Monthly Archives: January 2024

What are you outsourcing?

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Alec Couros recently came to Coquitlam and gave a presentation on “The Promise and Challenges of Generative AI”. In this presentation he had a quote, “Outsource tasks, but not your thinking.”

I just googled it and found this LinkedIn post by Aodan Enright. (Worth reading but not directly connected to the use of AI.)

It’s incredible what is possible with AI… and it’s just getting better. People are starting businesses, writing books, creating new recipes, and in the case of students, writing essays and doing homework. I just saw a TikTok of a student who goes to their lecture and records it, runs it through AI to take out all the salient points, then has the AI tool create cue cards and test questions to help them study for upcoming tests. That’s pretty clever.

What’s also clever, but perhaps now wise, is having an AI tool write an essay for you, then running the essay through a paraphraser that breaks the AI structure of the essay so that it isn’t detectable by AI detectors. If you have the AI use the vocabulary of a high school student, and throw in a couple run-on sentences, then you’ve got an essay which not only AI detectors but teachers too would be hard pressed to accuse you of cheating. However, what have you learned?

This a worthy point to think about, and to discuss with students: How do you use AI to make your tasks easier, but not do the thinking for you? 

Because if you are using AI to do your thinking, you are essentially learning how to make yourself redundant in a world of ever-smarter AI. Don’t outsource your thinking… Keep your thinking cap on!

The right tool for the job

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Last weekend’s Coquitlam Crunch walk was cold. We were the only ones in the parking lot at 8:30am.

We walked about 1/3 the way up then we put on our grip-on cleats, and the cold air was a lot more difficult for me to tackle compared to the actual walking conditions. Still, we usually do the walk in 55 to 56 minutes and it took us 1 hour. A four minute difference.

Today was another story. It started the same with just us in the parking lot, but the lot was very slushy and slippery and so Dave and I put our over-shoe cleats on right away.

Walking conditions this time were much harder to tackle. One thing that added to the challenge was that we had to stop at least 10 times for Dave to adjust his cleats, which kept slipping off of his shoes. I don’t think Strava counted all the adjustment stops because when I stopped my timer it said 1 hour and 14 minutes, but it saved the time as 1 hour and 11 minutes.

That’s a significantly slower time due to the slippery, slushy conditions. We don’t mind, it wasn’t a race, and we love the opportunity to be together, get some exercise, and also feel the accomplishment of ‘just doing it’ even when conditions are less than favourable. But one thing that was quite clear was that my cleats provided a much better experience than Dave’s. In essence, my cleats were a tool that I used, but didn’t have to think about, didn’t have to manage. I put them on at the start, they did their job, and I took them off at the end. Dave’s cleats needed his attention. They took away from the flow of the experience… they interrupted our walk.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a big deal, it didn’t ruin or walk or anything like that, they simply required our attention. On the way down Dave suggested that we think about a metaphor for the experience and the best one we came up with was, “Sometimes it’s worth getting a great tool instead of accepting and tolerating the use of a good tool.”

The cleats I own were just $21 on Amazon, and a few dollars more than the ones Dave has. The cost difference isn’t much, but the experience is so much better. Unfortunately after our walk last week, I forgot to share the link with Dave until yesterday, so he’ll get his by Monday and be ready for next week, but they didn’t come in time for today’s walk.

It’s a good lesson to think about though. Sometimes we just use a tool because it’s the one we have, the one we’ve always used, or the one that is easy to access, rather than seeking the best tool for the job. Sometimes it’s worth the time and research, and/or the extra cost, to get a tool that does the job extremely well… and reduce the challenges of using a less than ideal tool.

In the grand scheme of things, we’ll probably only need these cleats 1-3 more times this entire year, and if Dave stuck with his, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But there are things in our lives that we readily tolerate that could become ‘invisible’ and require less of our time, energy, focus, and attention… working seamlessly because we have found the right tool for the job.

BIG Question Institute Webinar on Inquiry Hub

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Here is the video from the BIG Question Institute Webinar teachers John Sarte, Al Soiseth, and I did on our school, Inquiry Hub Secondary. (On Vimeo)

Here is the comment I wrote on the webinar recording page on the BIG Questions Institute site.

Thanks for the opportunity to share Will, it was great to connect.
Here are a few links that we were going to share that we didn’t get to on the final slide:
http://Educators.inquiryhub.org – Created for the Cmolik award, which we lost out to Peter Liljedahl, mentioned in the webinar.

And our school YouTube page, which includes the ‘How far will you go’ student created video I mentioned.

And a couple posts I’d like to share… the ‘Teacher as Compass’ post that it turns out you prompted with a Tweet… and my ‘Learning and Failure’ post. We didn’t really get to this in the presentation, but one of the things I’m most proud about at our school is how we teach students to embrace would be failures as learning opportunities from which to grow and improve.

Thanks also to all who attended. Happy to share other resources such as our Inquiry courses.
Dave

As always, feedback appreciated, either here or on the BIG QI page.

Every learner is a hero

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Yesterday Inquiry Hub teacher John Sarte and I did a webinar with Will Richardson. In it, we shared the ‘Every Learner is a Hero’ whiteboard model we’ve been developing. I realize that this was drawn over 2 years ago and yet this was the first time we shared it in full.

There is a lot here, and John and I will share more, but here are some ideas on this whiteboard that I’ve already shared:

  1. The metaphor of Teacher as Compass – Think also of ‘Teacher as Guide’.
  2. The relationship between Learning and Failure , which involves re-examining the term failure.

It’s about more than just Transforming our Classrooms…

It’s about creating a place for students to Dream, Create, and Learn… where student voice isn’t just about students presenting, but also about them helping to develop and create the learning spaces and experiences they want.

Students should be the heroes of their own learning journeys… after all it’s their learning that really matters.

 

Get out the shovel

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I’m not doing my usual exercise this morning. Instead, Ill be heading out to shovel my driveway as my morning physical activity. After spending months with a herniated disc last year, I don’t plan on pushing myself with a weights workout before tackling the snow. I already know that I’ll be continuing with the shovelling when I get to school this morning too.

I’m not a fan of the snow, I make that pretty clear quite often. I am a warm blooded Bajan who would rather sweat than feel chilled any day. But I don’t mind shovelling snow. I put on a lot of layers of clothing. I also put on headphones and listen to a podcast and get into a rhythm where the work becomes a series of meditative motions. I even like the sound of the shovel scraping against the ground. And finally, it’s rewarding to see what you’ve accomplished.

I don’t think I’d like it as much if it snowed every day, but where I live I end up shovelling snow a maximum of 10 days in a year… usually a little less than that. So, I’ll get the shovel out and plug away without complaint, and admittedly, I’ll kind of enjoy it… And I just found out it’s a district wide snow day! I still have to get myself to school, but everyone else gets the day to stay at home… that’s ok, too. I hope to get a lot done today… after the shovelling!

 

into the dark

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I drove home from work well after dark last night. It’s 7am and it’s pitch black outside. I saw the sun out my window yesterday just before lunch, and that was the only natural light I really saw for the day. At least we could see the sun, there were quite a few days last week where you didn’t know where in the sky the sun was, because the cloud cover was too heavy.

I know I left Barbados at the young age of 9. I know that most of my life has been spent with winter days being short and dark. Still, I just can’t get used to it. I want to live somewhere that the shortest day of the year is still over 11 hours. Yes, it got dark shortly after dinner every day in Barbados. Yes, that’s a stark difference from summer nights here, when we can still see the sun in the sky after 9pm. But that consistency of seeing the sun every day, the wonderful experience of having it be bright and clear… and warm… every morning, this is something I wish I had.

I don’t think I’d ever end up living full time anywhere except Canada, but when I retire I’m going to do my best not to be in the dark for January and February. I am going to seek out holidays that are filled with long, bright, warm days. These short, cold, dark winter days are really not my thing.

Join our webinar this coming Wednesday

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This Wednesday, Jan 17 at 4pm PST, please join us to learn about Inquiry Hub Secondary School.  I’m looking forward to connecting with Will Richardson again, I’ve followed him and been influenced by his thinking since I started blogging in 2006. When he suggested connecting for a webinar I knew that I wanted a teacher with me, and who better then my colleague John Sarte. John is a founding teacher at Inquiry Hub, and he has been truly instrumental in developing the vision of our school, and helping us create our unique learning environment. Here are the webinar details, I hope that you can join us!

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FREE WEBINAR: “Inquiry Hub: The Dream, Create, Learn School” with Dave Truss and Dr. John Sarte – Hosted by Will Richardson

Details

Join us for this important overview of a compelling school model that highlights the power of project-based learning.

Inquiry Hub is a small Coquitlam School District (BC) high school that is unique in its approach and delivery. Known as the Dream – Create – Learn school, Inquiry Hub was born out of the idea that students don’t need to spend every minute of their day siloed into individual courses, without any unstructured time. It has evolved into a community of students who work both together and individually to complete the required curriculum while also designing some of their courses and their day around inquiries and passion projects that they want to pursue.

Grade 9’s and 10’s do cross-curricular projects using SCRUM project management, collaborating to get work done efficiently and effectively, and they also take an Inquiry Course designed around developing strong presentation skills and documenting their learning journeys, doing passion projects that they design. Grade 11’s and 12’s construct year-long IDS – Independent Directed Studies courses where they delve deep into their interests.

A key component of the program is DCL time, coined after the Dream – Create – Learn motto, where students are not in a structured class, but rather have unstructured time to work on their class projects, homework and assignments, and/or on their passion projects. Central to this is creating a community of learners who are eager to help each other and who have learned that failure is part of learning. Projects can be too big, too challenging, too overwhelming, but still result in a final product or presentation that exceeds expectations.

Wednesday, Jan 17 – 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PST

RSVP now to join us for this important session with principal Dave Truss and teacher Dr. John Sarte.  (You’ll need a free membership to Will Richardson’s Big Questions Institute Community to RSVP and join us.)

Not so techie

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I’ve shared before about how I’m not as tech savvy as most people think. The reality is that I’m just willing to spend a lot of time getting to the bottom of an issue, and so my savviness has more to do with patience than with prowess. That said, I’m getting very frustrated with the technology challenges that seem to be coming my way that I can’t solve. A couple days ago the WordPress App stopped working. I could no longer save anything on it and so I couldn’t write posts on my phone. I deleted and re-installed the app, I tried logging in with my back-up access account, and then I gave up and finally moved to the Jetpack App that I have been begrudgingly avoiding. I didn’t want to make the switch because it forces block editing, which I think is clunky and works against me, rather than helping me with my writing. Now that app won’t work with my blog either. Maybe that’s a good thing because I wanted to write on my laptop rather than phone, so this might be the push that I needed.

Still, this wasn’t my only technology challenge this week or today. My wife is with her parents and her dad can’t access his Shaw mail. It’s an issue on his computer because my wife can access it on her phone and I can access it on my computer, so it has to be an issue with his machine. But the account uses web-based access and I suggested updating Chrome, and then we tried Firefox and while he can log into the account, he can’t click on any of the items in his inbox to read them on either web browser. The fact that I’m trying to give support over Facetime doesn’t make it an easier. I have Teamviewer (to take over a computer remotely) on my mother-in-law’s computer, but not on my father-in-laws, and while I’ll set that up soon, I didn’t feel like doing that for what I thought was a minor issue, and with my wife there, the support itself went fast, even if we couldn’t figure out the issue.

So here is my little rant, why does it seem that there are a lot more things breaking rather than working these days? I have to manually share my blog posts on social media because the tools I try to use (and have even paid for) don’t seem to work consistently. My wife gets a new phone and I spend a week updating issues that come up that were not a problem with the old phone. I upload a new plugin (after the issue with the WordPress login – yes I thought about that being an issue already), and it takes an hour to move from the free version to the paid one. I get stuck on a technical issue and google searchers seem less helpful than they used to. I buy a new toaster oven and the extra features make it harder to use and less convenient than the old one. I can’t decide if I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, or if things are being made less convenient and harder to repair?

In any event, I’m not feeling so techie right now. I seem to be coming across issues that are too hard for me to fix, and my patience is thinning. Cue the memes about old people not understanding technology… I hope that’s not me despite my little rant.

Seizing Moments

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to have lunch with my admin team. Now when I say that I’m talking about 3 ‘teammates’ that do not work in the same building as me. So when we can get together and enjoy a meal it’s a special moment. The moment was made that much more special because two of the three people I met are moving on… one to a new position, and the other one retiring. Then, after work, I connected with some other administrators for a wellness gathering. It was wonderful to spend that time connecting with colleagues that I don’t always see during my typical work week. And when I came home, my wife and I had a wonderful evening together. We both seem to have a little more energy than we usually do on a Friday night. It was a fun night of laughter and conversation.

This morning I did the Coquitlam crunch with my buddy, and while it was cold and early, and we were the only ones in the parking lot, it was a ‘seize the moment kind’ of opportunity. This was our 120th Crunch since we started 3 years ago in January 2020. My buddy suggested that the title of this post should be “Just Do It”, and that was the initial plan, but my thoughts go a little beyond that this afternoon.

After our walk and coffee shop social, I went home and said bye to my wife and helped her pack the car to head over to the island to visit her parents. Then my daughter called and asked for a ride because she spent an anniversary night out with her boyfriend and they were heading home from downtown. After dropping her boyfriend at his house, my daughter and I decided to go and enjoy a sushi lunch at a wonderful restaurant. I can’t express how wonderful it is to have grown-up kids who still look forward to a meal with their father (and yes, especially when he’s paying).

Now I am sitting in my hot tub, penning my ideas using voice to text, and even enjoying a little visit for my cat.

Visits with colleagues, chats with my wife, walks with friends, meals with family, and hot tubs on a cold winter day, these are all small little moments individually… But weave them together, and they make for an absolutely wonderful life.

We sometimes go headlong into work, and bury ourselves in busyness, not realizing that we don’t have to put everything on hold until our next vacation, or gathering with family or friends. Tiny moments, planned, and unplanned, are the moments we need to seek and enjoy.

Standstill

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The snow came later than expected. The temperature drop was expected, but the timing was perfect to create chaos in a city with limited snow removal capability.

I live on a hill, and last night my wife and I couldn’t get home. She spent hours stuck in traffic. I was at work quite late and when I left I made 3 attempts to get up the hill. The first and third attempts were blocked by firefighters, redirecting traffic away from the hill. The second attempt involved watching cars slide down two different hills that I was forced to avoid, finally finding my way back down to the main road my school is on.

I did a u-turn at the last attempt and ended up going to a Pho restaurant a block from my school for a warm, slow dinner. Then the main hill that I use going directly up from my school was open and I had an uneventful drive home. That’s not nearly as bad an experience as my wife being in the car for over 3 hours, mostly standing still and waiting, and finally having to go several kilometres out of her way to approach our house from the opposite end.

Still, we were more lucky than the cars that slid uncontrollably into each other on some of the hills we couldn’t get up. (That’s the hill that would have been my 4th attempt to go up, had I not u-turned and headed back to my school).

Our neighbourhood is very hilly, and we end up having events like this once or twice a year. What brings our city to a standstill though is not snow, it’s ice. It’s conditions where the snow comes, it gets compacted by cars, and then the temperature fluctuates above then below zero to liquify and then refreeze the compacted snow into sheets of ice. Hills, ice, and traffic don’t play well together.

This morning I won’t be trying to drive down the hill I came up last night. I’ll drive over to the main road that I know will be cleared since it is a major artery for traffic… (even though that’s the hill that had the most havoc last night). I’ll get to work earlier than usual and make sure the parking lot is safe. But I’m lucky that my school is on the bottom of the hill, closer to the river, and likely not as icy and snow-covered as some of our schools that get much more snow than us. Hopefully the chaos of last night is over.