Tag Archives: education

Side trips

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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

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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

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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

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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!

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?”

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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.

Playing with Chat GPT

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Yesterday I asked Chat GPT for blog post ideas for a blog that discusses ‘education, learning, and general life lessons‘. This is what it responded with:

I then chose #4 and asked: Write a short blog post titled, “The Role of Reflection in Learning” on the topic of Exploring the significance of reflective practices in enhancing learning and personal growth.

This is what Chat GPT came up with:

Would I ever just use Chat GPT to write my Daily Ink? No. But would I use it as a launching pad to help me generate ideas, or help me write a first draft? Absolutely. However, that’s just me. What you see above will be the kind of thing people who generate daily posts as part of a paid gig will do regularly. Sure they will make it sound a bit less formal, a bit more natural or conversational… but there are actually other Artificial Intelligences (yes plural, AI is not a single thing) which will do this and make it undetectable should you ask an AI detector if a human wrote it. Need something longer, like a school essay? Just ask Chat GPT to expand each of the 5 points into full paragraphs.

I didn’t iterate. I didn’t ask a more detailed question. I didn’t ask Chat GPT to further develop the ideas… If I did, it would make the above results even better and it would do so in a matter of seconds. And educators, try as you might, you can’t police it.

We are not far away from finding more AI written (or AI assisted) content on the internet than just purely human generated content… and we won’t know the difference.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 

Update: (…I came back to this a few hours later.)

TLDR: The question isn’t how good is the AI tool, the question is, “How good are my prompts?”

I followed up and requested Chap GPT to, “Write the above blog post in a more conversational manner, using paragraphs without numbering or section titles.”
Here is the updated version:

The Role of Reflection in Learning

In the fast-paced world of education, where we’re constantly bombarded with information, it’s important to take a step back and reflect on our learning journey. Reflection is a powerful tool that not only enhances our understanding but also fosters personal growth. So, let’s dive into the significance of reflective practices and how they can positively impact our learning experiences.

When we engage in reflection, we go beyond surface-level learning. It provides us with an opportunity to delve deeper into our knowledge and identify any gaps in our understanding. By pausing, processing, and evaluating what we’ve learned, we can connect the dots and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Whether it’s through journaling, discussions, or self-assessment, reflection allows us to make sense of complex concepts and strengthen our grasp on the material.

But reflection goes beyond academic understanding. It also enhances our self-awareness, which is a crucial aspect of personal growth. By reflecting on our learning process, we become more conscious of our strengths, weaknesses, and preferred learning styles. This self-awareness empowers us to tailor our learning strategies, seek additional support when needed, and leverage our strengths to maximize our potential. It’s like having a roadmap that guides us towards effective learning.

Another great benefit of reflection is its ability to foster critical thinking skills. When we reflect, we engage in thoughtful analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information. We question assumptions, challenge existing ideas, and gain a deeper understanding of various perspectives. This critical thinking not only sharpens our intellect but also enhances our problem-solving abilities. It equips us with the skills needed to tackle real-world challenges with confidence and creativity.

Reflection is also a catalyst for continuous improvement. Learning is a lifelong journey, and reflection plays a vital role in our growth. By reflecting on our successes and failures, we can identify areas for improvement and set meaningful goals. Regular self-reflection allows us to track our progress, celebrate achievements, and make necessary adjustments to our learning strategies. It promotes a growth mindset, inspiring us to embrace challenges, persist through obstacles, and strive for excellence.

In addition to all these benefits, reflection fosters metacognition, which is our ability to think about our own thinking. When we engage in metacognitive practices, such as reflecting on our learning process, monitoring our comprehension, and evaluating our strategies, we become more self-regulated learners. This metacognitive awareness empowers us to take control of our learning, adapt our approaches, and become more efficient and effective learners overall.

So, let’s make a conscious effort to pause, reflect, and embark on a transformative learning journey filled with growth, insight, and personal development. By embracing reflective practices, we deepen our understanding, foster self-awareness, sharpen critical thinking skills, promote continuous improvement, and cultivate metacognitive abilities. It’s time to unlock the true potential of our learning experiences through the power of reflection.

Then I followed up with, “Try again, still more conversational and less like an essay. Vary sentence and paragraph length, and end with a thought provoking question.”

I didn’t like what it came up with so I followed up one more time with, “This last version is a bit too conversational, try again and this time don’t start sentences with coordinating conjunctions like ‘But’ and ‘So’. Also change the first sentence so it less formal.”

Reflection in Learning: Unleashing the Power Within

In the whirlwind of education, where information bombards us from all directions, it’s easy to overlook the importance of reflection in our learning journey. We often rush from one lesson to the next, absorbing knowledge without truly digesting it. But what if we hit the pause button and took a moment to reflect?

Reflection goes beyond simply memorizing facts and figures. It’s a transformative process that allows us to delve deeper into our thoughts, experiences, and understanding of the subjects we encounter. It’s like shining a spotlight on our minds and examining everything we’ve absorbed in a more meaningful way.

What’s truly remarkable about reflection is that it extends beyond academia. It plays a crucial role in our personal growth as well. By engaging in reflection, we become more aware of our strengths, weaknesses, and unique learning styles. It’s like getting to know ourselves as learners on a whole new level. This self-awareness empowers us to tailor our learning strategies and leverage our strengths to maximize our potential.

Reflection isn’t a passive exercise; it’s an active one that fuels critical thinking. When we reflect, we question assumptions, evaluate information, and connect the dots. It enables us to go beyond the surface-level understanding and dive into the deeper layers of knowledge. This kind of thinking not only expands our intellectual capacity but also equips us with the skills to tackle real-world challenges with confidence and creativity.

Yet, the power of reflection doesn’t stop there. It serves as a catalyst for growth and continuous improvement. When we take the time to reflect on our learning journey, we identify areas where we can enhance our skills and knowledge. We set meaningful goals and work diligently towards them. It’s like having a personal roadmap for our own development, guiding us towards excellence and progress.

Intriguingly, reflection is also about metacognition – thinking about our own thinking. By engaging in metacognitive practices, such as reflecting on our learning process or evaluating our strategies, we become self-regulated learners. We take charge of our learning experience, adapt our approaches, and become more efficient and effective learners overall. It’s like having an internal compass that helps us navigate the vast landscape of knowledge.

So, let’s embrace the power of reflection. Let’s pause, process, and ponder on what we’ve learned. When we do, we unlock the true potential of our learning experiences. We deepen our understanding, foster self-awareness, sharpen critical thinking skills, and pave the way for continuous growth and personal transformation.

Have you taken a moment to reflect on your learning journey lately? What insights have you gained? How has reflection impacted your personal growth? Share your valuable thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

I think it would take one final personal edit, tweaking as I read it over once, and I’d have a pretty good blog post that’s both insightful and hard to identify as AI generated.

The question isn’t how good is the AI tool, the question is, “How good are my prompts?”

Fear & Teaching

I just read an interesting article, ‘ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it‘, and got to this sentence about a teacher using it in her classroom:

“Not all these approaches will be instantly successful, of course. Donahoe and her students came up with guidelines for using ChatGPT together, but “it may be that we get to the end of this class and I think this absolutely did not work,” she says. “This is still an ongoing experiment.”

The moment I read this I thought, ‘This is a teacher I’d love to work with!’ What’s her approach? Let me summarize it: ‘Here is a new tool, how can I use it in my classroom to help my students learn? Oh, and sometimes what I try won’t work, but if every experiment worked well then we wouldn’t be learning.’

I see so much fear when a new tool enters schools: Ban calculators, ban smartphones, ban Wikipedia, ban Chat GPT… But there are always teachers doing the opposite, wanting to use rather than ban new tools. Teachers who are willing to try new things. Teachers who know that some lessons will flop, and go in unexpected and unintended directions, yet see the value in trying. These teachers can look long term and see the worthy benefits of trying something new, they are unafraid to have a lesson fail on the path of being innovative.

It’s that lack of fear of flopping that I love to see in teachers. There’s a wide gap between, ‘That failed, how embarrassing. I’ll never do that again!’ and ‘Well, that didn’t work! I wonder what I can do next time to make it better?’ The former is quite fixed in their ways, and the latter is considerably more flexible. While fear rules the former, there is a kind of fearlessness in the latter.

Tools like Chat GPT are absolutely going to change education. I’m excited to see some fearless educators figuring out how best to use it, (and many new tools like it), in their classrooms, and with their students. The teachers willing to iterate, try, fail, and learn to use these tools are going to take their students a lot farther and learn a lot more than in places where these tools will be banned, blocked, and shunned.

The 4 ‘D’s leading to office discipline

It was early on in my first job as a vice principal. The position was in a middle school just a few kilometres away from the middle school I taught at for 9 years to start my career. Our secretary came to tell me that a student had been sent down to the office. I sat down with him in my office and he told me why he was sent there.

“Really, that’s all you did?” (I was sure he was leaving something out, I’d never send a kid down to the office for this.)

“Yes!” He said defensively.

We worked out an apology, and rehearsed it, and I sent him back down to his class. Minutes later he was back up at the office. I looked at him quizzically and he quickly responded to my unspoken question, “Mr. Truss, I did exactly what you told me to!”

After a bit of back-and-forth I took him back down to the class and waited for a an appropriate moment to talk to him and the teacher together. It became very evident that she had no interest in letting him back in the room. This surprised me for two reasons:

First, as mentioned, this minor altercation was nothing me or my peers at my previous middle school would ever have sent a kid to the office for. In my eyes, sending a kid to the office was essentially telling the kid, “I cant manage you,” which takes away any leverage I may have the next time this student has any challenging behaviour.

Secondly, why not take him back? I verified with the teacher that the students wasn’t downplaying the behaviour, he was apologizing, and he wanted to come back to class. But the teacher was not interested. I offered to come in with him and that got us passed the impasse.

When I started writing this, my intention was going to be on empathy and growth in understanding that not every student, teacher, or principal is just like me, and how important it is to understand this. But as I was sharing the story above I remembered my 4 D’s that led to the rare occasions I’d send a kid to the office. I wrote about this back in 2008, and I’ll share them here:

________

In 9 years as a teacher I have made very few classroom issues into office issues. I have 4 D’s that I think are issues that should be dealt with at an office level. The first two D’s are cut-and-dry/immediate office issues. These are ‘no-brainers’, you break these rules and you go to the office!

1. Drugs- Alcohol is included in this category;

2. Dangerous- Not just weapons, but physical violence too. The best policy is a zero-tolerance policy… We don’t solve problems this way.

The next 2 D’s have some grey area between being an issue for the office and being an issue that I handle myself. They are:

3. Defiance- an absolute refusal to participate and/or co-operate. If you don’t come to class prepared to learn, or if you aren’t willing to participate with the class… If you can’t offer me 5% of what I am offering you, then that probably hinders my ability to give everyone else the time and attention they deserve. I obviously can’t help you, so there is no reason for you to be here. I’ve only ever had one student absolutely refuse to engage in learning to this point. I honestly felt that it was a disservice to keep him in the class and made this the reason to send him to the office. (I have used this as ‘leverage’ with other students in the past- not an ideal strategy, but sometimes a student needs to know that you have limits);

and the final ‘D’,

4. Disrespect- If you are going to treat me, or others in a way that is hurtful, if you are going to ‘injure’ others emotionally/socially… then we have a problem. Hitting someone, or physically hurting someone puts you in the ‘Dangerous’ category and becomes an immediate office referral. Disrespect on the other hand is a little different. If you emotionally or socially injure someone then you are defying one or two of our school beliefs : Respect and/or Inclusion.

________

In ‘administering’ these rules, #3 and #4 had to be pretty extreme to get sent to the office. Otherwise, I handled them myself. But that’s me. Some teachers would be faster to send students away to be dealt with out of class. I just always felt that the most important relationship was between me and the kid. So, while #1 and #2 were likely immediate grounds for an office visit, #3 and #4 only resulted if the relationship was broken such that the defiance and/or disrespect didn’t allow me to be the teacher anymore. At that point the student is clearly a disruption to the class and I’m unable to manage it.

I think in my time as a teacher, I could count on one hand how many kids I ended up sending to the office, but looking back now, I probably should have asked for help a few more times. It’s good to try to hold on to the relationship with a kid, but sometimes a little help and support could go a long way. And I think having clear lines of what constitutes needing that help is a good place to start.

Reexamining the term FAILURE

Six years ago in Philadelphia I ran a session at Educon on Failure. Bill Ferriter came to the session and after the interactive presentation he created this image:

This was the premise I was working from,

When is failure really a success? When we engage students in EPIC projects and challenges, the journey to success is often fraught with failures that can prove to be amazing learning opportunities. 

Do we need to reexamine the use of the term ‘Failure’?

Our present education system is built around always finding the ‘right’ answer, but when can the wrong answer be valuable? How can we provide rich, meaningful opportunities for students to make mistakes, iterate, persevere and develop alternative approaches to problems relevant to what they are learning?

4 years before this presentation I created this image:

I shared an acronym that I came up with:

F ailure
A lways
I nvites
L earning

I share in an accompanying post,

Think of this: If students (regardless of skills and abilities) have only ever met success, and accomplished every task, assignment and project they have needed to do for school, then they weren’t pushed hard enough. In this case, it is the program that is the failure, because the students were not challenged as much as they should have been.

The learning potential of failure is significant. If the work is meaningful enough, there can be more learned from an epic failure, than a marginal success, where the measure for success was set too low.

We talk a lot about ‘learning through failure’ in education, but we don’t really mean failure. Because when a student takes lessons from something not working, then it’s a learning opportunity and not actually a failure.

When you think about it, lack of knowledge is where the learning begins. If you give students the knowledge, they don’t really learn, you actually rob students of their learning. You want them to struggle and to find the learning challenging. And if the challenge is authentic, if it’s really a challenge, then it’s not something they’ll get on the first try. So hitting the ‘failure point’ is part of learning. Trying to achieve too much needs to be part of the process… and so bumping into failure is an essential part of learning.

So a failure is only a failure if the challenge lacks reflection, resources, support, or effort. If these things are provided (by the teacher and more-so by the learner) then the learner didn’t actually fail. They may not achieve their original goal, but they invited learning into the attempt… and learning is achieved. That is not a failure.

The idea of learning through failure is actually not a failure at all. It is accepting that there are opportunities for learning in not achieving the intended goal but still identifying that there was learning to be acquired and often the struggle is something that makes this kind of learning stick.

—–

Related: This Ignite presentation on Transforming Our Learning Metaphors:

You can’t police it

I said Chat GPT is a game changer in education in my post Fear of Disruptive Technology. Then I started to see more and more social media posts sharing that Artificial Intelligence (AI) detectors can identify passages written by AI. But that doesn’t mean a person can’t use a tool like Chat GPT and then do some of their own editing. Or, as seen here: just input the AI written text into CopyGenius.io and ‘rephrase’, and then AI detectors can’t recognize the text as written by AI.

The first instinct with combating new technology is to ban and/or police it: No cell phones in class, leave them in your lockers; You can’t use Wikipedia as a source; Block Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok on the school wifi. These are all gut reactions to new technologies that frame the problem as policeable… Teachers are not teachers, they aren’t teaching, when they are being police.

Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. We aren’t going to police away student use of AI writing tools, so maybe we should embrace these tools and help manage how they are used. We can teach students how to use AI appropriately and effectively. Teach rather than police.