Ed tech must reads: column #65

January 30, 2023

First published in Campus Morning Mail 24th Jan, 2023

Well, it appears that 2023 is to be the year of Generative AI in education. In much the same way that we were swamped with newfound experts on epidemiology and public health policy at the start of the pandemic, it is hard to scroll through online content without finding a dozen hot takes on ChatGPT. As someone whose job it is to make sense of this brave new world and contribute to an institutional response, I must admit that it is hard to keep up and separate the wheat from the chaff. Hot tip though – if your piece is partly written by an AI app, it’s more likely chaff. Just stop it, please. We get it.

This collection of resources from Anna Mills, a writing teacher at the College of Marin in California has been one of the best I have found so far. I don’t necessarily agree with all her ideas but her tweets have consistently been some of the most thoughtful and practical that I have come across in the maelstrom of discourse. She is also hosting a webinar on the topic on Sat 28th Jan at 9am (AEDT).  

Webinar - The AI (ChatGPT) Future: What do we do now? Thursday 2nd Feb, 12 noon AEDT from ASCILITE TELedvisors Network and UniSA Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning

If you prefer something at a more sociable time, I have worked with Prof. George Siemens (UniSA) to organise a 1 hr panel discussion with a focus on practical next steps for educators, leaders and edvisors (learning designers, education technologists, academic developers etc). On the panel we have:

  • Prof. George Siemens - Director: C3L UniSA Education Futures

  • Ass. Prof Trish McCluskey – Director Digital Learning Deakin University

  • Aneesha Bakharia – Manager Learning Analytics and Learning Technologies University of Queensland

  • Anna Mills – Writing teacher at College of Marin

  • Colin Simpson  - Education Technologist Monash University, Convenor TELedvisors Network

Examining the Role of Emotions in Learning with Technology from Journal of Digital Life and Learning

And now for something completely different. This article from Robin Kay of Ontario Tech University explores what I feel to be an underexamined aspect of education, the impact of emotions on learning. Specifically, learning with technology. Kay surveyed 220 pre-service teachers, gathering data about their emotional responses to learning strategies tied to learning technologies. Social interaction based approaches correlated to anxiety while experimental and authentic strategies were most strongly associated with happiness.