' (as opposed to an author) so presumably an answer is forthcoming?

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

Literally Nobody Understands AI. That's bad.
Michael Feldstein, e-Literate, 2026/03/24

---

I did enjoy Michael Feldstein's reflections on the education sector's general failure to understand AI (and I encourage him to post more open access blog posts). "AIs have weird failure modes that we don't understand yet," he writes. "That's likely because the industry has not been rigorously studying them yet. We need to recognize the reality of where we are so we can minimize risk of disasters... AI labs are heavily populated by two kinds of experts: Mathematicians and engineers. Neither discipline is trained on falsifiable theory as the standard for a good explanation. Mathematicians trust proofs. Engineers trust optimizations." Feldstein paints a picture here that (to elide the details) approximates 'science' with 'theory' and 'explanation'. My question back is: what if it's education (the academic research discipline) that has the definition of science wrong. What if we don't get neat theories and predictions? What if 'understanding' doesn't mean 'tell a causal story'? Related and important: prediction and causation in machine learning and neuroscience. Also: AI that explains its discoveries. And: what metaphor should drive AI research? The field is wide open here.

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

I built a tool that shows live journalist requests so you can skip cold outreach
Reddit, 2026/03/24

---

More from the world of vibe-coded tools. I'm not recommending this one (because you actually have to pay to use it) but I'm mentioning it here because it speaks volumes about how the news gets its news in the first place. In a nutshell: people who have something to sell (consulting, products, books) employ agents to contact journalists. Journalists, meanwhile, put out calls across their networks (which are followed by these agents) for sources and spokespeople. The thing is, the less journalists spend on researching good sources, the worse the sources they actually find tend to be, which is how funding cuts erode quality journalism. I don't see this tool changing that equation any time soon, though I'm always on the lookout for something that might work on the journalists' end.

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

Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record
Joe Mullin, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2026/03/24

---

"Imagine a newspaper publisher announcing it will no longer allow libraries to keep copies of its paper," writes Joe Mullin. "That's effectively what's begun happening online in the last few months." He elaborates, "turning off that preservation in an effort to control AI access could essentially torch decades of historical documentation over a fight that libraries like the Archive didn't start, and didn't ask for. If publishers shut the Archive out, they aren't just limiting bots. They're erasing the historical record." For the record, I agree. Via Slashdot.

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

Webclaw MCP server, 10 tools for web extraction, runs locally
Valerio (Massi), Reddit, 2026/03/24

---

I am not saying you should go out and use this application (goodness, no, please don't). What I am doing is using it to introduce the new trend of 'Claw' applications, a term used to designate automated AI agents like the original ClawBot (renamed MoltBot, renamed Open Claw). Here's another one: MetaClaw. "Inspired by how brains learn. Meta-learn and evolve your claw from every conversation in the wild. No GPU required." According to Ali Zulfiqar it "Intercepts every OpenClaw conversation and scores it, builds a skill bank from real usage not synthetic data, and auto-generates new skills every time the agent fails." Meanwhile Markus J. Buehler introduces ScienceClaw, "is an open-source crowdsourcing AI swarm for decentralized scientific discovery, inspired by MIT's Infinite Corridor (Github)." Meanwhile, over at Cisco we have DefenseClaw, "the agentic governance layer that sits on top of OpenShell and includes Cisco's open sourced scanners into something a developer can deploy in under five minutes" (OpenShell is a sandboxed environment for OpenClaw, providing kernel isolation, deny-by-default network access, etc.).

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

Is AI the solution to the problems that make higher education "ill" in the first place?
Junhong Xiao, David CL Lim, Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching, 2026/03/24

---

When a paper beings with a question like "Is AI always good for education?" I always worry. Nothing this complex is 'always' anything. And it makes me wonder why they're asked the question this way. Anyhow, the authors address this question from two perspectives: the potential for AI to improve curricula, and the potential for AI to improve access. The latter includes the possibility of personalization, automation and cost reduction. The authors argue in their very long conclusion, "put simply, the jury remains out on whether AI can meaningfully enhance higher education quality." Meanwhile, "In terms of widening access, AI is far from inexpensive." In a series of "takeaways for policymakers and institutional leaders" they offer a range of criticisms of AI, though I think more research and deeper consideration would have led to more plausible reflections.

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

Introducing Keytrace
Orta Therox, Keytrace Blog, 2026/03/24

---

Is this the one? "Keytrace lets you cryptographically link your atproto/Bluesky account to external accounts across the web." It's based on the distributed ID specification (DID) and you can use Keytrace to publish yours (if you have a Bluesky account, you have a DID, but there are other ways of getting one as well). I'm not posting a DID for myself just yet (Ben Werdmuller has done his) because I'm, working on a plan to generate my own DID in my own software.

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