I got a notification in LinkedIn for a position titled, Senior Writer Editor. It was with a company called Outlier and the goal seemed to be to improve AI prompt responses. It sounded interesting and aligned to the type of work that I was interested in pursuing. After submitting my resume, I was given the go ahead to start the onboarding training to learn more about the position. The training started off interestingly enough. I was given this doc to explain how I would be rating prompts. Basically, I was given two responses to prompts and had to determine which was better and give a rationale based on criteria provided. This part of the training was manageable and enjoyable. I liked picking apart prompt responses for elements of quality. The training identified responses along a spectrum of creative to logical/factual. They also provided rubrics that were helpful for each type of writing. Here are some examples. Once I completed a few of the rating exercises, I was then given the instructions that I would be challenged to write a response to a prompt based on my expertise in K-12 education to help train the models. Here is the prompt that I received:
Delving into Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and recent findings in neurodiversity, how can educators ensure they are differentiating not only based on ability but also on cognitive processing differences? Discuss the interplay of content, process, product, and learning environment in this context. When I showed it to my husband, he said it sounded like something you could write a PhD thesis on and I couldn't disagree. But I decided to go ahead and give it a shot thinking I would only have to write the one. I wrote what I felt was a decent response and it took me a couple of hours. Click here to read my response. When I finished, I was provided another prompt to respond to and that was where I stopped. Who knows how many more prompts I would have had to respond to in order to finish the training? It was clear at that point that I would be required to do a lot more work than it was worth. Nonetheless, this is a new movement in AI, getting the expertise of real humans to make the AI models better. It was an interesting exercise in being an AI Chatbot and I don't regret doing it. However, I will be wary of future opportunities such as this and you should too!
When i decided to host a Women's Sparring Event at my boxing gym, I was hopeful that a handful of women would show up. I have a dream of building up women's boxing in North Carolina. My desire for the event was to share my experience and support women to get some sparring in the ring with other women, or at least come watch and see what it is all about. I was surprised (and a little overwhelmed) at the number of women who came. It was so heartwarming to see and talk to all of the amazing women warriors who were brave enough to show up and share the experience of being in the sport. There were boxers as young as 13 and as old as 65+. There were all experience levels from one brave boxer who had only had two months experience to nationally ranked amateurs and professional fighters. My goal was to give everyone a safe, positive experience and as much time in the ring as they desired. I think it was overall a really positive, but I also learned a lot about making it better for the next time. It is a lot to juggle all of the different personalities and experience levels in boxing. First of all, I learned about different fighters and coaches and what to expect from them and what they need. Of course, the makeup of the fighters who come will always be different, but we had a good turn out from a variety of gyms in the area and I know many will return. I felt a little overwhelmed at which boxers to match up and who should go in with who, but I was glad I was more cautious than not even if some were in the ring more than others. I was grateful to hear from most of the women that said they had a wonderful time connecting with other women and can't wait to do it again. Ashley, one of our boxers said, "It was fun to see all the women encouraging each other...shows how powerful we are as a group even if it's an individual sport." I hope the women and coaches know that I am grateful for each of them for showing up and supporting each other at my event. I will definitely host another event soon as well as work to give the mighty group of women from our gym who show up every week more opportunities to spar and work on their technique. A special shout out to Remy, our gym owner and our coaches Ty, Jon and Allam for supporting the event and helping out to make it such a success.
This winter I had the opportunity to read two powerful works of nonfiction by Dashka Slater, The 57 Bus and Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. I first heard about the two books when I read Slater's New York Times articles about both events. Reading the articles left me wanting to know more about what had happened with each incident. They both take place in parts of the Bay Area that I know well having spent 7 years there as an educator and college student. Part of the power of these two books is how they are written. Each section of the books is small and looks at the issues from a different lens or person's point of view laying forth a nuanced and thorough telling of events that might otherwise seem cut and dry. The 57 Bus refers to the public bus that two students in Oakland take to school who live very different lives. There is Sasha, a genderqueer teen who attends a small private school called Maybeck High and lives in a middle class neighborhood in the foothills. Then there Richard, an African American teen who attends a large public high school, Oakland High and lives in a rough part of Oakland. They only spend 8 minutes together on the bus, but then in a thoughtless act where Richard lights Sasha's skirt on fire while they sleep on the bus, their lives become intimately intertwined as their families and communities wrangle with what it means to bring justice to the situation. The book is divided into 4 parts: Sasha, Richard, Fire, and Justice. We get to know each teen well and then there is an in depth exploration of the crime and how justice is sought. It is a heartbreaking series of events that ultimately leads to redemption and changed lives for both teens. It is a powerful tale for our time and is a valuable read for teens and their parents.
Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives it Changed is a story that is equally heartbreaking but seems far less resolved in the end. There was no sense that justice was served or that many of the perpetrators ever really were made to fully understand the harm caused. My husband attended Albany High School and I knew of the privileged space it occupied as a teacher who taught at Richmond High School that was 10. miles north and worlds apart. Albany is a town of educated liberals many of whom work for UC Berkeley. The people of Albany pride themselves on being informed and sophisticated in their understanding of race and racism. Albany High has many classes where race is addressed and students have conversations about racism making it all the more shocking that this happened in their community. The posts on the Instagram account were simply awful, but Slater is again able to cut through all the noise and sensationalism of the media and help us understand the complexity of the events and the people who were impacted. Like the 57 Bus, it is told in a series of short pieces focused on peeling back the layers and understanding the context and perspectives of those involved. One of the most thought-provoking pieces in the book is a section titled, Questions of Harm: Were you harmed if your picture wasn't on the account, but your name was? Were you harmed if your picture wasn't on the account, but your race was? Were you harmed if your picture was on the account but you were Asian or white? Were you harmed if you were male? Were you harmed if people said you were on the account but you never saw the post? Were you harmed if your best friends couldn't stop crying? Were you harmed if you once shrugged off the jokes? Were you harmed if everything looks different now? Were you harmed if you decided to forgive? Would you have been harmed if the account had never been hidden? Would you have been harmed if it had never been found? Slater does extensive research to listen and tell the stories of those involved. For each of the teens willing to talk with her, she shares their struggles, hopes and humanity. As she states in the author's notes at the beginning of the book: "True justice requires listening with curiosity and compassion to the human stories behind the headlines. Only then can we begin to repair what's gone wrong and reach for what's right." These two works of fiction are special and offer a place for authentic dialogue around issues of equity and diversity and racism. Slate also has some wonderful resources to help work with these texts: The 57 Bus Discussion Guide Accountable Resource Page image source: https://medium.com/the-ai-education-project/introducing-the-ai-education-project-3c1f1fc31fd2 As I continue my journey exploring AI and its implications for teaching and learning, I spent some time reviewing the curriculum available at The AI Education Project. Their site has free curriculum available for students and educators as well as information for advocates. They have partnered with some of the big tech companies including Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and GitHub and have a mission to create equitable learning experiences that teach foundational AI skills. There are high interest, flexible lessons and activities that range from 5 minute warm ups to a semester long Introductory course. The AI Education Project implements culturally relevant pedagogy and project-based learning as a foundation for their curriculum and the content choices reflect a broad range of topics that teachers of any subject matter can find relevant.
AI Snapshots offer 180 five minute warmups organized by the four core subject areas: English, Math, Science and Social Studies. Each warm-up starts with a slide that asks students a thought-provoking question or design challenge. Then there is a second slide titled: Things You May Have Considered. That helps students and teachers explore the topic more deeply. It's a great way to get students to begin to think about the complexities and impact of AI in various disciplines and aspects of our lives. There are also AI Challenges that students can work through on their own that challenge students in timely tasks such as proving they are smarter than ChatGPT and improving their TikTok algorithm. These are wonderfully engaging independent lessons for curious high schoolers to try. For Computer Science and Technology teachers who are interested in bringing AI into their curriculum, the AI Education Projects offers a Project Dashboard that provides project-based learning on a variety of topics related to AI. One of my favorite projects on the dashboard is The 29 A.Is of Washington D.C. where students follow the journey of individual citizens and see how their lives are impacted by AI. It is a memorable, equity-focused lesson that drives home the problem of bias inherent in AI systems. The Intro to AI course is an incredibly thoughtful and well-designed course that provides foundational skills in AI while having students create their own AI recommendation system using Hugging Face. The course includes lesson plans, a teacher's guide, a slide deck and a student workbook. While this course is recommended for 10 weeks, it could easily be built out to last an entire semester. This course is one of the best examples of culturally relevant pedagogy in the field of computer science that I have seen. It gets students to consider AI in ways that are based in the real world. It has them explore biases inherent in data and gives students ample choice to explore their own interests. Furthermore it provides teachers with explicit guidelines to teach the course in a way that makes it accessible to those who may feel a bit intimidated to teach a course in AI. Finally, the AI Education Project offers live professional development and toolkits for educators and advocates who are interested in getting AI implemented in their classrooms, schools, and districts. The AI Education Project is doing incredible work in the field of equity focused and civic-minded computer science education. I highly recommend it as a place to go to find curriculum and guidelines related to teaching AI.
Lately, I ‘ve realized that my biggest passion in education is curriculum development. It was always my favorite part of being a teacher- designing the lessons that I would teach to my students. After my first few years of teaching, I landed in a number of roles that truly gave me freedom in designing curriculum that was innovative, impactful and culturally relevant from designing an ELL curriculum and program for high school students to working on a design team to support teachers to build more engaging online courses, to creating a computer science course for girls. I recently applied for a position as a curriculum developer for Facing History & Ourselves. They are a phenomenal organization whose website is a treasure trove for educators interested in helping students become active, reflective citizens in the world.
Facing History & Ourselves has created the following framework, Pedagogical Triangle for Historical and Civic Understanding.
Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/
According to their website:
“We engage the mind, heart, and conscience of adolescents who are in the midst of determining who they are and how they interact with the world. We challenge our students to reflect on and analyze moral questions and dilemmas that arise during the study of history and literature. Our curriculum guides students as they explore human behavior, asking them to consider connections between their own actions and the actions of others. By examining the complexities of being human, we nurture caring and curious adolescents who grow into brave and engaged adults.” The Facing History & Ourselves scope and sequence known as the Facing History Journey starts by having students examine human behaviors, beliefs and attitudes in their own lives. Students are then presented with a historical case study or piece of literature to further explore the complexity of humanity that was dealt with in the beginning. Finally, students do creative or reflective work to explore the implications in our current society studied in the works they explored. I reviewed in depth two powerful curricular units that I found on the website: Power, Agency, and Voice and Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age. Power, Agency, and Voice is an ELA lesson that focuses on helping students explore what it means to have power and agency and then using your voice to exert that agency. It uses two powerful pieces of literature, a short story by Bethany Morrow called “As You Were” and a spoken word poem by Clint Smith titled, "The Danger of Silence" to contrast ways people use and don’t use their voice to exert power and agency. Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age explores the historical case study of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager and the impact it had on the community in Ferguson, Missouri and the nation. Students begin by deciding on a contract for holding sensitive conversations then move into a discussion about identity and bias followed by an exploration of news reports, journalism and social media. For this unit Facing History recorded interviews with a number of journalists and media experts to help students understand their process and perspective. There are several things that are truly impressive about the units. They are broken down into smaller lessons that can be remixed to create additional lessons for other topics. They are student-centered and provide wonderful discussion questions, handouts and teaching strategies to help frame student discussions and keep students engaged. You can create an account on the website and then save lessons, texts, units and teaching strategies into collections for yourself. You can also download the units into Google Classroom and many of the texts are available in Spanish as well as English. Finally, there is a collection of professional development to support teachers in their journey to use this curriculum. I viewed a wonderful professional development webinar with Clint Smith, the poet, teacher and scholar of one of the lessons I reviewed. It was called, "Working for Justice, Equity and Civic Agency in Our Schools." He discussed the work needed to portray a complete history to young people and what that work looks like. I am excited to refer back to Facing History & Ourselves as a gold standard for how to develop rigorous, timely, engaging curriculum that helps students be conscientious and civic-minded as I look for opportunities to go back to work in this field. My hope is to develop relevant curriculum units that explore the intersection of computer science, digital civics and wellness, social justice and stories. I completed another professional development course on LinkedIn Learning called, Foundations of Accessible Elearning. It was an excellent course that gave practical guidelines for supporting learners with disabilities. The course covered the most common disabilities and provided simple and effective ways to adjust curriculum to meet the needs of learners with those disabilities. It helped to refresh my understanding of important ways to make learning accessible. I was reminded of one of my first assignments in my Master’s program where I had to design a keyboard for a person who was paralyzed below the neck. In one of my last observations at Girls Who Code, I was able to witness a wonderful lesson on Accessibility in Game Design that was created and taught by one of my teaching team’s lead TAs. It was such a well-designed lesson and the students really came away understanding principles of accessibility. The lesson was Barbie-themed. Students were first led through a lesson where they were taught some of the key principles of accessibility and shown examples in game design. They then had to critique examples of poor accessibility design. Finally in groups they were challenge to create Barbie and Ken posters that demonstrated good and bad use of accessibility features. There were four groups total, two were tasked with making a poster with good design and two with bad design. Then the class voted on the best poster. The students had a blast! I tried out LinkedIn premium for a month this summer and one of the most valuable benefits is having access to LinkedIn Learning. The first course I took was called, “Creating Inclusive Learning Experiences” by learning and development expert Naphtali Bryant. Bryant argues that making learning experiences inclusive is a powerful way to invite all members of an organization to the table and make it possible to create ownership and authenticity while building skills for those involved. He uses a framework called INCLUDE that provides a practical approach to identifying key features of inclusive learning. He starts by explaining how best to investigate the needs of learners by focusing on what he calls the 4Ps (patterns, problems, priorities, and pain points). This provides a terrific means for doing a needs analysis and truly reflect on the real reasons your learners need the training. He next focuses on what will nourish learners which involves finding the right mix of activities to keep learners engaged. Then, he reminds us of the power of collaboration and the value of working with multiple stakeholders whose expertise can provide the best possible experience for all learners. He then goes on to underline the value of listening to learners and getting to know them and centering learning around who they are. Uniting learners is at the heart of an inclusive design as Bryant reflects that it is about creating an environment where people can be their full self and feel a sense of belonging. The final two steps in the INCLUDE framework are discovery that emphasizes a learner-centered model and empowerment which refers to providing support to individuals along the way and providing participants with practical takeaways and resources to continue their learning after the training.
Bryant provides lots of practical activities for each part of the framework and it was truly an enlightening model to help make sure the learning experiences you design are inclusive.
Image Credit: https://yestem.org/tools/the-equity-compass/
One of the best professional development experiences I had this summer was taking part in an online course called, Equity in Informal STEM Learning: Using the Equity Compass created by University College London. The Equity Compass is powerful framework for assessing informal STEM learning such as after school clubs, summer camps and programs at museums.
I really appreciated the distinction they made between Equality described as “treating people in the same way, making sure people get the same opportunity” versus Equity described as “factoring in people’s different needs and assets, understanding that people might need different opportunities and support.” The Equity Compass focuses on four main parts: challenging the status quo, working with and valuing minoritized communities, embedding equity and extending equity. As participants of the course, we were introduced to each part of the framework and then presented with case studies to analyze that represented STEM Experiences that were lacking in terms of equity and diversity. We were also challenged to come up with solutions for each of the case studies to make them more equitable by applying our knowledge of each part of the framework. It was a well-designed course that really helped participants understand and apply practices to bringing more equity and diversity into informal STEM experiences. After taking the course, I reflected on the Equity Compass and the work Girls Who Code is doing with their Summer Immersion Program. I can proudly say that it is a powerful example of what informal STEM learning with a focus on equity and diversity looks like. It is truly an honor to be part of this work in getting more girls and students from marginalized communities involved in Computer Science in a way that values their experience. It's been a while since a work of fiction has touched me on so many different levels and kept me riveted to its pages, but Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. did just that. It is beautifully written and conceived and is at once the American nightmare and the American dream even though it gets its inspiration from the classic British novel David Copperfield by Charles DIckens. It was listed as one of the top 10 novels of 2022 by both the Washington Post and New York Times. It has personal resonance from my experience as a foster parent and living in North Carolina where the impact of the Opioid crisis on the rural poor is hard to escape when one travels west towards the Appalachian mountains. The novel's narrator and protagonist Damon Fields known as Demon Copperhead offers a insightful and honest description from a child's view of all that happens to him which would be absolutely tragic if it weren't for his tremendous resilience and smarts in the face of one traumatic experience after another. Being born in a single wide trailer to a father who died before he was born and a drug addicted mother is a tough start. But his early years were bare-able. His neighbors were a family who looked after him and invited him over often for warm meals. In this family was also his earliest best friend whom he played with for hours out in nature everyday. Demon loves the beauty and expansive freedom of the mountains of Lee County, Virginia and it this setting that is a core part of what makes him feel human. Yet, it is the humans, good, evil and mediocre that have the biggest impact on him as he is thrust into the foster care system when his mother dies of an overdose. Kingsolver provides a damning account of a foster care system that can't even provide the basic needs of food and shelter. Her description of Demon's hunger and malnutrition in his first years is painful to read as he is used by inept foster parents as a source of income and child labor. His slow and inevitable addiction to Opioids is another gut-wrenching part of this novel. And yet he meets so many good people along the way. There's Mr. Armstrong, a middle school history teacher and counselor who recognizes Demon is gifted and his wife Annie, a high school art teacher who offers him a safe place to spend everyday to develop his budding ability as a comic artist. There are his peers Angus and Tommy whose friendships save him time and again. And then there is June, the mother figure who is always attuned to his needs from a young age and eventually gets him in a rehab program that saves his life.
The power of this novel is how deftly Kingsolver brings you into a rural community that has been absolutely devastated first by the coal mines and then by the Opioid crisis. It is thoroughly researched and accurately depicts a time frame starting in the 90s when the Opioid Crisis went into full swing. It is truly the American nightmare where greedy corporations destroy a vulnerable community, but Demon Copperhead's poignant narration of his ability to beat the odds is also a nod to the American Dream. Since November, I have been volunteering as a learning experience designer for Rumie Learn. They specialize in creating Bytes which are microlearning courses that take 6-9 minutes to take and are aimed at social media users aged 14-29. The idea is to get people to scroll with purpose. Rumie has an excellent onboarding program where you go through a series of Bytes that are located together on Rumie Build, which is the content creation system used to create Bytes. Since each Byte is built in the format of the Bytes learning experience designers will be creating, you get a good sense of how to format a Byte while you getting the information and training you need to create Bytes. Brilliant! The learning director, Steve Birek, takes a very active role in supporting new learning experience designers and also giving support throughout the process with a weekly volunteer support Google Meet as well as quality feedback during the Byte creation process. Slack is used effectively to build teams or squads of designers and as a place to get support and get to know the Rumie Build Community. Rumie also uses Discord to connect the entire Rumie community connecting the learners who use Rumie with the designers and staff of Rumie. Microlearning course creation at Rumie involves a two-week Sprint structure. First, you choose a learning objective in Clickup, the project management software utilized throughout the Byte creation process. This learning objective will be the focus of your Byte. Then you have a week to design the first draft of your Byte. During the second week it goes through Peer Review where LXDs review each others' Bytes. Then the Byte is reviewed by a Byte Editor and finally published on Rumie Learn. I found it challenging and fun to work within the constraints of microlearning and also the Rumie Build system. The emphasis is on using clear, concise language and pictures, gifs, and memes to keep learners engaged. I chose to create Bytes on a wide range of topics. I have learned so much through this process and plan to continue to stay on as a learning experience designer to create more Bytes in the future.
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AuthorYvonne Caples is a Learning Experience Designer who is passionate about making learning meaningful and engaging for all. Posts
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