Troy Patterson

Matthew Kenworthy – Old man yells at the state of email addresses

This is a terrific write up about the state of email addresses. Specifically, this addresses email lists. Some nice history stuff:

Many years ago, people put their email addresses on web pages, personal or departmental. But then came along SPAM email lists, built from bots scraping valid email addresses across the web. In an ever escalating war, email addresses were scrambled and obfuscated with different methods, some using clever highlight and paste tricks tied to the web browser. If I try to paste directly into Apple Mail, I sometimes get scrambled garbage.

If you’ve been using email for any length of time, you’ll get a smile and may even say an audible “Amen”.

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Libation

A free, open-source application for downloading and managing your Audible audiobooks

I’ve used this to gather up my Audible books, from, er, let me check here, 2014. I long ago left audible for other options.

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The “August-Ready” Digital Cleanout: Organize Your Teaching Files This Summer – TCEA TechNotes Blog

I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, yes, it can time consuming to find documents in Google Drive (or your local storage, or any other online repository). It can be especially frustrating when Google Drive search fails to find a document (especially when you had all the right words of the title, but in a different order). It has always been amazing to me that Google Drive search stinks as much as it does (and Apple Mail search, WOW is that bad).

Anyway, Dr. Bruce Ellis makes the case that workers spend an inordinate amount of time looking for “stuff”. Again that frustration and time wasting is real.

This is not limited to Google Drive though. Email is also addressed.

Dr. Ellis provides some specific, tangible steps to get you started. This will still take time, but he does provide a system. If the system works for you, great. In real life, I think everyone has a “system”, but not a repeatable one. The “system” changes frequently and is dependent upon the day/mood/environment/etc. So if this inspires you to adopt a system, it is definitely worthwhile.

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[2607.13562] AI advice suppresses people’s willingness to say “I don’t know”, even when the advice is wrong and accuracy is incentivized

AI is going to be with us. It has already had profound impact on us (and our students). Educators are going to have a address the cognitive issues and underlying impact of AI.

Thus, educators are going to need to think deeply about AI and how to use it. This paper provides a touch point to think about.

Abstract

Knowing when to say “I don’t know” is fundamental to human judgment, yet AI assistants offer a fluent answer to almost any question. In five experiments (N = 3,132; four preregistered, one direct replication), participants answered difficult questions and could always decline to respond. We engineered the questions so that AI advice was wrong, separating AI use from its accuracy. Merely having access to AI nearly eliminated participants’ willingness to suspend judgment, and this held whether the advice was actively requested or simply displayed. Consequently, participants answered more questions but were correct about a third as often as when AI was unavailable—yet their confidence nearly doubled. Incentivizing accuracy and penalizing inaccuracy led participants to seek and follow AI advice less, answer more accurately, and suspend judgment more often, though still far less than when AI was unavailable. As AI suggestions grow ubiquitous and unsolicited, they may not simply affect answer accuracy; they may even alter the metacognitive threshold at which people decide whether they know enough to answer.

Students are very much buying into AI as being personified.

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A.J. Juliani | Ban With Purpose: The Nuance Missing From the Screen Debate

Back to school time is going to bring lots of “screen time ban” discussions. Personally, I believe that this is a slightly misplaced discussion. The focus seems to be on schools and screen time. The major focus is on banning cell phones for students during the school day. Roughly 30 states , including Maine and Michigan, now have bell to bell bans for cell phones. Personally, I can fully support that.

However, I believe that the issue is much bigger than just schools. Yes, schools are a part of the argument. And sure, there are teachers and schools that are using screen time inappropriately. However, the bigger issue is parenting. I say this not sarcastically, but pragmatically, Parenting is Hard. Parenting has always been hard, and it’s not getting any easier.

A.J. Juliani makes points based on the Learning 3.0 framework. (I have mixed feelings about Learning 3.0.)

The arguments here again return to AI and the impact that it will have on students. This is worth a read and some pondering time.

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The US Constitution Is for Simple Folk Still Burdened by the Belief That Words Have Meaning – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

This one is from McSweeney, so sarcasm is back on the table.

Every serious legal mind must inevitably face a fundamental choice: Read the Constitution and apply its words as the bedrock laws of the land, or transcend its tired text and interpret the super-secret invisible version that tells you exactly what you want to hear.

That will get you started.