More news on the influence of AI in arenas outside of education:
Web analytics firm SimilarWeb reported last month that Stack Overflow has seen a drop in traffic every month since the beginning of 2022, with the average drop being 6%. In March, Stack Overflow saw a 13.9% drop in traffic from February and in April, the website saw 17.7% drop in traffic from March. SimilarWeb argues that some of that dropping traffic could be due to GitHub’s AI helper called CoPilot, but users could also be using the more popular ChatGPT as a way to help debug their code—the same way they may via posts on Stack Overflow’s forum.
Stack Overflow is a popular website among programmers, where they can ask and answer technical questions related to coding. Users can also vote on the best answers so that the most helpful ones rise to the top. The site is widely used as a resource for debugging and problem-solving, and its community is known for being helpful and knowledgeable.
ChatGPT, which uses AI to generate responses to programming questions, has been gaining popularity as an alternative to Stack Overflow. The website’s AI technology can provide more personalized and accurate answers to users’ questions, making it a more efficient tool for debugging and problem-solving.
Love it or hate it, AI is here to disrupt your reality.
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I continue to be blown away by the power of AI tools. At the same time, I completely understand many of the concerns about AI replacing working writers, artists, and other creators.
There is a way forward, and I think it lies in using AI as a support tool. The possibilities for students to use AI as a support to their work are many, but we must be judicious in its usage.
One quality that AI may put to extremely positive use would be objectivity – a lack of personal biases or prejudices. Properly programmed, my financial advisor AI should not be advising me to invest in areas where the advisor would get the biggest fee, but where I would stand to make the biggest return at the lowest risk. Would my AI dentist or doctor only recommend those procedures and medications that have proven rate of effectiveness not the most kickback from pharmaceutical companies? Would an AI intelligence agent be more likely to uncover double-agents in the office?
Of course, the burning question in education is “Would AIs make better teachers than humans?”
Hey gang. It’s been a bit, but life has been… crazy. However, I’m rounding the bend on a number of projects and have breathing room again.
I did manage to find about an hour each week to watch the final season of Picard—by far the best season—and a quote from Captain Shaw in the final episode really struck me. His recorded review of his first officer, Seven of Nine, described how she was reckless and a rule breaker. But, very often, the rules she was breaking were probably already broken anyway.
My message to you, keep breaking the rules that are already broken. Trust me, there are plenty of them out there.
And now, for this week’s 10 Things…
10 Things Worth Sharing
Somehow, I’d never watched Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” until I had to do so for classwork. What a shame. Of course, Daniel Day-Lewis is superb, but so is just about everyone else in the film. If you want to catch a small glimpse into what it took to get the 13th Amendment passed, spend 2.5 hours with this film. Or read the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin that goes into much greater detail on Lincoln’s political brilliance.
In other classwork explorations, I’ve read Joseph Rost’s Leadership for the 21st Century. His idea of a “new school of leadership” has me thinking about how digital learning coaches like myself should apply this thinking to our jobs. Promising stuff I’ll talk about more soon.
The final meeting of my teacher fellowship happened this past Tuesday, and we began planning the professional development event we’re hosting for our district in June. As my fellows struggled to come up with session ideas they believed were “good enough,” I reminded them that what may be obvious to you is amazing to others.
Career and competency-based education programs continue to grow here in the United States. My own district is remodeling our old elementary school into a new CTE center with multiple pathways for students to explore, many of which may lead them directly into a career right after graduation. College isn’t the path for everyone, and I’m excited to see that apprenticeships are on the rise here in the US.
Personal news: I’ve pretty much abandoned Twitter. I still check in with the folks I want to hear from, mostly professional connections. I’m moving to Mastodon for many social interactions. Also, I’ll be adding ActivityPub to my blog to better syndicate content. Come hang out with the cool kids 😉
The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for all who are passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!
Hey, y’all. We’re nearing the end of March, and for many public schools, that means Spring Break is near (or maybe already arrived). It’s a very busy time for educators as one school year ends, and plans for the next are already taking shape.
My hope for you as we approach the end of another school year is that you take the time to take care of yourself. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and it’s easy to get caught up in all the things at the end of the school year.
Take a beat, catch a deep breath, and center yourself. Rediscover what is really important to you and what you can control.
“We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.” – Austin Kleon
Anyways, here are ten things I thought were worth sharing with you this week:
10 Things Worth Sharing
I worked with a senior English class this week, showing them some AI tools. They might write a book.
Here’s a curated list of prompts, tools, and resources regarding the GPT-4 language model.
The TikTok trial is a mess and is only proving that the US government is targeting this specific company over other social media platforms. Any issues with TikTok are the same with Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and many others.
What is the right amount of agency to give to learners during their interactions with EdTech? Blog post and paper
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Happy Tuesday, folks. More appropriately (I guess), Happy Fat Tuesday.
Full disclaimer: I’m not Catholic, and Mardi Gras has no personal meaning for me. But many of you may join in the festivities and Lenten practices for the next 40 days. If you do, awesome. If you don’t, you’re welcome to hang with the rest of us heretics.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I sent out a newsletter on Tuesday. Life happens, deadlines loom, and if you’re me, there’s the ever-present anxiety beast that hangs back in the shadows, ready to rear its ugly head when you least expect it.
So, it’s been a minute. But we press on through whatever life throws our way and embrace what comes. In these times, I remember the words of Epictetus,
The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” — Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
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You and I can only control what we can control. Trying to exercise influence over anything else is fruitless and will only cause us distress. For me, that means managing my schedule a little better and giving myself grace for getting all the things that I have to get done. That’s not easy for me, and it likely isn’t easy for you, o fearless type A perfectionist overachiever that you are.
Not that I have any experience speaking about such things…
So, today’s newsletter is a little different. I’m just going to call it “Rethinking & Reviewing” because you’re about to go on a journey through Mike’s stream of consciousness, and we’ll both find out the destination when we get there.
Here we go…
What I’m Thinking
The first year of my year-long teacher fellowship is coming to a close. We’ve met over the course of this school year to chat and help each other redesign lesson plans for deeper learning opportunities using the 4 Shifts protocol as a reference. To say the program has gone well would be a tremendous understatement. The feedback I’m receiving from the fellows is great and full of deep reflection. Most are well on their way to completing their lessons with students, and I’ll share more soon. For me, this first year will inform my work with other teachers and future cohorts but will likely also lead to part of the work for my dissertation in the coming years.
Speaking of deeper learning, I listened to episode 2 of the “Redesigning for Deeper Learning” podcast and was challenged by one particular thought: what does “student choice” really mean? Depending on the context of the lesson, giving the students options to choose from may or may not truly be “student choice.” With several lessons from my fellows fresh in my mind, I’m rolling this around in my head quite a bit this morning.
What I’m Reading
One of my goals this year for reading is to finish up all the published Cosmere works from Brandon Sanderson. I’ve gotten through most of Arcanum Unbounded, which features several previously published short stories and novellas based in the connected Cosmere. I also finished Warbreaker in January, and it might have become one of my favorite Sanderson novels. My current pick of the bunch from Arcanum is “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell,” a short story originally published in a collection, Dangerous Women, edited by George R.R. Martin. It’s a different tale from the standard Sanderson fare, leaning a bit more toward the horror genre. It was a fantastic read.
I’m also re-reading How to Write a Lot because I need a swift kick in the pants to get my writing practice back in order. There’s no better motivation to do that than when you hear the words “your dissertation starts NOW” during a Saturday morning class. Yikes.
On the academic reading side of the world, I’ve been using Speechify for a ridiculous amount of time to process articles. For my attention-span deficient brain – no formal diagnosis, just my own experiences – having the audio version of a text playing while I am reading is a brilliant focus tool. I read faster, retain more, and am able to focus far better than when I try to read text only. This is especially true for reading journal articles, papers, and so on. Speechify gives me an audio version of just about any text on my laptop or in my web browser. I now consider it an invaluable part of my productivity toolkit, right alongside Notion and Readwise.
What I’m Watching
In my random voyage of self-care, I ran across several seasons of the 90s revival of “The Outer Limits” on YouTube. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s an anthology series of separate sci-fi stories and features some surprising guest star appearances from some popular stars of the day (heck, even Leonard Nimoy shows up). In some episodes, they do make an attempt to connect some of the stories, which makes for interesting situations. Overall, a great way to spend 45 minutes.
Oh, and Picard Season 3 just started, so there’s that, too 😉
What’s in My Ears
Two recent episodes of The Daily from the NY Times caught my interest, mostly because they deal with the recent explosion of AI tools. “The Online Search Wars” and “The Online Search Wars Got Scary Fast” are well worth the listen.
Also, I continue to update my 2023 playlist of songs I discover, or remember, throughout the year. I’ve compiled playlists like this for 2022, 2021, and 2020.
Wrapping Up
Well, I think I’ve rambled enough. Thanks again for reading and coming along for the ride. Have a great week!
Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a completely reader-supported publication. The best way to support it is to check out my recommendations or become a paid subscriber.
Hey, y’all. It’s time for another “10 Things” to clutter your inbox. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a week for me. I’m looking forward to a little break this weekend.
We’re digging deep into crafting a profile of a graduate in my home school district. I found this great article for steps to take in that long and very rewarding process right here.
One of the teachers in my teacher fellowship asked me about introducing the process of developing and marketing a mobile app to her third-grade students. They are working on a unit about economics.
I’m a fan of the 5E lesson planning framework. If you’re unfamiliar, The 5E lesson plan is a widely used instruction model consisting of five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate.
During the engage phase, teachers can use various strategies to encourage students to discover more about the topic, such as an attention-grabbing hook, a thought-provoking question, or a hands-on activity. The engage phase’s goal is to create an atmosphere of curiosity and excitement, as well as to set the tone for the rest of the lesson.
I thought about creating something for the first part of this 5E framework to get the students interested in the topic of mobile app development. Perhaps a little video of a mobile app developer giving students an overview of the process?
I know access to mobile app developers is easy to come by for schools in large cities, but my schools aren’t in a large city. And I don’t have any contacts immediately available to speak to a class, whether in-person or remotely.
Which, if you weren’t aware, is the situation that so very many schools deal with every day. Access to experts in some fields isn’t readily available.
But there’s a solution.
With a little help from a few AI tools, here’s what I did…
Writing a Video Script with AI
I began by using a tool I had just learned about called TeacherBot. The folks at TeacherBot aim to “build the tool every teacher deserves.” You enter an idea into the prompt space, and TeacherBot gives you a useful output.
The TeacherBot user interface
I aimed to create a script for an overview video of the mobile app development process. Here’s the prompt I gave TeacherBot to begin:
You are a software programmer. You need to introduce the concepts of coding an app for Apple’s iOS to a group of third-grade students in the United States. Create a story talking about the different phases of mobile app design and development.
I asked for a “story” and specified third-grade students to hopefully keep the response at an appropriate grade level for the students
Here’s what TeacherBot gave me in return:
TeacherBot response to prompt
Is it rudimentary? Yes. But, it is designed for a 3rd-grade audience. And it’s just an overview. If I had the learning objectives for the lesson or the unit, I might have been able to craft a better prompt or tweaked the response myself. I wanted a female speaker, so I should have indicated that in the prompt. However, that was an easy fix.
Now, I needed to create my speaker.
Creating a Speaker Image to Deliver the Script
To create an image for my speaker, I headed over to Midjourney and entered the following prompt:
minority woman, photography, depth of field f2.8 3.5, 25mm lens, 8k, ultra-realistic — v 4 — q 2 — v 4 — s 750 — uplight
I won’t go into the crafting of prompts for Midjourney here. Linus Ekenstam inspired this particular prompt, and he has a wealth of knowledge on his Twitter feed on crafting prompts.
Here are the initial results from Midjourney:
All of these images would work perfectly for this task. I wanted female minority representation for this project. Why? Because students need to know that jobs in computer programming and software development aren’t just for white men.
I choose this image from the four at random:
Now, I have my script and my speaker. Time for the final step.
Creating a Video with AI
For the final step, I turned to D-ID. After creating an account, I opened the “Create Video” tool and added the image of my speaker, and pasted my script in the script box.
D-ID interface
I changed the language settings to give the speaker an appropriate accent but still speak in English. Here is the final result:
Now, we have a little something to use to engage our third-grade students.
Is it perfect? Of course not. Do we still have a long way to go in the world of AI? Yes.
Will we ever get to use this tool to its fullest potential if we block it in school because we’re worried about cheating?
No.
AI is a tool, just like anything else. Use it. Be aware of what it can be used for, both for “good” and for “bad” — and keep in mind that what defines those terms is highly subjective.
Thanks for reading. You can get more articles like this as part of my weekly newsletters. I send out two per week: Tuesdays are deeper dives into education topics for paid subscribers, and every Friday, I share “10 Things” I think are cool and worth your time for free.
This is a preview of my Friday “10 Things” newsletter. Friday editions are free for everyone.
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.
It’s the first week of January which means here in the US, the public domain was just infused with all sorts of new (old) content. Included this year are the later Sherlock Holmes publications (YES!) and Metropolis, an early film of art deco dystopia.
Millions of documents, images, and other media now live in the public domain, making them freely available to anyone. We can use those works as inspiration for creating our own, standing on the shoulders of giants, and bringing our own creative ideas into the never-ending mix.
As such, here are some things on content, creation, and the public domain that I thought were pretty awesome.
