Productivity

Saving Time For What?

Posted by shareski on in ALP, GenerativeAI, Productivity

AI promises to eliminate mundane tasks and increase our efficiency. On the surface, that sounds great. Everyone wants to save time. Everyone wants to eliminate mundane tasks, and we’re all interested in efficiency. But as we dig deeper, we need to ask: what are we saving all this time for?

I recently had a conversation with a school superintendent who shared some ways his administrative assistant could use Generative AI to be more efficient. The assistant, while impressed with AI’s capabilities, responded, “Is this so I can just do more work?” That’s not an unreasonable response. Most conversations about time-saving in education center on the idea that reducing paperwork and routine tasks would enable us to spend time on more valuable activities – the human side of things. Whether that’s connecting more with students or working on projects that will truly make a difference for educators.

But efficiency for efficiency’s sake isn’t always what it seems, and it can lead to unintended consequences. Consider the technological advances of the 1950s: home appliances promised women more time to do things they enjoyed. Instead, these innovations raised the standard of cleanliness in homes. Women found themselves dusting behind shelves and in nooks and crannies they previously hadn’t even considered. The promise of saving time never materialized – we just asked more of people.

It’s quite easy to track time saved when using generative AI. My colleagues can provide tangible results from their effective use of it. The Ottawa Catholic District School Board is working to document these time-saving ventures. Their work will help us understand which tools and prompts we should leverage, and it might encourage those who are hesitant to explore more. However, we shouldn’t assume that saving time automatically improves our jobs or lives. For that to happen, we must be intentional about what we do with any time saved.

I use a piece of software called Descript to edit my podcasts. Before using Descript a one-hour podcast recording would take me about three hours to edit, produce and publish. Descript helps remove filler words and creates clips and descriptions that now reduce the three hours to one. I just saved two hours. Which leads me to the question, what will I do with those 2 hours saved? Those of us who work in education and many other professions have never-ending jobs. All of us could and some of us do work 80 hours a week and we never finish. Our to-do lists never get completely crossed off. These two hours of savings could be used to carry on with that list. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do and I might be happy to focus on another task that is more rewarding or maybe more urgent. This week after editing my latest podcast I did not choose to do more work. Instead, I shut off my computer and took my two grandsons to the park.

This was clearly an example of AI making my life better, more human, and more well.

The documentation work at the Ottawa Catholic School Board is critical in helping us understand how and why we want to use generative AI in education. Broad claims about time and efficiency leave too many questions and even create pushback. What one person calls “mundane” might be important to someone else. Look at self-checkouts – they’re already showing signs of failure. While most complaints focus on technological ineffectiveness (which leads to theft), there’s also a realization that human interaction is part of the shopping experience. These “mundane” exchanges offer health and well-being benefits we don’t often consider. Many cashiers likely take pride and joy in their work. Perhaps instead of eliminating these roles, we could redirect human interaction to other parts of the shopping experience.

I love efficiency in so many areas of my life. Stupid things like hitting all the green lights on my drive from my daughter’s place to my house or getting to the airport just in time for a flight. I play these little games in my head and feel good about not “wasting time”. My family knows this about me and when I brag about the time I “saved” on a drive home, they’ll ask “So what did you do with all this time you saved?” Of course, I didn’t do anything special and it proved the silliness of that pursuit which I already knew was silly.

When it comes to real opportunities to save time with AI, it could be more than something silly. But what I hope we consider is what we might be saving for. If it’s just more work that’s not all that interesting to me. If it’s so that I have more agency over my time to choose something better or something I’d rather do, then I’m all ears. The current state well well-being in our schools is not great. While not a panacea, AI could be used to support well-being. As I continue to educate myself and others about the possibilities and risks of Generative AI in particular, I want to be sure to ask what we are saving time for. In the end, I want it to make life better, and more human and not simply to perpetuate an already unsustainable life of productivity.

What do you think? Have you found it to save you time? What did you do with that time?

Delight 26: Validation

Posted by Dean Shareski on in delight, facebook, linkedin, Productivity

What’s bad about the Internet is that you can find a study to prove almost any idea or belief. What’s great about the Internet is that you can find a study to prove almost any idea or belief.

That said when you come across something that puts into words or helps explain a behaviour or an idea you’ve had that might seem counterintuitive it’s kind of delightful.

I have shared this tweet often:

I’ve developed a routine or method of creating presentations and keynotes that usually has me beginning early. While that tweet says I start a month out, that’s not exactly true. A month out is when I begin to build an actual slide deck. What happens before that is I begin a note in Evernote where I write random thoughts and ideas. It’s a total mess of images, quotes, conversations, and general brain dumps. The month before I begin to flesh things out more succinctly. I always have a good that a week prior, my presentation is in the “good enough” stage. It’s that last week where I pick at, revise and tweak sometimes with my computer in my lap moments before I speak.

While this has always felt a bit frantic, I couldn’t imagine working another way. I’m currently reading Originals by Adam Grant and he writes an entire chapter on procrastination and timing. While I don’t consider this procrastination, I was tickled as I read these four sentences:

Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds….Great originals are great procrastinators but they don’t skip planning altogether. They procrastinate strategically , making gradual progress by testing and refining different possibilities.

Grant, Adam, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, p 102, Penguin Books

I’ve always felt like my approach was less efficient or productive than it ought to be. Reading that made me smile and realize that my approach isn’t a flaw but a feature.

The One Thing Teachers Want That No One is Talking About

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Discovery, Productivity 1 Comment

Ask any teacher what is one thing they wish they had that would make their job better. For most the answer is time. 

The solutions to this problem are complex and in many cases outside the purview of educators but there is one increasingly growing aspect that no one seems to be talking much about. Time spent looking for stuff. 

“Stuff” is more or less content. While many jurisdictions are understanding that content may not be as important as developing skills, content is still important and necessary for learning even if your focus is on skills. 

The most progressive curriculum I know is in British Columbia. Teachers are free to focus on big ideas and core competencies and student agency is the goal. Yet as excited as educators are to embrace this, many I’ve worked with and spoken to are struggling to find content. The curriculum is less concerned with content and yet without something to build upon, analyze, create with, the efforts to develop skills and competencies fail.

School Has a Content Problem. It doesn’t seem to want any. ….But try as we might to think of reading or mathing as a skill, we cannot divorce any of it from specific content in the classroom. These aren’t Subjects that can be studied or mastered in any manner divorced from content, which is infinite in possibility and purpose and audience. ‘Content’ and ‘Skill’ are not equal partners, because skill is universal while content is specific. You cannot learn a skill without the content, but the content requires the skill no matter what it is.

https://medium.com/@berniebleske/school-has-a-content-problem-b7b299461f15

In other jurisdictions where standards are more focused on content, teachers are dissatisfied with textbooks and formulaic approaches. Their print-based world often seems outdated and lacking engagement. They know there is better stuff out there. 

So in both cases, teachers turn to “the google”. I’ve witnessed this first hand as my wife worked endless hours at night exploring possibilitites for her grade 2 classroom. I tried to do my own research to see if this was indeed widespread so I reached out to Twitter and asked a simple question:

While not scientific, my hunch is the results are fairly accurate. I believe this is something new. I recall as a young teacher prior to the Internet that I spend very little time culling for resources. I might spend time at the beginning of a unit at the local library but I exhausted my search relatively fast. The other resource I had was a teacher librarian who would also alleviate some of this work. The majority of my time at home was spent planning what my students would do with the content.  I’d say on average I spent 25% of my time finding and culling content and 75% of my time on what the instruction would be. Today I’d say for most teachers that’s reversed. Today’s educator is both blessed and cursed with infinite access to content. While there are many ways to find content and tips to better curate, it still takes time. A lot of time.  I also think much of this time is wasted.  Like going into a giant mall when all you need is a basic pair of socks, what should be a 5-minute job suddenly becomes hours. Yes, there are times when that’s part of the experience but doing this on a daily basis is costing many hours. Most of us can already admit to wasting more time online that we’d like, we don’t need to be adding to the problem. It seems that teachers and administrators are okay with this or maybe they just haven’t thought about it very much. I have. 

I don’t often mention on my blog that I work for Discovery Education. Over the past 7 years, I’ve been grateful to work with so many forward-thinking districts, leaders and teachers. While we offer a whole lot more, we are best known for our content. When I first began, our team would often highlight the fact that we offered 300,000+ resources from video, text, images, audio, interactives and more. We don’t talk about that much anymore. Instead, we might say that our services offer a handful of multi-modal, quality and vetted resources for nearly every grade, subject and standard. Teachers don’t want/need more stuff, they want/need good stuff and they want/need it easily accessible. When we do our job, we help teachers and leaders see how our products and services save time. We want to shift teachers time to allow them to focus on differentiating instruction, addressing the needs of individual students without having to spend a whole bunch of time finding just the right content. 

The reality is, the internet and youtube provide great content. The trouble is you have to find it. While there are many teachers who are willing to spend the time to find that content, it’s not fair to expect teachers to spend hours each night searching for stuff when they could be spending that time on instruction or better yet, resting. 

I don’t mean for this to sound like a pitch for Discovery but I’m simply surprised by how little anyone is paying attention to this growing problem. With growing stress among teachers, giving them the one thing they really need seems like something we all need to be paying more attention to.

To quote my friend Bill Ferriter, Is any of this making sense? Is this true for you? Do you see this as a problem Anyone you know addressing this? 

Future Ready is Overrated

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Classrooms, Productivity, Video 4 Comments

Updated: (added this wonderful video thanks to Maria Galanis)


“Future Ready” is a theme I’m hearing more and more in our schools. The idea that schools is about preparing for the future and getting kids ready for adulthood. It’s important stuff and certainly schools need to be in this business. And yet….

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachelrusinski/64660281

Mindfulness has been and continues to be something I try to practice and live daily. The stress that so many of our young people experience as well as adults concerns me. I worry that this stress is partly the fault of schools and the overt and subtle pressures we place on them. I’m concerned with my own parenting as I witness my own children often speaking about “getting through this” or “once this is done I’ll feel much better”. Those are natural but somewhat debilitating thoughts. Living in the moment is very hard. I would argue the vast majority of our day is spent on planning ahead or reflecting on the past and not so much on just focusing and enjoying right now.

I watched this clip on 60 minutes this week and it reminded me of things I’ve been trying to do for the past several years. I have gotten better at this and I suppose it’s partly age, partly experience but I think I’ve also taught it to myself. My photo a day project has been a proactive way of focusing on now. Ditching “busy” from my vocabulary has been another active step in being mindful and present. I’m still miles away from where I should and could be but I am pursuing it.

I think we’d be doing our students a big favor if we first began to model this in our own lives and suggested ways for them to incorporate this as well. Last year I worked with a group of principals and asked them what was their biggest concern. The overwhelming answer was “mental health”. While mental health is a complex issue and certainly schools aren’t currently equipped to fully address it, I think mindfulness would be an important place to start.  The research is pretty compelling not only for addressing and preventing anxiety and depression but to actually make you more productive and innovative. Did you know that your pets can also suffer from anxiety? Take a look at these CBD products for cats/a> that can make them feel better. You can also get cbd oils for dogs

When we are mindful, we are open to surprise, oriented in the present moment, sensitive to context, and above all, liberated from the tyranny of old mindsets. Ellen J. Langer, 1989

I’m not suggesting we don’t prepare our students for the future, I’m just asking us to consider that maybe “right now” is a pretty important idea to appreciate and acknowledge. The future is almost easier to deal with as it can be about hope as well as create a sense of urgency. Those aren’t necessarily bad but I wish we spend a bit more time on now. It’s a concept that as humans, we’re not very good at.

I might suggest a few simple ways to encourage and develop mindfulness in with your students:

  • Build in quiet time. What if you took 1-2 minutes a day to be absolutely still and quiet. Certainly having taught primary students, this is a challenge but I think if you frame it correctly and actually teach it, it would be a wonderful skill to learn.
  • Create an calming atmosphere. When I visited Singapore this year I spent some time with Clay Burell who begins each class with tea and relaxed conversation.
  • Pay attention and acknowledge things others might miss. Simply recognizing a student’s shoes, the way the sun is shining in the room or maybe a play a song or sound to listen to together. The point is to slow down and focus on the now without any stress or overthinking.

These are just a few ideas that come to mind, I’m sure there is a much better list somewhere else or in your own head but I mindfulness doesn’t just happen, you have to be intentional.

I’ll leave you with my latest short video in my Walk and Talk series and would love your response to the question, “How are you being mindful?”

https://observer.com/2021/04/11-best-cbd-oils-for-dogs-to-buy-online/

Evernote as an Assessment Tool

Posted by Dean Shareski on in assessment, Productivity, Video 1 Comment

I wanted to share how I’ve been using Evernote as an Assessment Tool.

I used Explain Everything on the iPad to create this video. I apologize the audio is not great, not sure how to improve this as I tried yelling, and using a headphone mic.

I’ll be sharing more about how I do the self assessments although I’ve written about it here but I do love the ability to record audio and have a more “conversation like” experience with my students.

Update: I forgot to mention, I email the note back to them but you could share notebooks as well but this way, they don’t have to have an evernote account.