“Dan pressed a button, and in less than a second the computer produced a poem in the style of Philip Larkin that was so much like a Philip Larkin poem, we thought it was a poem by Philip Larkin. We Googled the first line, expecting it to be an existing Philip Larkin poem, but we couldn’t find it on the Internet. It was an original work, composed by the A.I. in less time than it takes a man to sneeze.”
“To find your people, you have to know how to signal your passions and interests and seek out theirs. But you can also search Google, or scan LinkedIn profiles and send “Connect with Me” notices. You can tweet links about what you’re interested in, or leave comments on an Instagram feed. Here is a brief taxonomy that identifies five different types of communities you can tap into.”
“On the one hand, if we are solely responsible for the things we do wrong, some genuinely malevolent parties get off scot-free. On the other, if we locate responsibility entirely outside the individual, we relegate ourselves to sentient flotsam buffeted by currents beyond our control.”
“Joint UCI and UC Riverside study shows ‘near transfer’ predicts ‘far transfer’”
“The newest Omicron variant, BA.4/5, is gaining traction, causing case, hospitalization, and death curves to trend upwards in many countries.”
“Headley, a novelist known primarily for her works of fantasy for young adults, is the most recent of the dozens of modern English translators who have taken on the poem, which runs three thousand one hundred and eighty-two lines long.”
“Seven years into my role, I remain steadfast in my thinking that this will be my permanent professional home. Recently, I was asked what it would take to make that goal a reality: What are the conditions that would make it possible for me to last long term in this headship, given the volatility of the position?”
“People yearn for parental figures. And these types of parental figures, which we believe have existed in the past in all sorts of institutions (government, businesses, and heads in our schools), might not have even really existed at all. They’re illusions, lore. But they’ve become part of our story whether they were real or not. And even if we know that these people might not have been real, we draw comfort from believing they existed—and we still want that. The effort to uphold this role—particularly during a pandemic—can last only so long.”
“Ultimately, good governance is the bedrock upon which our schools and their missions rest, and the key to that is establishing a productive partnership between the head and the board.”
“The good news is that moving to a mastery-based system and measuring students against a standard instead of each other can lift students and teachers into a positive-sum system. The success of some students would no longer be at the expense of others. Incorporating projects and small-group learning where students are actively giving each other feedback and supporting each other also helps lift students and educators into a positive-sum system.”
“If a student needs to create a presentation or write a paper based on research, and they don’t yet have the skills to find resources or take notes, you could supply them with pre-selected resources and pre-written notes on the topic, then just have them write the summary of the research. In the future, they can work on the research or notes part of the process until they get to the point of being able to do the whole thing from beginning to end.”
“The additional notes added to the poem continue with some wildly improbable theories about how the sun works. Yet, in his obscure way, Darwin had stumbled on exactly what happens with photosynthesis and plant growth.”
“Richard Mann is the founder of Nerdle, the daily math game inspired by Wordle and launched in January 2022.”
This feat was made possible by a new approach to designing and constructing projects. Using one highly detailed digital three-dimensional model this approach is saving time and money on what can be expensive, slow, and complex building projects…”
“China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public. The Times’s Visual Investigations team and reporters in Asia spent over a year analyzing more than a hundred thousand government bidding documents… Here are the investigation’s major revelations.”
“Going into next year our focus is really about providing stability to our kids, some sense of routine, some sense of normalcy.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson