Posts

After two weeks of not eating consistently and losing weight, we decided to have our dog, Jo, put down.

***

We got Jo in the summer of 2014 when our oldest daughter was about six months old. We had a new baby and a new house and figured how hard could one more mouth be?

Jo, whose original name was "Penny" (which didn't stick), was described by the seller as a "mix of Weimaraner and fence jumper." She was one of the smaller puppies in the litter and was the quietist of the bunch. We figured these were good signs and that we'd have a nice quiet dog to go with all the other changes in our lives.

Jo turned into a big dog who really wanted to be a lap dog. She loved being scratched behind the ears and would rest her chin on any lap willing to have her. This usually meant her entire frame was leaning on someone's legs while she fought to stay awake.

Since we got her with a baby in the house, she learned quickly how to be patient. Her submissiveness only came out more while the kids (all four of them) grabbed, pulled, and otherwise used her as a beanbag chair during their infant and toddler years. She grew up right next to our kids and wanted to be where we were.

When we moved up to the farm in 2020, Jo suddenly had way more space in which to do dog things. She had all of the sunny spots picked out and would migrate around the yard throughout the day to get the best vitamin D she could. She particularly loved freshly dug dirt, generally where we would be trying to work.

Her true superpower, according to my wife, was her ability to find snakes. Jo didn't get riled up often if she wasn't playing, but when she came across a snake in the yard, she would almost point and give one, loud, deep WOOF. We'd either look up or run out to see her prancing around some poor garter snake just trying to go about it's business. I would pick it up and Jo would want to make friends so bad. She'd be in there, sniffing, trying to give a little lick and was bitten on the nose on more than one occasion.

When we would walk out the door to do something, Jo would trot along just to be with the group. She would shiver outside while the kids went sledding down the back hill in the winter. She would stay outside, even in the rain, if we were finishing up chores. Jo was always there. She was a people dog.

When Jo didn't eat for a couple days, we didn't think anything of it. She'd done this in the past and was usually some kind of upset stomach. But two days turned into three and then more. She wasn't eating dry food and would only lick at eggs we tried giving her. We bought a couple cans of wet food and even that wasn't taken very well.

We'd both read that labs are so loyal that they'll often string their lives out so their owners aren't disappointed. I know it's anthropomorphization, but with Jo, it wasn't out of the question. She would lay in her favorite spot all day and wag when we came over, but wouldn't stand or walk much. As much as I hated to even consider it, I knew the end was probably near.

We told the kids the night before and then spent the day preparing a nice spot for her in the yard. I was doing okay right up until the kids said goodbye. I had to take a minute to make sure I could drive.

The veterinarian was quiet and gentle, more for me than for her. I wept over the unfairness of having to make this decision and over feeling like I had let the dog down.

I know she didn't know what was happening and I stayed with her right up until the last heartbeat.

I drove home, Jo wrapped in her blanket. We cried some more as a family before putting her under a tree at the back of the yard. The kids chose an enormous stone to put near the spot and it turns out you can see it from the house.

There's an old comic, "Death and the dog" where a dog asks if he was a good boy to the Grim Reaper. Death replies, "No...you were the best."

This world can often be overwhelming.

Another month down, some more books finished.

More Than Words: How to think about writing in the age of AI - John Warner

This is a critical look at artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and why these tools do not write in the same sense that people do. Warner provides an approachable technical overview of what the systems do and why that doesn't fit the definition of human-produced writing.

The middle of the book explores the experience of writing and reading as humans, building a case against using large language models for writing in general. Warner does give examples of where these tools could be helpful, though.

Lastly, he breaks down ways in which to responsibly and slowly engage with AI tools. The adoption of ChatGPT and similar is not inevitable nor should we accept the argument that we should just accept them in classrooms. This book is well worth a slow read for anyone working in schools.

I also have a longer post on this book. You should just read the book.

The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalami

I read this book after hearing a review on NPR. Sara is retained (not detained, an important distinction) after returning from a trip abroad because government AI systems flagged her as a threat to others. She struggles to make her way in the retention center, facing discipline for arbitrary and shifting rules and physical danger while having her rights, masked as privileges, stripped.

This future isn't far away and is already here in many ways.

The Bridge to Never Land - Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson

A fifth book in the "Peter and the Starcatchers" series which follows Sarah, Aiden, and JD about 100 years after the original four books were set. Again, lots of rising action spread into 40 or so chapters before the characters really start to make progress.

The main characters ask questions through the whole book without really finding answers. The antagonist feels flat and just kind of "there" for the suspense. No one really develops and again, like the last previous two books, this was a chore to get through.

I've been sketching and painting regularly over the last month. I feel like I'm getting some technique down and I'm setting aside consistent time to actually make some stuff with my hands. Here's a small selection of some of my sketches from the last month or so.

I started scrolling through Mastodon posts on Sundays and bookmarking pictures people share with the "SilentSunday" tag. There are often great lanscapes, lonely buildings, or other quiet photos which grab my attention. This has helped me keep a log of things to scroll through when I sit down to paint so I don't have to hunt for subjects.

It still feels clumsy from time to time and I'm still wary about putting paint to paper. There are a couple pages in this sketchbook that have some pencil sketches that I cannot quite bring myself to paint yet...I'm not sure why. But I'm enjoying the time.

I just finished John Warner's More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI and I wanted to take time to reflect a little more at length about the book and how it's pushing me to think about my own positions on AI.

First, this book is worth reading by anyone, not just teachers or writers. Warner takes time at the beginning to explain what large language models are and how they work. The underlying function of the technology is next-best-word predictions. The chat layer adds a feeling of "intelligence" - which doesn't exist - but has fooled most people into thinking is there. This sets up John's main argument: the output of systems like ChatGPT is not writing because it does not involve thinking. Writing is an introspective, creative process and the output from an LLM is driven by statistics. There is no feeling, there is no personal connection, and there is no consideration of the implications of the text appearing on the screen. It is an input/output exchange.

An argument I hear often, especially in teacher-land, is that these systems are the "calculator moment" for this generation. Warner takes this analogy to task early on, which I am incredibly thankful for:

For calculators, when it comes to their mechanical operations, the labor of the machine is identical to the labor of a human. Yes, there is benefit to conceptually understanding what is happening...but automating the particulars of those operations does not change the underlying labor in the slightest.

With ChatGPT, howver, while the end product of the output -- strings of syntax -- bears significant similarity to what a human may produce, the underlying labor is quite different. Fetching tokens based on weighted probabilities is not the same process as what happens when humans write (emphasis mine).

This is the first time I've seen the tension laid out so clearly. Using ChatGPT to write for me is not the same as having a calculator do my arithmetic. I know what I'm doing when I punch numbers into a calculator. Prompting a chatbot for text to pass off as our own is willingly giving our voice away.

The middle half of the book considers writing as a human endeavour, one of the noblest in any context, and how AI erodes our ability to generate and share new knowledge. Warner moves into chatbot use in education and tells a story of realizing that most of what he (which I also apply to myself) was asking students for "bullshit," which they readily produced following formulaic instruction for writing.

I'm constantly thinking about what I do in my class, including how I'm trying to design the class to be less doable by AI. How much bullshit am I asking for? What lessons or units do I do that are formulaic, rinse-wash-repeat and move on? I want to minimize those and get students thinking about science - how do we interact with this amazing universe? How can learning about science - and writing about what we're learning - help us to build understanding and appreciation?

Warner ends the book with some ways in which to think about AI within the safety of time with a "Resist-Renew-Explore" framework. We need to resist the urge to "pivot to AI," like so many corps and "thought-leaders" encourage us to do. Warner says we should "orient toward goals that are associated with human flourishing," which I love. This is not a wholesale rejection of AI, but rather a way to include it as it supports that larger goal and reject it where it does not.

By treating the AI as an "alien intelligence," we can distance ourselves from being enamored by empty promises. Renewal comes in rethinking what we ask students to do and how we ask them to approach the what. Students look for shortcuts when the work is bullshit, but will readily engage when there is meaning and purpose. Lastly, exploring is completly appropriate as long as we know what we're doing with whom and that we embrace "do no harm" as the core rather than the sexier "fail fast."

For me, I'm still very much in the "resist" phase of my own journey. I find myself looking for ways to make AI useful and I still have not really found a compelling evidence. Coincidentally, Doug Belshaw and a very helpful post this morning on the communal aspects of AI literacies which helped me think differently about my approach. Since it's not part of my daily work yet, I tend to keep AI segmented off. I need to make more time to ask others and read about what they do find helpful and keep an open mind about how it might fit into my life.

At the same time, I'm wary. I'm not disillusioned by the promises of AI bros and hyped up media. I do not think AI is going to destroy all humans and I do not think it's going to make everything wonderful. I do think it has - and is already showing - a penchant for sinister behavior, so I close this post with a phenomenal piece written by Joobles.

there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask.

it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same.

it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. "you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster."

there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn't mean it has no price

for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face.

I finished three books in April, mostly toward the start of the month. I slowed down at the end of the month because school got really busy and I generally fell asleep as soon as I could.

This month features finishing another read-aloud for my kids and a bunch of science fiction.

Peter and the Sword of Mercy - Ridley Pearson, Dave Barry

Book four...similar plot to the last two books. Peter gets pulled to London, Mollusk Island is in trouble because of pirates. The middle is long, with one-chapter pages giving tiny details making the movement feel extremely slow.

My kids like it, but I think they should've stopped after book three. That ended neatly and felt like a satisfying finale for a trilogy. I understand wanting to continue the story into the Wendy plot line, but the stretches made to try and make it work felt like they went too far.

Generation Ship: A Novel - Michael Mammay

A standalone novel of a ship, travelling from Earth for hundreds of years, as it approaches their destination star system. The story is told from the perspectives of different crew members (more citizens now, than crew) and their political and social shifts that occur as a result of finally reaching their new potential home. The story moves along well and each particular character has their niche (the scientist, the military guy, the hacker, the farmer, and the politician) and each works to make sure their perspective is the one that makes the difference.

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

A lone scientist is on a save all of humanity mission. It read similar to The Martian, with a lot of first-person narrative in both the past and present tense. The main character is a scientific catch-all who seems to have expertise in all things astronomy. I think, like The Martian, it was a little too "science your way out of this" problem for my taste and I found myself reading along just to get to the next plot point.

That said, it was a good book with interesting perspectives on what resources and sacrifices might need to be made in order to save humanity.

Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler

I felt tense with every page. The shadows of society in the book are already visible today and it's a stark look at how quickly things can devolve. I don't feel like an anxious person, but this book felt a little too close to home with our current trajectory.

I keep my reading list current and post update to LibraryThing if you want to connect there.

In a previous lifetime, I worked as a summer camp counselor. One of the things we did to make the morning flag routine fun was to dress up in different themed costumes. Each day had a color theme and all the counselors would put together a goofy costume on that theme and then winners would be picked by the leadership staff.

Another counselor and I, Caleb, realized we could combine our creative powers to come up with more elaborate - and hopefully more impressive - costumes to win points for our team.

I give you, the Don Quixote, and probably one of my favorite pictures ever.

This summer formed several core memories and even though Caleb and I fell out of touch, I still think back to this morning fondly. I'm glad I have such a great picture to remember it by.

I'd had this article starred in my RSS reader to sit down and read carefully. Robert is a math professor I've followed for many years because of his thoughtful approaches to grading and assessment. AI in education is everywhere and I'm constantly battling either seeing students use AI assistants to complete work or in wrestling with the discrepancy between "everything done" and poor performance on assessments.

It is nearly impossible to verify independently whether student work has been created by an AI versus the student, or if it’s a combination, how much is attributable to the student. So it’s only a perception of rampant cheating; the real extent is unknowable unless students tell me.

This is the rub - in chemistry, so much of what we do is based on skill development. These small skills - using the periodic tabe, for instance - prop up skills we develop later in the course. For work done independently (ie, not in the classroom with me around) I have to go on faith that students have done authentic work. Robert's grading standards call this a "good-faith effort." I think that's some language that I'll be adopting.

The point is that if the work shown on something students complete independently isn't good-faith, done as a human being, I am unable to do my job effectively and we're working against each other. I've tried hard to drive that point home with my 10th graders this year.

In the end, Robert ends up minimizing the effects of the homework/independent work grades and reinforcing the importance of being able to do the work on in-class tests. I've come to almost the same conclusion and I think I'm going to press harder into this model next year by reducing the value of independent work in the gradebook that much more. Says Robert:

Since everything is done in person, AI use is not really an issue; students can use AI to complete their homework, but I don’t think many do, because they know eventually they’ll be accountable for doing it “live”.

He also notes that he went hard into a no-tech policy this year in class. I've also started being more assertive with calling out phone use, but since I didn't set a policy at the start of the year, it's pretty tough to change tack now. Next year, I think it's going to be "phones in bags" from day one. I can see clear cognitive improvements when phones aren't around. You can almost map out grades based on student phone use in class. Setting a blanket policy will help build a culture of "let's be here now" that is so important for learning.

He ends with a provocative question:

How do you assess upper-level cognitive skills while mitigating AI risks? ... On the one hand, tasks that get to those levels seem especially vulnerable to being “hacked” by generative AI [...] On the other hand, there should be ways to assess those higher levels with items that are uniquely “hardened” against AI.

Again, this is the rub. I used to use homework to build out base skills to develop critical thinking and application skills in the classroom. Now that generative AI can just do the skill building tasks, students cannot begin to approach the critical thinking work in the room. I need to really spend time thinking about my skill-aligned tasks this summer to try some new strategies in the fall.

Well, I did it. I started working on my fork of Anchor CMS to get it up and running with PHP 8. Honestly, most of the work so far has been updating the build system with new versions of the JS packages used to bundle everything up. I haven't needed to do much with the PHP yet.

Anyways, I can set up a new instance from scratch, create the admin user, and write some posts. I've fixed a few CSS errors and I'm going to start working on updating the Sass files because they have some deprecations since they were first written 10 years ago.

The repo is on Github if you want to take a peek.

I've been thinking about moving back to a small CMS for the blog. Specifically becuase I would like to be able to just log into something and write rather than using my current static site flow.

AnchorCMS is an old blog app I've opined about in the past and I decided to take on another project and work on a fork. The maintainers shut down the original codebase back in 2020 and it's been sitting since.

The plan right now is trim down the installation flow and tailor it for myself - it'll be updated for PHP 8 and use SQLite for a database to keep my server running with low overhead.

I have no idea what I'm in for because I haven't touched PHP in a minute. We'll see how it goes.

In 2023, I tried my hand at watercolor painting and sketching in general. Then, in 2024 I just...stopped. No real reason why other than I didn't make time to continue the habit. I would pick up a pencil here and there, but I didn't commit to making the practice a habit.

Earlier this year, my kids asked me to take a walk out into the woods and do some sketching. I relized that I had set art up as this escape where I had to be alone and couldn't have people around. That's true sometimes - I might want to do something quietly by myself - but it can't be all the time. Keeping it for those alone time moments meant that I just didn't create anything.

So, in an effort to get back on the horse, here is some of my recent arting.

I really like watercolor, so I'm pushing myself to use them more. I sketched two bluebirds from photos on the Internet and then painted. I'm trying to be loose with my brush, but I am very much out of practice. That said, the one on the left came out pretty good.

Keeping on the bird theme, I tried a couple of robins. I need to work on controlling the paints as they come off the brush. I think I tend to use too much water, so I'm left trying to mop up the runs, which causes paint to reactivate a slosh around...it's an area to improve on.

I switched to landscapes for a little bit. Julia Bausenhardt is a German artist who has a wonderful blog on nature sketching and journaling. She wrote a post about sketching all in blues recently that I wanted to give a try. This helped me think about how to mix different values to convey depth.

Kristie DeGaris is a Scottish drystone waller, author, and photographer I follow on the socials. She shared some photos back in February which included a striking image of this building on a bright green hillside.

I went back to birds and did some sketches from photos. I should have taken more time to warm up - I tend to dive right into the painting without due preparation. I'm disappointed in how the top left painting came out because I knew as I was painting that I could've done better had I just slowed down.

The top right cardinal was better, but my washes were uneven and I went back to try and fix them which caused the paint to run...oh well. I was happy with the sketches before I began, so that's a win.

I will not be discussing the bottom bird in this post.

This is probably my favorite so far. The washes are more even, you can tell that they're cardinals, and they even have the right proportions and perspective. It actually looks like one is looking at you, which is progress.

I don't know that I've defined my own style yet. I like Julia's nature sketching and the artistic realism she's able to capture. I also really like Liron Yankonsky's YouTube channel which is much more loose and interpretive rather than illustrative. I've been trying to emulate his approach a little more in my form, but my water and paint control isn't quite there yet, which leads to mixed results.

It really boils down to doing more painting regularly and being willing to just go for it. I do see improvement and I know what I want to work on...I don't feel like I'm floundering. I'm enjoying the process even though I'm scared to paint sometimes. It's kind of like this blog...I'm doing the art for me, not for an audience, so it is what I want it to be.

I only finished two books this month - it was a slow one for reading.

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

I didn't know that this was a collection of short stories. I think had I known, the experience would've been more enjoyable. I kept trying to piece the various stories into one narrative in my head. They're all related, but not as a single, unifying plot.

I'm not used to reading older science fiction. The dialog felt very 1950's and...more innocent? than I was expecting. I think Dr. Calvin's persona parallels the robots in her approach to problem solving, which was an interesting plot device.

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space - Adam Higginbotham

This is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. It is detailed without feeling tenacious and paints clear, relatable portraits of everyone involved in this disaster from the families all the way up to the top officials of NASA. It is an absolute must-read if you remember the accident or grew up hearing about it as a kid watching Space Shuttle launches.

I'm about halfway through another science fiction book that I'll finish this month. I'm trying to decide if I can do another nonfiction or if I need to save that for once school is out.

I keep track of everything on LibraryThing if you want to connect there.

Last week wrecked me. Nothing in particular was bad, but the whole thing just felt bad overall. I 'm finally feeling like I'm back on track with school and life things, but for a few days there, I was just hanging on.

On Monday, we were busy finishing up our unit on gases in Chemistry. We'd been hyping up the culmination - the steel barrel crush - with all of the classes. We got all of our students to come down at the end of the day only to have the demonstration not work. I'm not sure what happened, but it was kind of a big letdown. I had a few ask if I was embarressed, and I'm not, but I'm defnitely disappointed that we couldn't make it happen. It's kind of a lot to set up and coordinate and it was a bummer to start the week off with.

I'd also been struggling to challenge the web development class lately. We'd been in Javascript for several weeks, looking at ways to interact with pages they'd built, but I could tell I was losing a subset of the class. So, I took some time to back off and go back to some CSS work. We focused on grids and students spent a week building out small portfolio starter sites using grids to layout a main menu page and then to build out content pages. This class is really in the grind now and some are realizing that they don't love writing code every day. I'm glad they're sticking it out, but I needed a way to rebuild some interest.

So, I introduced a wide-open choice project. Working alone or in collaboration with others, I gave them the opportunity to design and build whatever they wanted. Luckily, I only had to change one group's direction (but not by much) and the interest and activity level picked up noticeably.

In my infinite wisdom, I also offered to help groups with server needs - if they wanted persistent storage, I would throw up a couple database routes. Two groups took me up on that, so there was a couple hours of working with them on their models and what routes they wanted available. Then, there was a group who really wanted to build a chat app. Me, an idiot who has never worked with websockets, said "sure."

The next 48 hours of my life were consumed with fighting to get a simple websocket server up and running. I started by trying to tack it into a Flask server I already had running and it quickly got into sunk cost territory. I struggled with the routing, I struggled with the application server, and I struggled with nginx. Finally, I gave up on that route, ripped it all out, and got it running as a separate service.

Going down that whole consumed my time and my thought processes. I couldn't focus on other things because I was so mired in getting this one thing to work. I really should have just let it go and asked the group to step back until I could dedicate more time to making it happen, but I chose to try and do everything. It was a bad call.

My work quality in my other classes went down. I was frustrated and tired and it bled over into other secetions. My advanced chemistry class half-did a lab that I'd been trying to put together with meager results and then kind of just floated the rest of the week. I lost out on some chances to push their own thinking becuase I fixated on the other course.

The week took a big toll on me. I left on Friday having everything running and my grades caught up, which was a huge win. I spent time tonight planning out the next two weeks before spring break for regular chemistry so I don't have to think about what's happening there. That will let me do some damage control for the advanced chemistry section and finish up their current unit strong before the break as well.

Time management has always been my weak point in teaching. I get too invested in specific projects and then I struggle to keep the other balls in the air. This year has been better (just like last year was better than the one before) and next year I'll have one fewer class to prepare, so the end is in sight. I love my job and I love my work and I really hope that this last week was the last one I'll have like it for a while.

I read a ton this month. Granted, two of these entries are comics, which is not in my normal rotation, but they were both omnibus collections, so I'm counting them as books.

Resident Alien Omnibus Volumes 1 & 2 - Peter Hogan

I started watching the TV adaptation on Netflix sometime in January and I noticed at the end of one episode that it was based on the comics. I liked the first season of the show, so I decided to check these out. The show and the comic diverge in plot, but the general premise is that an alien crash lands on Earth and has to fit in while he waits for rescue.

The comics were enjoyable and flowed well. Supposedly, there are more coming out, so the third volume may make its way into these lists. The first season of the TV series is better than the second. I have not started the third season yet.

The Feather Thief - Kirk Wallace Johnson

My wife read this and we renewed the library loan so I could read it. I vaguely remembered a This American Life episode about this story and the book goes so much deeper (the TAL episode featured the author, so he knows his stuff).

The general story is that fly fishing lures, over many many years, have been idealized by the materials you use to create them. Bird feathers, in particular, are a main "ingredient" and give the fly certain prestige. Old fly patterns rely on endangered birds. A fly-tying savant from the United States breaks into the British Museum of Natural History and steals hundreds of preserved specimens. The book chronicles the break in and the fallout after.

Tusks of Extinction - Ray Nayler

I found this more enjoyable than The Mountain in the Sea. The premise felt more plausible, so the suspension of disbelief was easier. In short: elephants are extinct, mammoths are back, and a woman's consciousness is used to do the work of restoring the population.

Human nature doesn't change - some people want revenge for past harms, others want the thrill of dominating the natural world. Ultimately, the characters are driven by their own desires and fail to see the destruction that comes as a result of not understanding the other side.

Peter and the Secret of Rundoon - Dave Barry

The third installment in the Peter and the Starcatchers series based on Peter Pan. I've been reading this aloud to my kids before bed. I felt pretty undewhelmed (again). The book was all over the place between characters imperiled in Neverland and in the fictional desert country of Rundoon.

The plot draws a little more out of the story - Peter's connection to the Starcatchers is deeper than originally thought, but there is no exploration of the meaning of that connection. It jumps from one bad situation to the next without explaining any of the significancs of the plot developments over the course of the three books.

There is one more to go and, hopefully, it's got a little more meat to it.

The Mercy of Gods - James S.A. Corey

I loved The Expanse books and I didn't know they hard started a new series. This is set in a new universe (though, there were some details scattered in that hinted back to the protomolecule and others from The Expanse) and focused on a group of humans who are captured by an invading alien species called the Carryx.

The book does not feature large scale space shoot-em-ups like The Expanse novels and instead takes a more slow-burn look at how humans react to captivity. The main cast is a group of scientists who weigh out the benefits of behaving and obeying their new captors or resisting outright. The balance between the two extremes pushes the group to the brink.

Brambleheart - Henry Cole

An easy read aloud for my kids. This was more time dependent because they're participating in a book club, so I read this to my younger kids so they could participate. The main character is trying to find his place in a community with stringent expectations. Help comes, but not in the way anyone was expecting.

All of my reading is tracked on LibraryThing if you want to connect in real time.

This week, I was talking with some colleagues about the rate of students using AI to comlpete classwork. The short story is that their students are turning to AI tools for every writing assignment, regardless of topic or genre. A stark - and discouragin - instance was a free-writing assignment where students were asked to write reviews for five of their favorite things. It could be movies, music, tech, food...anything that they found so good that they just had to tell someone else about.

Most went to AI and then copy and pasted it's thoughts.

Another teacher in the group said she had spoken to some recent graduates who said they have varying expectations in their college courses. Some professors have a blanket ban, others require students to use AI tools. I am firmly in the camp of teaching my students as they are now, not necessarily where they'll be in the future, but it really made us wonder if we're neglecting something important by not teaching students explicit skills in using the systems.

They asked how I handle AI in my chemistry classes and my short answer was that I've shifted heavily into labs this year. I don't have them doing much online research and, when I do reach for some kind of writing task, it's linked very tightly to papers which are coupled to what we're doing through instruction. I ask open-ended questions, but they're following specific procedures and protocols that are unique to my room.

Earlier this semester, we were working on unit conversions. I did a little exploration with students considering carbon dioxide release in combustion, measuring the amount of carbon released for every gallon of gas burned in cars. After we realized that we release a ton of carbon dioxide just from driving, I moved the discussion to AI tools. I taught about why it's more expensive per search than a traditional search. We also looked at water use for data centers and looked at the cost - economically - of the two data centers Amazon and Microsoft are building. Students were shocked that both companies were given billions of dollars worth of tax breaks to come and, ultimately, pour CO₂ into the air unchecked.

I've written about my discomfort because of known issues as well as some of my exploring local-only models which had mixed results (soon to be revisited). I don't think this is zero-sum where I have to jump in wholesale, but I cannot - and should not - ignore the culture shift that is happening with my students. I think my approach in the short term will be to pair up the task with a specific, targeted analysis of what LLM tools can actually do and contrast it with what students think they can do.

Here's an example:

I'm going to do a March Madness-style element bracket with classes this year to break up the spring monotonmy. If I were to ask them to research an element, every student would take out their phone and copy/paste the first paragraph from the model into their slide or whatever.

This year, I can invite them to do that - use the model to generate some information about the lethality of the element. But then, anything they use must be backed up with a citation. So, use the model to start the process, but dive into actual verification of information and make that the practice. The model becomes an assitant.

Really, what I want to teach students is that by relying on a model to gather ansewrs, it is supplanting their own voice. I want to know what they think, what they care about, what they're frustrated with. I remind my classes that answering questions and taking time to talk is literally my job. I am there to make sure they are learning, not just that they're able to find the right words to answer a question.

Copying and pasting from an AI model might get the answer right, but it's removing the most important part of the answer - their own voice. The social and political climate right now is pushing to remove voices and I want to make sure that every teenager that comes through my room has - and can use - theirs.

I was at the grocery store early this morning getting head cold care supplies. We'd managed to avoid the worst of this spring bout of sickness so far, but it caught up.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon and I heard a cardinal in the trees. I haven't heard a cardinal in weeks. They're there - they don't migrate - but I hadn't heard one in the morning since the late fall.

There was also a tufted titmouse in the distance. You've probably heard one, too. Hopefully, now you have a name to put with it.

All of the kids are quiet in bed. My wife isn't feeling well and I've found myself enjoying the quiet of the house.

I often have to resist the feeling that I should be doing something.

I think the only something that needs doing is taking these quiet moments as they come.

Toward the end of high school and into college, I developed a tase for metal/metalcore music. Super loud, really intense. One difficult part of being a metal fan is that it's kind of isolating unless you really know the other people in the room like it.

As such, I have a playlist on our Amazon music account called "Dad" which has a collection go-to bangers. My wife knows and tolerates this listening, but I don't really play it for my kids. Today, it came out, they think it's dance music.

I played about 20 seconds of "Beyond Repair" by Johnny Booth (be warned, it's intense). It started with nervous laughter and ended with, "that's enough, it's too screamy."

Good times.

I went on kind of an AI rampage during some professional development yesterday. 24 hours later, I'm feeling just as sad about how it went and more in a mindset to think things through more clearly.

Since starting to pay attention to AI, I’ve found my philosophical training kicking in. This has helped me notice that people tend to conflate things in multiple ways. I’m not immune from these, but I’m trying my best not to let them cloud my judgement.

First, we think through existing tropes that we’ve seen (e.g. ‘Skynet’ in the film The Terminator). Second, we conflate different types of AI (e.g. predictive vs generative). Third, and this is what I want to deal with in this post, we conflate different kinds of ethical concerns about generative AI.

I cought a portion of a discussion between Doug Belshaw and some others following Doug's post. The thread branches a couple times, but they're also worth reading. Doug is right and that categories of ethical concerns are more helpful for framing discussion than just "AI is good/bad." I also appreciate his point (starting here) that there is a difference between platforms and tooling.

In the end, I'm still really stuck on the environmental impact. I am by no means carbon neutral - it isn't a reality for me in my current living situation. But, I can avoid creating more problems by choosing to participate or not participate in certain activites. If (when?) the realities of energy requirements change, then I'll feel better about trying generative tools out more regularly.

New year, new books! I finished three in January and I'm on my way to however far I get in 2025.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void - Mary Roach

I enjoyed this book more than the other book I read by Mary Roach, Fuzz. Mary has a ton of sidebar humor thrown in and she covers a lot of the details of space travel that aren't discussed in most publications. Each chapter was dedicated to a particular facet of living in space from hygiene to bone loss in zero gravity. She quotes early astronauts (Jim Lovell and Frank Borman are frequently featured) along with the researchers and engineers who have to solve the problems that come with living in space.

Peter and the Shadow Thieves - Dave Barry

Another read-aloud to my kids, this is the second book in the Peter and the Starcatchers series. This was a sprawling book, going from Mollusk Island (Never Land) to London and beyond. Peter goes to warn Molly and her father of approaching danger and has to figure out how to navigate the dangers of London. Meanwhile, the other Lost Boys are left alone on Mollusk Island to figure out how to make do without Peter.

I don't think it was as good as the first book and several parts felt very drawn out, but my kids and I had fun reading it together.

Children of God - Mary Doria Russell

This is the sequel to The Sparrow, which told the story of Jesuit priests travelling to Alpha Centauri following music heard by SETI. I read that back in 2020, which was an emotional trip. This book was no different. Set years after Emilio Sandoz was returned to Earth, it picks up the story with a second mission of priests returning to Rakhat with Sandoz unwillingly brought along.

I started and stopped a couple times while reading it because the themes were so heavy. New characters emerge and we learn about what happened to both Emilio and the peoples of Rakhat following The Sparrow. Each of the plots wove together seamlessly and brought the entire Rakhat story to a fitting end.

Onward to February! I keep track of current and upcoming reading on LibraryThing if you want to see other books I've read and what I have coming up.