Monthly round-up October 24
We went on holiday to Crete this month, and hired a car to do some trips including to the ex-leper colony of Spinalonga, (pictured) and inland villages. I already miss the sunshine and the food.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been doing actual work this month, writing a report. It’s involved, inevitably, researching AI in education. With all the hype it was interesting to find lots of thought pieces about potential uses, reviews of how students are using it, but very few actual case studies of it being applied in education. And often it was an extension of existing practice, such as learning analytics, with a layer of AI slapped on it. Also this month the use of the term “AI slop” has come to prevalence as we begin to see this type of meaningless content invade social media. It seems the AI bubble is about to burst, and the label “powered by AI” may soon be seen as something to avoid. This was inevitable I guess (you’ll acknowledge how I’m not mentioning hype curves here), and we’ll probably see it settle into a more normal mode soon. Anyway, I’m not convinced by this whole “work” thing.
(saw this meme online somewhere which made me laugh)
As if Musk going full on fascist promoter wasn’t bad enough, it turns out there has been some dodgy behaviour in the WordPress world. It turns out being ‘open’ isn’t any protection against tech bros being tech bros.
Books
I enjoyed Sarah Rose’s account of Robert Fortune’s theft of tea from China to set up the East India Company’s Indian tea plantations. She refers to it as industrial espionage on the grandest scale, and is full of details I wasn’t aware of, for instance the invention of terrariums (or Wardian cases as they were known) weren’t just nice for growing plants indoors, but revolutionised global trade by allowing new plants to be grown in different countries in the empire. The book has also set me off trying different teas.
Another enlightening read was Sabrina Imbler’s My Life in Sea Creatures: A young queer science writer’s reflections on identity and the ocean. She takes a different sea creature for each chapter and uses it as a metaphor for aspects of her life, such as her racial identity, finding queer clubs, relationships with men, etc. In lesser hands it could be an approach that fails on one aspect or the other – either the marine biology or the autobiography element dominates but she balances them both beautifully and the metaphors really work as a lens of interpreting her own life. Maybe I should do one in terms of educational technologies: “Chapter 1, why I’m boring like a VLE”.
As we were on holiday, I read a lot of horror this month (ideal poolside reading, right?). If that’s your bag, I recommend CJ Tudor’s novel take on vampires (which is difficult to manage), Stephen Graham Jones continues to explore the slasher theme with his latest book, and Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie riffs off the myths surrounding exploitation movies in the weirdest way.
Vinyl
Ezra Collective’s new album Dance, No One’s Watching continues to showcase the vibrant UK jazz movement, and adjacent to this was Baby Rose’s ep teaming up with Canadian jazz trio BadBadNotGood. I was on something of a smooth jazz vibe this month, as it also saw the reissue of Sade’s back catalog, so I picked up some I didn’t own including her best work, Love Deluxe. Anyway I’m off to drink some Oolong tea and embrace the smooth sounds on vinyl.
