MSM 567: 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. – Normal Working Hours for Middle School

Summary:

Shawn and Troy discuss what they did over break (including a comic), more on AI, social media, and more. Dave discusses the 5E Learning Cycle. 

Jokes:  

While my wife was in labor, I read her some clean jokes to distract her from the pain, but she didn’t seem amused…

  • It must have been the delivery…

What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet?

  • “Supplies!”

My next door neighbour banged on my door at 3 in the morning last night. He’s so rude. 

  • Luckily I was still up, practicing the drums

How do you make an egg-roll?

  • You push it!

A friend of mine didn’t pay for his exorcism.

  • He got repossessed

Middle School Science Minute  

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

K12Science Podcast:  5E Learning Cycle

I was recently reading the November/December 2022 issue of “The Science Teacher” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.

In this issue, I read the “Editor’s Corner” column, written by Ann Haley MacKenzie. She wrote a column entitled, “Direct Instruction: A Healthy Place for Both Science Teachers and Students?”

Direct instruction doesn’t always work. What we know about human learning is that students need exposure to a concept at least five or six times before they can begin to move it into long term memory. Hence the 5E Learning Cycle: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate.

http://k12science.net/5e-learning-cycle/

Reports from the Front Lines

The Social Web

Susie Dent  @susie_dent

Word of the day, at this point every year, has to be ‘scurryfunging’ (19th century US dialect): the frantic tidying up/attempt to achieve a semblance of order that takes place just before guests arrive.  

Resistentialism is the belief that inanimate objects are out to get you: tables and shop displays bumping into you; toast landing butter-side down; sellotape hiding its end/sticking to anything other than what’s needed.

As part of a Christmas words countdown, here’s a reminder of the ‘lickspigot’(16th century): the friend or acquaintance who never fails to turn up when free drink is available. The food equivalent, from the same century, is the smellfeast.

Terrible Maps  @TerribleMaps

Chances of a white Christmas in Australia

PUNS  @ThePunnyWorld

Why couldn’t the jalapeño do archery? He didn’t habanero.

Lake Superior  @LakeSuperior

Somewhere between Cypress Hill and Snoop Dogg.

Quote Tweet   cat  @thecat854

Replying to @LakeSuperior

How high did you get your waves today, @LakeSuperior?  

Kathy O’Neil  @DestroyAllBeets

Lake Michigan is trending. People don’t know our lakes are huge? They create their own weather and are basically inland oceans. Your lakes aren’t like ours.

Glenn Stevens  @glennrstevens

Not a good beach day in @PetoskeyArea. #Michigan

Jason Neiffer Ed.D.  @techsavvyteach

AI-Created Comic Could Be Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

ChatGPT 2049  @ChatGPT2049

Automated.  @DataChaz: Everyone is talking about #ChatGPT and #GPT3, but did you know there was a free, #opensource version of GPT-3 called OPT-175B? No login, no credit card needed! 😉 https://opt.alpa.ai https://twitter.com/DataChaz/statu

ChatGPT 2049  @ChatGPT2049

@jsmasterypro: Build and Deploy Your Own ChatGPT AI App in JavaScript | OpenAI, Machine Learning  @OpenAI https://youtu.be/2FeymQoKvrk https://twitter.com/jsmasterypro/s  

Stephen Reid – Digital Druid  @StephenReidEdu

“The first thing students will use ChatGPT for is to cheat”. Nope, they used it to create a game! 11 year old boy creates #HarryPotter-themed game using AI. I’ve played it, you can too. It’s amazing! https://mpost.io/11-year-old-boys-game-for-chatgpt-is-blowing-up-the-internet/

#PlayMatters #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

R.C. Sproul Jr.@rcsprouljr

I’m not saying it’s windy but it appears the wind has blown Fort Wayne down to the South Pole.  

Mastadon

Nele Hirsch @ebildungslabor@digitalcourage.social

For people who work with #H5P (or want to use it to design their learning opportunities in the future), I’ve blogged two quick ideas.

1. clickable definitions

2. multimedia self-introduction

There’s also a tutorial on exactly how to go about creating a subtitle file for a video or audio (if I don’t want to write the subtitles down manually).

I designed the content as part of a course creation for #adulteducation, but it can certainly be applied to other areas of #education.

Troy Patterson @troypatterson@scholar.social

Students Prioritize Using Moodle

A Comic with instructions on how to create an activity for students to prioritize.

https://troypatterson.me/2022/12/30/students-prioritize-using-moodle/

#Moodle

Facebook:  

Gramma’s Funnies Group:  

Resources:  

AXIS:  The Culture Translator

Top Influencers of 2022  #1-20

  • 20 Lin Manuel Miranda
  • 19 Harry Styles
  • 18 Joe Rogan
  • 17 Jeffrey Dahmer 
  • 16 Mr. Beast 
  • 15 Drake 
  • 14 Aaron Judge 
  • 13 Tom Cruise
  • 12 BeReal
  • 11 Queen Elizabeth II  
  • 10  Kate Bush 
  • 9   Tom Brady
  • 8   Vladimir Putin
  • 7   Fleetwood Mac
  • 6   Taylor Swift
  • 5   Ye
  • 4   Elon Musk
  • 3   Pro-life marchers
  • 2   School shooting victims
  • 1   AI

Public Domain Day

On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain. 1  They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, compositions by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and a novelty song about ice cream. Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2023/#annotations:0Lu-nIIkEe2uGqPJZkEdWQ

Forever connected: the realities of parenting and growing up online

https://blog.1password.com/parenting-and-growing-up-online-report/

Pepper & Carrot

Free images for educational use. 

https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/files/framasoft.html#annotations:BB2YXoFZEe2s4I-5miBZLg

Teachers Would Make at Least $60K Under New Federal Bill

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/teachers-would-make-at-least-60k-under-new-federal-bill/2022/12#annotations:qC6mtoB1Ee2kBt9ibQ-PtA

ClipArt ETC

ClipArt ETC provides students and teachers with over 71,500 pieces of quality educational clipart. Every illustration comes with a choice of image size as well as complete source information for proper citations in school projects. All images are appropriate for classroom use. You’ll find no advertisements, pop-ups, or inappropriate links here. A friendly license allows teachers and students to use up to 50 free clipart items in a single, non-commercial, school project without further permission. This free classroom resource is supported entirely by the fees received from the commercial users of the site.

https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/#annotations:_asccm2YEe23BkMcS3vlJA

Web Spotlight:  

Women Who Meant Business

Don’t Believe Everything You See

How School Social Media Accounts Put Student Privacy at Risk

New student privacy research shows that school social media accounts have posted millions of photos of students and other identifiable information, which might be dangerous.

The study’s authors estimate that more than 4.9 million posts have included identifiable images of students on public Facebook pages, and about 726,000 of those posts are thought to identify one or more students by their first and last names. 

https://www.techlearning.com/news/are-school-social-media-accounts-putting-student-privacy-at-risk#annotations:ATMkzIYLEe2adpubr94j-g

Random Thoughts . . .  

Chad Frye – Illustration Guy on the Fundamentals of Math

“Cartoon illustrations? For a middle school math textbook? Unheard of. I remember seeing cartoon drawings in school books when I was in the third grade, but by the time I had arrived to the level of having a different teacher for each subject, school had gotten quite serious. In fact, anything math or science was like learning a foreign language to me. I hated those classes, as they consumed much of my brain’s capacity in a poor attempt to understand anything. It’s no wonder I chose a career path that thrived on poking fun at the world instead of trying to conquer it. To get to poke fun at math seemed like an intriguing prospect, and something that I more than likely would have responded very well to as a seventh grader myself.”  https://chadfrye.com/fundamentals-of-math/  

Grab some Chad Frye Originals:  https://chadfrye.com/store/?fbclid=IwAR1JmlZLE2T_pXnnFTh2S53pV6g29Q3iGjGRiBP8Cuzi6IoRSDdea18dYpY  

January is National Thank You Month – Carol Josel

Thank you!! Thank you!! Thank You!! ~ Dec 30, 2022

When I was a kid…

** If someone opened or held a door for you, you thanked them.

** If someone handed you so much as a glass of water, you thanked them.

** If someone gifted you—even with something you hated—you thanked them, not with a phone call, email or text, but with a handwritten note.

Thoughtfulness was in the air and gratitude, too, for things both big and small. My parents made sure that I followed suit, corralling my big sister and me in the living room every Friday night. Yes, every Friday night for what they called The Penny Game. The rules were simple: Answer a question correctly and get yourself a penny, as in…

~ “What do you say when you need a favor?”

~ “What do you say when you’re given something?”

~ “What do you say when someone is kind to you?”

And on and on it went, along with spelling questions, easy ones like circus and hello, and not so easy gems like Mississippi and their oft-repeated pneumonia.

And it all stuck. Not only am I good speller, saying “thank you” is a thing with me. I even thank my dog Jenny every which way, and she’s deaf!

Laughable, I suppose, in these not so civil, “I deserve” days. Fact is, 95% of Americans believe we have a civility problem. As educator and CEO Ray Williams also discovered:

*** 81% of us believe uncivil behavior is leading to an increase in violence.

*** 70% think the Internet encourages uncivil behavior.

*** 71% believe civility is worse compared to a few years ago.

What constitutes civility? Respect and politeness/good manners come to mind, starting with a simple, “Thank you.”

It matters and not just to me…

Back on July 4, 2021, January became National Thank You Month, thirty whole days devoted to being grateful. Powerful words that imply approval, one of life’s biggest motivators, the force often behind hard work, achievement, and giving back. Power words that open doors and give rise to civility and smiles all around.

So, as you dismantle the Christmas tree or put away the menorah, go old school with me and give thanks often to loved ones and helpful strangers, alike. As Gabriel Andreas reminds us, “The more we look for things to be grateful for, the more there will be.”

~ With thanks for your ongoing support and wishes for happiness and good health in 2023, Carol

Teacher Memes

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MSM 566: Just A Minute, I have to Word It Right in Chat GPT . . .

Summary:

Shawn and Troy talk about ChatGPT, how teachers could use it, and more. Dave takes us to Mars. 

Jokes:  

Why did the FBI search Santa’s workshop?

  • They had probable Claus

When I was younger I almost made history

  • But I was late so they wouldn’t let me in the class

My neighbor thinks it’s rude I spy on his garden

  • I’m on the fence

England doesn’t have a kidney bank,

  • but it does have a Liverpool.

I really worry about the future of the calendar.

  • It’s days are certainly numbered

I just found out why Romans eat so much Dutch sauce.

  • Because there’s no place like Rome for the hollandaise!

Middle School Science Minute  

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

K12Science Podcast:  Mars On Earth

I was recently reading the November/December 2022 issue of “Science Scope” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.  

In this issue, I read the “Scope on the Skies” column, written by Bob Riddle.  He wrote a column entitled, “Where on Earth is Mars.”  

The day is coming when a crewed mission sets down on Mars and becomes the second group of humans to be “boots” on another world.  The first group consisted of Apollo 12 astronauts who landed and returned from our Moon.  However, getting to Mars is more of a challenge, as we have learned from the numerous robotic missions sent to Mars over the years.  How will we prepare our astronauts for this mission?

http://k12science.net/mars-on-earth/

Reports from the Front Lines

  • AI Art Wrap Up
  • Lunch Coverage
  • Chat GPT
    • Test questions
    • Lesson Plans
    • Text Books

The Twitterverse/Fediverse  

Bethany Smith  @bethanyvsmith

Fantastic afternoon session on all different ways to use H5P!!! #MootGlobal22

Gretchen  @offgridteacher

Dear school administrators: During the week before Christmas, please don’t make informal observations, document student behavior, and then make teachers create an action plan in response. Speaking from experience, today.

all sunshine and rainbows  @DeeSTEM_Teach

I found out Chat GPT can write Lesson Plans……

Susie Dent  @susie_dent

Word of the Day is ‘thermopot’ (18th century): one who downs a prolific amount of hot drinks.

Kim Scheinberg @kims@mas.to

This is not a chart depicting Moore’s Law.

This chart is the CRAYOLA COROLLARY showing that the number of Crayola crayon colors doubles approximately every 18 years.

https://scholar.social/@kims@mas.to/109525496734522042

#mschat thread.  

Strategies:  

24 classroom games to make student learning FUN

https://truthforteachers.com/classroom-games-to-make-student-learning-fun

You Need Chat GPT.  Just Don’t Tell Admin . . . 

So I did a thing.  I want a short “article” on Differentiated Instruction.  I want to put it in that incredible long Charlotte Daniels form that must be filled out after an observation.  So I asked Chat GPT to give me a thing on Differentiated Instruction.  Here’s what I got.  Definitely going to use this somewhere . . . 

Chat GPT – Sample Lesson Plan on Athenian Democracy:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LTHuus1KbfwEP2UxJB3iobFhWjCdLlnGzz8RwIlFISo/copy

Resources:

Tom Lehrer Songs

All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain.

NOTICE: THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.

THE BEST 5 TIPS FOR MANAGING A DISAPPOINTING REPORT CARD WITH YOUR CHILD | SHARON SALINE, PSY.D. 

1. Listen first, ask questions after

2. Set realistic goals for the next quarter or trimester

3. Make sure adequate support is in place 

4. Avoid punishments and use logical consequences

5. Set up an effective routine for studying at home

Standard EBooks

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of U.S. copyright restrictions, and free of cost.

https://standardebooks.org/#annotations:IRO9KkPqEeu1ytMDZLevIg

Sketch & Fetch

Our Science Explosion group wrote a Pictionary game for science. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JixxHJrQhZUguecKPx-c69wVa0DKnmQeCZMEijU59yE/edit?usp=sharing

Felt

https://felt.com/#annotations:Q2kNjG2jEe207icznYPQ8Q

Web Spotlight:  

AXIS:  The Culture Translator

Wishposting

What it is: Young people are sharing their holiday wish lists via TikTok under #christmaswishlist2022.

Big Liver Lies

Pilkmas is Here

What it is: A bodybuilding influencer known as the “Liver King” who advocates for an animal-based diet admitted that his muscular physique was actually due to steroid use.

What it is: Lindsay Lohan created a viral trend in a Pepsi ad where she is featured drinking a concoction of Pepsi and milk—a drink known as pilk.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/100-trillion-global-economy/

Wingfeather Saga, Episode 2 

A story with the magic of Narnia and a sweeping epic like Lord of the Rings. Experience the official featurette for Season One of The Wingfeather Saga and stream the series on YouTube and the Angel Studios App this December 2nd. #WingfeatherSaga #BewareTheToothyCows  

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheWingfeatherSaga

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MSM 565 Do You Know Where the Fire Escape Goes To? I Do…

Summary:

Shawn and Troy talk about the NCSS Conference, 7th-grade art, and more. Dave drops the SKNOWLEDGE.

Jokes:  

If Schrodinger’s cat was a fugitive from the law would he be wanted > dead & alive?


Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet and friends are just enemies you haven’t made yet.


Geology rocks but Geography is where it’s at!


Three weeks ago I sent my hearing aids in for repair.

  • I’ve heard nothing since.

Most of the year I have a lot of faith

  • Around the holidays I start to become more eggnogstic.

I remodeled my kitchen.

  • I told the carpenters to not go too fast with refinishing the kitchen cabinets. When they asked why, I explained that I am afraid of quicksand.

Someone asked me what ‘contemplate’ means, I’ve given it a lot of thought


Making digital art and canvas art is quite easy.

  • But paper is where I draw the line.

Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, yams…. I’ll never forget my roots

Middle School Science Minute  

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

K12Science Podcast:  Sknowledge (Snow Knowledge)

I was recently reading the November/December 2022 issue of “Science Scope” a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.  

In this issue, I read the “Citizen Science” column, written by Jill Nugent.  She wrote a column entitled, “Get in the “Sknow” for Science!” 

The Sknowledge project was formed around the natural curiosity that students have for the outdoors and the snow.  The project goal is to help scientists ground truth winter weather data, one snowball at a time by measuring snow depth, air temperature, and cloud cover, and the ability to make a snowball.  For more information, visit:

https://www.sknowledge.ca

http://k12science.net/sknowledge-snow-knowledge/ 

Reports from the Front Lines

  1. NCSS Annual Conference  
  2. 10 work days until Christmas Break  
  3. ISTE coming to Philadelphia, NCSS coming to Boston, AMLE coming to National Harbor, MD 
  4. 7th Grade Art
    1. DIA “You Gotta Have Art!”    
  5. Summarizer
  6. 10 Amendments Ranking

The Twitter-Feder-verse  

AMLE  @AMLE

We’re loving the festive new #StatsInSchools  @Kahoot game from our friends at the @uscensusbureau. Thanks for helping to make statistics meaningful and fun for students! Check it out https://okt.to/wR8JHT

Susie Dent  @susie_dent

Word of the day is ‘blear-witted’ (17th century): entirely lacking in foresight and clouded in judgment.

Word of the day is ‘growlery’ (1853, from Charles Dickens): a place you retreat to for the purposes of growling, muttering, and letting off steam.  

Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR)  @HC_Richardson

It’s Steven Wright’s birthday. Do yourself a favor and read the tweets in his honor.  

Dr. Joanne Freeman (@jbf1755@mastodon.social)

@jbf1755

Hey! @HerbertHistory‘s podcast has arrived!! #HATM people, unite!  https://t.co/4kFM6aDTDg  

Typical EduCelebrity    @EduCelebrity

Teacher: What was the most useless innovation in schools? Me: The Spork

#mschat every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.  And as Troy says, “The Twitter never stops!” 

Strategies:  

Games to Improve Executive Functioning Skills

Service Project Idea

When filling out your Christmas cards this year, take one card and send it to this address:

A Recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed National Military Medical Center

8901 Rockville Pike

Bethesda, MD 20889-5600

Resources:  

Bouncy Balls!  

A fun way to visualize music or monitor classroom noise.  

https://bouncyballs.org/

Desperation Notifications!

Social media platforms are leaning into deceptive design patterns to capture your attention but they’re just contributing to our growing “notification anxiety”

https://stribs.medium.com/desperation-notifications-9a353a96622

Common Sense Society 

Common Sense Society (CSS) was founded as a debating forum in 2009 by a group of American and European university students. The group aimed to explore the ideas, cultures, and geography that have shaped our history in order to best contribute to a future that fosters human flourishing. In doing so, CSS became a celebration of the political, intellectual, and cultural inheritance which constitute our shared civilization.

Examples:  

Protecting the People: Limited and Absolute Governments compares and contrasts the differences between limited and absolute governments and asks, “which system better protects human rights and happiness?”  https://www.commonsensesociety.org/education-arch/protecting-the-people-limited-and-absolute-governments/  

The Ancients and the Founders considers whether the U.S. Constitution overcomes the problems found in ancient governments and asks, “are there problems endemic to every democratic society that are impossible to eradicate?” https://www.commonsensesociety.org/education-arch/ancients-founders/  

Supporting Gifted ELLs:  Effective Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom – Elizabeth Rasmussen, PhD candidate at USF

NCSS 2022 Handouts for Effective Strategies for the Social Studies Classroom session.  

AXIS:  The Culture Translator

AI Did Not Write This Newsletter

What it is: ChatGPT became the internet’s robot darling this week, with curious users asking the interface questions and being bemused, surprised, or creeped out at its high functionality.

A New Lens

What it is: Earlier this month, Lensa became the #1 app in the Apple store’s “Photo and Video” category after releasing a feature called “magic avatars,” customized pieces of AI-generated digital art.

Why it’s an ethical conundrum: Lensa asks users to upload a minimum of 10 photos of their face to its app before it can generate a magic avatar. It then takes these photos and uses open-source tech called “stable diffusion” to produce artwork of the user in several different styles. These attractive-looking avatars are perfect for profile pictures, dating profiles, or just sharing online, and #lensa already has over 600,000 posts tagged on Instagram

Asteroid Launcher

https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/

Web Spotlight:  

English Learner Collaborations – Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies 

Language-aware lessons support all students, especially Multilingual Learners who are still developing in English, access primary-source rich learning.  

http://www.emergingamerica.org/english-learner-collaborations

Font Advent

Each day of the advent calendar will feature a different type foundry and highlight some of their most notable typefaces. It will be a highly opinionated and almost arbitrary selection of a few of my favorites from the list.

https://matthiasott.com/notes/independent-type-foundry-advent-calendar-2022

How Christmas became an American holiday tradition, with a Santa Claus, gifts & a tree

Christmas trees and gift-giving on Dec. 24 in Germany did not spread to other European Christian cultures until the end of the 18th century and did not come to North America until the 1830s.

From the onset, all family members, including children, were expected to participate in the gift-giving. Gifts were not brought by a mystical figure, but openly exchanged among family members – symbolizing the new middle-class culture of egalitarianism.

https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/121622_christmas_traditions_op/how-christmas-became-american-holiday-tradition-with-santa-claus-gifts-a160tree/#annotations:Btq-1HgBEe283xfk_DllLw

GPT Detector

This is an online demo of the GPT-2 output detector model, based on the 🤗/Transformers implementation of RoBERTa. Enter some text in the text box; the predicted probabilities will be displayed below. The results start to get reliable after around 50 tokens.

https://huggingface.co/openai-detector#annotations:11Rh7ncJEe2j7w9RO0EDAQ

This Is Where Most of the World’s Soccer Balls Come From

Sialkot, a city in northeast Pakistan, produces about 70% of the world’s supply—including Adidas’s Al Rihla, the official ball of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

More than 80% of the soccer balls made in Sialkot use hand stitching, a laborious process that makes the ball more durable and gives it more aerodynamic stability. The seams are deeper, and the stitches have greater tension than those sewn with machines.

At manufacturer Anwar Khawaja Industries, stitchers get paid roughly 160 rupees—about $0.75—per ball. Each one takes three hours to complete. At three balls a day, a stitcher can earn about 9,600 rupees per month. Even for a poor region, the wages are low. A living wage for Sialkot is around 20,000 rupees a month, according to researcher estimates.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-world-cup-soccer-ball-adidas-al-rihla-sialkot/#annotations:hAFnGG9-Ee2Pggsncjcgyg?leadSource=uverify%20wall

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