Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Kevin putting it out there

  • Vibe coding new activities?

    I just learned what vibe coding is, and how people are using AI to create great new simple tools without coding. I think to myself: I want to put the power of the internet using information gap activities literally into the hands of my students (well, their mobile devices, but close enough).

    NYTimes Hard Fork podcast segment 3 (gift). What is vibe coding. examples include making games online,

    Ethan Mollick also writes about his experience VibeCoding on Claude 3.7.

    What I want. Create A/B info gap activities on the fly. Input a topic and an interaction, (dialogue, interview) and some kind of information gap. The result, I hope, will be a set of instructions on mobile-friendly html where students can choose A or B and get specific step-by-step instructions to scaffold, then complete the activity. I’ll let you know how that works.

  • The Dao De Jing

    by Laozi, about 2,500 years ago. New translation by Ken Liu.

    Do by not doing, and there is nothing that cannot be done.

    The text is short, and contains enigmatic phrases that have been interpreted over the millennia. Ken Liu writes mostly science fiction, and very well at that. Over the pandemic he found himself unable to write and looked back. His will to write returned but he held off to finish a new translation with notes, along with stories from contemporaries to fill out the understanding.

    It’s helping me too. Thanks to Kottke for the recommendation.

  • Calque. This I did not know

    Calque vs loanword. Cool blog. These two are very similar but subtly different. Flea Market and Skyscraper are examples.

  • Attention is Everything All At Once

    I’ve been basing grades in my classes on what I call Attention Units (AU=gold, get it?). Since studying 37.5 hours over a semester (15 weeks, 90 min class and 45 homework) is not measurable for proficiency, and because I run a class with a lot of individualization (personalized, differentiated), I can’t measure them on a specific set of language points or skills. I also find I can’t accurately measure how hard they work, which is a common fallback for language teaching. That leaves me with Attention, a more specific aspect of the “working hard” school of grading. I believe, especially these days with mobile and online learning, that this has become a viable option, both for measurement and curriculum. Let me explain.

    Some research about attention and it’s sibling, ignoring.

    Via Kottke and How to weather the storm.

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  • Remember Enron? Corruption and oil spills? It’s gone nuclear

    You can now buy a nuclear reactor for your home. From America’s favorite company. What could go wrong? From Slashdot.

    Spoiler, this is a SATIRE. It’s a fun fake. Had you going, though, right?