Our #SciComp / #HPC kickstart course starts tomorrow at 12:00 EEST / 11:00 CEST. It is livestream, so anyone can watch with no questions asked. Register for the Q&A document, even if you aren't at #AaltoUniversity (and we teach so that it's useful to others too).
Day 1: basic background and examples. Day 2-3: Using a cluster.
"ChatGPT Edu, powered by GPT-4o, is designed for universities to responsibly integrate AI into academic and campus operations. This advanced AI tool supports text and vision reasoning, data analysis, and offers enterprise-level security."
Based on everything we know about AI, I am sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this new tool to integrate it into our #teaching and campus operations more broadly.
/Obvious sarcasm
Season 1 of the Galactic Cow launched in 2023, and we're starting work on Season 2. It's a great time to revisit your favorite episodes, or listen for the first time. If you are interested in what role education could play in our growth as a species ♥
(PS - you should definitely subscribe to our Substack!)
My son's grade 6 teacher is leaning full tilt into the "embarrass you in front of the class for benign requests/mistakes" method of authoritarian #teaching.
I'm caught between wanting to call her out on it, vs, not wanting to make things worse for him since she seems like the retaliatory type. And there's only 1 month left in the school year.
The recording of the 2024 Sue and Harry Bovay Lecture in the History & Ethics of Engineering is now live!
Jon Leydens (Colorado School of Mines) spoke about social context & public welfare in engineering curricula and how we can better include these topics in engineering education.
Good news on open access to my works on bilingualism, the research area related to my teaching, child-raising, and using Japanese for over 40 years. I was interviewed by The Japan Times on #bilingual#education for a forthcoming paywalled article. It was a long interview, and usually a newspaper article uses only short passages from one individual. However, the #Japan Association for #Language#Teaching Bilingualism Special Interest Group (#JALT#Bilingualism SIG) would like to publish the full interview in its newsletter Bilingual Japan. Everyone should be able to read that as I back it up in research repositories. The tentative title is "English Education and Bilingual Education in Japan."
My publications on bilingualism have been backed up mostly at Academia Edu, which is not so easy to access anymore [any comment?], so I've added links to the original sources of articles, which are open access, at https://japanned.hcommons.org/bilingualism
Courtney Gore, the co-host of a right-wing online talk show, won a seat on a Texas school board on the basis that she would undo leftist indoctrination and get rid of educational materials with inappropriate messages about sexuality and race. Then she took office and actually read the curriculum, finding that the subject matter simply taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.” The Texas Tribune talked to her about why she ran for office, what she thinks is behind the push to take over school boards, and the backlash she's faced since speaking out against the ultra-right element of the Republican party.
Uncited generative AI use by students in coursework
I teach a course where I allow the use of generative AI. My university rules allow this and the students are instructed that they must cite the use of generative AI. I have set the same Laboratory Report coursework for the last two years. And students submit their work through TurnItIn. so I can see what the TurnItIn Ai checker is reporting.
Something I keep coming back to as a teacher and learner is Papert's concept of "Objects to Think With". In some ways, math for me is simply a collection of objects to think with. The guitar, too. Card games. The Rubik's cube. A basketball. And a simple way to be a lifelong learner is to continually seek out new objects to think with.
I'm teaching a new #class "Solidarity Memory Work"
We'll learn about #solidarity#movements in allied professions (academic history, journalism, etc.) then discuss (1) how to actively #document and #preserve current movements and organizations, and (2) activate that #records already in #collections to motivate and guide contemporary organizers
'Following the successful development of the Black Teacher Archive (BTA), beginning in 2020 with initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the BTA’s public unveiling in 2023, a pair of new grants will allow the project to expand its reach and impact in the coming years.'
Today, like many other West Australian teachers, I'm not going to work this morning.
It's interesting that our industrial action is represented in the media as about pay. We're not striking over salary - we're striking because the system is broken.
My son has had no Phys Ed teacher all year. He's had a procession of relief teachers which, for a special needs child, is extremely distressing. He attends an inner city public school, but staffing shortages are statewide.
Speaking of special needs students, I'd like to look after my own without having to skip lunch to ensure their needs are met.
I'd like the Education Department to give me a personal device so I can do my job
(more efficiently). If I want a laptop, I have to lease one.
I'd like an acknowledgement of how teaching has recently become more difficult and demanding, especially during #COVID19, when we kept schools open and tried to keep students safe.
I enforced the mask mandate far more often than a rank-and-file police officer. I've probably been threatened and assaulted more times than many police officers too. And the statewide mobile phone ban? Guess who enforces that every single day.
So many of my colleagues have left teaching: re-trained or resigned due to burnout and stress. Who suffers? The students.
It's not about the pay. We're tired, and we need support. We're underfunded and under-resourced. We need to improve conditions for students. We need to fix the system.
Traditional lectures suck, all the evidence points to it. It's not that there is no place for lectures, but the time spent in them needs to be drastically reduced.
"Games are the secret to learning math and statistics, says new research."
"This research backs up what we already know—that traditional lecturing is not the best approach for learning, even in numbers-based subjects like economics or statistics."