Alright, here's the first Roundup of the new year. Hope everybody had a great first couple of weeks. If you're new, this is where I dump articles, tools, and posts I think might be interesting or useful to you in your classroom. I try to do it once a week.
Screenshots on your MacBook:
If you're a power Mac user, this is old hat to you. But if you don't know this trick, I'm about to save you ten billion clicks over the next decade.
I use the screenshot shortcuts roughly nine million times a week: dumping images into a slide deck, grabbing a QR code to throw up quickly, snagging a photo online to edit. It's way faster than saving the photo, then re-uploading it from your downloads folder. And, as more images online have the ability to right-click --> Save Image turned off, this is a handy workaround.
The keyboard shortcut is Command + Shift + 4, which will put a crosshair on your screen. Drag it around whatever you want to snag, and when you let go, it will snap the pic and display it (briefly) in the bottom right corner. If you already have your slide deck open in another window, just drag it over, and -- voila! -- it's there.
This link also tells you how to capture a whole window or do a screen-capture video, which is what I used to make the lil video below demonstrating the screen capture procedure (and is also discussed in the linked article)
More ChatGPT info:
I'm fascinated by ChatGPT's potential as a tutor for at-home work, but we know it makes mistakes (at least for now). So I found this article both concerning and optimistic, as people much smarter than me are beginning to find the edges where it gets things wrong, think about how to avoid that, and discover what we can do with it in its current form. The most encouraging takeaway, from a study of adults using ChatGPT to learn algebra:
On a short test afterwards, these adults [with access to AI tutorial content] improved 17 percent, compared to less than 12 percent learning gains for the adults who could see a different group of hints written by undergraduate math tutors. Those who weren’t offered any hints scored about the same on a post-test as they did on a pre-test.
Full article can be found here.
What is Art?
I estimate that, were I still teaching literature, I could get at least three full 50-minute classes out of this video explaining why Marchel Duchamp signing his name on a urinal counts as art. (Yes, it was a new, unused urinal. Don't be gross.)
Brief discussion at this post, which also links to the full video, which I watched at 1.5 speed while typing the other posts in this entry.
Math instruction.
I wholeheartedly endorse this post about doing less in math so the students can do more. I left high school thinking I hated math, and I was in my mid-20s and back in college for round two before I realized I didn't hate math; I just hated doing thirty nearly identical problems a night when I understood the concept somewhere between problems 5 and 10. And on the nights when I was confused in a world before YouTube and ChatGPT and Khan Academy, I REALLY hated staring at 30 problems I didn't know how to do, struggling through them, turning them in, and then finding out 48 hours later that I was wrong about almost all of them.
As I explain to my students: That's like a basketball coach putting a curtain between the free throw line and the goal, having everybody shoot 30 shots, and telling them two days later how they did. There's no instant feedback, which means there's no rational way to self-correct and improve on your mistakes.
RETRO IS THE BEST, YO
The folks at Flippity (who I suspect I'd get along with) have added the ability to create an Asteroids-style retro video game from your class content.
Not gonna lie, I played the demo like sixteen times. They have lots of other goodies here.
PODCAST PEOPLE
I'm usually listening to an album or comedian if I have my earbuds in, but I use car time for podcasts. If that's you, here's a 10-minute podcast on 3 simple ways to use AI in your classroom.
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