Posts related to: Stories
Knowledge, Community & Care: Reimagining STEAM Education for Health Equity

Knowledge, Community & Care: Reimagining STEAM Education for Health Equity

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...

The Avengers, Creativity & the EdTech Midgame

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...

Code, Kathak, and Confusion: A Story of Learning with GenAI

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

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,...

Oops! Double Trouble with Double Dactyls OR Learning from AI’s Creative Mistakes

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...

Shattered: Myth, Metaphor & Gen AI

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...

Of Stochastic Parrots and Drunk Interns: My Chat with Win Coalition

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:

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...

Many Voices, One Song: Orchestrating Polyphonic Learning

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...

“They’re Not Allowed to Use That S**t”: AI’s Rewiring of Human Connection

“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

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...

From Clairvoyant Fish to Static Earths: Scientific Dialogues with GenAI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...