One of the deepest pleasures of an academic life is when something you helped create, an idea, a framework, gets a life of its own. Others run across it, who knows how that happens... and they find meaning in it and use it to guide their work. It is both unexpected...
GenAI Reasoning Models: Very smart & confident (but still drunk)
A year or so ago, I came up with this metaphor that working with a chatbot is like having "a smart, biased, supremely confident, drunk intern." While the bias aspect is a crucial issue I've written about elsewhere, for this discussion we'll focus on the other...
The Avengers, Creativity & the EdTech Midgame
If last week we had Bollywood, could Hollywood be far behind? Here is the fourth blog post from students in my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education, documenting what we do each week. The only edit I made to their post was including the image and description of...
The GenAI and Expertise Paradox: Why It Makes Expert Work More Important But Harder
I've had many conversations recently with colleagues about what happens when we integrate GenAI into our daily work. What effects does it have on our cognition? What do we gain and what do we lose in this process? Does using Claude or ChatGPT to help with writing...
Creativity class goes to Bollywood
The third blog post from students in my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education. Links to previous posts below. These posts are an ongoing record of what we are up to each week – and are not edited by me in any way (minor stylistic changes apart). Here we go....
Code, Kathak, and Confusion: A Story of Learning with GenAI
One of the students in my Human Creativity x AI in Education class is an accomplished Kathak dancer and last week we got into a discussion of how she could bring this personal interest into projects we were exploring in the class. How could GenAI help? So yesterday,...
AI schools, para-social relationships and more: New episodes of AIR|GPT
I am a co-host of a relatively new podcast called AIR | GPT with Caroline Fell Kurban, Liz Kolb, Ruben Puentedura, and Helen Crompton. Our conversations are masterfully orchestrated by Emmy Award-winning executive producer Errol St.Clair Smith. For the uninitiated,...
Creativity x GenAI: Week 3
The second blog post from students in my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education. (You can see the first post here). Just in case you are wondering why this is week 3 and not week 2, we lost one class due to MLK Day. These posts are an ongoing record of what we...
Human Creativity & AI in Education: Week 1
This semester I am teaching a course titled Human Creativity x AI in Education. We have 19 students in the class, split into 5 groups. (And yes though I love prime numbers, having one more participant would have been better). Each week one of the groups will document...
Oops! Double Trouble with Double Dactyls OR Learning from AI’s Creative Mistakes
As headlines swirl about AI chatbots misrepresenting Anne Frank (Schools Using AI Emulation of Anne Frank That Urges Kids Not to Blame Anyone for Holocaust) and Apple canceling its AI news summaries due to accuracy concerns (Apple pulls error-prone AI-generated news...
The Dance of Entropy: A Transdisciplinary Exploration
One of the ideas we have been exploring in my transdisciplinary creativity class this semester, is that of how generative AI can serve as a bridge between seemingly disparate fields. In this post, I want to share the results of an ongoing experiment demonstrating the...
Shattered: Myth, Metaphor & Gen AI
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" and its resonance with our AI age (The Mirror Cracked: AI, Poetry, and the Illusion of Depth). In that post I explored how our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by technology, AI...
Lee Shulman (1938 – 2024)
The news of Lee Shulman's passing has led me to reflect on the profound impact he has had on my career and worldview, despite our paths crossing in person just once. While we never formally collaborated, our academic journeys shared a fascinating connection through...
Copy, Paste, Personality: AI and the Messy Science of Being Human
According to MIT Technology Review (AI can now create a replica of your personality) a new paper from Stanford and Google DeepMind researchers claims that a two-hour interview is enough for AI to create an accurate "replica" of your personality. The idea that we can...
Of Stochastic Parrots and Drunk Interns: My Chat with Win Coalition
I recently sat down with Ryan Gray and Robin Bryce of Yavapai College for Win Coalition's What's Next Speaker Series. Regular readers of this blog will know exactly what I must have talked about - no surprises here! We dove into AI, education, and where all this is...
Perspectives on Global Learning: SLL at the GLOW Conference:
I joined my Silver Lining for Learning (SLL) co-hosts - Chris Dede, Curt Bonk, and Lydia Cao (with Yong Zhao unable to attend due to travel) - to deliver a keynote at the Global Learning for an Open World Conference. SLL has been a labor of love over the past five...
The Mirror Cracked: AI, Poetry, and the Illusion of Depth
In a recent episode of Silver Lining for Learning on Hybrid Intelligence, I was going on about how AI systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated at mimicking human emotion and agency. Nothing new for readers of this blog - my usual concerns about synthetic...
Can Machines Stink? A Touring Test of Human Exceptionalism
My friend Leigh Wolf sent me the Journal of Imaginary Research's 2024 call for abstracts (note, abstracts not papers) on the theme of "Flourishing." Do check out the journal. It IS a hoot! I do plan to submit something to the journal. I mean how cool would that be......
Many Voices, One Song: Orchestrating Polyphonic Learning
In music, polyphony describes a texture where multiple independent melodic voices interweave to create something greater than the sum of its parts. The philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin expanded this idea to human discourse, seeing it as a way for multiple voices and...
Announcing AIR|GPT: A New Podcast
I'm excited to share that I'm part of a new monthly podcast focused on generative AI in education (AIR|GPT) alongside some great colleagues and friends: Helen Crompton, Caroline Fell-Kurban, Liz Kolb, and Ruben Puentedura. The podcast is structured as an informal yet...
“They’re Not Allowed to Use That S**t”: AI’s Rewiring of Human Connection
I recently participated in a panel discussion organized by the Center for American Progress. Our conversation focused on the emerging impact of generative AI in classrooms. During the Q&A session, someone posted the following question: I am a designer / engineer...
Building Character: When AI Plays Us
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." These words from Martin Luther King Jr. speak to something fundamentally human – the belief that...
Kern You Believe It? A Typographical Tango with AI
As someone who enjoys playing with images, words, and typography, I'm always seeking new ways to generate ideas. I recently tried an experiment: collaborating with an AI language model (Claude) on a series of typographical designs. It all started after I had created...
From Clairvoyant Fish to Static Earths: Scientific Dialogues with GenAI
In my previous post (From Shortcuts to Simulations: Two Contrasting Uses of AI in Higher Education), I shared how my colleague Jim ingeniously used AI to prepare for a difficult conversation about academic integrity. Today, I want to explore another fascinating...
From Shortcuts to Simulation: Two Contrasting Uses of AI in Higher Education
It is almost a cliché to say that generative AI can be both a challenge and an opportunity in education. Here's a story that captures this duality perfectly, showcasing two different approaches to how generative AI can be used in educational contexts, one ethically...
NotebookLM’s Viral Secret: It’s All in Our Heads
Google's recent release of NotebookLM has stirred up quite a buzz, particularly its podcast feature. At first glance, it might not seem revolutionary—after all, we've had AI tools that can engage with uploaded documents for a while now. And it does not require...
From ChatGPT to Chats Devroop: Ed Tech & Time Travel in South Africa
This past week I was in Durban, South Africa presenting at the Innovations in the Science of the Teaching and Learning (ISOTL) Conference 2024: Bridging Ethics, Equity, and Innovation in Higher Education, organized by the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It was a pretty...
Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum
As we continue to grapple with the hype and transformative potential of generative AI in education, I find myself revisiting a point I've made before: the most significant impacts of this technology may not be within the classroom walls, but in the world that...
Beavers, Brains & Chat Bots: Cognitive Illusions in the Age of AI
Imagine a world where tape recorders fool beavers, triangles tell stories, and AI convinces us it's sentient. Welcome to reality—where our cognitive biases are colliding with technology in ways we're only beginning to understand. In this post, I focus on our tendency...
Teachers and genAI: Insights from an OECD Webinar
I recently had the privilege of participating in a webinar hosted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) on the topic of "How teachers can use AI effectively." The session was described as follows Supporters of AI argue it has the...