Prompting basics
—————-* Be clear
* Be specific
* Use complete sentences
* Use proper grammar
* Use punctuation correctly
* Politeness may influence results\*
* Don’t be afraid to correct or refine
AI Prompting Matters: Round 3 by Tom Woodward
Month: August 2024
On that return trip, “I measured the temperature of seeps all over, wherever I could,” he says. The closer to the surface he measured, the warmer the water was. In 2008, a separate team from the University of Minnesota had [predicted](https://conservancy.umn.edu/items/a9ae3228-1d09-4dd9-8bd2-8f63e23e000c) that heat from Minneapolis’s urban surface was conducting itself deep underground, heating the groundwater there like a metropolitan microwave. Brick’s subsequent research proved them right—but also showed that they had significantly underestimated the extent of the warming.
Brick published his results in 2022, as a chapter in [_Threats to Springs in a Changing World_](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119818625), published by the American Geophysical Union. His findings aren’t unique to Minneapolis. From Japan to Italy, Canada to Switzerland, scientists have found other “subsurface urban heat islands” where pavement and basements warm up what’s below them.
The Strange Heat Island Lurking Beneath Minneapolis by Sarah Scoles
In footage shard by a wedding guest on X, Aphex Twin can be seen performing from a modest DJ booth with nothing more than a small projection screen behind him. Instead of family-friendly sounds and a heartwarming montage of the bride and groom, he opted for drum & bass with eye-popping visuals featuring his iconic distorted face, as seen on the album cover of 1996’s Richard D. James Album.
Watch Footage from Aphex Twin’s Latest Headline Performance – His Friend’s Wedding by Nick Yopko
I remember going to a wedding where the DJ played Nine Inch Nails. This felt odd. I think going to a wedding with Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert is next level. Would be a strange vibe.
‘_Outstanding!’_ you may say, Fletch. ‘_That’s for me!’_ ‘_I’m gonna quit my fucking job!’_ ‘_I’m gonna tell my boss to shove it!’_ But, before you rush into anything, remember that creating art, like many things of value, comes at a cost – and confronting one’s own self can be the most challenging and fearful thing you’ll ever do. Fletch, I wish you luck in whatever you choose to do.
The Red Hand Files – Issue #297 – Are songs from God? by Nick Cave
David Truss (daily-ink.davidtruss.com)I have no idea what song or even what genre will tickle my musical fancy next, but until then, I’ll be choosing between these most recent choices ‘on repeat’.
On Repeat by David Truss
David, I am wondering how these songs end up ‘on repeat’? Clearly, some tracks click, but for that to happen, we need to listen to a wide range of music? Are there times you listen to the radio? Or is there times when your children or wife are playing music that you pick up new tracks from? This is one of those things that intrigues me, especially in the age of algorithms?
I was over-optimistic about the benefits of social media and insufficiently pessimistic about the downsides. However, if it was right for a little while, and now is wrong, the question remains, can it become a bit more right again? If so, how and where? Anyway for a little while there, we made some excellent cat memes.
Things I was Wrong About Pt3 – The democratisation of social media – The Ed Techie by Martin Weller
As I line up with all the other people to say how I too was wrong about the ‘democratisation of social media’, I am left reflecting upon my own experiences. I am particularly intrigued looking back upon Ian Guest’s research into Twitter and professional development.
I am assuming (as I am no longer a ‘resident‘) that Twitter is different to how it was when Ian was doing his research. However, I would also assume that it was different again in say 2010 when Clint was doing his research. We often talk about Twitter or social media as something stable, but surely it is something that is forever changing. That is one of the take-aways I took from Ian’s choice to use actor network theory as his framing.
For me, one of the changes that I noticed was a move from sharing to something else. It leaves so many questions. I wonder where people moved? Did they stop learning or just stop sharing, instead to become lurkers, keeping their ideas in their own gated communities? I feel that it is far too easy to say we were ‘wrong’ or ‘right’, I wonder if the more useful point of reflection is what ideas we might have been ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about and how things have changed and what sort of ‘right’ is required moving forward. Is the ‘right’ needed a online parks? Here I am reminded of something from Angus Hervey about ‘letting go lightly’ to aide in moving forward:
Don’t say “I’m right, and you’re obviously wrong.”
Say “at this point, given all the evidence I’ve considered and having made a genuine effort to try and see if from the other side (point to some examples), the balance of the argument seems to rest on this side for these reasons, so for now that’s what I am going with. If new evidence, or a better argument comes along I am totally willing to change my mind about this, and I’ll also be pleased because it will mean I’ve gained a deeper understanding about the world.”
The Beauty of Being Wrong by Angus Hervey
Continue reading “💬 Things I was Wrong About Pt3 – The democratisation of social media”
This presents a quandary for open scholars – do you continue to advocate for open access for everyone, and at the same time accept that you are feeding the machine? Do you accept AI as inevitable and hope your content in some way adds to its quality (I mean, I’m not sure what my random metaphors on here will do to the learning models). Or do you seek to control content with more specific licences that might prohibit being harvested by AI but allow human access?
The darkish side of open licences by Martin Weller
Martin Weller reflects the fine line between open licensed content and the fear that it is being fed (or mostly likely, has been fed) into the AI machine. I like Weller’s point that, “There is no “CC-BY for uses I like” licence.”
What are the most popular digital tools for learning and why?
Source: VOTING 2024 – Top 100 Tools for Learning 2023 by Jane Hart
I have not reflected upon my top tools / workflow(s) for a few years, this therefore was a good excuse to stop and take stock.
As requested, here is my list of ten tools. Although not meant to be in any order, I have ordered my list based on use and importance:
- WordPress – WordPress is where I ‘collect the dots‘ in my ‘Collect‘ site and join them together in some sort of response in my main site. This has completely replaced my use of social bookmarking applications, such as Diigo, which I finally let go last year. Also, if I reply to anyone on the web, my reply starts on my site and is then syndicated elsewhere either via webmentions or manually.
- Libby (and BorrowBox, Libro.Fm, Spotify and Audible) – I (re)turned to reading/listening to books lately as my main source of ‘dots’. I have always read books, but they had become secondary to staying on top of various feeds. Now I often find myself churning through audiobooks on walks or while doing jobs around the house. My local library has a subscription with Libby by Overdrive, which I use to borrow books. However, I also use Bolinda Audio’s Borrowbox via the local library and Spotify at times, as well as purchase books from Libro.Fm and Audible.
- Moon+ Reader Pro – If I cannot find a book in audiobook, I will read it or listen to it on my Android phone via Moon+ Reader Pro. Although I have used Kindle in the past for this purpose, I like the options and flexibility that Moon+ Reader Pro provides. I also often use this app to annotate books that I listen to as audiobooks.
- Inoreader – For content online, I try and syphon everything through Inoreader, this includes Mastodon. Gone are my days of dipping in and out of streams. Sadly, I am no longer able to pull my Twitter feed into Inoreader, therefore I only use Twitter now to respond to certain people in certain situations.
- Pocket – When I find an interesting article, I often save it to Pocket to read or listen to later. However, I must admit, I do not get through my saves as I once did, especially after putting pause on my monthly newsletter.
- AntennaPod – I use AntennaPod for podcasts. It does what I need, but I really wish I had a cleaner way of collating what I listen to, other than sharing out elsewhere.
- Obsidian – I have started using Obsidian after discovering that I could easily pull all my annotations from Kindle with ease. I now pull my annotations from Moon+ Reader and keep track of the podcasts I listen to, sort of. I do not really use it to backlink etc, actually I do not use it that well, especially as I do not pay for it meaning that I have a vault on my phone and on my work computer. I often use it as a place to carve ideas out in Markdown. I used to use Trello for this, but it was feel a little too over-engineered for what I was trying to do, while I also use Literal a bit to track the books that I have been reading, but at the end of the day, Obsidian is (currently) my dumping ground.
- 1Password – I would not usually consider a password manager as a learning tool per se, but I cannot argue with Harold Jarche when he states that it “simplifies my online life and gives me more time for learning.”
- Google Sheets – As with 1Password, Google Sheets is not necessarily a tool that I learn from, but it is a tool that helps streamline a lot of my learning and makes it more ‘doable‘. For example, I realised that I did not have a clean process for recording my professional development required for my teacher registration, so I made a spreadsheet with a separate tab that allows me to collate the different standards associated with the learning.
- YouTube – I do not watch a lot of video, often preferring books and podcasts. However, there are times when I do look things up, check videos from channels I have subscribed to or saved to watch later after they have come up in my Inoreader feed.
ᔥ in top tools 2024 – Harold Jarche ()
I majored in magazines at Syracuse’s journalism school. Every magazine I’ve worked for over the decades has joined the dustbin of history; I guess what I really majored in was obituary writing.
I founded a pioneering tech magazine. Tech killed it off by Michael Antonoff
Tennis great-turned-philanthropist Roger Federer delivered the Commencement address at Dartmouth on June 9, 2024. The eight-time Wimbledon champion gave pointers on how to win at life. Federer received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the Commencement ceremony.
2024 Commencement Address by Roger Federer at Dartmouth by YouTube
Roger Federer provided three lessons about life that he has deduced from tennis:
- Effortless is a myth
- It’s only a point
- Life is bigger than the court
This reminds me of Patrick Dangerfield’s argument that there is always another moment.
It has taken me far to long to visit this flora reserve. I remember when the land was bought by Croydon Council for a very small amount in the 1980s in order to preserve its wonderful biodiversity. After going through a number of management iterations it is now controlled by Parks Victoria.
Hochkins Ridge by skippingstitches
From your knowledge, was there any gold found in the Hodgkins Ridge area? I remember walking through the reserve growing up and finding a depression near the top of the ridge on the Neuparth Road side. However, looking at the 1983 geological survey from your Gold! post, I cannot see any particular references.
The citrus gall wasp (Bruchophagus fellis) is a native insect native to coastal regions around the border of Queensland and New South Wales. It has now spread throughout the eastern states, including South Australia and Victoria and has also been found in suburban Perth. The wasp produces lumpy, woody galls around it’s larvae on branches. The galls weaken the trees, reducing fruit size and yield and sometimes causing branch dieback.
Inspired by Gardening Australia, I went with ‘peal and reveal’ to deal with the gall wasp infestation.
In this newsletter, we’re looking at how to use hyperlinks in Google Sheets. And, if you’re an advanced user, I’ve got a spicy formula for you at the end of the newsletter.
Sheets Tip #312: The Missing Link 🔗 by Ben Collins
Ben, I really like the spicy solution regarding hyperlinks:
=HYPERLINK( "#gid=0&range=A" & ArrayFormula( MAX( IF( ISBLANK(A2:A), 0, ROW(A2:A))))+1 , "Add Data")I had never thought about the fact that you can reference a cell and what possibilities that may allow.
It had me wondering about linking to a cell in a table via a drop-down menu / wild card search using the MATCH function to add a link to a table row:
=HYPERLINK("gid=0#gid=0&range=B" & MATCH(B$1, 'Sheet1'!B2:B, 0) + ROW('Sheet1'!B2) - 1, B1)Academic literary criticism doesn’t do fun these days. It rarely has, of course, but now it has descended fully into an apparently permanent, and permanently dour, secular-Calvinist recitation about structures of oppression — and, when critics lift their heads long enough to notice that students are utterly bored by all this, have no better response than to say Neoliberalism made me do it. I am not sure academic literary criticism can ever come back from its moribund state, but its best chance of doing so would be to try to have some fun. Surprise itself. Play the Game.
The Game by Alan Jacobs
Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)Any time you encounter a shitty, outrageous racket that’s stable over long timescales, chances are you’re looking at a collective action problem. Certainly, that’s the underlying pathology that preserves the scholarly publishing scam, which is one of the most grotesque, wasteful, disgusting frauds in our modern world (and that’s saying something, because the field is crowded with many contenders).
Instead of asking students, “Does anyone have any questions?”, try asking, “What questions do you have?” or “Ask me two questions.”
@tonyvincent https://learninginhand.com/blog/2024/8/17/does-anyone-have-any-questions
Tony Vincent collates a number of strategies for supporting students with questioning. This includes pairing students up, using sticky notes, predicting the questions of others, being clear about expectations around questions, and allow wait time. Some more strategies to add to the search for ‘a more beautiful question‘.
I really like this remix from mitch said. Felt that Kamala’s facial expression suited Aphex Twin best, not Charles Mingus.
“That (the miss from the goalsquare) is my whole philosophy on sport – it is not that I don’t care enough – I care, a lot – but once that is done, it just doesn’t matter,” he said. “There are blokes who live in the space of, ‘I’ve just f***ed this up for the game, that was our opportunity to win’. No, it was an opportunity, and now I’ve got to look for the next one, and how I can impact that next one for us.
“The game is far from perfection on a weekend, but you need to have the will to give the next moment a crack, and eventually you will break them. I am such a believer in that.”
The mantra that’s been driving ‘Danger’ for 17 years by Damian Barrett
“I was looking at it, and I could see it has our label and I could see that it has you whatever like nine songs on the one side,” he recalled. “And I was looking at the actual gold record—it only had four songs on it.”
That was a bit of a mind blow for the trio, which immediately broke the glass, took the record out of its shell, and heard … instrumental piano recordings of Barry Manilow songs. This clearly blew the minds of both the band as well as the hosts. It’s not exactly common knowledge, but apparently the gold and platinum records are just plated and labeled with no care as to whether the actual records contain the artist’s songs.
The Random Music Hiding On Gold & Platinum Records by Ernie Smith
—
To borrow from John Laws, records ain’t records?
True learning is a slow contemplatory process and yet schools are ‘busy’ places with little time for teachers or students to contemplate. We are too busy being industrial and efficient,…
The lack of looking back in schools is proof of their anti-learning design in the same way the randomness of the timetabling of siloed subjects is. It makes no sense to anyone that the best immediate preparation for an hour’s study of Romeo & Juliet, is a serious deep-dive into photosynthesis but schools do it anyway because any student output allows us to compare them regardless if it fails to help them learn.
Look Back to Move Forward by Richard Wells
I remember studying the representations of Holocaust at university whilst also emerging myself into the world Baudrillard and postmodernism. My interests in literary theory could not help but bleed, let alone clash, with historical thinking. I really struggled to properly partition those different approaches. This is nothing when going from Romeo & Juliet to photosynthesis. Such transitions often feel like pulling the hard drive out before it has properly been ejected. Never feels right.
The conundrum is what a modern school looks like that is not dictated by the “production for ranking/judgement”? Yes, you can choose your pedagogy, but I feel at some point someone, somewhere is going to come asking for some sort of data and big data requires order, which often leads to classes and timetables. I guess that is your point.
I had never thought of all this as neo-eugenics exercise? I am not completely sure if this is the intent of things such as Australia’s My Schools website, but it definitely has me thinking. I am left wondering how much information getting added to student management systems is for the benefits of the student, say the emergency contact, and how much is for those managing the bigger picture?