It’s hard to get into serious news reading with all the ChatGPT stories in my newsfeed every morning. I keep thinking I need to filter it out but it’s somewhat interesting with all the different takes on it. I mainly will click through and read something that looks like it’s advise for education and there’s no shortage of that, for sure. Heck, I even wrote a post of my own here. I was just speculating and giving my two cents.
This morning though, this one really caught my eye.
I guess when there’s an opportunity, there are people ready to go for it.
Now, my first thought when reading the article was that it was on the Apple system and I had to smile because most things there cost money. Sometimes, a lot of money. Cheapskate me did bring my open-source mentality to my MacBook Pro and so I don’t have many paid apps installed there although I’m sure that I paid for the Apple ones with the price of the computer.
Now, lest I come across as too smug, I did take a peak into the Windows Store and found that this platform isn’t immune to opportunities to spend money.
As my friend Bill would say, there are Ferengi opportunities everywhere. Jumping ahead of the game for an application to interface to a free resource that is still in Beta? The people behind this did a nice job of promoting it in the link. It looks just like any other application in the store.
Apparently, there are lots to pick your way through.
In the cloud of excitement surrounding ChatGPT, some shifty actors have sought to cash in. An avalanche of unverified mobile apps claiming to be ChatGPT have popped up in both the App Store and Play Store, but none are actually associated with OpenAI.
I wonder – does ChatGPT have an open API that makes these happen and let you jump the queue? I’ll be honest; until I read this story, I hadn’t even considered that concept.
It would be interesting to see screenshots or a movie or two of these things in action.
In the meantime, apparently, OpenAI is working on its own app for iOS.
It does beg the question – if ChatGPT does such a good job of doing things, including writing software, why doesn’t it just write its own iOS app?
In the meantime, a wide-open question – would an application that runs on your phone or tablet outside of a browser be something that you would want? Would you pay money for it?
Will Gourley was kind enough to join Stephen and me for Wednesday’s show. I think we could have talked all morning about various things inspired by the writing in these great blog posts.
As we try to do when we have a guest host, we pulled in a post from Will. The nice thing about going live is the ability to put people on the spot and I did, asking Will why his titles are always in lower case. And, we got an answer to that and about his own abandoned blog.
I enjoyed reading his take on Track and Field day. Typically, it’s held in the Spring of the year when it’s great to be outside and hopefully not raining.
In his post, Will made reference to Track and Field being a great idea for distance learning. He started with the concept in the post and then expanded on it during the show. While I’ve never run any marathons, I’ve swam in some and certainly walk marathons with the dog every day but had never made the connection like he did. I can now tell you that I totally agree with him; I’d just never put it that way.
The good news is that Will plans to continue writing and sharing his thoughts on the Heart and Art Blog going into the fall.
There are jobs available everywhere. Diana’s done her research and includes a link to the post which is an interesting read.
Sure, there are jobs everywhere but employers are looking for applicants with experience. Therein lies the crunch. Once you have the experience for your resume things are easier.
Diana takes us on a discussion of her employment life and it is rich. From odd and unrelated jobs as a student to a teacher in search of full-time employment to a teacher who is fully employed, it’s all there.
She’s looking for a job for her youngest; if she lived around here, I could get her one in a heartbeat but the commute would be pretty rough from where she lives. If you can help a person out, she’s all ears.
Speaking of ears, nobody wears a set of ears like Diana.
Marc is usually good for some posts about “The 500” and there are a couple recent ones to check out:
The 500 – #308 – Songs For Swingin’ Lovers – Frank Sinatra The 500 – #309 – Willy And The Poor Boys – Creedence Clearwater Revival
But, that’s not the point of this post. Marc introduces us to the way that he uses Shapegrams in his classroom with success. There are a number of links to student work at the bottom of the post to see how it’s done in his classs.
Particularly these days, every post seems to have a graphic to enhance the writing. You can’t even create an Instagram post without one. Having grade appropriate ones are important.
Reading this post reminded me of my time on OSAPAC and our licensing of the Canadian Clipart Collection. Where is OSAPAC these days? This sounds like a worthy piece of software to be evaluated.
This is a post that is far too short. It’s depressing to read and I suspect that there is more behind it than Rabia shares.
She’s learning from her PhD about the importance of citing sources. I learned far earlier than that; I’m thinking Grade 7 where we got a zero, no questions asked if we didn’t quote our references and importantly, do it correctly.
Her observation:
“Too often Black, Indigenous, racialized and other marginalized people’s work is used and not referenced properly.”
It’s not just the formal writing and Rabia talks about it as part of general conversation. At the bottom of this post, she gives a number of sentence starters that are worth reading and use.
I’m paraphrasing my Grade 7 teacher here but I still understand her intention “if the resource is good enough to use, it’s good enough to use properly.”
This is a post that should be part of your summer inspiration. Over the past couple of years, professional development (I prefer the term professional learning) has been hard to find, hard to attend happily, and even harder to implement with classes through online meetings or later with social distancing rules.
Though it’s not the big message from the post, you need to find some way to get over the malaise that we’ve all fallen into.
Joel’s post is a strong message for the need to learn at the best of times and he addresses what you can do if you’re in the spot of not attending because you don’t have the time. You need to find the time and now that there’s a quasi-return-to-normal, you need to find some way to make it happen personally.
Ten Resources to Learn About Queer and Trans History in Canada
There isn’t much commentary that I can add to this except to bookmark this resource. There may come a time, maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point, you need to have a quality resource.
This isn’t just a random collection of things that Google offers up; Krista offers workshops on “gender and queer identities” so she knows of what she speaks.
I got a request from Peter on Sunday afternoon after I had written a scheduled a post for Monday already. He wanted to write a guest blog piece and have me host it. How could I say no? I didn’t even know the topic but I knew that a request like this would be for a good reason.
And it was.
He used the opportunity to write about an original piece of artwork that he had purchased from Colleen Rose and wanted it posted. Of course, I agreed. It didn’t go all that easily. Google Docs and some of the formatting that he used didn’t copy/paste well into WordPress. Then started the revisions – he wanted a picture of my painting and then we went back and forth wordsmithing things. It wasn’t until about 2 in the morning that I finished it on my end and it went live at 5am. It’s a great post about a wonderful person and talented artist. Kudos to Peter for writing it.
A rose between two thorns, thanks Colleen Rose
As always, read these great posts and then follow the authors on Twitter.
Is there any location in a school that changes so frequently in response to resources, understanding how students read, or just a conducive place for learning, reading, making, or just a place for lesson planning as the library?
Elizabeth has started a series of blog posts about what goes into her thinking about design and I like how she’s generous enough to share it with us in this post and has shared it with colleagues and administrators from other schools over the years.
Today’s library is so far removed from the libraries that we enjoyed going to in schools. Certainly, we enjoyed going there and it was a favourite place for a number of reasons. Mostly, I recall, it was for books and a quiet place to work.
Things have changed. How do you make it a success? There’s lots of planning, design, and thinking that goes into it and you get a sense of it in this introductory post.
Things to consider – layout of the room
Beginning readers
Picture books
Chapter books and graphic novels
Non-fiction
Dual language
If you’ve been paying attention to education, there’s much more to come as we think about makerspaces and all the other things that happen there. As she notes, the library environment is the third educator in the room. If you think it’s just another room with books, you’ve got another think coming.
I’m looking forward to the upcoming posts.
Researcher’s Journal: Living in a post-truth world
Now that Paul is working on his PhD, he’s taking us deeper in thought as we tag along with his research.
This time, he’s looking at “post-truth“, ironically the definition that I’m sharing is from Wikipedia! This resource even has a post about mis-information.
It doesn’t take long when you turn on the evening news broadcasts from the south of the border that this concept blows up in your face. There was a time when an expert carried an expert label; now it seems like anyone who is willing to stand in front of a camera and scream gets the air play. Truth used to be so binary.
Paul’s current thoughts are influenced by Sam Weinburg and he’s good enough to give us a glimpse of his research reading.
These days, it seems anyone can be a journalist and you can start with a blog and share whatever information you want! Later, I’m going to talk about a blog post from Bonnie Stewart and she has a link to a resource on eCampusOntario about Information Abundance. Good reading and I can’t help but think that Paul’s work is important but how will it be judged objectively? What does objective mean anymore?
All teachers have a way to start their class. There’s a phrase that you often hear “minds on” to describe things. You’d like to think that students come in, sit down quietly, and get to work. About the second day in this profession and you know that they need help; it doesn’t come naturally.
Aviva shares how she personally starts her day. With an early start, she’s into the popular word puzzle games. I know that many teachers are now using it as a fun start to the lesson (psst don’t tell them that it’s good for them) but Aviva uses it for herself to get her mind going.
Then, what would an Aviva post be without pictures? She shares how her students get started independently.
It seems to me that the key to all of this is to find a bite-sized activity that’s engaging and enjoyable to do. That’s not always easy but finding it will have huge payoffs.
Redesign for online: 3 easy steps to questioning everything you do as an educator
My RSS Reader brought up this two-year-old now post from Bonnie. I don’t know if she updated it or if it was just fortunate luck but I read it and really enjoyed it. There’s so much wisdom in here that, after COVID, we can get a better understanding of now.
Warning – the title is a bit of a bait and switch but not in a bad way. As she notes, there is no such thing as three easy steps.
Online teaching is her thing so she does write from a strong background and credibility. After two years, everyone has built up a bit of expertise so her experiences have added importance.
There were a few big takeaways for me.
“Redesigning for online is a confronting process. It forces you to pare down both your course content AND your course communications to the bits that matter most” – Yes! Not everything gets ported over. It’s also a good idea as you prepare for F2F next year
“the infrastructure of the internet is actually designed FOR two-way participatory communications” and she gives terrific examples of what to do. I thought that the concept of knowledge creators versus consumers was particularly helpful. With YouTube and the like, I think everyone has got the consumer part down pat
“My partner, on the other hand, worked ten hour days, wrote half an Online Teaching textbook, and created an entire site of video resources and interviews about digital pedagogies” This is a rich resource
There is a presentation and the irony of the tools used isn’t lost on me but it will be a good hour of professional learning for all.
After the fact, I had some regrets about sharing the post. The content was about the work that Diana puts in to support her colleagues in a couple of graduations in the school – from Kindergarten and Grade 8. She’s using her technical skills to build a presentation using green screen and a story for each student.
It was a little sobering when she mentioned that this might well be the first time for the kindergarten students to see a big audience. I never thought of that.
The regrets came from responses to the voicEd show where the concept of graduations was discussed in not so glowing terms. That wasn’t the point of Diana’s post and I hope that she missed it. Graduations are a school or district decision; not an individual teacher’s.
Having said that, I can’t recall any course where things abruptly ended after the last class. Even at the Faculty of Education just taking a single course, there was an invitation to go out or over to someone’s house to celebrate the end of things.
There have been so few things to celebrate these days that a formal graduation may just be the shot that people need, for that moment in time. There may be a time and a place to have this discussion but to tag onto this blog post isn’t it.
And don’t forget the parents – this from a friend of mine this morning…
So proud x 2 🎓🎓🎉🎉! Congratulations to both XXXXXXX and XXXXXXX on their Grade 8 graduation from XXPS! 🙌🏻 10 years in the making!
I’m sure that also the kids will get a DVD or a link to the presentation that they can enjoy for a lifetime. I sure wish I had that to look back at.
Ditto here. In the past while, I’ve had an optometrist and doctor appointment and I’ve worn a mask. The sign on the door says so and I know that these are occasions where you’re going to be closer than ever to someone not in your immediate family.
We also wear masks to the drug store where it’s about 50/50 with staff and Walmart where the ratio is less. I’ve convinced my wife that self-checkout isn’t bad because you don’t have to stand really close to anyone.
I’d like to go with the sentiment that it’s all over. But it isn’t, by a long shot.
A good friend, wife, and inlaw all got it
Friends on Facebook have checked in with the sad news
Baseball was cancelled because they couldn’t field a team
Then, there’s the concept of longCOVID (longCovid) that Marie talks about in the post. It’s not pleasant and she doesn’t sugar-coat it.
Somehow, so many have bought into the concept since vaccination centres are shut down and there isn’t a frenzy to get a jab.
I had to smile a bit at her thoughts about style. Like so many, I just wish we could get to the point where it’s not here and we don’t have to worry about writing about it. We’re not there yet.
I felt that this was a brave and important post from Diana. Here, she takes a look at some of the idioms that she has found herself using. An idiom is a word or phrase that is used in language that represents something different other than the original meaning.
We talked about this post on Wednesday morning on voicEd Radio and I found it was awkward. I didn’t want to use the examples that Diana had given because it just wouldn’t be appropriate to say them out loud. This is one case where blogging is better than podcasting since she could put the idiom inside quotation marks to denote her use of it. Certainly when you talk, there wasn’t an equivalent that I was comfortable using.
During the show, Stephen introduced another one – “Cake Walk” – and I had no idea of the history of that one. After his explanation, I don’t think I’ll ever have the urge to use it again. I had no idea…
This is a good post and I’ll bet you’ll pay a bit more attention to your words after reading it. She treats each of the examples the same way:
I can’t remember the first time I thought about this but it would have been a long, long time ago. Now, it’s just part of the business of being online with an email account.
Somehow your email address ends up being discovered by the bad guys through any one of a million different ways and you get an unsolictited email that appears in your inbox. In the early days, it appeared right up front and in your face. The content of the email typically has some sort of message for you requiring action on your part which usually involves clicking a link and going to some place that you didn’t intend. The goal is to get more information from you or important things like Credit Card information.
That’s what drove Peter to write this post – he had a friend who thought that they had had their information stolen. Peter responds with a good summary of what a spam message looks like for others to learn from and provides some great advice. Even if you think that you know it all, it’s still a good read and reminder.
These days, most email providers have artificial intelligence hard at work trying its best to keep those messages away from you by dumping them into a spam folder. Sadly, you still have to visit it because sometimes good messages get dumped there.
This is a blog post that goes hand and hand with a podcast discussion between Charles and Stephen Hurley. There’s lots of great information there about Cito and Charles and their relationship as well as a bit of history if you like that sort of thing. And, I do even though I’m a lifelong Tiger fan.
Like most sports, baseball is a source for fascinating statistics that can be used nicely in the classroom and answer the question “When will we ever use this?” Cito’s stats as a player appear here:
In the podcast, Stephen kept pushing Charles to talk about leadership in schools as compared to Gaston’s leadership in baseball. Of course, it got me thinking and two managers came to mind – Earl Weaver and Sparky Anderson. There is a definite different in styles compared to Gaston’s.
Who would you want managing your school?
You’ll want to read the post and listen to the podcast – it’s about 20 minutes long and really worth the listen.
And, hang in there Charles, there may be a phone call to use your abilities as a catcher yet.
WE’RE ON THE PLANET TEZRA HELPING CHILDREN TO MANAGE THEIR EMOTIONS …
Lynn, who I remember as a principal in my school district, has partnered with a niece and a recent graduate from Kennedy Collegiate to produce a series of books for students. It’s not just any type of book and I think that it’s unique enough to appeal to parents and libraries who are in search of the solution this series will help address.
The premise for the series surrounds inhabitants from the planet Tezra. They are interestingly drawn with sharp looking colours. What makes these characters special – well, you’ll have to read Lynn’s post to get all the details but part of it is that they have difficulty managing their emotions.
The books come will come with an accompanying guide for teachers and parents to help them use the resource successfully to help manage emotions. It sounds like they’re addressing a very unique situation.
As a promotion, one lucky entrant to a draw will get a personal caricature of themselves from the illustrator.
You hear about issues that people are having going into school every day. They’re legitimate at the best of times; teaching is a tough profession.
Living and teaching through a pandemic and the type of leadership that we’re seeing, it only makes the stress that more oppressive. Burnout is a legitimate concern.
In this post, Kristy offers her thoughts with three areas:
Professional Support
Outside-of-Work Friends
Family
I had a flashback to advice from my first principal that has stuck with me since then – choose your friends wisely. There are so many that just poisonous or may end up turning on you.
In each of the areas, Kristy spells out some very important things to consider. Even if you don’t feel the burnout right now, you might at some point and that makes reading and bookmarking this important.
This tags onto the post from Charles above dealing with leadership. I first of all tried to attach the descriptions here to a manager of a Major League Baseball team.
They take calculated risks
They unconditionally celebrate the successes of others
They are not afraid to communicate what they think
They welcome change and challenges
They embrace a growth mindset and don’t dwell on things beyond their control
They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves: they rush forward
Then, I spun it to think about leadership in education. I could see his points fitting nicely into both scenarios.
It’s an interesting post about leadership and, of couse, Joel expands on each of his points as you work your way through this read.
For those who are in leadership positions, I think it’s important to realize that other’s eyes are always on you and that makes this openness, caring, and empathy all that much more important.
Supporting Student Transition from Elementary to Secondary
In my personal transition, my preparation for Grade 9 didn’t have anything about the change in network and friends, it was all about how if I didn’t do better in Grade 8, I was going to be toast in Grade 9 or as my Grade 8 teacher called it “Coll-EEEE-giate”. I was petrified and there was no formal Grade 8 night; my parents and I were welcome to walk the halls the week before school started to find my home room and locker. It had to have a big effect on me; I still remember that room and my locker combination. 57-36-12
It was a scary experience. I don’t have specific memories of Grades 10-13 but I still remember Grade 9.
Things are so much different now. Even the buildings and philosophies are different. Some students are in the big house starting earlier than before. Yes, the building is reorganized to make it friendly but still. Grade 8 nights are big events and Grade 8 teachers are much more aware of the big change in student life ahead.
Things are definitely different than back in my day never mind throwing in all the COVID stuff. Secondary school can be an intimidating place, of that there can be no doubt. Big, bad teachers, and all that!
I found Gary’s post to be an interesting read, chocked full of advice and he even includes an a self-advocacy toolkit full of ideas and student oriented that might find its way into your set of tools.
Please take the time to click through and enjoy all these posts. Then, follow these bloggers on Twitter.
Here’s a resource that every science teacher (and others) are going to want to bookmark because I can see so many uses for it with them. It’s called the OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer and it’s so powerful and yet so humbling at the same time.
An interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science. Discover your favourites, see which species are under threat, and be amazed by the diversity of life on earth.
Be prepared to do a lot of zooming and moving around.
If you follow one of the links in the window when you land at the site, you’ll be dropped into the middle of life, somewhere. Exploring around there is hugely interesting. And why wouldn’t it be. The website brags that it has identified and placed 2,235,322 species on the tree, many with images.
This is a huge resource and each time I find something of particular interest, I’m off in another direction. I love it when a resource is that comprehensive.
There is a section specifically devoted to education including instructions about installing it locally. You owe it to yourself to look through the site and then, of course, start exploring.
doug --- off the record 