Multilitteratus Incognitus

Old Timey School House ( Lego version ) I came across a post on LinkedIn the other daaaay (read this in a Letterkenny cadence, if you know what that is  😆 ).  Here's a direct link to that post if you'd like to engage with it and its author . Over the past couple of years, I've been trying to get my mojo back when it comes to discussing issues like this. For a brief time, we had MOOCs (well, cMOOCs) with a daily recap of what was happening on Twitter using a specific hashtag, blogs, and other places on the web (Downes' gRSShopper, if anyone remembers this). Now things are difused though LinkedIn posts, people's blogs or substacks  branded blogs, or on Discord; and there isn't a place that collects this discussion.  Anyway, don't mind my "old man yelling at clouds" moment. So, one of the things that I've been observing over the last decade (or more) is that a tried and true narrative exists any time there is a new technology out there. Namely, ...

Last fall, I got to design and teach a course that I've been wanting to teach for a very long time : Language Learning and Technology (or, in other words, Computer-Assisted Language Learning - if you are in the language education field). It was a lot of fun to design, and a good experience to teach. I really enjoy design work (even though I don't get to do it often), and it's been ages since I taught a class that was a regular graduate class; all of my grad courses since 2021 have been Capstone courses, which I've treated mostly like a studio space with peer review.  There isn't a lot of "discussion" that happened in that kind of course. Anyway, the last time I taught a course with regular weekly discussions, we used Blackboard "Classic."  I've been using discussion forums on Canvas for a few years now through my OLC facilitation, and before that, I've had experience with a variety of LMS and their associated forum functionality.  They ar...

It's the winter break, and now that I have some actual downtime, I decided to do some Microsoft training. I think the last time I had the mental space to do any of this on the Microsoft Education was sometime in 2021 (if the last badge earned is any indication). Anyway, I went through the course offerings to see what's on tap at Microsoft, and I came upon a whole load of AI-related things. Cool. While I've been paying attention to this whole AI thing, I haven't really paid that  much attention to what corporate training is saying about their products (and how they might be used).  I've seen some colleagues post their badges on LinkedIn, so I thought I'd also follow the AI for Educators  learning path on Microsoft Education to get conversant with what others on my campus are experiencing through these trainings. Now, AI has been touted as a time saver on a variety of fronts, a claim that I think has yet to pan out.  As I was going through the AI for Educators ...