Kind: Articles

traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body
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Bookmarked Degenerative AI in education by Ben Williamson.

But what if, instead of being generative of educational transformations, AI in education proves to be degenerative—deteriorating rather than improving classroom practices, educational relations and wider systems of schooling?

I’ve read this a couple of time, and probably need a couple more.

I guess, like other technologies that have entered the classroom, we are very much in the hands of the powerful. We get the technology we are given. Usually at a low cost, but perhaps at a high price?

As a side note, Jetpack now offers to change the tone of what I write with AI. Here is the humorous rewrite of the previous paragraph:

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Me:

how could I display a list of links using the WordPress opml in the body of a page?

chat.openai.com:

[opml url=”URL_OF_OPML-FILE”]

Replace “URL_OF_OPML_FILE” with the actual URL you copied in the previous step.
For example:

[opml url=”http://yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/links.opml”]

  1. Save or update the page.
  2. Preview or visit the page to see the list of links displayed.
    WordPress will parse the OPML file and generate the necessary HTML to display the links.

Me:
Are you sure there is an opml shortcode? This didn’t work on my site

chat.openai.com:

I apologize for the confusion. You are correct that there is no built-in OPML shortcode in WordPress. I apologize for the incorrect information provided.

What was intriguing was the total confidence for the reply and the immediate apology, did it check to see if I was correct? It then went on to offer a plugin suggestion…

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A small example of the H5P Find Multiple Hotspots content type in Glow Blogs.

I was intrigued how these wee chicks survived given the number of dogs walked along this shore in addition to plenty of gulls & crows who I would expect to enjoy a plover chick dinner. Even the adults are quite hard to spot.

I am building a collection of H5P examples on Glow Blogs. I’ve also been using it to make some spelling crosswords, word-searches and cloze procedures for my class using the North Lanarkshire spelling word list.

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3 screenshots of the merlin app, recording and identifying bird song.

Since dawn chorus day I’ve been noticing bird song more than ever. This has lead to wondering which birds are singing. A recognise a very small number. I’ve tried a couple of apps and my favourite so far is Merlin.

Merlin identifies bird sounds using breakthroughs in machine learning technology to recognize species based on spectrograms—visual representations of sounds

Sound ID.

Rather delightfully you see the names and thumbnails of bird the app recognises. This are hi-lighted each time the bird is heard. Even better you get the same effect playing back the audio. Hopefully this will lead to me being able to recognise a few more bird songs without the app.

How accurate the app is I do not know, but I have seen most of the ones it has identified nearby.

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Bookmarked AudioMoth | Open Acoustic Devices.

AudioMoth is a low-cost, full-spectrum acoustic logger, based on the Gecko processor range from Silicon Labs. Just like its namesake the moth, AudioMoth can listen at audible frequencies, well into ultrasonic frequencies. It is capable of recording uncompressed audio to microSD card at rates from 8,000 to 384,000 samples per second and can be converted into a full-spectrum USB microphone.

Looks a bit tricky to actually buy at the moment, but interesting device.

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Likes The Verb – The Sound Design Verb – BBC Sounds.

Ian McMillan celebrates spectral spaces, the pulse of the body, and the power of repetition, in a Verb which showcases emerging talent – new sound designers from the Sound First scheme ….

Ian is joined by the songwriter, producer and sound designer Benbrick, the poet, playwright and performer Hannah Silva, and Sound First participant Noah Lawson, to explore what sound design can bring to poems, and what sounds are buried in poems themselves.

Really enjoyed listening to this, perhaps I am a wee bit more tuned into sound after Sunday.

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Robin at dawn. Dither image. It was poor anyhow due to light.

The above is a short selection of a few moments of the stream I broadcast this morning, 10 minutes in total. The segments are each separated by 1 seconds of generated silence. The Whole thing is on the Stream Page.  There is a fox barking near the start and a pigeon claps its wings over head near the end.

Continue reading →

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Screenshots of HikeTracker, map on the left, stats on the right

I’ve been looking for a replacement for Trails .

There are quite a lot of GPX apps out there so it has been interesting looking at them.
Many ‘hiking’ apps are concerned with giving you routes or posting routes you take their own or other services. These apps tend to be quite fully featured and often need an account on an online service. Trying a few out gave me a chance to think of what I wanted.

  1. Easy recording of a trail
  2. Trail shown live on a map, preferably OpenStreeMap.
  3. Quick and simple transfer of gpx track to my mac so that I can use it to tag photos, etc.
  4. Not completely killing the battery of my aging iPhone over a day.

Other features are either a bonus (some stats) or a complication (online services).

I’ve settled, for now at least, on HikeTracker . The app has been designed by a hiker, with the main aim of accuracy & simplicity. It fulfils all of my requirements.

The app is set up to work well “out of the box” for a hiker or walker – just tap “Start” and go!

It has worked well for me in a couple of tests, geotagging some rather blurry photos and giving me a track to add to the map.

I was happy to pay for trails and would be happy to pay for this free app too.

Featured image: Screenshots of HikeTracker, map on the left, stats on the right.