Where is the school? The school that empowers our children to create the better world that we have decided to eschew?The school that fosters curious, lifelong learners?The school that invites skepticism and expects students to point out inconsistencies between the things we say and the things we do?The school that embraces Christian values, and Muslim values, and Hindu values, and Jewish values: that taking care … Continue reading Where is the School?
“Has your district implemented any AI literacy materials for staff and/or students?” It’s a reasonable question. I was in a virtual meeting with about 60 other educators earlier this week. We were talking about artificial intelligence, and how schools are working to embrace it, manage it, leverage it, govern it. It’s a working group. We’re trying to figure things out. There are no right answers. … Continue reading AI Literacy
Fifteen years ago, I mentioned that my school district was receiving 20,000 email messages per day. That was four times the email volume that we had seen five years prior. At the time, we were switching to Google for email, and we were planning to provide email accounts to students for the first time. That kind of growth is impressive, but it’s not unusual. Nearly … Continue reading The Speeding Up is Slowing Down
They’re worried about our kids. They’re worried that we’re teaching them that some kids don’t have one Mommy and one Daddy. Some have two Mommies, or no Mommies. They’re worried that we’re teaching them that some people don’t feel safe at home, or don’t have enough to eat, or don’t have a warm place to sleep. And knowing that might make them ask questions about … Continue reading Worried
Last month, the Beatles won a Grammy award for best rock performance for their song, “Now and Then.” They had also been nominated for record of the year for the same song. The Beatles last performed together on August 29, 1966, and last recorded together on August 20, 1969. This “new” song is built on a demo recorded by John Lennon in 1977, with some … Continue reading Complacent Innovation
Technology makes us stupid. I’ve written about this before. The availability of amazing tools that provide knowlege and organization allows us to stay on the ball without remembering anything. My car knows where I’m going and how to get there. My calendar will tell me what I’m doing this weekend. My phone knows how to contact everyone I care about, so I don’t need to … Continue reading Artificial Words
Last week, this image showed up as a memory online. I tweeted it at the beginning of 2012 with the caption “This might be our nextgen learning / tech planning process.” I remember drawing this. I recall a long conversation with my superintendent about it. Just the two of us, sitting at the table in his office. I wanted to redefine public education. He was … Continue reading The Grand Plan
I was playing with Notebook LM a few weeks ago. This is an AI tool, developed by Google, that is supposed to help people interact with documents and resources. You can give it a bunch of content, and then summarize that content and ask questions about it. It has a cool feature that creates AI-generated audio overviews in a conversational, podcast-like format. So I fed … Continue reading What’s Next?
For the last decade or so, I’ve carried around a little notebook that I refer to as my “think book.” It’s a place to put notes and ideas and observations and connections that I may want to come back to later. This week, I transitioned from volume 9 of the book to volume 10. Whenever I do that, I read through the old book one … Continue reading Odds and Ends
My first experience with the firehose was Usenet. In the pre-web Internet days, there was a global discussion board with thousands of topic-specific groups called newsgroups. You could subscribe to the newsgroups you were interested in, and see the messages posted to those groups. Using special software, called a newsreader, you could manage which groups you belonged to, and read, post, and respond to messages … Continue reading What Do I See?
Yesterday, 206 students walked across the stage, accepted their diplomas, shook hands with a bunch of people they didn’t know, and walked off into their futures. They’re an impressive group. Eight of them are National Merit finalists, putting them among the top 1% of American students. An additional 11 are commended scholars (top 4% nationally). Collectively, they took 136 advanced placement courses and 255 college … Continue reading Are They Ready?
On Monday, March 9, 2020, Governor Mike DeWine announced that three cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in Ohio. Two days later, he reported that Ohio had four cases. I was confused. Does that mean Ohio now had seven cases, or does the second announcement include the three previously reported? When I figured out that seven was the total, I knew we had a problem. … Continue reading Detecting AI
Taste of Tech 