Time and space for learning

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In the past few weeks I’ve seen a few videos about schools in the US where students doing 2-3 hours of AI guided learning are outperforming most other schools.

This report really excited me to see:

Going forward Teachers (or Guides) are going to have such important roles to play as AI ‘covers’ the required curriculum with student focused just-in-time learning. Then the teachers will work on life skills and competencies, and enriching student-focused passions.

Two questions to focus on:

  1. What is the core curriculum?
  2. What competencies do we want to foster in all students?

Beyond that, it’s really about creating the time and space for students to be guided while they pursue their interests and passions.

When AI covers the curriculum the role of educators for the rest of the school day really gets innovative and exciting.

Our inability to rationalize the irrational

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I found a letter to the editor that my dad wrote on September 13th, 2001,

In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack a few days ago, there seems to be a perception that the U.S. intelligence community had been completely unprepared for the magnitude of its ferocity and destruction.

The incomprehensible fanaticism motivating a large number of individuals prepared to commit their lives to such a suicidal and barbaric undertaking. presumably may have been considered an inconceivable scenario by intelligence strategists.

Nonetheless, the unthinkable has happened – which demonstrates clearly our inability to rationalize the irrational.

Abraham Truss, Scarborough (Ontario, Canada)

It was published on September 16th in The Toronto Star, page A12 in the Editorials and Letters section, changing only the opening sentence to clarify, “In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack in New York City last Tuesday…

The last sentence is chilling to me: “Nonetheless, the unthinkable had happened – which demonstrates clearly our inability to rationalize the irrational.”

As we approach 24 years after 9/11, it seems as though we are still committing irrational acts, and we are still incapable of rationalizing them. The news is filled with contrived rationalizations, profiles of killers, talking head debates, and biased perspectives inventing rhyme and reason for irrational acts. Reasons we search for, but are clearly unable to meaningfully comprehend. And still the irrational behaviours continue…

Going home

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It doesn’t matter that I’m 57 years old and have lived in a different province for 32 years… visiting mom is ‘coming home’. For the week leading up to my visit I had to keep correcting myself. I’d say, “I’m going home to my parents.” It has been over two years since dad died, but ‘home to parents’ is still my default.

I’m not in the house I grew up in. I’ve only ever slept on a couch here. But I still call visiting mom, ‘home’.

I don’t think that will ever change.

Brilliance lost

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I’m visiting my mom with a huge task at hand. She will be moving soon and needs to downsize drastically. When my dad passed away a couple years ago I had to go through boxes and boxes of files. I reduced hundreds of boxes down to 8 that I kept. What did I think was worth keeping?

My dad was a brilliant man, genius level, with all the quirks that come along with Asperger’s level exceptionalism. He was a kind of mad scientist who came up with brilliant ideas that actually worked… he just never had the business acumen or any luck in getting these ideas to market.

I’m trying to document what I can (scanning his notes) to record two key concepts:

  1. A patent to extract platinum from catalytic converters and electronic waste. This was proven to work effectively with a grant from The Ontario Research Foundation or ORTEC.
  2. A diesel additive that mixed water and diesel to a perfect solution, and ran more efficiently than diesel alone. Dad experimented on old trucks and 2-stroke engines with his additive adding 10-25% efficiency, with higher efficiencies in older motors.

Both of these involve science well beyond my understanding and I’m struggling to decide what’s worth copying.

Then I come up to other ideas like a nuclear powered plane that he shared with the military. I have no idea what to do with this? I took a picture of a few pages, then I realized I just can’t keep this all. It would take me days and days to copy it all and nothing will ever come of it.

He had so many brilliant ideas and it’s just sad to see them disappear. But I don’t have 15 days to copy everything and sort it all in a meaningful way. I’ll be hard pressed even to copy everything for the two inventions above.

So back I go to try to archive this stuff as best as I can… hoping that some day someone can actually use his ideas rather than for his brilliance simply to disappear forever.

Old jokes, new format

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Build it and they will Like, Follow, and Share… the newest craze to hit the internet is nothing more than a rehashing of old ideas in a new format. By now everyone has seen the Bigfoot videos where an AI Bigfoot is doing a selfie vlog and telling jokes as well as doing ridiculous antics. If you haven’t seen them, Google ‘Bigfoot Vlog’ and they will show up in droves. I’ve notice a few things. While a few of them are refreshingly funny, most of them rehash really old jokes, many of which are based on racism, sexism, or tropes that have all been done before. It’s literally just old jokes in a new format.

But they work. They get the click, likes, and shares. They are going viral. And they are creating copycats that are now doing the same thing, using AI, but with people rather than Bigfoot. Videos that are mostly 100% realistic and yet still sit somewhere in the uncanny valley of almost right, yet not fully. And again, just rehashing old content in a new format.

Expect a lot more of this. Also expect world crisis to be leveraged for the same attention. You’ll see bombing in the middle east that’s actually just AI video. You’ll hear government leaders and celebrities saying outlandish things, except it won’t really be them. You’ll see alien landings, meteor landings, and even plane crashes that didn’t happen but were rather prompted into video reality.

When we get tired of the jokes, we’ll just start to get fooled more and more by AI drama that is invented to draw our attention. But for now, the jokes will come. They will get more inappropriate and cross lines a person wouldn’t with a video of themselves. And as attention wanes they will get more extreme, more tasteless, and so abundant that we’ll just be tired of them… as I am already tiring of them.

Holidays and routines

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I know that the reason I fit my meditation, writing, and fitness regimen into my day is because I wake up early and because I have a routine that I maintain. In fact the idea of routine maintenance is normally a bit of an oxymoron for me because when I’m running my routine there is no maintenance required. My alarm goes off and my routine begins. No maintenance needed. No motivation needed… It all just gets done.

Then comes a holiday and suddenly the routines are out the window. Now I need to think about when I’m going do the things that I normally do without thought or effort. And since thinking, effort, and motivation are all required, it all gets a lot harder to do.

There is the running joke that if you need to get something done, give it to a busy person. Well, that sums up my routine tasks. Give me a small window and say, ‘All this needs to be done in this short time,’ and I get it done. Give me a whole morning to do the same, and it will take me all morning. Parkinson’s Law in effect: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”

So now as I start thinking about enjoying my summer I’m also thinking about routine maintenance… something I normally don’t usually have to think about at all.

It should be getting easier, but it isn’t

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Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we live in the 21st-century. It should be getting easier, but it isn’t. All of our schools just got new photocopy machines, and there is a one hour video tutorial to learn how to use them. More videos and instructions are required, if you are the one who is doing any kind of basic maintenance like replacing the toner.

Related to this, when was the last time you bought a new TV and you instantly knew how to use the remote? I find incredible irony that there is nothing universal about a universal remote control. I don’t know, call me crazy, but I would think that in this day and age the tools we use would get simpler to use, not more complicated.

Borrow a friend’s car and try to fill the gas tank and you’re left puzzled as to where the release is for the gas tank’s door. Go to the gas station and there’s a process to get your rewards card punched in, because you don’t have room in your wallet for 17 rewards program cards. Try to connect your phone to that same borrowed car, and you’re worried that you’re going to have to cancel another users profile. Or you are faced with a touch screen menu that just doesn’t make intuitive sense.

How is it that the user interface of almost everything we do now is more complicated than necessary? Why is it that every single place we go to online we’re expected to login or create an account, or at the very least close one or two pop-up invitations to do so? i’m looking at a website for 30 seconds, to find out one piece of information, do I really need to decide whether or not I want to accept cookies?

My microwave has a touch dial where I have to spin my finger in a circle to get to the appropriate time. I don’t think I can ever hit the time I want without toggling back-and-forth. This takes me significantly longer than if I had to punch three number keys on a touchpad and hit ‘Start’. There is nothing convenient about this. And that’s my point…

We live in an era when things should be getting a lot easier, user interfaces should be intuitive and natural to use, but instead everything seems to be getting a little more difficult. I just don’t get it.

Happy Canada Day

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I’m not going to watch fireworks tonight.

I haven’t done anything uniquely Canadian.

I’m not wearing red and white, and I’m not waving a flag.

That said, I’m a proud Canadian. An immigrant who calls this land home. And at this time I feel uniquely free compared to living south of our border.

On top of that, I actually had a medical test today that would have cost me hundreds or thousands of dollars down south, and it only cost me $7.50 in parking.

No, I may not be celebrating Canada Day out in the open today, I’m only having a small backyard bbq with family. That doesn’t mean that Canada Day isn’t special… because it is.

To all the proud Canadians out there, Happy Canada Day!

The stretch

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A few days ago I did something I’ve never been able to do. I stood up, bent over at the waist, and was able to not just touch my toes, but touch the floor. I just stopped writing this to try again just now and I wasn’t even close. The difference is that I did a good 10 minute stretch before the time I actually achieved this.

I’ll try again today after I’m warmed up. I have been stretching my hamstrings more than usual for quite a few months to get to this point. But I am probably years away from being able to touch my toes ‘cold’, without any warm up. Yet I am still appreciative of the gains I have made.

In every aspect of life, it’s good to stretch yourself!

The picture tells the story

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Friday was the last day of school, and while I had a good weekend before heading back in to work to clean things up, I felt very unmotivated. When I saw this image shared by a friend and coworker, I knew I had to share it too.

There is a saying, “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

Summer holidays always start very slow for me because suddenly I have time… the time that I said I wish I had, to do all the things I wish I could do. For me that’s more daunting than exciting. I have routines that automate a lot of the things I want to get done. Remove the routine, remove the automation, and suddenly everything takes effort, everything takes motivation, and motivation is harder to maintain than good habits.

So, I’ll go into a bit of a dip. I’ll struggle just to get the usual stuff done, despite having more time. Then I’ll adjust and it will all get better. But I’ve learned to give myself some slack and just slack off for a bit first. And that’s what this weekend was all about.