educators

"Although it's still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak. A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn't speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial. It "converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences," said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience."

AI may not be the writing boon that, well, AI claims it is. From the image study, Youngblood warned, "If consumers determine that AI images are poor quality or a bad fit they may hold that against your brand/product/services." The content study showed: 50.1% of respondents would think less of writers who use AI. 40.4% would view brands more negatively if they used AI-generated content. Only 10.1% would view the brands more favorably.

"You can only take advantage of this offer if you are a full or part-time student at a degree-granting school in either the U.S. or Canada. Don't be dissuaded if you don't see your school when attempting to sign up for the offer: OpenAI has a support link to help find or add your school to the list. This tool may also confirmed whether your school is ineligible. You need to be physically present in the U.S. (and its territories) or Canada to sign up for this offer, too-VPNs will not work, unless its a whitelisted educational VPN. OpenAI says it'll confirm your student credentials through a service called SheerID. If the service is unable to verify you through your school's registrar office, or via your school's single sign-on service, you may need to provide SheerID with extra documents to prove your eligibility. SheerID says it only uses this data to authenticate your eligibility for this promotion, and does not sell or share your data with third parties."

In a day when AI graphics are all the rage, more people are talking about the AI features built into Microsoft Paint. Here's a rundown of those features for those of you using PC's and without access to some of the other AI tools out there.

Discover sources is a new feature in Notebook LM that will let you find new sources to go into your notebook. As always, verify those sources.

One of the most exciting things my college-bound seniors learned this semester is Notebook LM. Now, Google has rolled out three more features for students as they study for exams (many of which are college-level exams for my seniors.)

This digital reconstruction of a face of a woman from the bronze age is really fascinating. This is a great way to weave AI/digital tech into history. "Dr Emily Hauser, the historian who commissioned the digital reconstruction, told the Observer: "She's incredibly modern. She took my breath away. "For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy - Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, was queen of Mycenae in legend - and from where the poet Homer imagined the Greeks of the Trojan war setting out. Such digital reconstructions persuade us that these were real people.""

National Library week is coming up, April 6-12. here are some resources for it.

A balanced overview of this debate from CoSN's conference. in Edtech Magazine. "In reality, Lapus shared, kids check their phones 52 times per day on average and spend an average of 43 minutes on their phones at school, according to research from Common Sense Media. These numbers don't paint a complete picture, however. There are the subsequent effects of children's cellphone use to consider, as well as the ramifications of taking devices away."

Larry Ferlazzo shared this in 2024 but this AI tool took many of the classic adventure stories and turned them into choose your own adventure games using chat. So frankenstein, Jane Eyre and many more are now interactive in a new way. I can see many exciting adventures in learning by using this as a tool. (And remember to have kids compare and contrast these to the novels they read, there is no substitute for a good book!)

So sad to see NaNoWriMo Go! Hat tip to Stephen Downes for telling us about this one. It is an issue with the organization saying it was ok to use AI in creative writing - a stand some best selling authors disagreed with. "Around the same time, the nonprofit was also lambasted for inconsistent moderation on its all-ages forums, which created an unsafe environment for teenage writers, community members claimed. According to NaNoWriMo, these controversies over content moderation and AI did not directly lead to the organization's demise. But they certainly didn't help. "To blame NaNoWriMo's demise on the events of the last year does a disservice to all struggling nonprofits," a NaNoWriMo spokesperson, Kilby, stated in a YouTube video. "Too many members of a very large, very engaged community let themselves believe the service to be provided was free.""

Working out on the weekend is better than not working out at all -- 150 minutes a week - that is the number. "The researchers discovered that both the active regular and weekend warrior groups had a lower risk of death from all causes (up to 32 percent), as well as a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and cancer. "Engaging in physical activity concentrated within one to two days was related with a similar reduction in mortality risk as more evenly spread activity," the researchers concluded. Basically, you shouldn't sweat it if all you can manage is to crank out your workouts on weekends-it's still better for your health than being less active."

I appreciate the rundown and detail on what Miguel Guhlin heard and his observations about a webinar he attended. His experience is much like mine. The only place we differ is I do not like the term "thought partner." AI doesn't think. It also can't be a partner. A partner implies an equal. It is a tool for thinking, perhaps. I guess I'm careful on anthropomorphising AI as the worldview I want to teach the kids. Otherwise, this is a fantastic overview and very helpful and I'll be sharing it.

A new malware is impacting gamers - it pretends to be an ASUS utility. Be careful and use this article to fix this and to be educated about the problem.

"Generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) chatbots hold promise for building highly personalized, effective mental health treatments at scale, while also addressing user engagement and retention issues common among digital therapeutics. We present a randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing an expert-fine-tuned Gen-AI-powered chatbot, Therabot, for mental health treatment."

This really concerns me but also points to a need to train humans to supervise AI chatbots. "An artificial intelligance (AI) chatbot trained by Dartmouth researchers to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) significantly reduced depression, anxiety, and eating disorder symptoms. The randomized clinical trial of Therabot, published in NEJM AI, found that an AI-trained therapy chatbot could play a vital role in expanding access to CBT."

"This 2.5-hour CEU is designed to help individuals and educators gain a better understanding of the latest advancements of AI, the future implications of its use, and to obtain valuable insight about how AI can be used to help educators become more proficient and inspire new ways of learning among their students and colleagues. It is designed for educators at any stage in their career, educational administrators, parents, students, and individuals who desire a better understanding of artificial intelligence in the education sector."

"Leveraging the same technology that powers NotebookLM's Audio Overviews, Gemini app users can now generate podcast-style conversations based on documents, slides, and Deep Research reports. Upload files about topics you want to explore and enjoy dynamic discussions between two AI hosts with unique perspectives."

These Alexa changes impact classroom and privacy! "What do I mean by that? Well, take, for example, that recently, Amazon announced a significant change in its Alexa device privacy policy. Starting March 28, 2025, Amazon will remove the option to process Alexa voice requests locally on specific Echo devices. Instead, all voice recordings will be sent to the cloud for processing, a move intended to support Amazon's new generative AI features in Alexa Plus."

"There is no evidence that restrictive school policies are associated with overall phone and social media use or better mental wellbeing in adolescents. The findings do not provide evidence to support the use of school policies that prohibit phone use during the school day in their current form, and indicate that these policies require further development."