https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/ recent bookmarks from jm 2023-05-19T09:01:10+00:00 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/ai-cheating-teaching-chatgpt-students-college-university?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other jmOne of the reasons so many people suddenly care about artificial intelligence is that we love panicking about things we don’t understand. Misunderstanding allows us to project spectacular dangers on to the future. Many of the very people responsible for developing these models (who have enriched themselves) warn us about artificial intelligence systems achieving some sort of sentience and taking control of important areas of life. Others warn of massive job displacement from these systems. All of these predictions assume that the commercial deployment of artificial intelligence actually would work as designed. Fortunately, most things don’t. That does not mean we should ignore present and serious dangers of poorly designed and deployed systems. For years predictive modeling has distorted police work and sentencing procedures in American criminal justice, surveilling and punishing Black people disproportionately. Machine learning systems are at work in insurance and health care, mostly without transparency, accountability, oversight or regulation. We are committing two grave errors at the same time. We are hiding from and eluding artificial intelligence because it seems too mysterious and complicated, rendering the current, harmful uses of it invisible and undiscussed. And we are fretting about future worst-case scenarios that resemble the movie The Matrix more than any world we would actually create for ourselves. Both of these habits allow the companies that irresponsibly deploy these systems to exploit us. We can do better. I will do my part by teaching better in the future, but not by ignoring these systems and their presence in our lives. ]]> ai future education teaching society https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:865f84511d36/ 2022-09-01T10:39:12+00:00 https://www.callingbullshit.org/ jmThe world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit. We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument. ]]> learning science teaching tutorial courses bullshit scepticism facts https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:611ec2e256f9/ 2020-07-23T14:11:49+00:00 https://schools.forhealth.org/risk-reduction-strategies-for-reopening-schools/ jmWe recognize there are immense challenges. There is no perfect plan to reopen schools safely, only “less bad” options. There is no “one size fits all” strategy that works for every school. Schools have limited budgets and staff. Compliance will be imperfect. Learning will be different. There will be disruption. Schools may need to re-close unexpectedly depending on local conditions. No one knows with certainty what the fall will bring in terms of this pandemic. Despite these challenges, the enormous individual and societal costs of keeping schools closed compels us, a team focused on Healthy Buildings and exposure and risk science, to present a range of control strategies that should be considered in discussions of school reopenings. ]]> health schools reopening covid-19 teaching kids children https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5dfcd85537d9/ 2020-07-23T14:10:55+00:00 https://schools.forhealth.org/risk-reduction-strategies-for-reopening-schools/faqs/ jmThere is no such thing as “zero risk” in anything we do, and certainly not during a pandemic. There will be some risk to students, teachers, staff, and families. As such, it is important to reduce these risks to the extent possible. Returning to school should not be “school as usual.” We prepared the following set of questions as a guide for parents, teachers and school staff who may not be sure what to ask or look for at their school. While we offer some insight into the responses you might receive, and expect, each school’s response will be different because there is no “one size fits all” plan for COVID-19. ]]> schools teaching covid-19 health kids children https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f59d8717ba89/ 2020-07-21T23:24:16+00:00 https://twitter.com/SarahCohodes/status/1277638735597895680 jm education children kids covid-19 reopening schools teaching https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c02e6a3f0f7d/ 2020-07-21T23:15:13+00:00 https://www.americanscientist.org/blog/macroscope/what-it-will-take-to-reopen-schools-safely jmIf we want school to reopen safely in this school year, here’s what it will take: community outbreak control, extensive changes to school operations to limit infection risk (and the money to support such changes), flexibility, and transparency — in that order. ]]> schools education reopening covid-19 teaching https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d01540939146/ 2020-05-18T13:56:40+00:00 https://blog.khinsen.net/posts/2020/05/18/an-open-letter-to-software-engineers-criticizing-neil-ferguson-s-epidemics-simulation-code/ jmthe main message of this letter is something different: it’s about your role in this story. That’s of course a collective you, not you the individual reading this letter. It’s you, the software engineering community, that is responsible for tools like C++ that look as if they were designed for shooting yourself in the foot. It’s also you, the software engineering community, that has made no effort to warn the non-expert public of the dangers of these tools. Sure, you have been discussing these dangers internally, even a lot. But to outsiders, such as computational scientists looking for implementation tools for their models, these discussions are hard to find and hard to understand. There are lots of tutorials teaching C++ to novices, but I have yet to see a single one that starts with a clear warning about the dangers. You know, the kind of warning that every instruction manual for a microwave oven starts with: don’t use this to dry your dog after a bath. A clear message saying “Unless you are willing to train for many years to become a software engineer yourself, this tool is not for you.” ]]> software coding engineering science teaching c++ https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:379ea18e947c/ 2020-03-13T15:22:49+00:00 https://twitter.com/aoibhinn_ni_s/status/1238384369435324419 jm education teaching maths math covid-19 kids https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d8f2d57978fe/ 2017-09-11T11:21:54+00:00 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/teaching-students-code-what-works-lynn-langit/ jm education learning coding teaching tkp lynn-langit scratch kids https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:70e45a0ce512/ 2014-02-10T15:58:56+00:00 http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software jm feminism community programming coding women computing software society work linux-journal children teaching https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:568cca680e6a/ 2013-12-11T16:05:29+00:00 http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/dec/09/gender-stereotypes-schools-children-choices jmOur children should be free to choose to study what really excites them, not subtly steered away from certain subjects because teachers believe in and propagate the stereotypes. Last year the IOP published a report "It's Different for Girls" which demonstrated that essentially half of state coeducational schools did not see a single girl progress to A-level physics. By contrast, the likelihood of girls progressing from single sex schools were two and a half times greater. Amen to this.]]> sexism schools teaching uk phyics girls children bias stereotypes https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:24604c2225f0/ 2013-09-24T22:02:14+00:00 https://www.usenix.org/blog/my-daughters-high-school-programming-teacher jmDuring the first semester of my daughter's junior/senior year, she took her first programming class. She knew I'd be thrilled, but she did it anyway. When my daughter got home from the first day of the semester, I asked her about the class. "Well, I'm the only girl in class," she said. Fortunately, that didn't bother her, and she even liked joking around with the guys in class. My daughter said that you noticed and apologized to her because she was the only girl in class. And when the lessons started (Visual Basic? Seriously??), my daughter flew through the assigments. After she finished, she'd help classmates who were behind or struggling in class. Over the next few weeks, things went downhill. While I was attending SC '12 in Salt Lake City last November, my daughter emailed to tell me that the boys in her class were harassing her. "They told me to get in the kitchen and make them sandwiches," she said. I was painfully reminded of the anonymous men boys who left comments on a Linux Pro Magazine blog post I wrote a few years ago, saying the exact same thing. I am sick to death of this 'brogrammer' bullshit.]]> brogrammers sexism culture tech teaching coding software education https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:96b124f6e81d/ 2012-03-31T23:02:59+00:00 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/31/girls-coding-female-peer-pressure jm girls coding education peer-pressure software teaching kids https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5309439483fe/ 2012-03-20T13:02:42+00:00 http://www.martingsaunders.com/2012/02/teaching-primary-school-kids-to-code/ jm coding education kids programming teaching school https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f8739b671a1b/ 2011-12-15T21:08:21+00:00 http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/24999-coding-for-our-lives? jm coderdojo programming coding kids children teaching education tech ireland https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8b605da5a485/