Tag Archives: education

Two wolves, 15 years later

The memory dates back 30 years, to the summer of 1993. The original writing dates back 15 years, a reflection on Remembrance Day 2008.

It’s one of my favourite pieces I’ve ever written, and it seems more relevant today than it did 15 years ago. I fear that we are farther away from peace in the Middle East than we have been since the 6 Day War of ’67, the summer before I was born. I wish there was a peaceful way forward, but I don’t see it. The good wolf is going hungry.

I’m not 100% sure the ‘two wolves’ story is Cherokee, and it’s sometimes shared as being told by a grandmother, not a grandfather. No matter the origin, it is the perfect backdrop to my post, and it speaks to the idea that these themes are nothing new to humanity. Unfortunately we don’t truly learn from our mistakes, and so history repeats itself… I hope that enough people will feed the good wolf that maybe, just maybe, we can find ways to live and love in harmony, rather than focus on hate, anger, and our differences in a way that make us act more like animals, and less like humans. Less like hungry wolves, no matter their disposition.

Two wolves

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. 

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. 

One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” 

“The other wolf is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.” 

“The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person too.” 

The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win? 

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

It was the summer of 1993 and I was in Israel playing Water Polo at the Maccabiah Games. Certain memories stick with me to this day:

  • 40,000+ cheering fans at opening ceremonies
  • Floating in the Dead Sea
  • Having a semi-automatic machine gun unintentionally, but repeatedly bumping into me on a dance floor
  • Masada
  • Visiting Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall

My first visit to Jerusalem held a surprise. We had a day off before the semi finals and our team decided to take the bus tour to Jerusalem. I was ‘tagging along’ rather than being one of the people who chose what we did, so I neglected to read the advertisement for the bus tour. I neglected to notice that the bus first stopped at the Holocaust Museum.

I hopped on the bus, camera packed, ready to visit the sights of this ancient city. Imagine my surprise when the bus pulled into the parking lot of the Museum. “Where are we?”

My happy-go-lucky-tourist-with-camera-in-hand attitude hit a plexiglass wall the moment I walked in the door. There in front of me, on a pedestal, was a plexiglass cube about 40cm³ filled with gold teeth. Early on in the concentration camps these were pulled from the mouths of Jews on their way to the gas chambers, but it was quickly realized that dead Jews don’t scream and so they started pulling these valuable gold teeth out after the Jews had been gassed.

The Hall of Names containing Pages of Testimony commemorating the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Photo credit: David Shankbone

The museum tour was quiet and solemn. Two translated letters, one from a German Commandant and the other from a German Captain,  also stick with me to this day. Forgive my paraphrasing, this was over 15 years ago.

The one from the German Concentration Camp Commandant was sent to another Commandant inviting him to come and see the new gas chambers where they could now, ‘efficiently exterminate 2,000 rather than just 750 Jews at a time.”

Dehumanize the targets.

The one from the Captain was giving advice to other Captains and it said, ‘Be sure that when executing Jews by firing squad to have at least two of your soldiers shooting at each Jew. Although this may seem like a waste of bullets, it removes the guilt that your soldiers feel since they know that even if they did not shoot, that the Jew would still be terminated. The cost of the extra bullet is worth the removal of guilt from your soldiers and the boost in morale.’

Depersonalize the deed.

Both of these perverse letters have had a lasting impression on me because in their own sick way, they make perfect sense. If you are going to be in the business of murder, it makes sense to think of it as extermination, as we do not think twice about exterminating bothersome bugs. If you are going ask soldiers to be obedient and murder for you, it makes sense that you remove guilt from their task.

Rationalize evil.

We do that today, after all we have ‘counter-terrorism’ and we do illegal things in the name of ‘national security’ and our soldiers die in ‘friendly fire’ and of course we don’t support this, rather we ‘support our troops’.

Which wolf are we feeding?

I’ve taught a student of the Bahia faith, whose family had to flee Iran in the middle of the night for fear of being murdered.

I’ve taught a student who hiked for three days in the mountains of Afghanistan with his pregnant mom, younger brother and father, as they fled the new regime. Mom was a teacher in Afghanistan, but when I met her she was washing dishes in a restaurant.

I’ve taught a Serbian who did her Grade 8 public speech on the cruelty of the United Nations. Her Grandfather and best friend were blown up in a crowded shopping mall by a UN plane. Her life was spared because she forgot her purse in the car and went running back to get it.

Who is the enemy?

My life has been very different. As an immigrant to Canada I moved to a mostly Greek neighbourhood and had three close friends that welcomed me into their houses and their lives. I followed these friends to a High School where, for different reasons, they all left by Grade 11, leaving me to fend for myself for Grades 12 and 13, (Ontario had Grade 13 back then).

I left high school with 5 very close friends: A Canadian born of Scottish decent, a German, an African Born Shiite Muslim, a Canadian Sunni Muslim, and a Canadian Jew with East Indian decent. Oh and as for me… my wife describes me as a Chinese Jew from Barbados… (I describe myself as Heinz57 or a mutt).

I wore a kilt in the wedding party for Ross, the Canadian Scott, and I lived with Kassim, the Shiite Muslim, in his house for 5 days leading up to his wedding, living as a surrogate brother and participating in every ceremony.

And as for being a Jew, I think most Jews would say that I am not Jewish. You see, Judiasim is a matriarchal religion and my Grandmother, my Mother’s Mother, is to this day a Catholic. She was happily married, a role model marriage like few I’ve seen, to my Jewish Grandfather until he died.

We can co-exist.

When I read Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat I was drawn to the ideas in his very powerful final chapter where he talks of cultures that are stuck on History rather than Hope. There can never be peace in the Middle East if History trumps Hope. Jerusalem taught me that: As a city with great historical significance to three very different religions, Jerusalem should be a sacred and holy place, not a place of hostility and tension.  But where we have ‘anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego,’ we have evil, and we will never have peace.

We remember.

There are parts of History we should not forget. After all, World War One was the ‘war to end all wars’… And so I am writing this on Remembrance Day for a reason. Whether it be concentration camps and the Holocaust or Hiroshima and Nagasaki or genocide in Russia, Rwanda, or East Timor… or any tragic historical event worth remembering… we choose to remember so that we do not repeat our mistakes. We must want and hope that things can be better. We must see lessons learned, not resentment and mistrust. The past will repeat itself if we do not see ‘joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith’… faith that tomorrow can be better than today.

And the battle continues…

“The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person too.” 

The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win? 

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” 

May you always feed the good wolf.

Related: In Remembrance 2019.

AI is Coming… to a school near you.

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.

The task of education today

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.

The easy way out

I love the ingenuity of students when it comes to avoiding work. I remember a student showing me how playing 3 French YouTube videos in different tabs simultaneously somehow fooled the Rosetta Stone language learning software to think he was responding to oral tests correctly. How on earth did he figure that out?

Here’s a video of a kid who, while doing an online math quiz for homework, figured out that if you go to the web browser’s developer ‘inspect element’ tool you can find out the correct answer. Just hover over the code of the multiple choice questions and it highlights the choices and the code tells you if that choice is true or false.

@imemezy

Kids know every trick in the book…i mean computer #computer #maths #homework #madeeasy #lol #children #schoolwork #schools #hack #hacks #tricks #tips #test #exam #learning #learn

♬ original sound – Memezy

If there is an easy way to solve things, students will figure it out.

There isn’t an AI detector that can figure out with full certainty that someone cheated using a tool like Chat GPT. And if you find one, it probably would not detect it if the student also used an AI paraphrasing tool to rework the final product. It would be harder again if their prompt said something like, ‘Use grammar, sentence structure, and word choice that a Grade 10 student would use’.

So AI will be used for assignments. Students will go into the inspector code of a web page and find the right answers, and it’s probably already the case that shy students have trained an AI tool to speak with their voice so that they could submit oral (and even video) work without actually having to read anything aloud.

These tools are getting better and better, and thus much harder to detect.

I think tricks and tools like this invite educators to be more creative about what they do in class. We are seeing some of this already, but we are also seeing a lot of backwards sliding: School districts blocking AI tools, teachers giving tests on computers that are blocked from accessing the internet, and even teachers making students, who are used to working with computers, write paper tests.

Meanwhile other teachers are embracing the changes. Wes Fryer created AI Guidelines for students to tell them how to use these tools appropriately for school work. That seems far more enabling than locking tools down and blocking them. Besides, I think that if students are going to use these tools outside of school anyway, we should focus on teaching them appropriate use rather than creating a learning environment that is nothing like the real world.

All that said, if you send home online math quizzes, some students will find an easy way to avoid doing the work. If you have students write essays at home and aren’t actively having them revise that work in class, some will use AI. Basically, some students will cheat the system, and themselves of the learning experience, if they are given the opportunity to do so.

The difference is that innovative, creative teachers will use these tools to enhance learning, and they will be in position to learn along with students how to embrace these tools openly, rather than kids sneakily using them to avoid work, or to lessen the work they need to do… either way, kids are going to use these tools.

Staying in the discomfort

A couple days ago at our start of the year administrators meeting, we had a presentation by Jo Chrona. She was presenting on learning in Indigenous and anti-racist education, and she said something that still sits with me. She talked about how the learning isn’t easy but the real challenge is sitting, and staying, in the discomfort.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. We spend our days as problem solvers. We see the challenges and the issues we face and we tackle them. But systemic problems are not something with a quick fix, and if we have a ‘fix and move on’ mentality, we aren’t really dealing with the underlying issues. If we move away from uncomfortable issues they don’t really get meaningfully addressed. If we don’t sit in the discomfort, we don’t learn or help our community learn.

But it’s not human nature to stay in an uncomfortable place. This needs to be intentional. Being vulnerable and having the hard conversations, rather than trying to immediately make things better, is when we can really reflect, listen, learn, and heal. And of these four things, listening is the most important. If we are fixing, we aren’t listening.

One of the powerful things about staying and sitting in the discomfort is that we only really learn things well when there is a struggle. And so when we allow ourselves time to struggle, to understand the struggle of others, we create the space for deep learning to happen. We create the opportunity for meaningful learning and meaningful change to happen.

Side trips

I went on a hike with my youngest today. We were headed to a falls that we never made it to. But we didn’t care that we missed it. On the way we passed a bridge over a small creek, and I’d explored that creek before. So, we went off the beaten path and took a little side trip.

There was a small path, we weren’t trail blazing, but it is not a main path, and quite secluded.

The side trip was the best part of the hike. That’s often the case. The unexpected detour, the restaurant off the main strip, or the unscheduled stop become the highlight.

It’s the same thing in education. You start a lesson. A kid asks a question and you venture way off your plan, but everyone is engaged and the learning is rich.

The important thing is that you create the conditions for the side trips to happen. You have a plan, but it’s not cast in stone. You have an agenda but you leave room for opportunities to arise. You explore, question, and follow your curiosity.

After our side trip we took the harder route that takes us to a lower falls then a steep climb to the upper falls. We saw the lower one, then didn’t realize we had higher to go for the high falls when we met the path downhill. 10 minutes later we realized our mistake but had to head home so my daughter could make her afternoon plans.

It didn’t matter. The rest of the hike was a fun father/daughter trek. The main falls will be explored another day, and the side trip became the main quest.

Subtle regret

It’s a price I pay as an educator. It doesn’t matter how many positive things happen in a school year, I always feel a little regret at the end of the year. I wanted the year to be more. I wanted it to be better. I wanted to make a greater contribution. I wanted to have more impact.

Twenty five years into my career, and I’ve felt this every year. This year it stings a bit more because my health issues made me miss a lot of school. But I also know this is just me being hard on myself. I know that if things were 100 percent better and I hit every goal I had, I would still feel subtle regret that I didn’t set my targets high enough.

Yesterday a grad came by with flowers, and a card, and a card from their parent. Both cards shared thanks for four amazing years in a school that gave them an opportunity that they felt they couldn’t get anywhere else. That’s heartwarming. And yet this morning I’m lamenting about what else could have been done.

This isn’t me feeling depressed. This isn’t me fishing for compliments. It’s me wondering who else feels this at the end of the school year?

In reality, I don’t want this ‘subtle’ feeling to go away, (that said I also don’t want it to be more pronounced). I actually want this small feeling at this time of year. It doesn’t sadden me as much as it drives me. It makes me think a bit about the potential of next year. It fuels me and inspires me to think bigger, to be excited about what’s possible. It’s kind of like the feeling of coming in second in a competition, you aren’t thrilled, but you had a god season, and now you are excited about next season.

Maybe it’s possible to garner that excitement without the subtle regret? Maybe it could happen where you feel like you won the season and you want to create back-to-back winning seasons? Perhaps that’s possible. But unlike a sports season, a school year doesn’t have a trophy, and there are always things about the year that could have been better.

So, I’ll take the subtle regret. It won’t make me sad, but it will make me want to make next year better… and I really believe it will be.

Use it or fall behind

Check out what Khan Academy has done so far, since getting early access to Chat GPT4 last August.

And here’s what’s coming soon:

The gut reaction to using new technology in education is to ban, block, and/or punish students for ‘cheating’. While I’m not going to link to the many times I’ve already said this, I’ll say it again… the technology is not going away!

So how do we use it effectively, creatively, and for learning? 

That is the question question to ask… and Chat GPT4 and tools like it probably have better answers than you can come up with.

Dinner with the dead

A question Tim Ferris used to regularly ask his podcast guests was, “If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?” 

Well now it might be a bit easier to have one of those dinner conversations… even if the person is dead.

Here’s a conversation on AI and education between Bill Gates and Socrates, but first the description of the video:

AI Brings Bill Gates & Socrates Together: A Must-Watch Dialogue on AI. An exclusive video of Bill Gates and ancient philosopher Socrates discussing the potential of artificial intelligence. Don’t miss this groundbreaking fusion of past wisdom and present innovation, reshaping our understanding of AI.

In this video, you will witness a fascinating discussion between Socrates, the Greek philosopher considered one of the greatest thinkers in history, and Bill Gates, the American entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft, one of the most important companies in the world of technology.

Despite belonging to different eras, Socrates and Gates have a lot in common. Both are considered pioneers in their respective fields and have had a significant impact on society.

The AI-generated conversation will allow these two great figures to discuss topics such as technology, ethics, education, and much more. Will Socrates and Bill Gates be able to find common ground in their ideas and thoughts? Find out in this video!

https://youtu.be/hJ5qN9PRmFc

It didn’t need the laugh track, and there is a slight cartoonish feel to the two characters, but this technology is just getting better and better!

“How good are my AI prompts?”

Two thoughts about yesterday’s post, ‘Playing with Chat GPT‘:

1. I used the plural phrase ‘Artificial intelligences’ and followed up with, “yes plural, AI is not a single thing”. What’s both exciting and scary is that Chat GPT and other incredible AI tools are revolutionizing markets like health care diagnostics, manufacturing and logistics, coding, customer service and tech support, copy editing and content generation, audio and video editing, and even education. I think anyone who uses these tools can see why it’s exciting, but why do I also say scary? Here are two reasons:

First of all, many of these tools are open source or open access and/or very affordable for anyone to build on top of. This is great, but also permits people to do some pretty nefarious things, like produce deep fakes, and use these tools in increasingly evil ways. And as AI gets better, so does the ability to do greater harm.

Secondly, we are going to see a major decrease in jobs. Now this is under debate, with some people thinking there will just be a shift in jobs, but I disagree. For example, you own an online website that hires content 10 content writers to produce daily content to get new articles in front of your readers. You lay off 7 of them, keeping your best ones, and you have them use Chat GPT to write articles similar to the best, most popular ones on your site, and the 3 best remaining editors tweak the AI writing, make it better, easily doing the work of 10 writers. 

This kind of shift isn’t happening with just Chat GPT, there are more and more AI tools that are quickly shifting the need to less staff, who are more creative and innovative, to do jobs many more people did. If you are an elegant coder or excellent problem-solving tech support worker, your job is safe. If you are just competent at coding or tech support, an AI can and will do the job better than you, and you won’t be needed much longer. The irony is that your years of providing support will have helped train the very AI replacing you.

This isn’t just about Chat GPT, it’s about a plethora of Artificial Intelligences changing the way we learn, access information, get fooled, and work. And the pace of change will rival the any prior advancement in human history.

2. After publishing yesterday’s post, I went back to Chat GPT to play some more (as seen in the ‘Update’ at the bottom of the post). Three prompts after my original one I had something that was easy to read, and would take just one read-over and final edit to be something I could publish, which would be insightful, and difficult to know was AI generated. I ended my update with: The question isn’t how good is the AI tool, the question is, “How good are my prompts?”

…and if your prompts are not that good… just ask Chat GPT to improve them!

Here are a couple Twitter threads with some insightful prompts for Chat GPT.