"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
A few weeks ago, Educause published an article by Dale Pike, Brooke McGowin, Aaron Bond, Larry Cox II and Daron Williams entitled “Framing Generative AI in Education with the GenAI Intent and Orientation Model.” The article discussed the potential of generative AI (GenAI) in education and introduced the above framework to help understand and implement… Read more Enhancing the GenAI Intent and Orientation Model
Now that I am retired, it has been interesting to look back at my early 2008 posts. One post was “Only Thing To Fear” where I discussed the challenge of teaching a Masters class in edtech when all of my students worked in schools that blocked access to many of the websites we were exploring…including… Read more Fear of AI
A year and a half ago, my wife and I moved from Virginia to Massachusetts to be nearer our twin daughters. After a year in New England, one begins to sense the ghost of Robert Frost near every stone fence! Which got me thinking…what would Robert Frost think about GenAI today? So I asked Claude…and… Read more AI through the Eyes of Robert Frost
Yesterday, Ethan Mollick had an interesting post in his Substack about Latent Expertise. He noted “…There are areas where AI is better than an expert human at particular tasks, and areas where it is completely useless. Instead of blanket statements, we should focus on specifics: we know that LLMs, without further development, are already useful… Read more Teaching Job Title: AI Expert
Way back in 1984, Wendy’s introduced an advertisement that in modern terms would be seen as having gone “viral.” Three elderly ladies are at a fast food counter ordering a Big Bun, and one says: As I read Educause’s article on the IDEAS Framework this past week, a similar reaction hit me. Where’s the faculty?… Read more Where’s the Faculty?
In the past, I have touched on the importance in teaching practice of asking students good questions rather than focus on rote memorization of answers. An example was my post here. Or to go back further, a question Enoch Hale raised about a Future Faculty class we both sat in (taught by Jeff Nugent): What… Read more AI and the UnGoogleable Question
Several readings that crossed my desk this week had my brain buzzing. Back in the days of the VCU Center for Teaching Excellence, I used to start the week over coffee with Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl, and as we exchanged ideas, Bud would say “My brain is just buzzing as I try and connect… Read more Stepping Lively into the Horizon Report
Jim Lang is out with his Second Edition to Small Teaching. Anyone who follows me knows that I have liked this series, blogging about the First Edition here and the companion book that Flower Darby and Jim wrote on Small Teaching Online here. I first met Jim Lang at a local brainstorming session in Boston… Read more Small Teaching Revisited
On Monday evening, I was in a Zoom conference with some Fall students and fellow doctoral teachers doing an overview of the fall class. Towards the end of the hour, one student began to vent about the fact that we were not lowering out standards during a time of high stress. He could not believe… Read more Empathy, Stress and Teaching Philosophies
Mike Wesch has been a hero of mine for years … ever since he posted “Web 2.0 – The Web is Us/ing Us” in 2007. Mike is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and I was lucky to not only hear him at several conferences, but also to meet him when… Read more Quick Weekly Intros Using Tips from Mike Wesch