teaching

For now, AI is more hype than substance.

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

There’s Human Intelligence, and Artificial kind. I wasn’t taken up by the recent bluster about AI which arrived in 2022 all dressed up, but wearing flipflops. Somehow there was a mismatch between its promise and what it delivers.

I did give it a try, however. Just like I once wandered into ‘Second Life’ slightly skeptical. Is this real, I wondered. Are we there yet?

1. AI ART – THE LOW-HANGING FRUIT WITH WEIRD, FUZZY SKIN

I had checked out the app called Starryai (which I wrote about in a Substack newsletter.) So, for my second attempt, I called up the algorithms on Dall.E to see if this fancy pants tool could design a magazine cover. Like WIRED.

The prompt that I typed, into Dall.E, was: “WIRED magazine cover with Dall.E.”

Could it ‘design’ a cover of tech magazine, using itself (Dall.E) in the title? Was it capable of reflecting on itself?

I was margially impressed. Marginally. In other words, not terribly. Sure, the graphics were overly arty as WIRED occasionally tries to be. Dall.E gets the look right, but the details are so bloody amateurish, even clumsy. It doesn’t seem to handle white space, or understand how to mimic a masthead. The fonts are a joke!

2. AI WRITING – NOTHING TO WRITE HOME ABOUT

I teach creative writing in all my classes. Naturally I’ve been intrigued, and even alarmed by how the talk about how AI could write like a human. Many people are hailing this as the death-knell for flesh-and-bone writers, journalists etc. Some tear their hair out about plagiarism in schools.

 The Nieman Lab is a bit more circumspect:

“While ChatGPT won’t win any journalism awards (at least for now), it can certainly automate much of the long tail of content on the internet.” — Nieman Lab, Predictions for Journalism in 2023

I checked out an application on the ChatGPT platform known as OpenAI that some people have told me can write fairly convincing content. I was suspicious. I had read a piece by a marketing writer, Mitch Joel about this. To check how smart this AI could be I typed in this snarky prompt: “Is Mitch Joel right about AI platforms.”

I wanted to see if this ghost in the machine was savvy enough to pick up his argument and reference it. As I guessed, it didn’t live up to my expectations. In fact, the software apologized for its inability to do more than explain what Mitch does for a living, and went on to explain how these are still early days! (Brownie points OpenAI for admitting you don’t know what you don’t know.) While it got the paragraphs and punctuation nicely. The second ‘graph was a doozy. Like a lazy copywriter churning out some garbage just to fill a layout to impress a client.

The website sets our expectations, in fact, saying things like, “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.” Hmm!

Having said that, others are raving about AI content generators like Jasper. It’s supposed to be a boon for copywriters, social media posts and SEO content.

HERE’S MY TAKE ON AI. Content creators of the world —authors, journalists, copywriters, podcasters —shouldn’t feel threatened. For now. Good copywriters don’t sit at a desk stringing clichés to adjectives. They walk the factory floor, sit through plans board meetings, and argue with brand managers before the concept emerges. Translated: They produce content, rather than regurgitate it. Translated again: The fruits of AI are tempting but aren’t ready to pluck. Even for students. Low-hanging fruit – tempting but bland. Sometimes filled with bugs.

ChatGPT says it is addressing this. It’s like saying Samuel Bankman-Fried has declared he is making sure there aren’t any more crypto scams.

Are we concerned? As teachers, yes. Plagiarism is something no school takes lightly, if only because we want students to discover the value of originality, and creativity. It’s what will benefit them in any career. How about you?

On this 30th anniversary of the Web, some teachers still send lessons on WhatsApp

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

It’s easy to be so enamored by the shiny objects around us –smart speakers, wi-fi door locks, wireless earbuds– and assume that the whole world is connected.

Yesterday, November 12th was a big anniversary of the World Wide Web. 30 years ago to this day Tim Berners-Lee, the British scientist suggested in a very academic scientific paper “…a space in which everything could be linked to everything.” This was his third proposal – the original was in 1989. It outlined the concept of hyperlinks, and how browsers, servers and terminals could possibly connect everyone.

But there are many parts of the world, including here in the US, where dead zones exist and the web is almost inaccessible. I remind my students of this often, as they sit in a computer lab and sometimes get impatient when the Wifi drops, or a website doesn’t load.

This morning, I was taking them to Pixabay, and open-source website for copyright-free images, but also for music. The site was blocked. No worries, I said. There are worse things that could happen to you. There are schools where students have to depend on lessons sent to them on thumb drives. In Sri Lanka, I know of teachers who send students lessons on WhatsApp, because the homes don’t have Internet (but a serviceable smart phone with a monthly data plan.) See Hakiem Hanif’s story how a 53 year old teacher is doing it.

So while some of you may be contemplating buying a fancy 5G phone for about the price of a plane ticket to Australia, remember that there are parts of the world where being online is still a luxury.

Easy Content Curation Tools for Teachers

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Content curation. It was a phrase slung around a lot about 5 years ago.

I wrote a lot about it then, in my IABC tech column etc. But today I have had to do some of this curation business when working on a lesson plan that has to be much more than links and words.

I began testing out a service called Lino (www.linoit.com) to create a new ‘wall’ to support lessons in my class. It’s a bit like Padlet which I began testing last year.

The first test is to use it for a class on Book Trailers – a way to combine script writing, and microphone use with creating a promotional ‘trailer’ for a book. Also collecting facts, pictures, sounds, music tracks, video and slide decks in one convenient place. This is what one page looks like:

Lino_BookTrailer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curation could become a lesson in itself, to help students understand how embed codes work, respecting copyright, crediting sources etc.

If you want to check them out try both.

And then life threw me a lesson plan

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

For more than a year, I have been making a transition from corporate communications to education. I have been given an opportunity to be a computer teacher at an elementary school in Scottsdale, Arizona.

It’s an amazing time to be joining a profession that’s getting lots of attention. And scrutiny. From the recent schoolteachers’ walkout in Chicago, to the just out Nations Report Card, among others, the story is not exactly cheerful.

Meanwhile, as knowledge acquisition is moving an 120 miles-per-hour, pedagogy is ambling along.  I can see this through the lens of our two children, as new engagement tools emerge, and curricula change. Analog classrooms are trying to adapt to digital natives. Britannica now has an app for the iPad and other tablets. Classrooms are being ‘flipped.’ We can’t continue to do the same old, same old.

If there’s a simple lesson plan for my career, it’s this: push students to the edges. Focusing on ‘core’ areas, but also widen the aperture. Knowledge of ‘computers’ without context of where they are used, is meaningless. Often it’s the topical things we introduce in class that make planned (not canned) lessons relevant. One study last year found that students who did “science-related activities that are not for schoolwork” performed higher.

TO KICK OFF, I re-positioned the computer class as a Technology and Computer Lab, in which students will engage in subjects from space exploration to search engines.

Being the school’s robotics coach helps. This is a program established by the FIRST Lego League. Students can step out of their comfort zone and take risks, even while engaging their math and design skills.

Each day, the lens zooms in and widens…