Monthly Archives: November 2023

Advice for everyone, and no one

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A frustrating if not comical aspect of social media are lists and advice that are so banal they actually hurt to watch or read. I just saw a content creator give her “Top 3 tips for getting back on track with your credit.”

This was to:

1. First create a budget. Stick to it. And update it regularly.

2. Make cutbacks to save at least 3 months worth of monthly income.

3. Only spend what you already have.

The worst part of this ‘great advice’ is that it was sponsored by a bank. This was basically a paid advertisement from a savings bank, spewing trite and wasting our time and attention.

Here’s my advice to quit smoking: Don’t buy cigarettes.

Here’s my advice to lose weight: Eat less, exercise more.

Here’s my advice to get more sleep: Go to bed earlier.

Here is my advice to giving advice: State the obvious and you’ll always be right!

…But the advice won’t be taken, because that’s not really advice. It’s hopes and dreams. It’s laudable, wishful thinking. It’s not actionable for anyone who the advice is directed at. I’m reminded of a Derek Sivers quote, “If information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

I don’t know too many billionaires with perfect abs, and facts disguised as advice won’t get you there either.

The silhouette

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I was a passenger in a car driving on an overpass downtown, and I saw a silhouette of a person sitting at their computer in front of their window.

A writer of novels completing a best seller.

A manager looking at the day’s accomplishments.

A YouTube watcher waiting for Uber Eats to arrive.

A lonely person FaceTiming mom.

A work from home entrepreneur talking to a mentor or mentee.

A holiday planner booking their next flight.

A silhouette of a person on a computer, alone in a room. 1,000’s of possible stories, each one of them a momentary reality, and then the thought, the moment is gone. Just the silhouette remains.

Idiots, cruelty, and kindness

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Sometimes I hear something and I think, ‘I wish I said that’. This video ends that way. It doesn’t start that way, I almost stopped listening, but I’m glad I waited past the comedy to get to the real message.

“Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being.”

And so,

“…the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

Prove your intelligence. Be kind.

AI is Coming… to a school near you.

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Miguel Guhlin asked on LinkedIn:

“Someone asked these questions in response to a blog entry, and I was wondering, what would YOUR response be?

1. What role/how much should students be using AI, and does this vary based on grade level?

2. What do you think the next five years in education will look like in regards to AI? Complete integration or total ban of AI?”

I commented:

1. Like a pencil or a laptop, AI is a tool to use sometimes and not use other times. The question is about expectations and management.

2. Anywhere that enforces a total ban on AI is going to be playing a never-ending and losing game of catch-up. That said, I have no idea what total integration will look like? Smart teachers are already using AI to develop and improve their lessons, those teachers will know that students can, and both will and should, use these tools as well. But like in question 1… when it’s appropriate. Just because a laptop might be ‘completely integrated’ into a classroom as a tool students use doesn’t mean everything they do in a classroom is with and on a laptop.

—

I’ve already dealt with some sticky issues around the use of AI in a classroom and online. One situation last school year was particularly messy, with a teacher using Chat GPT as an AI detector, rather than other AI detection tools. It turns out that Chat GPT is not a good AI detector. It might be better now, but I can confirm that in early 2023 it was very bad at this. I even put some of my own work into it and I had Chat GPT tell me that a couple paragraphs were written by it, even though I wrote the piece about 12 years earlier.

But what do we do in the meantime? Especially in my online school where very little, if any, work is supervised? Do we give up on policing altogether and just let AI do the assignments as we try to AI proof them? Do we give students grades for work that isn’t all theirs? How is that fair?

This is something we will figure out. AI, like laptops, will be integrated into education. Back in 2009 I presented on the topic, “The POD’s are Coming!”

(Slideshow here) About Personally Owned Devices… laptop etc… coming into our classrooms, and the fear of these devices. We are at that same point with AI now. We’ll get through this and our classrooms will adapt (again).

And in a wonderful full-circle coincidence, one of the images I used in the POD’s post above was a posterized quote by Miguel Guilin.

It’s time to take the leap. AI might be new… but we’ve been here before.

1.5 billion beats

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I just started a new audio book, Scale, by Geoffrey West. I learned that almost all life forms have an average of about 1.5 billion heartbeats in their lives. Mice have faster heart rates, and die sooner as a result. Turtles and whales live over 100 years with their slower heartbeats. But fast or slow, it seems animals end up with about the same number of beats if they live a full life.

I find statistics like this fascinating. How is it that this is a constant when so many other factors come into play, and when so many evolutionary traits went in different directions? Trunks, blow holes, shells, horns, fins, arms, wings, marsupial tails, all evolve with different purposes, but our many sized hearts all give our different species the same amount of beats.

We may not have the same appendages, we may be all different sizes and shapes, and we all have different amount of time on this planet… but all our mechanical clocks tick the same number of times. Amazing!

(Re)stacking habits

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I used to wake up, write a blog post, meditate for 10 minutes, and work out, all before getting in the shower around 6:45-7am. I used the Atomic Habits strategy of stacking my habits one-after-the-other so that I reduced a lot of friction in my mornings. I’d start writing and the rest of the stacked habits just happened one after the other.

A couple things happened to change this. I have been spending more time writing, stopped meditating, and started spending more time stretching. However, it was the writing time that was the big change since both the meditation and stretching were both 10 minutes long. What I’ve noticed is that my workouts and stretching are getting shorter.

So, I need to unstack my current habits. I need to write most or all of my posts at night, then I can start my morning with meditation, cardio, stretch, then a strength routine dedicated to one or two muscles, which is my usual routine. Essentially I’m not really unstacking my habits, I’m re-stacking them in a way that they give me the outcomes I want without compromising any of them at the expense of others… I just changed the title of this post from ‘Unstacking habits’ to ‘(Re)stacking habits’… Because stacking works, but it needs to work for all the habits, not just some of them.

As a good friend said, I won’t know how well this works until I try it for at least a couple weeks, because a few days aren’t long enough for a pattern to be formed, for a habit to truly become a habit. Let’s see how this goes. If I remember, I’ll give a progress report some time later this month.

Asimov’s Robot Visions

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I’m listening to Isaac Asimov’s book, Robot Visions on Audible. Short stories that center around his Three Laws of Robotics (Asimov’s 3 Laws).

• The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

• The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

• The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These short stories all focus on ways that these laws can go wrong, or perhaps awry is the better term. There are a few things that make these stories insightful but they are also very dated. The early ones were written in the 1940’s and the conventions of the time, including conversational language and sexist undertones, are blatantly exposed as ‘olde’.

It also seems that Asimov made 2 assumptions worth thinking about: First that all robots and Artificial Intelligence would be constructed with the 3 laws at the core of all intelligence built into these machines. Many, many science fiction stories that followed also use these laws. However creators of Large Language Models like Chat GPT are struggling to figure out what guard rails to put on their AI to prevent it from acting maliciously when meeting sometimes scrupulous human requests.

Secondly, a few of the stories include a Robopsychologist, that’s right, a person (always female) who is an expert in the psychology of robots. There would be psychologists whose sole purpose would be to get inside the minds of robots.

Asimov was openly concerned with AI, specifically robots, acting badly, endangering humans, and even following our instructors too literally and with undesirable consequences. But he thought his 3 laws was a good start. Perhaps they are but they are just a start. And with new AI’s coming out with more computing power, more training, and less restrictions, I think Asimov’s concerns may prove prophetic.

The guard rails are off and there is no telling what unexpected consequences and results we will see in the coming months and years.

The task of education today

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This quote was shared with us in our Principals meeting yesterday:

“This is the task of education today: to confront the almost unimaginable design challenge of building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition. This challenge brings us face to face with the importance of education for humanity and the basic questions that structure education as a human endeavor.” ~Zachary Stein

One of our Assistant Superintendent’s added, “We are trying to build a utopian society in triage conditions.”

There is no doubt that it is much harder to be an educator today than it was when I started my career over 25 years ago. And as we navigate ‘building an education system that provides for the re-creation of civilization during a world system transition,’ we are bound to struggle a bit. How do we mark assignments that are written or co-written by AI? What skills are going to be needed for the top jobs of 2030? How different will that be for 2040?

Ultimately we want to support the education of students who will become kind, contributing citizens. But how do we do this in a world where Truth seems arbitrary to the sources you get it from, and politicians, religion, and corporations are all pushing conflicting information and agendas? I think this goes beyond just working on competencies like critical thinking. It requires mental gymnastics that most adults struggle with.

Meanwhile, the majority of school schedules still put students into blocks of time based on the subjects they are learning. “Let’s think critically, and do challenging problems, but only in this one narrow field of study.” We aren’t meeting the design challenges we face today if that’s what we continue to do.

More than ever students, future citizens, need to understand complex issues from multiple perspectives. They need to understand nuance, and navigate when to defend an idea, when to compromise, and when to avoid engagement altogether. They need to be prepared to say “I don’t know,” and then do the hard work of finding out, when the accuracy of information is incomplete or even suspect. They need to be prepared to say, “I was wrong,” and “I am sorry,” and also be prepared to stick to their convictions and defend ideas that aren’t always the accepted norm.

That’s not the future I prepared students for 25 years ago. It is indeed an ‘almost unimaginable design challenge‘, and as we navigate new challenges we have to recognize that mistakes will be made… but not changing is far scarier than trying.

Left unsaid

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I was having a conversation with my daughter yesterday and I mentioned a podcast I was listening to with Dr. Daniel Amen. The point I shared with her was how Dr. Amen talks about killing ANTs… Automatic Negative Thoughts. My daughter liked that idea and added something she has been working on, which is, “Don’t let a positive thought go unsaid.”

I really like this idea and think I’m going to work on the same.

How often do we complain about bad customer service, but we just appreciate good customer service, yet leave those thoughts unsaid?

How often do we get frustrated with a loved one or a coworker who doesn’t do what we expect them to do, but don’t really value them when they do a little extra?

How often do we focus on ANTs, but leave our positive thoughts unsaid?

Do it well

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How long will it take… to do it well?

What resources do you need… to do it well?

Who can help you… to do it well?

What can you put off… so that you do it well?

Some jobs just need to get done, others should only be done if they are done well. The work is rewarded with a job well done. So give it the time, put in the resources, get the support you need, and put forward an honest, concerted effort… to do it well.