🙋♂️ Google Gemini AI in everything, teachers are overworked & out of time, and more – Of bits and bytes for April 15, 2024
Internet Travels
Of bits and bytes is my weekly roundup of interesting links and ideas I discovered on the internet. It is published every Monday to cover the previous week’s highlights.
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It’s been a week, and with that benign opening I mean, nothing much has happened since the eclipse on Monday. Don’t get me wrong, the eclipse was amazing, but the rest of the week has just been rain and 40° weather. That temperature is my least favorite temperature, 30° weather coming up second. It’s not cold enough to get any snow, but it’s not warm enough to do anything outside.
Apps
Google is going hard with adding their Gemini AI to EVERYTHING. One of the announcements was for “Google Vids”, an AI powered app that blends the creation of slides based presentations with video.
No announcement has been made on how Gemini will be integrated into the educational versions of Google Workspace. My guess is that it won’t be available in the free Fundamentals version, and the other versions will pay per user.
Student Sparks Debate by Revealing That They Use AI to Write Essays – Memebase – Funny Memes
Pedagogy
Teachers are over worked and out of time with few solutions even in discussion. Several of my solutions would just tick people off, so I’m going to keep them to myself. However, there are several in the article that need to be looked at.
One of my biggest pet peeves is clerical work. There is no reason whatsoever that a teacher should be running their own copies. The average teacher salary in the US is $67,397, or about $32/hour. The average secretary’s salary is about $19/hour. It doesn’t make sense for a district to pay someone $32/hour to run copies.
There is also the opportunity cost when the teacher in our example runs copies. This is the loss of output from that teacher when they are doing a task that might be better done by someone else. Unfortunately, it’s also hard for others to grasp. This cost can somewhat be viewed in a Meeting Cost Calculator. For a 45 minute meeting with two teachers (at $60K/year) and a principal ($100K/year) has a cost of $115. How much money did you get to spend in your classroom last year?
Teacher Memes For Exhausted Educators – Memebase – Funny Memes
Technology
Texas will be using AI to grade their STAAR tests this year. Good luck!
Tips
Google posted one of those list articles, 6 Chromebook tips to boost your productivity, and right off the bat is one that I do not like at all. Tap-to-click is the first thing I turn off. For me I accidentally drag and click things all the time when it’s turned on. Maybe I just have a heavy finger on the trackpad.
Pop Culture
Having students’ eyes checked can improve later income along with their eyesight (Archive). I speak from experience. In elementary school our desks were always in rows and the seating chart was alphabetical. This mean with a last name of Collins I was always in the 1st or second row. When I went to the middle school in 7th grade, I was placed in the back row, which was amazing. However, Mrs. Harvey called on me to read the board. I remarked “I can’t read that” with the assumption that no one could read the board from the back row. Apparently, I was wrong and shortly thereafter fitted for glasses.
If you’ve ever wondered why students (and adults for that matter) can begin to act like Taylor Swift is their best friend, then you will want to read up about parasocial relationships
The best Influencer memes 🙂 Memedroid
Potpourri
When Abraham Lincoln was angry with someone, he would write a strongly worded letter but not send it until the next day. By then he would reflect on what he wrote and on the situation and throw the letter away. He was onto something because researchers have looked into relieving anger, and one of the ways is to write down your thoughts and shred them
Extra Credit
Here are extra links that I found interesting that may or may not be education related or interesting to you and I didn’t want to lose them.
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