Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: digital storytelling

  • 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.

  • 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.

    .

  • Attention Grabbing by Mr. Beast

    Mr. Beast of YouTube fame is expanding his empire with a new game show. This is a review of the show, complete with a short history of how Mr. Beast got there. A good lesson for where are attention is being guided. Take back control, folks.

  • Curipod beats Kahoot

    I just discovered Curipod, a lesson creator with AI feedback built in. It looks like a valuable tool more suited to language learners than Kahoot. I like the flexibility of customization while there is a good lot of lesson templates. For now, it looks like short writing sessions can set a scene for discussion.

    Oh, and most of the functions are available for free. Sadly, if you want feedback to student writing in a non-English language (something my students would actually read), you have to negotiate school or district pricing, which I have not looked into yet.

  • Eraserhead

    I remember the velvet, slick with age, and the ashtrays at the end of the arms on the creaky seats in an also run theater in the barrio Chino of Barcelona. I remember being high as hell on a new batch of hashish from the kid brother of a friend. I remember being both scared and fascinated at the same time. We decided not to stick around for the second feature, we wanted to go out to a bar to talk about Eraserhead. That was my introduction to David Lynch.