⚙️ Work

We started the process of restructuring our team. The first step was the hardest thing I’ve had to do professionally. Now we get to move into the next phase for the team, and lots of exciting opportunities coming from that.

Also

I’m hiring - the posting to fill the Learning Technologies Specialist role for a 2-year limited term went up on Friday.

Also

While sharing the posting on shudder LinkedIn, I saw a video that was shared by UCalgary, showcasing Phong Vu and his family who own and operate Bake Chef. Which reminds me, I should plan to get a Bake Chef sub for lunch on Monday…

🔗 Links

Education

• Natasha Kenny @ Explorations in Higher Education: From learning-centred to human-centred education

  These principles could be used to inform how we approach course and curriculum design, how we develop academic processes and policies related to teaching and learning, and as a foundation for meaningful reflection, conversation and dialogue.

AI

• Esther Shein @ ACM News: The Impact of AI on Computer Science Education (via Doug Holton)

• Natasha Kenny @ Explorations in Higher Education: Help me build an AI Executive Coach

• Raj Boora: Generative AI is a whatever Calculator

• Princeton Vision & Learning Lab: Infinigen (via Dave Anderson)

  Amazing. An open source application that integrates with Blender to generate new objects, textures, terrains, based on LLM prompts.

  When I was teaching the graduate architecture design studio course last year, we talked about this kind of LLM-based 3D design tool. It was just in the early stages back then, but looks like it’s progressed quickly. I don’t have time to play with this, but it looks like fun.

• Audrey Watters @ Second Breakfast: The State of the “Art”. Absolutely agreed. The AI focus on efficiency is corrosive.

• Martin Weller @ The Ed Techie: 30+ Years of Ed Tech – 2024: AI Slop

‘Berta

• Janet French @ CBC News: Stephen Harper appointed chairman of Alberta Investment Management Corporation

  Stephen Harper is most famous for his work as a celebrated fund manager, which explains his appointment as chair of the board of the provincial corporation that manages pension funds for half a million albertans. This is obviously unrelated to his conservative evangelism, nor his tenure as prime minister (where one of his cabinet ministers was, completely coincidentally, the guy that’s probably going to be our next prime minister).

  It’s definitely all about his proven track record in managing funds like our $160B in pensions, and not about a plan for those funds to be “invested” in oil and gas and away from the lefty woke green energy boondoggles. Drill baby drill! This province is exhausting.

🍿 Watching

• Silo (season 2, Apple TV). Solid start to the new season.
• ★★★☆☆ Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). It was a thing that happened. Juvenile fan service, but fun.

📚 Reading

• ★☆☆☆☆ Inventing the Future Bit By Bit. John Buck. (2024).

  Buck documents the history of the “first golden decade” of Apple Computer, from 1981-1991. But it was basically “I have a folder of like 50,000 quotes and snippets from various media and maybe I can just kind of string them together chronologically somehow”. Interesting at times, but incredibly tedious. The book should have had an editor, should have been less than half the length, and should have told the story rather than just stringing together often-random quotes.¹

🧺 Other

It was our anniversary this week. 27 years (together for 34) and counting.

and I dorked around with the drone a bit, seeing what the neighbourhood looks like from above when covered in snow.

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🗓️ Focus for next week

• Meetings
• Preparing the hiring process for the LTS posting
• Campus Conversation on Principles for the Assessment of Student Learning (helping to facilitate some group discussions)