"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
I just finished reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book (2024) Nexus (and Audrey Watters would definitely like the cover!). Harari challenged both optimistic and pessimistic views of AI’s impact on society, arguing that treating information technology as either purely beneficial or destructive misses the unprecedented nature of our current moment. Through historical analysis from Stone Age… Read more Are We Still the United States?
Back in my teaching days, when having my students analyze search engines, I used to suggest that one interesting exercise was to Google themselves and see what resulted. Of course, this was back before Google became, as Cory Doctorow so eloquently put it, “enshittified.” This week, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols had an interesting article entitled “Guide… Read more What Does AI Know About Me?
There have been some interesting posts in my feeds recently regarding the intersection of AI and the future of teaching and learning. Lance Eaton had a post last month on Jailbreaks and Teaching and Learning. He reminded us about the limitations of these tools to actually understand. He stated something to his AI agent that… Read more Teaching and Artificial Intelligence
Earlier in the month, Jared Horvath posted a short article by Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch entitled “The EdTech Revolution Has Failed.” In this post, they noted that the early 2010s saw a digital revolution in Western schools with the widespread adoption of 1-to-1 devices like laptops, tablets, and iPads. However, they felt that this… Read more A History Lesson
This week, Harold Jarche posted about his two decades of blogging and the four questions raised by Bryan Cantrill and Cynthia Dunlop: What blog entry was I most proud of? Which one was most difficult to write? What impact of blogging have I found surprising? What advice would I have for those getting started with… Read more Four Blogging Questions
It has been quite a week in America, with basically half the voting public happy that Trump was re-elected and half (my half) wondering how a convicted felon could possibly be elected. I thought Robert Reich provided an insightful reflection in “The Lesson.” Reich dismissed several conventional interpretations of Trump’s victory over Harris, including claims about… Read more Economics and AI in Post Election America
Cory Doctorow had a post the other day entitled “You Should Be Using an RSS Reader”…and guess what? My RSS reader – Feedly – picked up this article because my reader subscribes to Stephen Downes, and he had a post about it. Which was precisely Cory’s point! Rather than letting others tell you what to… Read more What Comes Around … RSS
Over the past five months, I have been exploring GenAI and co-working with these platforms in my blogging. Most of my posts have been pretty upbeat regarding partnering with GenAI for teaching and learning. Some recent posts by people I respect have me reconsidering my rosy scenarios…though not tossing them out altogether. I think the… Read more What is Effective Use of GenAI in Teaching?
My weekly EDUCAUSE newsletter listed a 2023 article by Florence Martin and Albert Ritzhaupt entitled “IDEAS Framework for Teaching Online.” I remember reading it last year. The IDEAS (Inclusion, Design, Engagement, Evaluation, Assessment, and Support) Framework is a suggested comprehensive guide for online teaching and learning. It was developed based on extensive research and expert… Read more Some Ideas about IDEAS
Retirement has brought with it the luxury of time devoted to reading. While I enjoy both science fiction and mysteries, I also read history and non-fiction books as well. I am currently reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yural Noah Harari (2014). Although it has been out a decade, I still find it… Read more Impactful Books