Educator’s Notebook #450 (June 16, 2024)
INTRODUCTION
Summer Reading and Growth, Apple's AI Release, Managing Tech in Schools, Four Day Weeks, Revisiting History, and More
An excellent issue.
In the features, capping a growing rise of concern about social media and teens, the US Surgeon General recommends Congress approve a warning label on social media. This is the highest profile efforts to raise concerns about the correlation between the rise of social media and teen mental health. Also find a helpful primer on restorative justice in schools in the second feature piece.
Also this week, fund a healthy bit of writing about health use of tech in schools. Tech writing has recently focused enormously on AI, but in this issue, find a small surge in writing about other tech use cases.
More to the pace of the summer, enjoy the two articles in PD on ways to think about growth this summer. Time to read!
Last, these past several weeks have seen continued rapid movement in the AI space. See the AI section at the end for more.
Enjoy!
Peter
Pew Research
FEATURED
“Surgeon General Calls For Warning Labels On Social Media Platforms”
“The United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health.”
“Restorative Justice In Schools, Explained”
“Even as educators see an uptick in misbehavior, nearly half of teachers and administrators say their schools are using restorative justice practices more now than five years ago, according to a recent EdWeek Research Center survey. But the purest version of the restorative justice framework is hard to come by, said Allison Payne, a professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania who studies the practice… Here’s an overview of what restorative justice is and how it fits into the larger school system.”
ADOLESCENCE
“Boys Get Everything, Except The Thing That’s Most Worth Having”
“The statistics are starting to feel like their own cliché. Over a quarter of men under 30 say they have no close friends. Teenage boys now spend two hours less a week socializing than girls and they also spend about seven hours more per week than their female peers on screens.”
“85% of Teens Say They Play Video Games… 4 in 10 Do So Daily.”
CURRICULUM
“Should Voters Decide What Schools Teach?”
“As they choose a presidential candidate in the November election, California voters may also have an unusual opportunity to decide whether the state should add a new course to its high school graduation requirements. While supporters say the course is urgently needed, critics say the unusual step of putting curriculum-related issues directly to voters could prompt more such proposals—including the hot-button issues that have plagued many other states over the past three years.”
DIVERSITY/INCLUSION
“A School Board Reinstated Confederate School Names.”
How Some Schools Are Proceeding With AP African American Studies Even When The State Rejects It
ELEMENTARY
HIGHER ED
Many Colleges Are Approaching $100K/Year. How Much Do Families Actually Pay, By Income?
On Higher Education In A Context Of Scarcity
“Can Small, Struggling Colleges Survive?”
HUMANITIES
PD
Six Simple Ways To Think About Summer Growth As A Teacher
A Summer Reading List For Teachers And School Leaders
READING/WRITING
A Collection Of Email 1000+ Sign-Offs
“Simple Headlines Are Better”
“Harvard analysis reveals that online readers tend to avoid complexity.”
“Children Reading Fewer, Less Challenging Books”
SAFETY
STEM
The Excel World Championship Was Last Week
“I’d wager that if you wanted to see the most exciting drama happening at the MGM on this Friday night, you’d have to walk through the casino and look for the small sign advertising something called The Active Cell. This is the site of the play-in round for the Excel World Championship, and it starts in five minutes. There are 27 people here to take part in this event (28 registered, but one evidently chickened out before we started), which will send its top eight finishers to tomorrow night’s finals. There, one person will be crowned the Excel World Champion, which comes with a trophy and a championship belt and the ability to spend the next 12 months bragging about being officially the world’s best spreadsheeter. Eight people have already qualified for the finals; some of today’s 27 contestants lost in those qualifying rounds, others just showed up last-minute in hopes of a comeback.”
SUSTAINABILITY
Will Liquid Batteries Advance The Industry?
“As Solar Power Surges, US Wind Is In Trouble”
On the EV Charging Infrastructure
TECH
Your Breathing Probably Changes When You Are Looking At A Screen
How Some Schools Leverage Video Games For Better Student Outcomes
“More than half of teens who play video games say it helps with problem-solving skills, but many say it negatively impacts sleep.”
How Time On Digital Devices At School Correlates With PISA Math Performance
Ten Tips For Rolling Back Smartphone Use At Home
"How One Brooklyn High School Became A Minecraft Powerhouse”
“Four years ago, New York City officials created a citywide tournament called Battle of the Boroughs that allows public school students to compete in an annual Minecraft challenge. Students typically must submit projects — or “builds” in Minecraft parlance — following specific prompts that are supposed to get students thinking about principles of urban planning, sustainability, and community development to improve the city. As interest in the competition has grown, with about 500 submissions this year, the team at John Dewey has become a powerhouse.”
How Two Families Are Navigating Adolescence Offline
Establishing Proof of Impact With EdTech
“Certifications are an attempt to create accepted standards for edtech’s impact that can truly align the interests of companies, buyers, and end users. So, what types of certifications are out there and what do you need to know if you’re looking to engage with certifications for your edtech product? Let’s jump in!”
“The High Value Of Low-Tech Classes”
Being Good At “Civilization” [Video Game] Correlates With Managerial Skill?
WORKPLACE
“A Day In The Life Of [A] Middle School English Teacher”
On Pulse Surveys To Assess And Boost School Climate
EdWeek Releases “Teacher Morale Index”
“Teachers’ scores on the Teacher Morale Index show wide variation by the subject they teach… Teachers’ scores on the index varied widely depending on the stage of their careers.”
Here Is A Research Database For Studies On Four Day School Weeks
GENERAL
“The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Going To College”
“Benjamin B. Bolger has been to Harvard and Stanford and Yale. He has been to Columbia and Dartmouth and Oxford, and Cambridge, Brandeis and Brown. Over all, Bolger has 14 advanced degrees, plus an associate’s and a bachelor’s. Some of Bolger’s degrees took many years to complete, such as a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Others have required rather less commitment: low-residency M.F.A.s from Ashland University and the University of Tampa, for example.”
“2024 Drone Photo Awards Nominees”
A.I. Update
A.I. UPDATE
Student and Teacher AI Usage Surges, Google Makes Education-Specific Models, Apple Releases Their AI, and More
The featured articles in this issue focus on the detailed use of AI in individual feedback and tutoring situations. These will, inevitably, be the most common use case, and both research and the industry are progressing quickly.
Also this week, see the research from the Walton Family Foundation on AI adoption by students and teachers. This is the most recent research available, and it shows a rapid spike in use in education contexts. It’s time to get moving, folks.
Last, find helpful writing by Anthropic on AI safety mechanisms (Red Teaming) and how LLM designers should think about personality.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Asana
TECH/AI: FEATURED
A Detailed Look At The Viability Of AI Tutors
“This piece primarily breaks down how Google’s LearnLM was built, and takes a quick look at Microsoft/Khan Academy’s Phi-3 and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu as alternative approaches to building an “education model” (not necessarily a new model in the latter case, but we’ll explain). Thanks to the public release of their 86-page research paper, we have the most comprehensive view into LearnLM.”
ChatGPT Gives Almost Expert Feedback On Writing, And In Some Contexts, Better
“A team of researchers compared AI with human feedback on 200 history essays written by students in grades 6 through 12 and they determined that human feedback was generally a bit better. Humans had a particular advantage in advising students on something to work on that would be appropriate for where they are in their development as a writer. But ChatGPT came close… Most of these humans had taught writing for more than 15 years or they had considerable experience in writing instruction. All received three hours of training for this exercise plus extra pay for providing the feedback.”
TECH/AI: EDUCATION
Teachers Need To Be Critical About Adoption Of AI
“How To Use AI To Create Role-Play Scenarios For Your Students”
“Are We Just Grading Robots?” - Professors Wrestle With AI Essays
“Instead, he will assign less writing and less deep reading, because students’ work in that area is now difficult to assess. He will rely more on lectures and in-class, handwritten exams. “It’s going to force everybody to the lowest common denominator.” But he refuses, he says, “to waste a whole bunch of time just grading robots.””
“AI Is Getting Very Popular Among Students And Teachers, Very Quickly”
“Maybe most notable, the reviews from students are broadly positive. Seventy percent of K-12 students had a favorable view of AI chatbots. Among undergraduates, that rises to 75%. And among parents, 68% held favorable views of AI chatbots.”
Summary Of The Walton Family Foundation AI Usage Survey
“Americans have broadly positive views of AI and are using it at work and in their daily lives. 59% of teachers, 70% of K-12 students, 75% of undergraduate students, and 68% of K-12 parents have favorable views of AI chatbots. Around three-quarters in each group report having used AI chatbots either personally or at school/work. 46% of teachers, 51% of parents, 48% of K-12 students, and 46% of undergraduate students report using AI chatbots once a week or more.”
Detailed Breakdown Of Walton Family Foundation Survey
“The sample includes a total of N=1003 teachers, N=1001 K-12 students, N=1003 undergrads, and N=1000 parents. The teachers, K-12 students, and parents' samples were weighted to align with demographic estimates from the U.S. Census and undergraduates with demographic estimates from the National Center for Education Statistics.”
Google’s Full Paper On Designing LearnLM, For AI Tutoring
“Recent advances in generative AI (gen AI) have created excitement about the potential of new technologies to offer a personal tutor for every learner and a teaching assistant for every teacher. The full extent of this dream, however, has not yet materialised. We argue that this is primarily due to the difficulties with verbalising pedagogical intuitions into gen AI prompts and the lack of good evaluation practices, reinforced by the challenges in defining excellent pedagogy. Here we present our work collaborating with learners and educators to translate high level principles from learning science into a pragmatic set of seven diverse educational benchmarks, spanning quantitative, qualitative, automatic and human evaluations.”
TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK
"What is Red Teaming?”
“The Price Of Automating [AI] Ethics”
“If generative AI is truly good at one thing, it is tearing down the facade of a given practice and revealing how shoddy the foundation was to begin with. ChatGPT made many in education confront writing practices that produced rote outcomes. AI detection has done the same with how little work we put into teaching students what it means to use these new tools ethically. The last 18 months should send a clear message that teaching ethical behavior isn’t something we should automate.”
TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
Real Photograph Submitted To Contest For AI Generated Photos, Wins, Disqualified
““I entered this actual photo into the AI category of 1839 Awards to prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance, that Mother Nature and its human interpreters can still beat the machine, and that creativity and emotion are more than just a string of digits,” Astray wrote in a blog post."
Summary Of Apple’s Release Of Apple Intelligence
“What Should An AI’s Personality Be?”
AI Generated Music Wows Creators
Comparing The Landscape Of LLMs Today [Chart]
Ethan Mollick Reviews The Capabilities Of GenAI Tools Today (Song Included)
“Every six months or so, I write a guide to doing stuff with AI. A lot has changed since the last guide, while a few important things have stayed the same. It is time for an update. This is usually a serious endeavor, but, heeding the advice of Allie Miller, I wanted to start with a different entry point into AI: fun.”
“AI Generated Sound Effects Are Here”
TECH/AI: USES AND APPLICATIONS
What Happens When GenAI Is Used For Content Moderation?
Workplace Adoption Of GenAI Is Surging
“Daily users are 63% more likely to see AI as a teammate compared to monthly users. As people start using AI more, they don’t just consider what AI can do for them, but how to work with AI as a teammate to tackle highly-complex workflows.”
TECH/AI: GENERAL
Introducing “Slop” — AI Generated Spam
““Society needs concise ways to talk about modern A.I. — both the positives and the negatives,” he said. “‘Ignore that email, it’s spam,’ and ‘Ignore that article, it’s slop,’ are both useful lessons.””
Reflections On The Weird, Uncertain State Of Silicon Valley
“Is it the end of something? Is some era dead? Are we getting getting eaten? Is it time to build? I don’t know. The ocean is changing too quickly; the weather is too unfamiliar. The moment betrays buzzy headlines and showy predictions. Whatever gets made now will likely be upended two or three times before the sea settles down. The best reason to build a boat today may not be to make something that endures, but simply to be out on the ocean, for whenever it finds its rhythm again. Because the water is convulsing in weird ways, and you don’t fight the sea.”