🙋♂️ Learning, Gen Z’s love of books, social jetlag & ADHD children, and more – Of bits and bytes for January 8, 2024
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
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Pedagogy
Back in the aughts there was much angst with how easy it was for students to cheat with the internet, and, as things tend to be, we’re back in that situation with AI. However, we now have tools that may probably won’t work at detecting plagiarism. Here’s the story of a student falsely accused of cheating, how his professor handled it, and what he wishes his professor would have done instead.
Snapchat built its business on streaks, and Tom Scott talks about just how powerful streaks can be. With this knowledge, what streaks could we be using in the classrooms?
I had no idea there was a scientific term for the difference in the amount of sleep one gets during the week vs the week. It is called social jetlag and it can affect cognitive functioning in students with ADHD. Interestingly, sleep disturbances did not have an effect. Today (Saturday) I woke up past 11am, so now I’m performing this research on myself. Let me know if people in their 50s should be sleeping in until 11 on the weekends.
For everything AI can currently do, it’s still not as good as our brains for some things, but by adapting how we learn, AI could learn even faster. I don’t know if we are ready for this or not.
Technology
There have been some success stories about AI being able to diagnose medical conditions, but the lastest shows that it’s pretty terrible at it. I would still trust a doctor that consults with it, just as long as the doctor doesn’t blindly follow whatever it spits out. In fact, that’s pretty good advice for a lot of situations!
I’ve looked at Twitter maybe twice in the past couple of months and turned off posting blog entries to it back in October. If you are going through some Twitter withdrawal, here are ten strategies for replacing Twitter from people who used to work there. However, is it a bad thing? Researchers are looking at why we aren’t posting on social media much anymore h/t – Archive. I’ve always been a proponent of posting first on something I’m in control of, like the Eduk8me website, and then share from there. Am I hurting my reach? Yeah, pretty much so, but I’m in control. I don’t write for the algorithm or reach, I like geeking out and sharing! Anyone who wants to see what I’m up to can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed.
Tips
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Oprah all use the 5-Hour rule where they set aside an hour a day for deliberate learning or practice. I do this by getting up at 4:50am where I either do a run and then work from my treadmill computer or just work from my treadmill computer. It’s an hour and a half of pure bliss. No interuptions, just me, my thoughts, my computer, and my treadmill. Sounds like the title of a movie.
Pop Culture
Wes Fryer is crushing it coding with a little help from ChatGPT with creating his Social Media Text Prepper. His program will take a text post and break it up according to the conventions of the social media site to which it will be posted.
Jose Vilson posted some great ideas in his list of things to do in 2024. The genesis of the list was because educators are becoming “tired of being tired”.
I like reading on my Kindle, but apparently that’s not the best way to read for comprehesion where actual print is better. The good news is the Gen Z – Archive prefers physical books. I wonder how this could change if eBooks were created with a lot more care than just transferring the written text. For example, the digital version of Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a fantastic example of what an ebook could be. Just look at it! If you wondering who Charles Munger was, he was vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and passed away last November.
Speaking of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet is currently the 9th richest person in the world. However, he generated 90% of his wealth AFTER his 60th birthday. If he would have retired in his 50s no one would know who he was today.
Potpourri
Need something to read? here’s a a reading list for making sense of 2023. BTW, Caitlin’s newsletter is fantastic, I strive to be as good as writer as her.
Here’s how your brain uses experience to determine if something is worth doing. My favorite quote:
Sometimes you have to just do it
Do you have a new parent in your life that needs more things to stress over? Then share this article about what parents do that destroys a kid’s confidence. It boils down to, let your kids be themselves, support them, and don’t expect them to be like you.
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.
- Do syllables exist? | Linguistics | The Guardian – Use this as an opener at your next English/Language Arts meeting.
- A History of the Word “Toast” and the Tradition of Toasting – The New York Times h/t – https://archive.ph/VFEpd – Something to read before your next midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.
- A Very, Very Expensive Emoji h/t – https://archive.ph/Sm6Ym – Reminds me of the usage of the gun emoji. On most platforms it looks like a toy gun or water pistol, but on some it looks like a real gun, so sending what you think is a toy gun to someone who sees it as a real gun is going to cause all sorts of problems.
- Desks And Desk-Ish Alternatives | Living Avivaloca – When I’m out in the buildings, I use whatever space is available. Luckily I’m not tall so the kindergarten tables and chairs work fine.
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