🙋♂️ Recalculating, getting the right answers, AI detectors are a bust, and more - Of bits and bytes for January 2, 2024
Internet Travels
Welcome to 2024! I fully embraced the idea of Dead Week, working on several geeky projects strictly to satisfy my own curiosity and learn some things along the way. I set up a Ghost installation so I could compare it to WordPress, a chat server using Zulip, switched my About site to a Google site, tried another chat server with Matrix, installed GoatCounter for analytics, and wrote some code with the assistance of ChatGPT to create Google Slides from Markdown (not for the faint of heart to use!).
As far as the chat server and Ghost server go, I’m leaving them up for now to play around with. Feel free to create an account and play around. Let me know if you want to publish articles on the Ghost site. I can’t guarantee they’ll last past the end of January, but my new motto is Breaking things is half the fun.
Along the way I embraced my collection of DVDs and started re-watching The Simpson’s while gaming in my basement.
The fluorescent controller was a Christmas present, I think it fits right in
Such a good break. I’m ready to start the new year with gusto!
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Apps
I know it’s tough for teachers to deal with all of the AI text generators, but you can’t rely on any of the AI detectors. Additionally, there is anecdotal evidence that neurodivergent individuals’ writing can be flagged as AI generated such as this Professor accused of being AI bot due to neurodivergence and some reports of Autistic persons being mistaken for AI
There are a lot of school districts subscribed to Google Workspace and it’s good news that Google’s Bard is getting almost as good as Open AI’s ChatGPT.
Pedagogy
John Schinker always writes the most interesting articles, and Recalculating is right up there. Problem solving and critical thinking skills are some of the most important skills to learn.
Larry Ferlazzo posted his 9 Education Predictions for 2024 and number 7 is something I’ve been struggling with. It’s part of the reason I was looking at different chat software and blogging software over break. The biggest problem is not technical, it’s hitting Dunbar’s number, the fact that humans have a limit of about 150 friendships.
Dan Meyer stumbled onto Cunningham’s Law with his advice for helping students learn the right answers by asking for the wrong answers first.
Technology
What replaces X/Twitter? Well, with the issues of social media and youth mental health maybe the answer is… Nothing. People are not posting to social media as much as they have in the past h/t – Archive and now it could be that over 50% of users may shun social media by 2025.
Pop Culture
Seth Godin looks at change and fear and the fact that “It’s hard to tell a fad from a trend when you’re in the middle of it.”
Potpourri
One of my go to quotes when it comes to technology is one from Henry Ford, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”. Technology is difficult because it’s so fast, and “looking for the tool is the first step in finding it“
Things I learned this week: findings attributed to Pythagoras may have been discovered by his followers and then attributed to him. Researched discovered the Pythagorean Theorem on clay tablet 1,000 Years Older Than Pythagoras.
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