🔗 Links

OERs

• eCampusOntario: Affordable Learning, Lasting Impact: How OER and Partnerships Save Students Money (via Clint Lalonde)

Webstuff

• Docsify-this (via Paul Hibbitts and Alan Levine)

  A utility that turns any web-visible markdown .md file into a fully rendered web page. Looks handy, but would be even handy-er if it could be deployed on a webserver as a script to render any .md files in public_html directories. Which connects to…

• Docsify - a command line tool that runs the Docsify-ing thing to generate a website from markdown .md files.

  But at this point, why not just use Hugo? (Hugo builds my website from folders of markdown .md files, which are then automatically uploaded to my webserver)

• Clint Lalonde @ Edtech Factotum: Using GenAI to analyze scenarios against a framework. Clint starts by asking:

  “How do we share this stuff? I know we used to use blogs to share this practice. How do we find out about practice like this now?”

  I mean. Like this? Like the blog posts and notes and annotated links and examples that many of us have been sharing for years? That’s how. We do this by sharing our work. Sure, it was better back in the dinosaur age of The Blogosphere, but the stuff still works and many of us are still using it.

• Gita Jackson @ aftermath: For The Love of God, Make Your Own Website

  The internet sucks now–but it doesn’t have to.

Change

• Tim Klapdor @ Heart Soul Machine: A big fish in a small bowl looking out.

  I definitely agree with his frustrations with institutional process and bureaucracy, but I don’t necessarily agree that “breaking the fishbowl” is the way around that. Institutional changes happen either by fiat, imposed from legislation or financial circumstances, or from the inside, with people working within institutions.

  The tool I have is to work from within. It’s slow, often invisible and not acknowledged, but necessary and important work. I’ve been doing that for 30 years now. There’s not much that I can point to and say “I did that”, but there’s a lot that I can point to and say “it wouldn’t have happened that way without me”.

Sigh. AI.

• Ethan Mollick @ Coursera: AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching (via Stephen Downes)

  I was just wondering how I could leverage something for teaching. Maybe it’ll help me be more efficient as well?

• Stephen Downes @ Teach Online: Five Ways AI Will Help Personalize Learning Experiences and Make Education More Adaptive and Responsive to Individual Learner Needs (but the article doesn’t attribute authorship - Stephen let me know on Mastodon)

  Some good ideas for approaching (generative) AI in the context of teaching and learning. Certainly things I’d be considering if, hypothetically, I was setting up a research agenda for a teaching-and-learning-and-technology research lab…

• Craig Hale @ techradar: Zoom reveals major rebrand — dropping video as it goes all-in on AI

  They’re rebranding as an “AI-first company” with a focus on “digital twins” that can do your work for you so you can send them to Zoom meetings while you do something else. This only works if your meetings suck. Stop having crappy meetings that could be replaced by a bunch of Sims talking to each other while the humans are off doing something else.

• Audrey Watters @ Second Breakfast: Who Cares about the Holidays?

  Some really great thoughts on the use of generative AI, especially for the push to outsource “acts of care” to an LLM. Watters succinctly summed this up:

  Absolutely depressing AF.

  Yup. Not sure I agree that using Gemini to come up with a list of “5 ways I’m handling the holidays” is that much different than just Googling/DuckDuckGoing/Binging/etc. It’s all outsourcing “to a goddamn machine”. It’s all absolutely depressing AF.

• College & Research Libraries News: The Artificial Intelligence Disclosure (AID) Framework (via Paul Pival)

  How to disclose the use of genAI, beyond trying to pretend like it’s an attributed co-author of a thing.

• Christina Hendricks @ You’re the Teacher: AI & RELATIONSHIPS: MOLLICK, CO-INTELLIGENCE

  Mollick’s book is, though, I think much more positive about the potential value of humans working with AI for various purposes (for creativity/art, teaching and learning, work, and more), and provides many practical ideas for doing so. I have tended to focus on some of the more critical aspects of Mollick’s book, which is reflective of my own interests and sense of caution.

  I gave Mollick’s book 4 stars. It’s good, but I think he leans a bit too far into “we’re all gonna be cyborgs with genAI working as collaborators and it’s going to be awesome!” (I paraphrase. a bit.)

🍿 Watching

• ★★★★★ Contact (1997).

  The scene where Jody Foster drives past the crowd of protestors/fans, and her eye contact with Jake Busey, is perfection. The first time I watched Contact, I thought they leaned too hard on the religious fanatics and science denialists - that’d never actually happen! And now, in 2024, they look quaint and reserved.

• ★★★★★ 12 Monkeys (1995).

  Deeply weird and weirdly deep. Terry Gilliam is a genius. Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt at their peaks.

🧺 Other

This round of sciatica seems to be slowly wrapping up (he says, jinxing himself to another few weeks of nerve-pain hell (but hopefully not)). Holy crap have I lost what little conditioning I’ve had, and packed on the pounds shockingly quickly. I need to get on top of that once I’m more mobile (without triggering another round of this nonsense).

Sunday will mark 3 years since mom died. Feels like yesterday and forever-ago.

🗓️ Focus for next week

• LTDT holiday lunch spectacular (and farewell-but-not-farewell to a team member who is about to start a 2 year secondment elsewhere on campus)
• The usual. Meetings. Team meetings. AI meetings. Conference planning meeting.
• TI’s silent auction to raise funds for United Way Calgary. I donated 4 paintings from my parents’ estate. Not sure how valuable they are, but someone might be interested.