Educator’s Notebook #469 (December 1, 2024)
INTRODUCTION
Minimum social media age, productive disagreement, classroom collaboration and more
Short week, big news!
In an enormous move, Australia last week formalized a minimum age of 16 for social media use. Starting in late 2025, social media companies will be required by lawmakers to verify the age of their users or receive fines. Read more in the features. Also in the features, explore the post about productive disagreement, including ways to engage in discussion on polarizing topics.
Also this week, find stories of grit and resilience, ways to think about delegating, approaches to fostering intrinsic motivation, and more.
In the AI Update, find one of the best overviews of the opportunities and risks of generative AI in schools, as well as further detailed visions of how GenAI can fit within daily pedagogy.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Levels of controversy (See the feature article for more)
Browse and search over 14,000 curated articles from past issues online:
FEATURED
Australia Sets A Minimum Age For Social Media Use At 16
“All jurisdictions agreed with the policy, and all but one (Tasmania) agreed that the minimum age should be set at 16. While the Tasmanian Government would have preferred a minimum age of 14, it agreed to support the age minimum of 16 to maintain national consistency.”
Discussion: “How To Productively Disagree On Tough Topics”
“When people engage in conversations about identity, diversity, and justice with someone who has opposing views, we encourage them to practice the four strategies we’ve described: Locate the conversation on the controversy scale… Find uncommon commonalities.. Show your work on the remaining disagreements to demonstrate that you’ve thought carefully about the subject… Manage your expectations.”
CHARACTER
Stories Of Experts Who Went From "No Talent" To World-Class Success
“When Kobe Bryant was 12, he played a 25-game basketball season without scoring a single point. “I was terrible,” he said. “Awful.” Not a single point. Not a free throw, not a lucky bounce, not a breakaway layup—not a single point. When asked about that season, Kobe said it taught him to take the long view.”
CREATIVITY
“Is Creativity Dead?” A Video Essay
“When human creativity seems defeated, it’s actually gathering strength and waiting for its moment to erupt.”
DIVERSITY/INCLUSION
What Are Americans’ Beliefs About Citizenship For Undocumented Immigrants?
How Americans Perceive The Size Of Minority Groups In America
“Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities.. It also applies to religious minorities.. And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities… A parallel pattern emerges when we look at estimates of majority groups: People tend to underestimate rather than overestimate their size relative to their actual share of the adult population.”
HEALTH
HIGHER ED
HUMANITIES
W. E. B. DuBois On Prosperity
“We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.”
LEADERSHIP
Five Ways To Infuse Gratitude Into Your Work
Four Ways To Think About Delegating, Based On Trust In People And Process
LEARNING SCIENCE
Reminder: Multitasking Is A Myth - How To Avoid It In Schools
On The Science And Emotion Of Being Human
PEDAGOGY
On Leveraging Collaborative Learning To Boost Intrinsic Motivation
Paper Blue Books Are Back For Assessments
READING/WRITING
SAFETY
STEM
TECH
WORKPLACE
GENERAL
How Famous Artists Would Plate Your Thanksgiving Dinner
Sam Altman Takes Notes On Paper Pads
“You definitely want to be able to rip pages out… I take them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time. You definitely want a kind of paper that is good to write on, which is a feel thing… You want a hard front and back to the notepad.”
A.I. Update
A.I. UPDATE
Teaching & learning with AI gets more focused, creating an AI replica of yourself, and more
In this week’s features, find the best summary I’ve seen yet about the positive and negative narratives surrounding AI, including high level tips for application of these narratives and critical insight into each one. Also in the features, see a wonderfully detailed dive into appropriate use of generative AI for developing literacy in elementary schools. Note that the recommendations are clear that students in elementary school should not use generative AI themselves, but that generative AI can be a strong support for teachers at these grade levels. See the report for more detail, including examples and instructions.
Also this week, find more and more remarkable uses and applications of generative AI, including the development of replicas of our own personalities. Researchers at Google’s DeepMind suggest that after a two-hour interview with a chatbot, the chatbot can respond to personality questionnaires and tests with 85% accuracy. Looking to question yourself on a particular topic? Maybe one day you’ll be able to approximate it. What a wild, weird world we are entering — we may soon be able to have ourselves as our own assistants.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Positive and negative narratives surrounding generative AI (see the Feature for more)
TECH/AI: FEATURED
“A Manifesto For Teaching And Learning In A Time Of Generative AI”
“At this point in history, it is difficult to argue whether GenAI will ultimately be a disruptive or sustaining technology, a catalyst or blocker, or something else that we cannot foresee. However, its public emergence at the end of 2022 undeniably sparked substantial speculation, hype, and even hope. In such uncertain and speculative times, it is crucial to adopt a collective stance to effectively navigate the future; a goal the authors seek to achieve with this collective work. With this manifesto, we resist the uncritical acceptance of GenAI and instead seek to establish a balanced perspective by critically analyzing both its challenges and affordances.”
How To Use GenAI For Elementary Literacy Development
“At the elementary level, GenAI tools should be used primarily by teachers for lesson planning, preparation, and selective modeling… Until there is compelling evidence of positive impacts on learning through direct student interaction with GenAI tools at the elementary level, as well as adequate safeguards in place to completely eliminate the risk of exposure to inappropriate content, elementary teachers are advised to restrict GenAI use to their own workflows.”
TECH/AI: EDUCATION
Ethan And Lilach Mollick Offer Free Course On ChatGPT For Teaching
“Think-Pair-GenAI-Share”
“The process is mainly similar to a standard Think-Pair-Share (TPS), with an extra step and some additional, relevant reflection in the final stage.”
On Crowdsourcing Institutional AI Policies
“Writing Against AI” - A Critical Response To OpenAI’s Guide For Educators
School Decision Stands In Lawsuit Over Alleged Unclear AI Policy
TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK
TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
“ChatGPT’s Poetry Is Incompetent And Banal”
“The other striking characteristic, particularly obvious if you look at the whole collection, and still more so if you have engaged with traditional formal features of poetry, either as reader or writer, is the extremely limited technical toolbox that ChatGPT uses.”
TECH/AI: USES AND APPLICATIONS
AI Can Create A Replica Of Your Personality From A Two Hour Interview
“The system works by combining detailed interview transcripts with GPT-4o. When someone queries an agent, it loads the interview transcript into the model and instructs it to imitate the person based on their responses. To create these transcripts, the researchers conducted two-hour interviews with each participant and used OpenAI's Whisper model to convert the conversations to text.”
With Drones And AI, Researchers Double The Number Of Known Nazca Lines
"How The Largest Gathering Of US Police Chiefs Is Talking About AI”
“The hype focused on three uses of AI in policing. The flashiest was virtual reality, exemplified by the booth from V-Armed, which sells VR systems for officer training… The second focus was on the changing way police departments are collecting and interpreting data… Finally, as in other industries, AI is also coming for the drudgery of administrative tasks and reporting.”
AI Adoption Report - October, 2024
“Gen AI is still in the early phase. As with previous major advances in technologies (e.g., PCs, the Internet), Gen AI is currently being used to improve the efficiencies of business processes. It takes time for companies and industries to fully take advantage of the new tools, assess the right tools and platforms, and re-engineer their processes and develop new capabilities based on the new tech.”