It’s Monday, MLK day, so the boys are off. I’m rushing to get everything ready for teaching tomorrow, and to be honest, I thought I’d pressed send on Friday, and slightly surprised this morning to see that this week’s issue hadn’t gone anywhere.
Last week, when I probably could have got a few more things done, a bit of procrastination crept in, maybe some nerves about getting back to teaching, but it’s okay, I think I’m up to date, and lucky to have the support of colleagues and friends who are giving me a kindly nudge.
This time of the year is difficult, we’re missing everyone back home, and it’s true that dark days and cold mornings can make things difficult. I have no choice but to get motivated, and I know that I am actually excited about what’s coming, and once I’m into routine, then I’ll be wondering what I was worried about.
If you’re feeling the same way, then know that you’re not alone, not by a long way. Remember that the seasons will change, and you’ll soon be feeling the sun on your face again.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
I don’t have too much for this section this week, other than to say that I’m writing and putting everything in place, syllabi written, assessment briefs ready, and although my canvas courses are going to look different this year, I think everything is pretty much as it was. Just to explain a bit more, I’ve come to the conclusion that asynchronous activities in my courses are just too much, I need to rethink homework, and design the learning that happens outside of class in a way that is manageable, and realistic.
Every semester I battle with my students for the readings, homework viewings, and asynchronous comments and messages. I’m not going to use discord or slack, I’ll still have a few channels open, and will have office hours, but students just find online conversations forced, and a bit weird. They don’t know each other outside of class, and the messages and texts that we’re all used to sending each other, those natural conversations and threads that we all have with our friends, well, they just don’t seem to be able to recreate in online learning environments. I feel a bit sad about it, the potential for learning using forums and threads is high, and advice that learning technologists give, in fact, the advice that I’ve given people, is to nurture community in this way, set expectations for the students, model the sorts of conversations that you’re looking for. But after years of trying this, although there are often good, interesting contributions, I’ve found that it is so uneven, so strange, that it actually works against some of the principles that I hoped to promote.
Let me know if you have a different experience, what am I missing here?
Lost and Found
I found a few things this week that I thought you might be interested in.
This year might be an interesting one for immersive, some people predict that the death of the metaverse is premature, and that it might get a second wind in 2024. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see what the ecosphere around Apple’s new Vision Pro headset will be like, apparently there are hundreds of apps ready to go, the majority will probably be mixed reality versions of existing games, and productivity tools.
I quite like this 360 world generator that uses AI to create almost any place that you want. I’m wondering with the upgrade, if students might be able to add environments into unity, so that it could be used in VR this might be a nice shortcut, or at least help with prototyping.
I’ve been watching the first series of Echo, a new Marvel series on Hulu and Disney+ featuring Alaqua Cox, who was born deaf, and is also a member of the Menominee and Mohican nation. It is very positive to see both a deaf and native actor with such a good role, although the first episode was a bit uneven and seemed to rush through her back story, I’m going to stick with it, and looking forward to seeing how this works out. The cast includes some of the actors from Reservation Dogs, including Zahn McClarnon, and Devery Jacobs.
Coincidentally, I read the article that says that AI is already better at lip reading than most humans.
Unriddle AI is very good at searching through research documents and providing short summaries. You get 10 credits for free, which you’ll quickly use up if pile in with lots of papers, but it is useful, a real time saver.
The university has now signed us all up for Microsoft Copilot, which is very good, but can’t quite work out the difference with GPT 4.
Thank you
This is issue 188 which although not a major milestone, just a few months away from a 200th issue, pretty much tells me that I’ve been doing this for a while, almost every friday, sometimes up to five or six issues a month depending on how it falls, and not always on a friday as you’ve noticed.
Just to let you know that Issue #141 is the most popular, and the one that has the least love is a little mini Welsh Music issue that is wonderful, and includes a few brilliant songs and recommendations to Welsh artists. Please go and check it out, and give it a little love. This is just about the only issue that I didn’t email to everyone, and it’s telling that the majority of traffic still comes from inboxes, rather than the substack app or website. I’m not sure what my point is, but I suppose it’s that although they keep inventing new ways to find content, email is still the optimum delivery, and although RSS is old tech, it can still be used, and I wish it would come back, and we could all say how sorry we were to stop using it.
Substack asked me if I wanted to publish Issue #100 so that newer readers could get a taste of the archive, so this week you might see two emails. I’m not really sure what you’ll receive, but why not.
Okay folks, I still have a few things to do before bedtime. Wish me luck, as I wish all of you the best for the coming week.