Matt’s Notes
Hey there, one and all! It’s been two weeks… and too long… since our last episode! But Life Happens! More on this later…
In this episode we’re taking the first steps in what will doubtless be a longer engagement with AI tools, applications, and implications for education. Since this topic is “bleeding edge” and/or “happening in real time”… you can choose your preferred aphorism… there’s lots to say! But we’ve never let being late to a party keep us from crashing it, so let’s get crashing!
Big audio #ednontech dynamite contained herein…
As mentioned in the recordings, this has been a pretty tumultuous few weeks for me. I know, what else is new, right?
But… since the last recording… my remaining grandfather passed away… I turned forty-five years old… halfway to ninety! And the same age my grandfather was when he became a grandfather. Point of fact… I am in no way ready to be a grandfather! I like to think I’m OK at being a dad most of the time… but honestly, that is pretty hit and miss sometimes!
I have also been in pretty high gear with job interviews… including a FOURTH interview for a role that took place yesterday morning… out of all the opportunities I’ve tried for over the past year and a half, this seems like it has the most potential… that’s about all I can say on that at the moment, besides the dribs and drabs that may appear in the recording… BUT… suffice it to say that regardless of what happens professionally and personally in the coming weeks and months, this EnT Podcast will continue… unless Doug somehow decides otherwise…
Now, for something completely different!
While putting these notes together, naturally I searched for “mad scientist GIF’s”. And from this search, I became aware of this absolutely stunning horror film from 1962— The Brain That Wouldn’t Die…
Apart from the jarring visuals, presented for your pleasure here, I can’t help but seeing this as a kind of nifty metaphor for the CATASTROPHIZATION (new word alert!) of AI and the messy… monstrous?… cusp between “AI present” and “AI future”…
As it turns out, the film went immediately into the public domain upon release due to “a flawed copyright notice”, as per Wikipedia… and if that doesn’t speak, somehow to both the current state of AI and the current state of Open Educational Resources (OER), I don’t know what does!
Do you have 82 more minutes to kill? You can watch the entire film here… but before that, do take a moment or more to check out my latest and maybe silliest social media experiment thus far… The Sad Dads of AI on Facebook! It is recent, it hasn’t been updated for more than a week, and it is deeply, deeply silly… BUT… not without some strong #ednontech value! I practically guarantee I will be talking to this later…
A few other resources that I’ve found lately that are either thought-provoking and helpful… or LOOK that way…
- Clint Lalonde Acting Director, Open Education at BCcampus, wrote a very thoughtful blog post about some of the implications for AI… namely Chat… and open education…
- A book that I’m DYING to read is now available to read this fall is now available for pre-order: An Introduction to Narrative Generators: How Computers Create Works of Fiction by computational creativity scholar Rafael Pérez y Pérez Professor at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana at Cuajimalpa, México City, and Open University Professor Emeritus of Educational Technology Mike Sharples… this checks lots of boxes, relative to my interests, and it is going to be SICK… to use a term…
- The US Department of Education has released a new report: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning… while I have yet to look deeply into its 70+ pages, this is a significant resource which we will no doubt be returning to in future episodes of this podcast…
Doug’s Notes
AI & Education – the visual impact so far…
What makes the synergy between artificial intelligence and graphics a new paradigm, rather than just a collection of techniques, is that it fundamentally changes the way we view interaction between people and computers.
Lieberman, H. (1996). Intelligent graphics. Communications of the ACM, 39(8), 38-48.
The connection between graphics and AI is becoming increasingly strong, and, it is now clear that AI research can benefit tremendously from embodiment in virtual worlds.
Thórisson, K. R., Pennock, C., List, T., & DiPirro, J. (2004). Artificial intelligence in computer graphics: A constructionist approach. ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, 38(1), 26-30.
The AI TA could also automatically provide teaching and professional development resources (texts, images, videos, augmented- reality animations, links, network connections) that the teacher might choose to call upon to support their teaching.
Holmes, W., Bialik, M., & Fadel, C. (2023). Artificial intelligence in education. Globethics Publications.
The fact that almost all images generated by artificial intelligence give results in accordance with the text, and almost all of them are quite good. As a result, it is concluded that the potential for using images generated by artificial intelligence for educational purposes is high.
Aktay, S. (2022). The usability of images generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in education. International Technology and Education Journal, 6(2), 51-62.
Adobe adds generative AI to Photoshop
The new AI tools will work similarly to other AI image creation technology, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, which allow people to produce pictures from simple text prompts.
Ward, J., Rangel, X., & Ruberg, S. (2023, May 23). Adobe adds generative AI to Photoshop. NBC News.
Word of the podcast
Artificial intelligence
Phrase of the podcast
AI Pivot
Question of the podcast
How could educators use AI to help improve student learning opportunities?
We are genuinely pleased you’d spend this time with us!! We can’t wait to all it again in a week or two…
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