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?

Sometimes Good Enough has to be Good Enough

Posted by Dean Shareski on in Personal 0 Comment

Do you ever settle for “good enough”? On the surface, it sounds bad. It sounds like you aren’t giving your all. Particularly in education when we have mantras like “Whatever it takes”, “All means all” and “no child left behind”. These are daunting phrases meant to evoke seriousness and urgency. As educators, we have a sacred duty to serve children and we take the responsibility very seriously. Our work isn’t trivial. Still, the truth is, the truth that we don’t talk about often enough in education and other vocations is that to be successful and thrive, we have to accept that for some things and some tasks good enough is good enough.

As an educator, you never are done. If you devote 80 hours a week to your job, you can still find things to work on, improve on, or tweak. We all have limits and depending on your personality or time of life, those limits differ for different folks. My 14 years as a classroom teacher taught me that there would never be enough time to do everything the way I wanted. I made choices. It meant that some days, heaven forbid, my students did a worksheet. Sometimes in PE, I just let them play. Sometimes I spent hours planning a PBL experience knowing that it would allow me time in the future given there might be less planning once the project got started.

I currently have 3 beautiful grandchildren who live near me and I want to spend time with them and they want me to spend time with them too. I have the luxury of some flexibility in my day. If they ask me to go for a walk, I’ll work to make that happen. I also will take time for myself as well. They won’t be at this amazing age for long. I’m not wasting this time. It means I have to be very intentional about my work. Prioritizing things makes me more productive for my job. I’m more focused and energized and produce high-quality work. And yet there are times when I make choices to say “good enough”.

Generative AI has helped me with this. Design work can get to “good enough” more quickly, allowing me to spend time making it way better than good enough in the same amount of time. Other times, it’s getting me to a place of good enough faster and I can spend time doing other things. Sometimes those “other things” are not work-related.

My job is still an endless list of tasks and time that could be spent making everything better just like my days as a classroom teacher. As much as I like my job, it does not define me. I know what matters to me. I’m proud of my work and am grateful for my years of service and opportunity. But with so many things competing for my time and attention, I have to make choices on how I spend my time and place my attention. Over 13 years ago I wrote about this idea and it remains for me an important concept and belief. I write this knowing many struggle with the very idea of calling something “good enough”. I don’t suggest it’s easy to say it, particularly if you’re worried about what others might think. If you’re happy to work endless hours or feel you have no choice, I would ask you to consider your end goal and recognize your limitations. We all have limited time and energy and should have clear priorities.

The Hats I Wear

Posted by Dean Shareski on in ALP, GenerativeAI, gratitude, Leadership, workshops 0 Comment

This past week I wore many hats for many different purposes all within our work in the Metro Vancouver/Fraser Valley region. With each of these “hats,” I learned and grew. Here’s how:

🎓 Consultant: This role is one I’m learning more about and feel more comfortable with every group I work with. Listening is a big part of this work. I work to resist jumping in when it’s important for those I’m serving to do most of the talking. With so many wise and experienced leaders, they don’t need me for much but look to me for confirmation and insights on their planning to really excel. Timely support and critical friend best describe this work.

🎓 Facilitator: Having 12 districts in a room with slightly different configurations requires a fine balance between structure and time. Much of the feedback we received suggested these teams often don’t get concentrated time to work together but we worked to provide the right amount of time, sprinkled with new learning that was used to spur them on. Constantly reading the room and making adjustments defines success in this role.

🎓 Teacher: I’m excited to be teaching again this semester. It’s been 4 years since I last taught a class. This semester I’m teaching EC&I 832 at the University of Regina. I’m specifically excited to explore the role of Generative AI in my work and my students. I shared some of my initial thoughts in both my syllabus and in our conversations. Being able to practice many of the ideas and beliefs I share in my day job makes this so rewarding.

🎓 Documentarian: I was privileged to spend Thursday working in West Vancouver Schools alongside with Cari Wilson who organized a beautiful morning with visits to 4 schools and 4 amazing teachers. We’re working on capturing their early learning around #genai and they all delivered thoughtful and insightful reflections that I hope to use to create some compelling short videos. Having the right questions and letting people share the things that matter to them helps push this into something people want to watch.

🎓 Presenter: I bookended my week with this role. This is the role I have the most experience in and feel most comfortable with. I opened the week with the operations team from Surrey Schools (School District #36 Surrey)#36 Surrey) and ended the week with high school teachers from Frank Hurt Secondary and Fraserview Secondary Schools. Both groups brought different dynamics and curiosities to the conversation but particularly with the high school teachers I felt and saw full engagement.

It was a nice way to finish a long week of work with this thank you from principal David Baldasso who used ChatGPT to help write this:

I would be remiss if I didn’t say a specific thank you to Adam Garry who has helped me fine-tune some of these “hats” as well as Alec Couros for supporting me in my work at the U of R.

From Book to Podcast in Minutes: My First Experience with Google Notebook

Posted by Dean Shareski on in GenerativeAI, joy, Video 0 Comment

Like all the big players in tech, Google is working to gain market share in education based on its AI tool kit. Recently I’ve been showing this clip in presentations about things to come.

This was 4 months ago. Unlike tech innovations of the recent past where you might see a demo and then maybe 2 years later you could try it, this is moving uber fast.

Today, I played with Google’s Notebook, followed Alec Couros’s suggestion, and uploaded a copy of my book. I also added my blog. Within minutes it created this 9-minute audio podcast of my book.

While there is still much more to explore and understand about this tool, just this feature itself is fascinating. Uploading a copy of my book and website makes me the perfect person to critique the content and I have to say if I had had this when my book was first released I likely would have used this to promote it. These 9 minutes do an amazing job of summarizing my book in a way that is engaging and easily consumable. I did look into the privacy policy and as it stands now, they are not using this to train their AI models. That said, I don’t fully trust that. I never wrote my book to make a bunch of money so I’m less worried about copyright.

More to come…..

When Should Writing Be Hard?

Posted by Dean Shareski on in GenerativeAI, writing 0 Comment

My current immersion into the world of AI and specifically Generative AI (GenAI) is at the same time exciting, fascinating and also mentally exhausting because you can’t embrace the possibilities without acknowledging the risks. As I say every time I’m working with others, holding these competing ideas in your head at the same time is not easy and in fact, goes against our natural survival instinct to see the world in binary terms.

I feel like I’ve done a good job surrounding myself with diverse opinions and experts in this area and at the same time have to remove myself from thinking too deeply at times because it’s extremely taxing mentally. Whether it’s politics, climate change or other major societal issues, it’s hard to live in 2024. No one can escape and most of us are trying to figure out what it means to be a good citizen and a flourishing, happy human.

Today I’m asking myself when should writing be hard? The promise of GenAI is often that it makes writing easier and even better. Whether it’s to spell check or fix your grammar or even to write an entire book, AI can perform all these tasks. For those who are objectively poor writers and don’t enjoy writing, it might be a lifesaver. Even those of us who write as part of our job and are good at it, it can be extremely useful. Like almost any new skill, writing is really hard. As a grandparent, I watch my granddaughter struggling to read, and my grandsons struggling to learn to skate and ride a bike, all these life skills are at one time hard and productive struggle is part of learning. As parents and teachers, we know this. Part of our job is not to eliminate the struggle but to embrace it and help them either during or perhaps after that it’s a good thing.

Today I’m writing this without any use of GenAI for the content but are using the spell and grammar checks. Given the title of this post, that seems like the correct choice. The issue I have is determining when the struggle is important. I think there are certain times when struggle is important. I’m going to write what I believe they are and then I’m going to see what a GPT might suggest they are. First here are my first attempts at when I believe writing should be hard:

  • When you’re learning to write. This is most obvious for early writers to understand the basics like sentence structure but it extends as you develop more skills and are working to use writing for different purposes like narrative, persuasive and creative writing.
  • When you’re trying to understand your thinking. A topic like this is one I need to understand deeply for myself. While GenAI could tell me what to think, I need to own this. I often use the example of school district mission statements. They do not vary all that much from district to district but you have to be able to make it your own. The reason you “reinvent the wheel” is to get your own wheel. Sometimes the result of the thinking doesn’t necessarily turn into good writing but the feelings and thoughts you put into trying to write your family member a heart-felt card force reflection and can conjure up feelings and ideas that may be latent or forgotten.
  • When your writing matters. Many writings don’t matter that much. An email to your boss or a conference description matters, but if it’s just about communicating information and emotion isn’t a big part of it or you’re not heavily invested then GenAI can be a time saver. But if you want to be sure that something has the right tone and feel, it probably should be hard. That doesn’t say you can’t use GenAi but probably only to make slight edits.
  • When a topic is complex and nuanced. Similar to my second point, the difference here may not be in your thinking but in your lack of understanding or appreciation of a nuanced or complex topic. This exact post is a prime example. Writing forces you to research or deep dive into ideas that push your thinking. While you could just read about it, writing helps to synthesize ideas or simply reveals how challenging some topics might be.

Here’s what ChatGPT said:

  • Deep Personal Reflection: When writing requires personal introspection or emotional depth, like journaling, memoirs, or sensitive communication, the human experience is irreplaceable. AI-generated text might lack the authenticity or nuance of personal reflection.
  • Developing Critical Thinking: For tasks meant to challenge or build analytical skills, such as academic essays or problem-solving exercises, it’s important to engage in the mental process fully. Relying on AI shortcuts the opportunity to refine reasoning or logical argumentation.
  • Creative Integrity: When originality and creative expression are the essence of the work—like poetry, fiction, or artwork—AI can limit the authenticity or risk compromising the writer’s unique voice.
  • Mastering Writing Skills: Writing is a skill that improves with practice. When learning to craft persuasive arguments, structure content, or develop style, it’s important to struggle through the process. Using AI too early in these stages can impede long-term growth.

So we aren’t a million miles off. I didn’t include the creative integrity idea. Good catch.

As I work with more and more districts this question as well as many related others are ones that everyone has to wrestle with. I feel like I should respond to the other question which is, “When Should Writing Be Easy?” This was hard enough to write. I’ll save that one for another day. As always your comments are welcomed and appreciated.