Ed Tech I’m Using
I came across Twine, a classic story editor after asking Bard to suggest some web apps for a literacy lesson that I wanted to SAMRise.
Twine is an open-source tool for creating interactive, non-linear stories and games. It allows users to easily create choose-your-own-adventure style stories and publish them online. I played around with it for about 10 minutes, and I was immediately brought back to my pre-teen years when I used to read Fighting Fantasy books by Jackon and Livingstone.
There is a lot of depth to twine, but I certainly think that kids as young as grade 3 could use the basic features, which allow them to add links when the reader is making different choices about which page to go to.
Check out this tutorial from the Twinery team.
AI I’m Exploring
Litmaps – to be honest, I am not entirely sure that this app even uses AI, but it has lifted me out of the research pit of despair that I found myself wallowing in for the last few weeks. From what I can tell from the Litmaps website, this is how it works:
- Contains over 200 million articles from various data providers
- Uses open-access metadata to maximize coverage of the literature
- Checked and deduplicated to ensure the most complete and up-to-date data possible
- Data providers include Crossref, Semantic Scholar, and OpenAlex, among others
Teaching Practice I’m Trying (or will be when vacation is over)
Thinking prompts – I have taken to creating a list of thinking prompts in Wakelet. Organized by: film clip, case, short story, poems, photographs, words, metaphors. I hope to create a bunch of resources for the IB and ICA learner profiles.
Two thinking prompts that spring to mind are from two of my favourite movies which are The Goonies and Labyrinth. The scene when the Goonie’s gang are at the bottom of the wishing well, and they are discussing giving up – links to resilience and risk-taking. In Labyrinth, the first scene that comes to mind is when Sarah is not sure about entering the maze and cannot find any openings. With a little help from the worm, she looks at the maze differently/from a different perspective, and thus finds a new opening. For me, this is about critical thinking, empathy and listening. Maybe Sarah would have found litmaps useful here 🙂
Media I’m Consuming
Two websites this week. Camel camel camel is a free price checker for Amazon, which came into great use when I was ordering a ton of stuff on Amazon Prime Day.
ZDnet hosts a section on artificial intelligence, which is a magic fountain of information, with a ton of incredibly useful information just flowing from it. For example, I learned from here that Apple is already testing its own Chatbot with developers and that there is a Barbie AI tool that turns you into one!
Things I’ve Learned
This is Seth Godin’s mini analysis, taken from the Purple Cow, that you can use when testing out new ideas for products/processes you are putting out into the market:
- How easy is it to spread the idea?
- How often will people spread this idea?
- How tightly knit is the group you are targeting?
- Do they trust each other?
- How reputable are the people likely to spread your idea?
- How persistent is your idea? E.g. mayfly or tortoise
The String I’m Pulling
I think I have finally identified the next steps in my career… After plenty of indecision, I have finally decided that my next learning, and actual skill development, will be in data analytics and how this relates to AI. I have just started a data analytics course on Edx with IBM. There is also a very useful guide found on Reddit for data analysis wannabes.
Quote, I’m Pondering
Hard choices easy life. Easy choices hard life – Jerzy Gregorek.