for too long, smartphone makers have been focusing on things that nobody needs (ai integration, stupid new user interfaces), instead of focusing on actually useful features: if i take a picture of something with my phone in a dream, that picture should still be on my irl phone when i wake up

Couldn’t Sam Altman just ask ChatGPT how to make itself profitable

Holy stromboli!

My cat loves to stand on top of me and wonder why I'm not getting up.

as an elementary school teacher my OTHER response is to question the reliability of "engagement" as a metric for learning in other contexts as well. That something can FEEL just as engaging without actually having a lasting impact also seems worthy of investigation.

Do not back down.

Actually a cool thing about this is that I'm mentoring a new teacher this year, and he teaches physical education. So it's not my area of expertise, but we'll be discussing something and I'll be like, let's see what the research says, and we can find sources that

Last night I dreamed in JavaScript.

the hardest thing about grad school is having to use microsoft outlook

My one sister lives in Maryland and I live in Ohio but the love my sister has for the teachers at her sons' school makes me feel loved as a teacher.

When I started the research course for grad school, I was really struggling with reading scholarly sources, especially getting lost in the weeds where they would describe methodology. But at some point it just... suddenly made more sense to me. Not perfect sense, but it was much less of a struggle.

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

I block calls on my phone between 10pm and 6am to protect my sleep. Therefore, I did not get the snow day phone call at 5:30am. Therefore, I got up at six and started getting ready for school. My phone did not bother to show me a voicemail notification until almost 6:30.

Libraries aren't just books. They provide gathering places, free internet, and programs like story hours and classes and films. Using your library demonstrates to your local government its importance to your community and can affect funding decisions.

Libraries are attention infrastructure. Free internet, quiet space, programs—all designed to support focus without monetizing it. Every other place you spend attention extracts something in return. Libraries just give.

Our local library can loan you a family pass to one of four local museums/The zoo. You get it for a week and can use the pass for four family members at those places any day that week. You should see whether your local library does something similar.

His first comment is rarely expressed but truly the sharpest insight about AI. So far all these advances tell us more about what intelligence isn’t. It’s like the old saw about the Michelangelo: “I just chisel away every bit that isn’t David.”

Post something random or you'll have an awful December.

My new favorite Thanksgiving food is baklava. Happy Turkey Day!

lessons for teachers too tbqh

Lately I have been taking notes on index cards, especially when I'm trying to keep track of information I may or may not need for an assignment. I vaguely remember a high school English teacher having us use index cards to keep detailed source notes. I'm not being as detailed as back then but...

Last kid I saw before leaving the library: Me: Hello there. Him: Hey! You were one of my teachers before, weren't you? You look old. Me: Thank you. Him: You like being told that you look old? Me: Yes. I feel like I've earned it.

I'm at the local library on the first day of break (trying to get ahead on some grad work) and I should have kept a tally of how many current and former students I've seen since I've been here. I even showed a seventh grader how to use the library app to request books from other libraries.

Almost as good as when the kids have a good time: A parent volunteered her time and energy to judging a speech and debate tournament and called it a 10/10 experience, saying "impressive doesn't begin to cover it." Said the kids were phenomenal. It's so validating when another adult sees what I see.

Yes! This also comes up in my recent contribution to CHE: www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

I did this recently with brushing teeth, just pretending, and even just pretending is a big hit.

Brandy you're a fine girl What a good wife you would be But my life my love and my lady Is the See

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

Sometimes teaching and coaching is really challenging. And sometimes the middle schoolers will spontaneously start doing the chicken dance in public. So it all balances out.

re: roblox dude's interview crashout. the thing he wants to say but can't is "at scale, kids are gonna get hurt. that is the price for scale." the thing nobody wants to say out loud is "maybe scaling to a level where harm isn't manageable is bad, and scale should be contained"

The Batman effect: A female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door. Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%).

We had our school's Thanksgiving feast today. The kindergarteners wanted to know what I'm thankful for. Me: I guess I'm thankful to keep learning every day. Kindergartener: I'm thankful my legs stay attached to my butt.

I checked my school email address (gmail powered) and it was turned on, which makes me upset because I feel like there could be other people's private information somewhere in my email threads. Other people who can't meaningfully consent to this.

although actually i probably wouldn't have such a hard time if i could remember to take my daily methylphenidate more than half of the time

Student: Thanks for this game, Ms. Driscoll. I'm allergic to it now. Me: Oh! Uh... does that-- wait, what do you think 'allergic' means? Student: It means I really like it. Me: Well. Thanks. But.... The moral of the story is, "ask follow-up questions."

As much as I enjoy the content of what I'm learning, and as convenient as it is, I am not loving an entirely asynchronous learning experience. It just provides me too much opportunity to ruminate on, and then misinterpret, what I'm actually supposed to be doing.

"What happened in fourth grade stays in fourth grade." - a very wise seventh grader

A local pizza place named a pizza after our school principal and I feel like that's the exact level of fame that's actually best fit for most people.

just gaslighting myself into believing that if i can make it to fall break, i can get my act back together (1) yeah right, i'm gonna overeat and oversleep and play at least as hard as i work (2) self, have you really ever had your act together to begin with?

November has only 30 days but is still somehow one of the longest months.

Earlier Star Trek was basically unvarnished hopeful enlightenment theory. DS9 deconstructs this. We need a series that moves past naive enlightenment or deconstruction. We need Romantic Star Trek.

This is how I have felt learning coding. There are so many people answering questions on reddit and stackexchange, posting youtube tutorials and blog explanations, etc.

I wish the chatbot had some way to provide a "confidence score" in its responses. Unfortunately the chatbot doesn't know what it doesn't know...and to be honest, it doesn't know anything other than patterns in language. It has no technical expertise in any field whatsoever.

"The chatbot always sounds confident and authoritative." I hate that.

👋 I'm Danielle, and I'm on the #econjobmarket this year! Let's start with a student describing her segregated school: "The school felt temporary. Built like a warehouse with aluminum siding . . . I had a slipshod education" The twist? The student is white, and her school is private. A JMP 🧵 -->

You guys wish you were on the level of sincerity I’m on. I’m listening to You Get What You Give by New Radicals and feeling emotions. As a matter of fact I DO have the music in me. I DO have the dreamers’ disease.

Slavery is about economics

Good statement from the US conference of Catholic Bishops

guess who turned in her second draft of her coding project at 11:56pm when it was due at 11:59pm?