🙋‍♂️ Google Updates, Student AI use, and more – Of bits and bytes for January 27, 2025
Internet Travels
Of bits and bytes is my weekly round up of interesting links and ideas I discovered on the internet. It is published on Mondays for the previous week
Thanks for waiting
This past weekend I had the most glorious opportunity of attending two Ryan Meetups in San Diego. After making it three days with 15 hours of sleep, I didn’t get this out on Monday. My apologizes, and thank you for waiting!
Apps
Google posted a bunch of updates from BETT 2025, here are a couple of my favorites.
- Google is adding a new feature to Google Classroom called Class Tools. As a part of Google Workspace for Education Plus, these new features on managed Chromebooks allow you to remotely manage classroom activities. With Class tools, you can create digital workbooks and share content seamlessly.
- Face Control is a new feature on Chromebooks to more accessible to students with motor impairments. This feature allows users to control their devices using facial gestures instead of the usual keyboard and mouse. We have one student who will definitely benefit from this new capability. The feature does require 8GB of RAM in the Chromebook, so you may have to purchase Chromebooks specifically for this use.
Mercator projections are used in maps to create a 2d representation of the world. However, they also make things bigger the closer you get to the poles. Here is a web app, Mercator: Extreme map, which allows users to experience high levels of distortion by shifting any point on Earth to the “pole”. With this app students can see how countries are distored with regular maps.
Pedagogy
Design thinking revolutionized problem-solving with a human-centered approach, but what comes next? Community-powered transformation is a method that prioritizes relationships, collaboration, and shared purpose.
In the article “I’m Not Sure Schools Can Teach Creativity”, Chad Aldeman explores the concept of creativity in education, questioning whether it can truly be taught in a generic sense. The article highlights research indicating that creativity is domain-specific rather than a broadly transferable skill, meaning that mastering a particular field is essential to fostering creativity within it. For instance, chefs, soccer players, and scientists all require extensive knowledge and practice within their domains to innovate cleverly. The takeaway for educators is that if we want students to be creative, we need to focus on creativity within specific contexts and skills.
Technology
CircuitMess looks really cool, but expensive. CircuitMess offers DIY STEM kits. With options like the Wacky Robots subscription for electronics beginners (ages 7+) and the STEM Box for more advanced tasks (ages 11+), kids can explore concepts like AI, machine learning, and coding tailored to their skill levels.
A new study from the Complexity Science Hub shows that AI, has problems at getting history facts correct. The three big AI models, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama, and Google’s Gemini, were tested against the Hist-LLM benchmark, based on the extensive Seshat Global History Databank. The results? Not so good. The issue is that AI struggles with nuanced historical inquiries, often mixing up facts or spreading historical misinformation. Researchers speculate that this is because AI tends to latch onto prominent historical data, having a hard time fetching the more obscure details.
Twenty six percent of U.S. teens admit to using AI for schoolwork, doubling its usage from 2023. High school juniors and seniors use it the most, but even then, AI is used by the minority. Seventy three percent of them are not turning to a chatbot for help. Interestingly, Black and Hispanic teens, as well as those from higher-income households, are more likely to be ChatGPT users. NPR also covers these results.
Tips
Google Books has added books that have entered the public domain this year. Among them are Ernest Hemingway’s World War I romance A Farewell to Arms and Lynd Ward’s graphic novel Gods’ Man, told entirely through woodblock prints. The collection now includes an adaptation Toad of Toad Hall by A.A. Milne, based on The Wind in the Willows. Items in the Public Domain no longer have a copyright, which allows you to use these books in whatever way you want.
Pop Culture
Sorry for the link to an Instrgram Reel, but it was too interesting of an idea to not pass on. It seems like some professors have been exploring innovative strategies to help college students with ADHD. We’ll have to wait and see if these professors are on to something.
It turns out that avid readers have slightly different brain structures too. Recent research highlighted that those who excel in reading often have distinctive features in certain brain areas, especially two regions in the left hemisphere that are crucial for language processing. These areas include the anterior part of the temporal lobe, which helps in associating and categorizing information, and Heschl’s gyrus, which is involved in pairing letters with sounds. Interestingly, a thicker cortex in these areas is linked to better reading skills, suggesting that a love for reading could indeed shape our brain’s structure over time.
Potpourri
Seth Godin’s blog post “Honesty about better” highlights the reluctance many of us face in learning new skills that can significantly enhance our lives. Whether it’s mastering statistics for better decision-making or understanding AI to boost productivity, the hesitation often stems from the effort required to learn, the fear of change, or the possible shift in worldview that learning could bring. The crux of the challenge isn’t the availability of resources — it’s our own willingness and motivation to take the steps to learn.
Back in the 1970s, Douglas McIlroy tackled the challenge of fitting a 250kB dictionary into a mere 64kB of RAM for Unix’s spell checker on the PDP-11 computer. McIlroy’s engineering began with a sneaky stemming algorithm that reduced the dictionary to 25,000 words, followed by using a Bloom filter for rapid lookups. As the dictionary expanded to 30,000 words, the Bloom filter couldn’t keep up, prompting McIlroy to develop a hash compression technique based on powerful mathematics and clever tricks like storing differences between sorted hash codes. These efforts resulted in the legendary compression algorithm which squeezed the data to just 13.60 bits per word — almost hitting the theoretical minimum.
To give you an idea of how much space 64kB of RAM is, Google’s search page is almost 3,000kB.
Thank you!
Major props if you’ve made it this far, you are a rockstar! Feel free to contact me with questions, ideas, concerns, or your thoughts on the next Marvel movie. In fact, I love to discuss about any topic and then wonder how it intersects with education, so fire away!
“Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, but Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” – Oogway, Kung Fu Panda
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