experimentation

“AI, Humans and Work: 10 Thoughts.” [Tobaccowala] + other items re: AI in general

On 09/23/2024, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, creativity, emerging technologies, engineering, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, media/film, Open AI, platforms, robotics, society, tools, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

AI researcher Jim Fan has had a charmed career. He was OpenAI’s first intern before he did his PhD at Stanford with “godmother of AI,” Fei-Fei Li. He graduated into a research scientist position at Nvidia and now leads its Embodied AI “GEAR” group. The lab’s current work spans foundation models for humanoid robots to agents for virtual worlds. Jim describes a three-pronged data strategy for robotics, combining internet-scale data, simulation data and real world robot data. He believes that in the next few years it will be possible to create a “foundation agent” that can generalize across skills, embodiments and realities—both physical and virtual. He also supports Jensen Huang’s idea that “Everything that moves will eventually be autonomous.”

Runway Partners with Lionsgate — from runwayml.com via The Rundown AI
Runway and Lionsgate are partnering to explore the use of AI in film production.

Lionsgate and Runway have entered into a first-of-its-kind partnership centered around the creation and training of a new AI model, customized on Lionsgate’s proprietary catalog. Fundamentally designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work, the model generates cinematic video that can be further iterated using Runway’s suite of controllable tools.

Per The Rundown: Lionsgate, the film company behind The Hunger Games, John Wick, and Saw, teamed up with AI video generation company Runway to create a custom AI model trained on Lionsgate’s film catalogue.

The details:

The partnership will develop an AI model specifically trained on Lionsgate’s proprietary content library, designed to generate cinematic video that filmmakers can further manipulate using Runway’s tools.
Lionsgate sees AI as a tool to augment and enhance its current operations, streamlining both pre-production and post-production processes.
Runway is considering ways to offer similar custom-trained models as templates for individual creators, expanding access to AI-powered filmmaking tools beyond major studios.

Why it matters: As many writers, actors, and filmmakers strike against ChatGPT, Lionsgate is diving head-first into the world of generative AI through its partnership with Runway. This is one of the first major collabs between an AI startup and a major Hollywood company — and its success or failure could set precedent for years to come.

A bottle of water per email: the hidden environmental costs of using AI chatbots — from washingtonpost.com by Pranshu Verma and Shelly Tan (behind paywall)
AI bots generate a lot of heat, and keeping their computer servers running exacts a toll.

Each prompt on ChatGPT flows through a server that runs thousands of calculations to determine the best words to use in a response.

In completing those calculations, these servers, typically housed in data centers, generate heat. Often, water systems are used to cool the equipment and keep it functioning. Water transports the heat generated in the data centers into cooling towers to help it escape the building, similar to how the human body uses sweat to keep cool, according to Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at UC Riverside.

Where electricity is cheaper, or water comparatively scarce, electricity is often used to cool these warehouses with large units resembling air-conditioners, he said. That means the amount of water and electricity an individual query requires can depend on a data center’s location and vary widely.

AI, Humans and Work: 10 Thoughts. — from rishad.substack.com by Rishad Tobaccowala
The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 215.

10 thoughts about AI, Humans and Work in 10 minutes:

AI is still Under-hyped.
AI itself will be like electricity and is unlikely to be a differentiator for most firms.
AI is not alive but can be thought of as a new species.
Knowledge will be free and every knowledge workers job will change in 2025.
The key about AI is not to ask what AI will do to us but what AI can do for us.
Plus 5 other thoughts

“10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor” [Clay] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 09/23/2024, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, culture, dangers of the status quo, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, pace of change, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay
ChatGPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, custom GPTs – you name it, I use it. Here’s how…

Excerpt:

To plan lessons (especially activities)
To create course content (especially quizzes)
To tutor my students
To grade faster and give better feedback
To draft grant applications
Plus 5 other items

From Caution to Calcification to Creativity: Reanimating Education with AI’s Frankenstein Potential — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky
A Critical Analysis of AI-Assisted Lesson Planning: Evaluating Efficacy and Pedagogical Implications

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in education, a troubling trend has emerged. What began as cautious skepticism has calcified into rigid opposition. The discourse surrounding AI in classrooms has shifted from empirical critique to categorical rejection, creating a chasm between the potential of AI and its practical implementation in education.

This hardening of attitudes comes at a significant cost. While educators and policymakers debate, students find themselves caught in the crossfire. They lack safe, guided access to AI tools that are increasingly ubiquitous in the world beyond school walls. In the absence of formal instruction, many are teaching themselves to use these tools, often in less than productive ways. Others live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing accusations of AI reliance in their work. These are just a few symptoms of an overarching educational culture that has become resistant to change, even as the world around it transforms at an unprecedented pace.

Yet, as this calcification sets in, I find myself in a curious position: the more I thoughtfully integrate AI into my teaching practice, the more I witness its potential to enhance and transform education

NotebookLM and Google’s Multimodal Vision for AI-Powered Learning Tools — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins

A Variety of Use Cases

Create an Interactive Syllabus
Presentation Deep Dive: Upload Your Slides
Note Taking: Turn Your Chalkboard into a Digital Canvas
Explore a Reading or Series of Readings
Help Navigating Feedback
Portfolio Building Blocks

Must-Have Competencies and Skills in Our New AI World: A Synthesis for Educational Reform — from er.educause.edu by Fawzi BenMessaoud
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on educational systems calls for a comprehensive reform to prepare future generations for an AI-integrated world.

The urgency to integrate AI competencies into education is about preparing students not just to adapt to inevitable changes but to lead the charge in shaping an AI-augmented world. It’s about equipping them to ask the right questions, innovate responsibly, and navigate the ethical quandaries that come with such power.

AI in education should augment and complement their aptitude and expertise, to personalize and optimize the learning experience, and to support lifelong learning and development. AI in education should be a national priority and a collaborative effort among all stakeholders, to ensure that AI is designed and deployed in an ethical, equitable, and inclusive way that respects the diversity and dignity of all learners and educators and that promotes the common good and social justice. AI in education should be about the production of AI, not just the consumption of AI, meaning that learners and educators should have the opportunity to learn about AI, to participate in its creation and evaluation, and to shape its impact and direction.

How might we build the nation’s new learning ecosystem together? [Getting Smart]

On 09/17/2024, in change, education, education reform, experimentation, future, ideas, innovation, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, strategy, student-related, teachers, United States, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Horizon Three Learning — from gettingsmart.com
How might we build the nation’s new learning ecosystem together?

America’s education system was a groundbreaking effort to help a growing nation thrive in the 19th century. Now, 200 years later, the world has changed; the horizon looks drastically different. Collectively, we need to redesign our education system to enable all of our children — and, by extension, our nation — to thrive today and tomorrow.

“Horizon Three” or “H3” names the future-ready system we need, one that is grounded in equity serving learners’ individual strengths and needs as well as the common good. This series provides a glimpse of where H3 is already being designed and built. It also includes provocations about how we might fundamentally reimagine learning for the future ahead.

Today, I’m excited to share with you all the fruit of our effort at @OpenAI to create AI models capable of truly general reasoning: OpenAI’s new o1 model series! (aka ?) Let me explain ? 1/ pic.twitter.com/aVGAkb9kxV

— Noam Brown (@polynoamial) September 12, 2024

Introducing OpenAI o1 – from openai.com

We’ve developed a new series of AI models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond. Here is the latest news on o1 research, product and other updates.

The wait is over. OpenAI has just released GPT-5, now called OpenAI o1.

It brings advanced reasoning capabilities and can generate entire video games from a single prompt.

Think of it as ChatGPT evolving from fast, intuitive thinking (System-1) to deeper, more deliberate… pic.twitter.com/uAMihaUjol

— Lior? (@AlphaSignalAI) September 12, 2024

OpenAI Strawberry (o1) is out! We are finally seeing the paradigm of inference-time scaling popularized and deployed in production. As Sutton said in the Bitter Lesson, there’re only 2 techniques that scale indefinitely with compute: learning & search. It’s time to shift focus to… pic.twitter.com/jTViQucwxr

— Jim Fan (@DrJimFan) September 12, 2024

Something New: On OpenAI’s “Strawberry” and Reasoning — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Solving hard problems in new ways

The new AI model, called o1-preview (why are the AI companies so bad at names?), lets the AI “think through” a problem before solving it. This lets it address very hard problems that require planning and iteration, like novel math or science questions. In fact, it can now beat human PhD experts in solving extremely hard physics problems.

To be clear, o1-preview doesn’t do everything better. It is not a better writer than GPT-4o, for example. But for tasks that require planning, the changes are quite large.

What is the point of Super Realistic AI? — from Heather Cooper who runs Visually AI on Substack

The arrival of super realistic AI image generation, powered by models like Midjourney, FLUX.1, and Ideogram, is transforming the way we create and use visual content.

Recently, many creators (myself included) have been exploring super realistic AI more and more.

But where can this actually be used?

Super realistic AI image generation will have far-reaching implications across various industries and creative fields. Its importance stems from its ability to bridge the gap between imagination and visual representation, offering multiple opportunities for innovation and efficiency.

Heather goes on to mention applications in:

Creative Industries
Entertainment and Media
Education and Training

NotebookLM now lets you listen to a conversation about your sources — from blog.google by Biao Wang
Our new Audio Overview feature can turn documents, slides, charts and more into engaging discussions with one click.

Today, we’re introducing Audio Overview, a new way to turn your documents into engaging audio discussions. With one click, two AI hosts start up a lively “deep dive” discussion based on your sources. They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth. You can even download the conversation and take it on the go.

Bringing generative AI to video with Adobe Firefly Video Model — from blog.adobe.com by Ashley Still

Over the past several months, we’ve worked closely with the video editing community to advance the Firefly Video Model. Guided by their feedback and built with creators’ rights in mind, we’re developing new workflows leveraging the model to help editors ideate and explore their creative vision, fill gaps in their timeline and add new elements to existing footage.

Just like our other Firefly generative AI models, editors can create with confidence knowing the Adobe Firefly Video Model is designed to be commercially safe and is only trained on content we have permission to use — never on Adobe users’ content.

We’re excited to share some of the incredible progress with you today — all of which is designed to be commercially safe and available in beta later this year. To be the first to hear the latest updates and get access, sign up for the waitlist here.

“Which AI tools do Instructional Designers use the most?” [Hardman] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 09/12/2024, in 21st century, accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, biology, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty/staff, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, media/film, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), neurodivergent/special needs, Open AI, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, writing, by Daniel Christian

The Most Popular AI Tools for Instructional Design (September, 2024) — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
The tools we use most, and how we use them

This week, as I kick off the 20th cohort of my AI-Learning Design bootcamp, I decided to do some analysis of the work habits of the hundreds of amazing AI-embracing instructional designers who I’ve worked with over the last year or so.

My goal was to answer the question: which AI tools do we use most in the instructional design process, and how do we use them?

Here’s where we are in September, 2024:
…

Developing Your Approach to Generative AI — from scholarlyteacher.com by Caitlin K. Kirby, Min Zhuang, Imari Cheyne Tetu, & Stephen Thomas (Michigan State University)

As generative AI becomes integrated into workplaces, scholarly work, and students’ workflows, we have the opportunity to take a broad view of the role of generative AI in higher education classrooms. Our guiding questions are meant to serve as a starting point to consider, from each educator’s initial reaction and preferences around generative AI, how their discipline, course design, and assessments may be impacted, and to have a broad view of the ethics of generative AI use.

The Impact of AI in Advancing Accessibility for Learners with Disabilities — from er.educause.edu by Rob Gibson

AI technology tools hold remarkable promise for providing more accessible, equitable, and inclusive learning experiences for students with disabilities.

The Six AI Use Case Families of Instructional Design — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Phillipa Harman
Pushing AI beyond content creation

So what are the six families? Here’s the TLDR:

Creative Ideation, aka using AI to spark novel ideas and innovative design concepts.
Research & Analysis, aka using AI to rapidly gather and synthesise information from vast sources.
Data-Driven Insights, aka using AI to extract meaningful patterns and predictions from complex datasets.
…and more

Town Hall: Back to School with AI — from gettingsmart.com

Key Points

AI can help educators focus more on human interaction and critical thinking by automating tasks that consume time but don’t require human empathy or creativity.
Encouraging students to use AI as a tool for learning and creativity can significantly boost their engagement and self-confidence, as seen in examples from student experiences shared in the discussion.

The speakers discuss various aspects of AI, including its potential to augment human intelligence and the need to focus on uniquely human competencies in the face of technological advancements. They also emphasize the significance of student agency, with examples of student-led initiatives and feedback sessions that reveal how young learners are already engaging with AI in innovative ways. The episode underscores the necessity for educators and administrators to stay informed and actively participate in the ongoing dialogue about AI to ensure its effective and equitable implementation in schools.

The video below is from The Artifice of Twinning by Marc Watkins

How AI Knocks Down Classroom Barriers — from gettingsmart.com by Alyssa Faubion

Key Points

AI can be a powerful tool to break down language, interest, and accessibility barriers in the classroom, making learning more inclusive and engaging.
Incorporating AI tools in educational settings can help build essential skills that AI can’t replace, such as creativity and problem-solving, preparing students for future job markets.

Join our linked in group, AI in the Classroom https://t.co/rmfw0SvcW1 #edtech #GenAI @isteofficial @cosn @ascd @neatoday @aftunion @oecd_edu @ccsso @fetc @tcea @cueinc pic.twitter.com/Cxl80WuDuS

— David Ross (@DavidPBLRoss) August 20, 2024

This AI App Can Solve Your Math Homework, Steps Included — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

Right now, high schoolers and college students around the country are experimenting with free smartphone apps that help complete their math homework using generative AI. One of the most popular options on campus right now is the Gauth app, with millions of downloads. It’s owned by ByteDance, which is also TikTok’s parent company.

The Gauth app first launched in 2019 with a primary focus on mathematics, but soon expanded to other subjects as well, like chemistry and physics. It’s grown in relevance, and neared the top of smartphone download lists earlier this year for the education category. Students seem to love it. With hundreds of thousands of primarily positive reviews, Gauth has a favorable 4.8 star rating in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

All students have to do after downloading the app is point their smartphone at a homework problem, printed or handwritten, and then make sure any relevant information is inside of the image crop. Then Gauth’s AI model generates a step-by-step guide, often with the correct answer.

From DSC:
I do hesitate to post this though, as I’ve seen numerous posting re: the dubious quality of AI as it relates to giving correct answers to math-related problems – or whether using AI-based tools help or hurt the learning process. The situation seems to be getting better, but as I understand it, we still have some progress to make in this area of mathematics.

Redefining Creativity in the Age of AI — from gettingsmart.com by David Ross

Key Points

Educational leaders must reconsider the definition of creativity, taking into account how generative AI tools can be used to produce novel and impactful creative work, similar to how film editors compile various elements into a cohesive, creative whole.
Generative AI democratizes innovation by allowing all students to become creators, expanding access to creative processes that were previously limited and fostering a broader inclusion of diverse talents and ideas in education.

AI-Powered Instructional Design at ASU — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
How ASU’s Collaboration with OpenAI is Reshaping the Role of Instructional Designers

The developments and experiments at ASU provide a fascinating window into two things:

1. How the world is reimagining learning in the age of AI;
2. How the role of the instructional designer is changing in the age of AI.

In this week’s blog post, I’ll provide a summary of how faculty, staff and students at ASU are starting to reimagine education in the age of AI, and explore what this means for the instructions designers who work there.

PhysicsWallah’s ‘Alakh AI’ is Making Education Accessible to Millions in India — from analyticsindiamag.com by Siddharth Jindal

India’s ed-tech unicorn PhysicsWallah is using OpenAI’s GPT-4o to make education accessible to millions of students in India. Recently, the company launched a suite of AI products to ensure that students in Tier 2 & 3 cities can access high-quality education without depending solely on their enrolled institutions, as 85% of their enrollment comes from these areas.

Last year, AIM broke the news of PhysicsWallah introducing ‘Alakh AI’, its suite of generative AI tools, which was eventually launched at the end of December 2023. It quickly gained traction, amassing over 1.5 million users within two months of its release.

7+ items regarding AI in our learning ecosystems

On 08/26/2024, in accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), business, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital storytelling, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, music, neurodivergent/special needs, pace of change, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What Students Want: Key Results from DEC Global AI Student Survey 2024 — from digitaleducationcouncil.com by Digital Education Council

86% of students globally are regularly using AI in their studies, with 54% of them using AI on a weekly basis, the recent Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey found.
ChatGPT was found to be the most widely used AI tool, with 66% of students using it, and over 2 in 3 students reported using AI for information searching.
Despite their high rates of AI usage, 1 in 2 students do not feel AI ready. 58% reported that they do not feel that they had sufficient AI knowledge and skills, and 48% do not feel adequately prepared for an AI-enabled workplace.

Chatting with WEF about ChatGPT in the classroom — from futureofbeinghuman.com by Andrew Maynard
A short video on generative AI in education from the World Economic Forum

The Post-AI Instructional Designer — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
How the ID role is changing, and what this means for your key skills, roles & responsibilities

Specifically, the study revealed that teachers who reported most productivity gains were those who used AI not just for creating outputs (like quizzes or worksheets) but also for seeking input on their ideas, decisions and strategies.

Those who engaged with AI as a thought partner throughout their workflow, using it to generate ideas, define problems, refine approaches, develop strategies and gain confidence in their decisions gained significantly more from their collaboration with AI than those who only delegated functional tasks to AI.

Leveraging Generative AI for Inclusive Excellence in Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Lorna Gonzalez, Kristi O’Neil-Gonzalez, Megan Eberhardt-Alstot, Michael McGarry and Georgia Van Tyne
Drawing from three lenses of inclusion, this article considers how to leverage generative AI as part of a constellation of mission-centered inclusive practices in higher education.

The hype and hesitation about generative artificial intelligence (AI) diffusion have led some colleges and universities to take a wait-and-see approach.Footnote1 However, AI integration does not need to be an either/or proposition where its use is either embraced or restricted or its adoption aimed at replacing or outright rejecting existing institutional functions and practices. Educators, educational leaders, and others considering academic applications for emerging technologies should consider ways in which generative AI can complement or augment mission-focused practices, such as those aimed at accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Drawing from three lenses of inclusion—accessibility, identity, and epistemology—this article offers practical suggestions and considerations that educators can deploy now. It also presents an imperative for higher education leaders to partner toward an infrastructure that enables inclusive practices in light of AI diffusion.

An example way to leverage AI:

How to Leverage AI for Identity Inclusion
Educators can use the following strategies to intentionally design instructional content with identity inclusion in mind.

Provide a GPT or AI assistant with upcoming lesson content (e.g., lecture materials or assignment instructions) and ask it to provide feedback (e.g., troublesome vocabulary, difficult concepts, or complementary activities) from certain perspectives. Begin with a single perspective (e.g., first-time, first-year student), but layer in more to build complexity as you interact with the GPT output.

Gen AI’s next inflection point: From employee experimentation to organizational transformation — from mckinsey.com by Charlotte Relyea, Dana Maor, and Sandra Durth with Jan Bouly
As many employees adopt generative AI at work, companies struggle to follow suit. To capture value from current momentum, businesses must transform their processes, structures, and approach to talent.

To harness employees’ enthusiasm and stay ahead, companies need a holistic approach to transforming how the whole organization works with gen AI; the technology alone won’t create value.

Our research shows that early adopters prioritize talent and the human side of gen AI more than other companies (Exhibit 3). Our survey shows that nearly two-thirds of them have a clear view of their talent gaps and a strategy to close them, compared with just 25 percent of the experimenters. Early adopters focus heavily on upskilling and reskilling as a critical part of their talent strategies, as hiring alone isn’t enough to close gaps and outsourcing can hinder strategic-skills development. Finally, 40 percent of early-adopter respondents say their organizations provide extensive support to encourage employee adoption, versus 9 percent of experimenter respondents.

7 Ways to Use AI Music in Your Classroom — from classtechtips.com by Monica Burns

Change blindness — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
21 months later

I don’t think anyone is completely certain about where AI is going, but we do know that things have changed very quickly, as the examples in this post have hopefully demonstrated. If this rate of change continues, the world will look very different in another 21 months. The only way to know is to live through it.

My AI Breakthrough — from mgblog.org by Miguel Guhlin

Over the subsequent weeks, I’ve made other adjustments, but that first one was the one I asked myself:

What are you doing?
Why are you doing it that way?
How could you change that workflow with AI?
Applying the AI to the workflow, then asking, “Is this what I was aiming for? How can I improve the prompt to get closer?”
Documenting what worked (or didn’t). Re-doing the work with AI to see what happened, and asking again, “Did this work?”

So, something that took me WEEKS of hard work, and in some cases I found impossible, was made easy. Like, instead of weeks, it takes 10 minutes. The hard part? Building the prompt to do what I want, fine-tuning it to get the result. But that doesn’t take as long now.

4+ items re: the K-12 learning ecosystem

On 08/14/2024, in accessibility / UDL, Alternatives, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), education, education reform, experimentation, face-to-face, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, neurodivergent/special needs, reading, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

How to use accommodations and modifications in the classroom — from understood.org by Amanda Morin

In a busy classroom, it can be daunting to meet the varied learning needs of all your students. Knowing you’re also responsible for implementing instructional accommodations and modifications in students’ IEPs and 504 plans can make it feel even more challenging. But with the right information, you can provide these important supports to help all students thrive.

Here are key concepts to keep in mind and steps you can take to implement accommodations and modifications for your students.

Unschooling: A way of learning outside of school and it requires no lessons, tests or grades — from cbsnews.com by Janay Reece

BALTIMORE — What if your child didn’t go to school?

Believe it or not, some parents don’t send their children to school five days a week, and it’s called unschooling.

It is a growing and sometimes controversial approach to homeschooling.

Rather than using a defined curriculum, unschooling parents trust their kids to learn organically. Unschoolers are focused more on the experimental process of learning and becoming educated, rather than with “doing or going to school.”

People Are Hunting for Education ‘Fads.’ What Does That Say About Schools? — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Public schools are particularly vulnerable to pressure, Cuban said on a call with EdSurge. That’s because national problems tend to become school ones, Cuban says. Schools have to walk a “tightrope,” striking a balance that is both stable for students and able to adapt to changes in the broader society, he says.

Pressure on schools to respond to new issues often ends up altering curricula or introducing new courses, because that’s the easiest part of the public education system to change, Cuban argues. But classrooms are isolated from the superintendent’s office, the school board and other “policy elites” who push change, he says.

Many kids can’t read, even in high school. Is the solution teaching reading in every class? — from hechingerreport.org by Julian Roberts-Grmela
Some high schools and states are experimenting with ways to integrate literacy instruction across all classes

Every teacher at her school, the Health Sciences High and Middle College, in San Diego, shares in the responsibility of teaching students literacy skills, regardless of the subject they teach. That’s because so many students, even incoming ninth graders, arrive at the school without basic reading skills, according to Douglas Fisher, an administrator at the school. While some students also receive one-on-one remediation, Fisher said that research shows those interventions aren’t enough to close the gap.

“We have kids that on our benchmark knowledge assessments are scoring what is the equivalent of second grade, first grade, fourth grade,” said Fisher, who is also a professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. Yet, by the time students graduate, he said, the goal at the secondary school is that they have “reading levels ready for college.”

This is what AI is for. Just this use case alone is worth every dollar invested in it. pic.twitter.com/vaOm3dpyxK

— Andriy Burkov (@burkov) August 10, 2024

From DSC:
The above item is simply excellent!!! I love it!

We’re going to see a lot more of the Square, Stripe, Shopify-type startups pop up for agentic AI.

This one is like an AI-human broker.

1) Prompt an AI with a need
2) Give the AI a budget (real money)
3) AI turns need into plan with tasks
4) AI finds humans to complete the… https://t.co/UXf1bNZ4AK

— Allie K. Miller (@alliekmiller) August 11, 2024

Google just announced their massive AI update in Chrome.

Google Lens is now inside Chrome

Here’s everything you need to know: pic.twitter.com/aXdqvi5wMP

— Poonam Soni (@CodeByPoonam) August 4, 2024

Also relevant/see:

3 new Chrome AI features for even more helpful browsing — from blog.google from Parisa Tabriz
See how Chrome’s new AI features, including Google Lens for desktop and Tab compare, can help you get things done more easily on the web.

On speaking to AI — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Voice changes a lot of things

So, let’s talk about ChatGPT’s new Advanced Voice mode and the new AI-powered Siri. They are not just different approaches to talking to AI. In many ways, they represent the divide between two philosophies of AI – Copilots versus Agents, small models versus large ones, specialists versus generalists.

Your guide to AI – August 2024 — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich and Alex Chalmers

Microsoft says OpenAI is now a competitor in AI and search — from cnbc.com by Jordan Novet

Key Points

Microsoft’s annually updated list of competitors now includes OpenAI, a long-term strategic partner.
The change comes days after OpenAI announced a prototype of a search engine.
Microsoft has reportedly invested $13 billion into OpenAI.

ChatGPT Cheat Sheet? pic.twitter.com/ETsPvJQfVA

— Nelly R Q (@nrqa__) August 5, 2024

Excerpt from by Graham Clay

1. Flux, an open-source text-to-image creator that is comparable to industry leaders like Midjourney, was released by Black Forest Labs (the “original team” behind Stable Diffusion). It is capable of generating high quality text in images (there are tons of educational use cases). You can play with it on their demo page, on Poe, or by running it on your own computer (tutorial here).

Other items re: Flux:

How to FLUX — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Where to use FLUX online & full tutorial to create a sleek ad in minutes

.

Also from Heather Cooper:

Introducing FLUX: Open-Source text to image model

FLUX… has been EVERYWHERE this week, as I’m sure you have seen. Developed by Black Forest Labs, is an open-source image generation model that’s gaining attention for its ability to rival leading models like Midjourney, DALL·E 3, and SDXL.

What sets FLUX apart is its blend of creative freedom, precision, and accessibility—it’s available across multiple platforms and can be run locally.

Why FLUX Matters
FLUX’s open-source nature makes it accessible to a broad audience, from hobbyists to professionals.

It offers advanced multimodal and parallel diffusion transformer technology, delivering high visual quality, strong prompt adherence, and diverse outputs.

It’s available in 3 models:
FLUX.1 [pro]: A high-performance, commercial image synthesis model.
FLUX.1 [dev]: An open-weight, non-commercial variant of FLUX.1 [pro]
FLUX.1 [schnell]: A faster, distilled version of FLUX.1, operating up to 10x quicker.

Daily Digest: Huge (in)Flux of AI videos. — from bensbites.beehiiv.com
PLUS: Review of ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode.

During the weekend, image models made a comeback. Recently released Flux models can create realistic images with near-perfect text—straight from the model, without much patchwork. To get the party going, people are putting these images into video generation models to create pretty–trippy–videos. I can’t identify half of them as AI, and they’ll only get better. See this tutorial on how to create a video ad for your product..

7 not only cool but handy use cases of new Claude — from techthatmatters.beehiiv.com by Harsh Makadia

Data visualization
Infographic
Copy the UI of a website
…and more

Achieving Human Level Competitive Robot Table Tennis — from sites.google.com

14+ resources regarding AI in our learning ecosystems

On 08/13/2024, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, Australia, CMS/LMS, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, Google, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, lifelong learning, Microsoft, multimedia, Open AI, platforms, policy, productivity / tips and tricks, religion, strategy, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

What Students Want When It Comes To AI — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Glenda Morgan
The Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey 2024

The Digital Education Council (DEC) this week released the results of a global survey of student opinions on AI. It’s a large survey with nearly 4,000 respondents conducted across 16 countries, but more importantly, it asks some interesting questions. There are many surveys about AI out there right now, but this one stands out. I’m going to go into some depth here, as the entire survey report is worth reading.

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AI is forcing a teaching and learning evolution — from eschoolnews.com by Laura Ascione
AI and technology tools are leading to innovative student learning–along with classroom, school, and district efficiency

Key findings from the 2024 K-12 Educator + AI Survey, which was conducted by Hanover Research, include:

Teachers are using AI to personalize and improve student learning, not just run classrooms more efficiently, but challenges remain
While post-pandemic challenges persist, the increased use of technology is viewed positively by most teachers and administrators
…and more

From DSC:
I wonder…how will the use of AI in education square with the issues of using smartphones/laptops within the classrooms? See:

Why Schools Are Racing to Ban Student Phones — from nytimes.com by Natasha Singer; via GSV
As the new school year starts, a wave of new laws that aim to curb distracted learning is taking effect in Indiana, Louisiana and other states.

A three-part series from Dr. Phillippa Hardman:

Part 1: Writing Learning Objectives
The Results Part 1: Writing Learning Objectives

In this week’s post I will dive into the results from task 1: writing learning objectives. Stay tuned over the next two weeks to see all of the the results.

Part 2: Selecting Instructional Strategies.
The Results Part 2: Selecting an Instructional Strategy

Welcome back to our three-part series exploring the impact of AI on instructional design.
…
This week, we’re tackling a second task and a crucial aspect of instructional design: selecting instructional strategies. The ability to select appropriate instructional strategies to achieve intended objectives is a mission-critical skill for any instructional designer. So, can AI help us do a good job of it? Let’s find out!

Part 3: How Close is AI to Replacing Instructional Designers?
The Results Part 3: Creating a Course Outline

Today, we’re diving into what many consider to be the role-defining task of the instructional designer: creating a course design outline.

ChatGPT Cheat Sheet for Instructional Designers! — from Alexandra Choy Youatt EdD

Instructional Designers!
Whether you’re new to the field or a seasoned expert, this comprehensive guide will help you leverage AI to create more engaging and effective learning experiences.

What’s Inside?
Roles and Tasks: Tailored prompts for various instructional design roles and tasks.
Formats: Different formats to present your work, from training plans to rubrics.
Learning Models: Guidance on using the ADDIE model and various pedagogical strategies.
Engagement Tips: Techniques for online engagement and collaboration.
Specific Tips: Industry certifications, work-based learning, safety protocols, and more.

Who Can Benefit?
Corporate Trainers
Curriculum Developers
E-Learning Specialists
Instructional Technologists
Learning Experience Designers
And many more!
…

ChatGPT Cheat Sheet | Instructional Designer

5 AI Tools I Use Every Day (as a Busy Student) — from theaigirl.substack.com by Diana Dovgopol
AI tools that I use every day to boost my productivity.
#1 Gamma
#2 Perplexity
#3 Cockatoo

I use this AI tool almost every day as well. Since I’m still a master’s student at university, I have to attend lectures and seminars, which are always in English or German, neither of which is my native language. With the help of Cockatoo, I create scripts of the lectures and/or translations into my language. This means I don’t have to take notes in class and then manually translate them afterward. All I need to do is record the lecture audio on any device or directly in Cockatoo, upload it, and then you’ll have the audio and text ready for you.

…and more

Students Worry Overemphasis on AI Could Devalue Education — from insidehighered.com by Juliette Rowsell
Report stresses that AI is “new standard” and universities need to better communicate policies to learners.

Rising use of AI in higher education could cause students to question the quality and value of education they receive, a report warns.

This year’s Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey, of more than 3,800 students from 16 countries, found that more than half (55 percent) believed overuse of AI within teaching devalued education, and 52 percent said it negatively impacted their academic performance.

Despite this, significant numbers of students admitted to using such technology. Some 86 percent said they “regularly” used programs such as ChatGPT in their studies, 54 percent said they used it on a weekly basis, and 24 percent said they used it to write a first draft of a submission.

Higher Ed Leadership Is Excited About AI – But Investment Is Lacking — from forbes.com by Vinay Bhaskara

As corporate America races to integrate AI into its core operations, higher education finds itself in a precarious position. I conducted a survey of 63 university leaders revealing that while higher ed leaders recognize AI’s transformative potential, they’re struggling to turn that recognition into action.

This struggle is familiar for higher education — gifted with the mission of educating America’s youth but plagued with a myriad of operational and financial struggles, higher ed institutions often lag behind their corporate peers in technology adoption. In recent years, this gap has become threateningly large. In an era of declining enrollments and shifting demographics, closing this gap could be key to institutional survival and success.

The survey results paint a clear picture of inconsistency: 86% of higher ed leaders see AI as a “massive opportunity,” yet only 21% believe their institutions are prepared for it. This disconnect isn’t just a minor inconsistency – it’s a strategic vulnerability in an era of declining enrollments and shifting demographics.

(Generative) AI Isn’t Going Anywhere but Up — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard
“Hype” claims are nonsense.

There has been a lot of talk recently about an “AI Bubble.” Supposedly, the industry, or at least the generative AI subset of it, will collapse. This is known as the “Generative AI Bubble.” A bubble — a broad one or a generative one — is nonsense. These are the reasons we will continue to see massive growth in AI.

AI Readiness: Prepare Your Workforce to Embrace the Future — from learningguild.com by Danielle Wallace

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries, enhancing efficiency, and unlocking new opportunities. To thrive in this landscape, organizations need to be ready to embrace AI not just technologically but also culturally.

Learning leaders play a crucial role in preparing employees to adapt and excel in an AI-driven workplace. Transforming into an AI-empowered organization requires more than just technological adoption; it demands a shift in organizational mindset. This guide delves into how learning leaders can support this transition by fostering the right mindset attributes in employees.

Claude AI for eLearning Developers — from learningguild.com by Bill Brandon

Claude is fast, produces grammatically correct text, and outputs easy-to-read articles, emails, blog posts, summaries, and analyses. Take some time to try it out. If you worry about plagiarism and text scraping, put the results through Grammarly’s plagiarism checker (I did not use Claude for this article, but I did send the text through Grammarly).

Survey: Top Teacher Uses of AI in the Classroom — from thejournal.com by Rhea Kelly

A new report from Cambium Learning Group outlines the top ways educators are using artificial intelligence to manage their classrooms and support student learning. Conducted by Hanover Research, the 2024 K-12 Educator + AI Survey polled 482 teachers and administrators at schools and districts that are actively using AI in the classroom.

More than half of survey respondents (56%) reported that they are leveraging AI to create personalized learning experiences for students. Other uses included providing real-time performance tracking and feedback (cited by 52% of respondents), helping students with critical thinking skills (50%), proofreading writing (47%), and lesson planning (44%).

On the administrator side, top uses of AI included interpreting/analyzing student data (61%), managing student records (56%), and managing professional development (56%).

Addendum on 8/14/24:

DSC: Think about the impacts/ramifications of global, virtual, real-time language translations!

On 08/12/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, education technology, emerging technologies, Europe, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, languages and translation, law schools, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Open AI, society, technologies for your home, telelegal, telemedicine / telehealth / virtual health, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, videoconferencing, Virtual courts and law firms, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Here’s the first group call with @ChatGPTapp Advanced Voice Mode.

Watch ChatGPT act like a native interpreter speaking to @skirano in Italian, and to me in Urdu.

Bonus, look out for the Mario impression near the end ? pic.twitter.com/TaVhJ6Q75J

— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) August 4, 2024

ChatGPT Voice Mode Is Here: Will It Revolutionize AI Communication?

Advanced Voice Mode – FAQ — from help.openai.com
Learn more about our Advanced Voice capabilities.

Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT features more natural, real-time conversations that pick up on and respond with emotion and non-verbal cues.

Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT is currently in a limited alpha. Please note that it may make mistakes, and access and rate limits are subject to change.

From DSC:
Think about the impacts/ramifications of global, virtual, real-time language translations!!! This type of technology will create very powerful, new affordances in our learning ecosystems — as well as in business communications, with the various governments across the globe, and more!

Digital Writing Lab

About this Project

The Digital Writing Lab is a key component of the Australian national Teaching Digital Writing project, which runs from 2022-2025.

This stage of the broader project involves academic and secondary English teacher collaboration to explore how teachers are conceptualising the teaching of digital writing and what further supports they may need.

Previous stages of the project included archival research reviewing materials related to digital writing in Australia’s National Textbook Collection, and a national survey of secondary English teachers. You can find out more about the whole project via the project blog.

Who runs the project?

Project Lead Lucinda McKnight is an Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow researching how English teachers can connect the teaching of writing to contemporary media and students’ lifeworlds.

She is working with Leon Furze, who holds the doctoral scholarship attached to this project, and Chris Zomer, the project Research Fellow. The project is located in the Research for Educational Impact (REDI) centre at Deakin University, Melbourne.

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Gig Work, College Skills [Fain]

On 08/01/2024, in apprenticeships, business, career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Gig Work, College Skills — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
New partnership lets college students use classroom learning for freelance roles.

Bringing Freelancing to College Education
A new partnership between Podium Education, an experiential learning company, and the freelance platform Upwork aims to let more students use the skills they’ve learned in class—and to make money now for doing so.

The Big Idea: The partnership, announced today, is an extension of the work that Podium already does with more than 70 universities. Through their Global Career Accelerator, students learn marketing, data analytics, or coding skills for credit and get the chance to work on a specific project with companies like Intel and the nonprofit charity: water. With the new partnership, students who complete the coursework will get customized access to and onboarding with Upwork, as well as coaching on how to be successful in freelancing.

The resistance to AI in education isn’t really about learning — from medium.com by Peter Shea

A quick comment first from DSC:
Peter Shea gives us some interesting perspectives here. His thoughts should give many of us fodder for our own further reflection.

This reaction underscores a deeper issue: the resistance to AI in education is not truly about learning. It reflects a reluctance to re-evaluate the traditional roles of educators and to embrace the opportunities AI offers to enhance the learning experience.
…
In order to thrive in the learning ecosystem that will evolve in the Age of AI, the teaching profession needs to do some difficult but essential re-evaluation of their role, in order to better understand where they can provide the best value to learners. This requires confronting some comforting myths and uncomfortable truths.

Problem #2: The Closed World of Academic Culture
In addition, many teachers have spent little time working in non-academic professions. This is especially true for college instructors, who must devote five to seven years to graduate education before obtaining their first full-time position, and thus have little time to explore careers outside academia. This common lack of non-academic work experience heightens the anxiety that educators feel when contemplating the potential impact of generative AI on their work lives.

Also see this related posting:

Majority of Grads Wish They’d Been Taught AI in College — from insidehighered.com by Lauren Coffey
A new survey shows 70 percent of graduates think generative AI should be incorporated into courses. More than half said they felt unprepared for the workforce.

A majority of college graduates believe generative artificial intelligence tools should be incorporated into college classrooms, with more than half saying they felt unprepared for the workforce, according to a new survey from Cengage Group, an education-technology company.

The survey, released today, found that 70 percent of graduates believe basic generative AI training should be integrated into courses; 55 percent said their degree programs did not prepare them to use the new technology tools in the workforce.

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