By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes Don't hate--I know, it feels cliche and late to game to start a Substack--especially have been such a loyal user for blogger for over 12 years and 2000 posts !  But don't worry--I'm still sticking around here! Created with Bing Image Creator. Prompt: “human and robot sitting at a table across from each other in noir style with a neon aspect to it” I am starting a substack called AI+Edu=Simplified and I'm also continuing with By Any Other Nerd.  Why run 2 writing platforms?  Well, I've been posting lots of AI stuff here and while it's normal for me to focus on different topics/projects in this blog, I think the work I'm doing around generative AI is substantial and ongoing enough that creating a different space for that is necessary.   What I like about By Any Other Nerd is its eclecticness.  It's a my wonderful hodgepodge of things big and small in my life.  I like that I've used it as a place to work through the p

Estimated Reading Time: 21 minutes Content Warning : Discussions of self-harm. I recently finished reading The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (and Brandon Sanderson for the last 3 novels). It's literally something that has taken over 26 years. Which is to say that it took me longer to read the series than how long it took the series to be fully published (24 years; 1990-2013). But I finally finished it.   This might be one of those examples of the sunk cost fallacy or the opposite? Not sure. I know for me the read was worth it not because it was a really great series per se but because of how it fits into my own history of reading, growing, and changing over the past 26 years. How to Read This Post What follows is me just sharing about my history of reading it and what I thought about it finally finished.  What then follows is a deeper history of reading and how this series fits in with my own growth and development.  All of that is to say, if you want to stay on the surface

Estimated Reading Time: 25 minutes It's been feeling like "another week, another talk" the last couple of weeks, even while navigating COVID.  This talk was for faculty in Boston University's School of Social Work.  This talk felt a bit more smoother and natural than some of the others that I've done and I think it's both a mixture of doing better with my slides as my visual guide and how I arched the discussion.  I also made parts of this more interactive which also helped.  Additionally, the group was an energetic crowd for a 90-minute session.   I leaned into doing the annotated slide deck and folks seem to find that to be a key piece in helping them both in the moment and as a follow-up if usage stats tell me anything.   The Good, The Bad, & The AI: Exploring Generative AI in Education  Hi all, I’m Lance Eaton and I’m excited to talk with you today about the role of AI in education and pull together some of the ideas that I’ve been seeing in the discu