As alien as AIs are, they’re also deeply human. They are training on our cultural history, and reinforcement learning from humans aligns them to our goals. They carry our biases and are created out of a complex mix of idealism, entrepreneurial spirit, and yes, exploitation of the work and labor of others. In many ways,…
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I had the privilege of listening to Elin Kelsey speak at the Global Education Benchmarking Group (GEBG) this past April. I had come across the book earlier and it had intrigued me as a great provocation for a course we were designing at Havergal College. But when I heard her speak, I knew I was…
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“”I no longer accept anything that is not perfectly written at this stage. Why Bother?” Like Mollock, Fuentes and Hick, Educators are finding that these Generative AI tools make our students far more skilled and efficient writers. They are also finding that, where producing essays were once seen as essential to helping students gain mastery…
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I have been deep-diving into Stoicism these past two years through the books and podcast of Ryan Halliday (aka: The Daily Stoic). When I was introduced to Danny Bauer, one of the authors of “Calm in the Chaos”, it was clear that he was a learning-practitioner of Stoicism in the educational context and culture. Chief…
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How might we understand the confluence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), Synthetic Biology, and conceive of a habitable future, with ethical considerations of what it means to be human – this books sets out to answer this ambitious question. The coming wave is defined by two core technologies: GAI and synthetic biology. Together they will…
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“The Future is Analog” (2022) is David Sax’s follow up to “The Revenge of Analog” (2016). In this very readable, incredibly well researched, with a wide diversity of people referenced and interviewed, David Sax offers a welcome version of the future based on the tough lessons that we’ve learned through our experiences of the pandemic….
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As part of an upcoming PD experience, I am reading this book by Richard Barrett, and thought I would share some of the learnings. The subtitle of this book is “Cultural Health and Employee Well-Being as a Pathway to Sustainable Performance”. This alone makes this book compelling, as a resource to offer some answers /…
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Recommended to me because of their useful analogy of: “The Rider” (logic and reason), “The Elephant” (emotions and relationships), and “The Path” (the environment and context), this book is a great source of inspiration, reminders and ideas for initiating change, for change management and it provides tools & language to support and lead others through…
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“Potlatch as Pedagogy” was recommended to me by Mike Carlson, a teacher at Wandering Spirits school (TDSB) and an Indigenous educational consultant. This book strongly resonates with “The Nordic Secret” and “Ecological Learning“, in that the approaches are student-centred, holistic and reciprocal. What I really enjoyed about this book was the 9 Principles of “Sk’ad’a”,…
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“School is an institution that is deeply, systemically, designed for compliance. The whole apparatus of rules, punishments, timetables and bells, syllabuses and set texts, marking and examination requires and rewards the disposition of diligence, obedience, conscientiousness and correctness: of willingly doing what you are told regardless of whether it seems senseless or untimely. Student choice…
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