Kind: Articles

traditional long form content: a post with an explicit title and body

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It depicts two people in nomadic garb leading a demon, or Persian div, in chains between them. The female figure holding the chain to her face is painted to look nearly as ferocious as the captured div. The concept of divs as evil supernatural creatures of mysterious origin dates to pre-Islamic Persia, but they are also described in the text of the Qur'an. Divs in Persian literature and folktales are sometimes captured and forced to use their magic to serve a king or hero.

Featured Image: Demon in chains | Cleveland Museum of Art CC0

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After not posting to Instagram for over 18 months, I signed up for Threads. So far, a whole bunch of posts from accounts I don’t know stream by quite quickly. Disconcerting. I still dislike the algorithm.

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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:

Continue reading →

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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.