Winnie’s Wise Words
/If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. -Winnie the Pooh
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
What it Takes
/Why do certain people put themselves through the years of intensive daily work that eventually makes them world-class great? The answers depend on your response to two basic questions: What do you really want? And what do you really believe?
What you want - really, deeply want - is fundamental because deliberate practice is an investment: The costs come now, the benefits later. The more you want something, the easier it will be for you to sustain the needed effort until the payoff starts to arrive. But if you're pursuing something that you don't truly want and are competing against others whose desire is deep, you can guess the outcome.
The evidence offers no easy assurances. It shows that the price of top-level achievement is extraordinarily high. Maybe it's inevitable that not many people will choose to pay it. But the evidence shows also that by understanding how a few become great, all can become better.
Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated
7 Free Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism, Social Media & more
/Tue, Nov 14 – Women Making News
What: Three of the most powerful women in journalism talk about battling disinformation, protecting reporters in war zones and leading influential news organizations during one of the most challenging times in modern media.
Who: Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, President, CBS News; Alessandra Galloni, Editor in Chief, Reuters; Rashida Jones, President, MSNBC, Sally Buzbee, Executive Editor, The Washington Post.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Washington Post
Wed, Nov 15 - The Role of Generative AI in Enhancing Data Storytelling
What: Leverage the power of Generative AI and our low-code platform to make sense of your data and more importantly, narrate a data story that aligns well with your questions and the problem at hand.
When: 9 am, Pacific
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Microsoft & iLink Digital
Wed, Nov 15 - The Future of Corporate Communications
What: Valuable, data-driven perspectives that will empower you to make informed decisions and navigate the ever-changing corporate communications landscape successfully.
Who: Margot Edelman, GM of Edelman; Steve Barrett, PR Week; Yanique Woodall, CVS Health; Alex Thompson, Global Chair of Edleman; Arelle Patirck, Ariel Investments
When: 4 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Institute for Public Relations
Wed, Nov 15 - Children on Social Media and the Multistate Lawsuit Against Meta
What: A discussion of the lawsuit filed by over 40 state attorneys general against Meta, alleging that its products are addictive and contribute to the youth mental health crisis.
Who: Ashley Johnson, Senior Policy Manager Information Technology and Innovation Foundation;. Jess Miers, Legal Advocacy Counsel Chamber of Progress; Nicole Saad Bembridge, Associate Counsel NetChoice; Ava Smithing, Advocacy & Community Director Young People's Alliance.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Wed, Nov 15 - Social Media Foundations: Basics for Facebook & Instagram
What: In this introductory course, we will discuss setting up a Facebook and Instagram business profile, how to schedule posts and stories, and how to engage your customers through this visual platform.
Who: Cassie Fly. a Marketing Specialist with the Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh Small Business Development Center.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Temple University Small Business Development Center
Thu, Nov 16 - Environmental Journalism Summit
What: Leading environmental journalists from major news outlets will predict the top stories of the year ahead.
Who:; Top reporters from The New York Times, NBC, NPR, TIME, and others, including David Byrne of Talking Heads.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Society of Environmental Reporters
Thu, Nov 16 - Journalism Ethics: Needed now more than ever???
What: We’ll share some anecdotal examples of dealing with touchy issues on deadline and invite you to join us in some exercises on how to handle decisions involving ethics.
Who: Traci Griffith, Mike Donoghue, Lincoln McKie
When: 11 am, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The New England Newspaper & Press Association
Two Kinds of Fools
/There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better." -William R. Inge
Good but not Safe
/“Then, he isn't safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said the Beaver. “Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you.”
CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Take calculated risks
/Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. -George S. Patton (born Nov. 11, 1885)
A learning strategy that has shown clear results
/Retrieval practice sometimes (shows) effects some 50 percent more than other forms of learning. In one study, one group of subjects read a passage four times. A second group read the passage just one time, but then the same group practiced recalling the passage three times.
But when the researchers followed up with both groups a few days later, the group that had practiced recalling the passage learned significantly more. In other words, subjects who tried to recall the information instead of rereading it showed far more expertise.
What’s important about retrieval practice is that people take steps to recall what they know. They ask themselves questions about their knowledge, making sure that it can be produced.
More concretely, retrieval practice isn’t like a multiple-choice test, which has people choose from a few answers, or even a Scrabble game, where you hunt in your memory for a high-point word. Retrieval practice is more like writing a five-sentence essay in your head: You’re recalling the idea and summarizing it in a way that makes sense.
As psychologist Bob Bjork told me, “The act of retrieving information from our memories is a powerful learning event.”
Ulrich Boser, Learn Better
Majoring in the Majors
/Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand - Thomas Carlyle
Thinking Hard
/A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -William James
14 Articles about the Business of Running an AI
/3 ways to test your AI’s effectiveness – Legal Dive
OpenAI unveils ambitions to compete more directly with Big Tech – Washington Post
AI Revolution: Top Lessons from OpenAI, Anthropic, CharacterAI, & More – a16z (podcast)
The TIME100 Most Influential People in AI - TIME
Silicon Valley startups lean into AI boom – Axios
These Prisoners Are Training AI – Wired
AI technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water – KBUR
Meta is Developing its Own LLM to Compete with OpenAI – Social Media Today
Microsoft, Google rebuild around AI with Windows and Bard updates – Axios
The New ChatGPT Can ‘See’ and ‘Talk.’ Here’s What It’s Like. – New York Times
The State of Large Language Models – Scientific American
OpenAI has quietly changed its ‘core values’ - Semafor
Google Brain cofounder says Big Tech companies are inflating fears about the risks of AI wiping out humanity because they want to dominate the market – Business Insider
New synthetic data techniques could change the way AI models are trained - Semafor
Why is my first choice so seriously lame?
/For some reason, we often expect our first choice to be the optimal choice. However, it’s actually quite normal for your first attempt to be incorrect or wrong. This is especially true of the major decisions that we make in life.
Think of the first person you dated. Would this person have been the best choice for your life partner? Go even further back and imagine the first person you had a crush on. Finding a great partner is complicated and expecting yourself to get it right on the first try is unreasonable. It’s rare that the first one would be the one.
What is the likelihood that your 22-year-old self could optimally choose the career that is best for you at 40 years old? Or 30 years old? Or even 25 years old? Consider how much you have learned about yourself since that time. There is a lot of change and growth that happens during life. There is no reason to believe that your life’s work should be easily determined when you graduate.
When it comes to complex issues like determining the values you want in a partner or selecting the path of your career, your first attempt will rarely lead to the optimal solution.
Let Us
/Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. - James Thurber
11 Free Media Webinars this Week: Disinformation, SEO, Storytelling, AI, Science & More
/Mon, Nov 6 - Getting it right: Pushing past resistance to better firearms violence reporting
What: This webinar will explore how four journalists have tried to be part of the solution and the changes they’ve observed. They’ll share tips for managing managers, taking small steps (and feeling okay about that) and the importance of working closely in the communities most affected by the violence.
Who: Kaitlin Washburn, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times; Abené Clayton, a reporter for The Guardian; Christopher Norris is a two-time Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist and former managing editor for community and engagement at WHYY
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Association of Health Care Journalists
Mon, Nov 6 - The impact of vaccine misinformation
What: The grave consequences of widespread anti-vaccination misinformation.
Who: PolitiFact Deputy Editor Rebecca Catalanello and Dr. Céline Gounder, host of the “Epidemic” podcast, KFF senior fellow, CBS News medical contributor.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Poynter & PolitiFact
Mon, Nov 6 - How Russia’s disinformation campaigns can target your town
What: Learn how — and why — Russian propaganda is bypassing content bans and posing as local news with
Who: Peter Benzoni of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and PolitiFact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Poynter & PolitiFact
Tue, Nov 7 - SEO Strategies for Nonprofits: Boosting Visibility and Traffic to Your Website
What: This webinar will get you up to speed on modern SEO tactics, why they're important, and how to build a strategy to keep your website's performance up to date. By the end of this webinar, you'll know How optimizing your site for SEO gains you new users; The basic SEO elements and how to manipulate them on your site; How to keep your site performing well on search engines in an efficient and effective manner.
Who: Julian Gerace, Tapp Network Digital Solutions Manager; Jason Spangler Tapp Network, Director Of Sales.
When: 12 noon
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Tue, Nov 7 - Google News Lab — Trends and Advanced Search
What: This session will equip you with practical reporting tips with examples. In Advanced Search, we’ll share how using search modifiers and specialized search engines can unearth story ideas and sources. We'll also look at how Google Trends can lead to insights on local audiences and complement your storytelling.
When: 11 am, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Google News Labs
Wed, Nov 8 - Global Media Literacy Education with the Pulitzer Center
What: Learn more about the many types of misinformation and approaches to media literacy. Participants will reflect on what global media literacy looks like in the classroom by exploring thinking routines and resources that encourage students to make local-global connections and identify power structures and dominant narratives that shape media.
Who: This workshop will feature an alumnus of the Pulitzer Center's Teacher Fellowship program, who will share their experience teaching an original project-based unit that cultivates global media literacy, and their tips for other educators doing this work.
When: 4 pm, Central
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Pulitzer Center Education
Wed, Nov 8 - "Once upon a Time": The Art and Architecture of Storytelling
What: This webinar will uncover the art and architecture of storytelling to reveal the power of persuasion. The session will answer these questions: How do we move from communicating to "inform" to communicating to "advocate" in sales and marketing presentations? What are the roles of trust and emotions in persuasion? Does speaking virtually change how we should persuade?
Who: Dr. Constance Staley Professor of Communication, University of Colorado
When:
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine
Wed, Nov 8 - The threat of AI and the Israel-Hamas war
What: To help you better understand how malign actors are — or are not — using deepfakes to accelerate false narratives and intentionally mislead audiences.
Who: MediaWise Director Alex Mahadevan will lead a conversation with MediaWise Ambassador Hari Sreenivasan and Felix Simon, communication researcher and doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute.
When: 11 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Poynter & PolitiFact
Wed, Nov 8 - Science essentials for local reporters
What: Basic principles about how science works and ways it can be used to strengthen virtually any news story.
Who: Former longtime Washington Post science reporter Rick Weiss and Ph.D. neuroscientist Dr. Tori Espensen.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: New England Newspaper & Press Association
Thu, Nov 9 – Key YouTube Strategies for 2024
What: Results from a soon-to-be-released study of media agencies. You’ll find out: How advertisers are addressing brand suitability challenges on YouTube and balancing that with campaign performance goals. How brand and agency leaders predict their spending on YouTube and CTV will change in 2024. Platform changes that could have a big impact on how brands represent themselves on YouTube in 2024, including shifts in how they can advertise to diverse communities.
Who: Tamara Alesi CEO, Mediaplus North America; Jessica Goon CMO, Tate's Bake Shop; Matt Duffy CMO, Pixability.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Pixability
Fri, Nov 10 - Public Funding of Local News
What: Four states now provide funding for local news through state appropriations: New Jersey, Washington, New Mexico and California. In this program, we hear from local news leaders in those states and the national organization Rebuild Local News.
Who: Ayinde Merrill (New Jersey Civic Information Consortium), Steve Waldman (Rebuild Local News) and Christa Scharfenberg (UC Berkeley). This session will be moderated by Meg Little Reilly (CCN).
When: 12 noon, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The University of Vermont
The Right Track
/Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers (born Nov. 4, 1879)
11 Recent Articles about Data Privacy & Security
/AI trains on your Gmail and Instagram, and you can’t do much about it - The Washington Post
Why deleting something from the internet is 'almost impossible' - CNN
How To Scan Your iPhone For Malware - SlashGear
RIP, Passwords. Here’s What’s Coming Next – New York Times
The metaverse brings a new breed of threats to challenge privacy and security gatekeepers – CSO
Companies are hoarding personal data about you. Here’s how to get them to delete it. - The Washington Post
Tech firms seek private data to train AI - Axios
Is ChatGPT becoming a serious security risk for your business? – Tech Radar
We don’t know exactly how things are working and how the inputs are kept, managed, monitored, or surveilled over time – MIT Tech Review
What Biden’s AI executive order means for data privacy – Semafor
When someone vents anger
/Don’t react when someone vents anger. Pretend you are watching from a distance.
Start before You’re Ready
/A side effect of doing challenging work is that you’re pulled by excitement and pushed by confusion at the same time.
You’re bound to feel uncertain, unprepared, and unqualified. But let me assure you of this: what you have right now is enough. You can plan, delay, and revise all you want, but trust me, what you have now is enough to start. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to start a business, lose weight, write a book, or achieve any number of goals… who you are, what you have, and what you know right now is good enough to get going.
We all start in the same place: no money, no resources, no contacts, no experience. The difference is that some people — the winners — choose to start anyway.
Yesterday & Today
/Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today!
10 Data Science articles from October
/China continues remote-sensing buildup with new launch of Yaogan satellites
Bayes factors evaluate priors, cross validations evaluate posteriors
How the Pentagon sizes up China’s military strength in space
Convolutional Neural Networks: what are they, types and applications?
5 most common and important data structures that every data scientist should learn and master
The various industries where the demand is rising for data scientists
China plans to create lunar satellite network for deep space communications
NRO building new satellites to deliver ‘10 times more signals and images’
Slingshot Aerospace harnessing AI to track suspicious satellites
17 Quotes from Articles Comparing Generative AI to the Use of Calculators in Classrooms
/Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only through human emotion? – The Atlantic
There's a natural progression. New tools like the calculator, like Grammarly and editing tools that came out a number of years ago that made all of our writing better, including mine, right? Those are things that are just going to keep on coming. And, we can't stop them from coming, but it's up to us to decide how to integrate them appropriately. – ABC News
As math professors once had to adjust their math teaching in the presence of calculators, writing instructors may need to adjust their teaching in the presence of AI tools. “It would be like micromanaging the use of calculators in in a math class,” Underwood said. “If you’re doing that, it’s a sign that you’re not you’re not taking the opportunity to teach them more advanced math that would actually help them.” – Inside Higher Ed
The question before us is how we can productively use ChatGPT to help our students become knowledge transformers? A writer, a teacher, and an education professor all suggest an analogy from the calculator and math to ChatGPT and writing. In the same way that calculators became an important tool for students in math classes, ChatGPT has potential to become an important tool for writers who want to hone their critical thinking skills along with their communication skills. – Brookings
Much as Google devalued the steel-trap memory, electronic calculators speeded up complex calculations, Wikipedia displaced the printed encyclopedia and online databases diminished the importance of a vast physical library, so, too, platforms like ChatGPT will profoundly alter the most prized skills. According to Chamorro-Premuzic, the skills that will be most in demand will be the ability to: Know what questions to ask. – Inside Higher Ed
It reminds him of what his mother, a high-school math teacher, went through when graphing calculators were introduced. The initial reaction was to ban them; the right answer, he says, was to embrace and use them to enhance learning. “It was a multiyear process with a lot of trying and testing and evaluating and assessing.” Similarly, he anticipates a variety of approaches on his campus. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Gibson, who has been teaching for 25 years, likened it to more familiar tech tools that enhance, not replace, learning and critical thinking. “I don’t know how to do it well yet, but I want AI chatbots to become like calculators for writing,” she says. Gibson’s view of ChatGPT as a teaching tool, not the perfect cheat, brings up a crucial point: ChatGPT is not intelligent in the way people are, despite its ability to spew humanlike text. It is a statistical machine that can sometimes regurgitate or create falsehoods and often needs guidance and further edits to get things right. – Wired
In the past, near-term prohibitions on slide rules, calculators, word processors, spellcheck, grammar check, internet search engines and digital texts have fared poorly. They focus on in-course tactics rather than on the shifting contexts of what students need to know and how they need to learn it. Reframing questions about AI writers will drive assignment designs and assessments that can minimize academic integrity concerns while promoting learning outcomes. – Inside Higher Ed
Judging from the reaction on TikTok, teachers on the app see ChatGPT as a tool to be treated the same way calculators and cell phones are used in class — as resources to help students succeed but not do the work for them. – Mashable
Professors wondered whether students would lean on the technology as a crutch. “Just as some feared that pocket calculators would cause schoolchildren to forget their multiplication tables, some professors worry that students will learn how to use graphical calculators without learning the concepts of mathematics,” The Chronicle reported in 1992. “[Students] know the information is a quick Google search away,” one professor wrote in a 2015 op-ed for The Chronicle encouraging professors to ban the use of calculators found on laptops and phones during exams. “What’s the point of memorizing it, they want to know.” Despite those fears, the use of calculators in math classrooms and the drum of keyboards in lecture halls are now commonplace. “The calculator changes the kinds of questions that you can ask students,” one professor told The Chronicle in 1992. “A lot of problems we used to assign were very artificial, so the numbers would come out nicely. Today we don’t need to worry about that so much. The problems aren’t harder, but they’re not as neat.” – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Every time a new technology is introduced, we find ourselves struggling with how it forces people to rethink the things they do. The best comparison, he said, is calculators, which, like ChatGPT, many found threatening to education. The worry, he explained, was about the possibility of calculators and statistical software eventually replacing mathematicians. – Grid
The New York City Department of Education has banned ChatGPT in its schools, as has the University of Sciences Po, in Paris, citing concerns it may foster rampant plagiarism and undermine learning. Other professors openly encourage use of chatbots, comparing them to educational tools like a calculator, and argue teachers should adapt curriculums to the software. “Do you want to go to war with your students over AI tools?” said Ian Linkletter, who serves as emerging technology and open-education librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. “Or do you want to give them clear guidance on what is and isn’t okay, and teach them how to use the tools in an ethical manner?” “There are lots of years when the pocket calculator was used for all math ever, and you walked into a classroom and you weren’t allowed to use it,” he said. “It took probably a generational switch for us to realize that’s unrealistic.” Educators must grapple with the concept of “what does it mean to test knowledge.” In this new age, he said, it will be hard to get students to stop using AI to write first drafts of essays, and professors must tailor curriculums in favor of other assignments, such as projects or interactive work. “Pedagogy is going to be different,” he said. “And fighting [AI], I think it’s a losing battle.” – Washington Post
In an academic context, we should approach language models as engines for provisional reasoning — “calculators for words,” as British programmer Simon Willison calls them. Instead of assuming that the model already has an answer to every question in memory, this approach provides, in the prompt, any special assumptions or background knowledge the model will be expected to use. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Once calculators became prevalent, elementary schools pivoted to translating real-world problems into math formulations rather than training for arithmetic speed. Once online search became widely available, colleges taught students how to properly cite online sources. Some have explored banning AI in education. That would be hard to enforce; it’s also unhealthy, as students will need to function in an AI-infused workplace upon graduation. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Every generation of students comes of age with new technology. From the calculator and the personal laptop to smartphones to Zoom, each has been initially met with angst about the disruption to traditional teaching. We fear foundational knowledge will be replaced by robotic inputs and outputs, or that personal interactions unmediated by screens will be eliminated. And so the new technology can seem an obstacle to the parts of the educational experience we love the most — the look when a student first grasps a difficult concept, the spark from an original idea during a brainstorming session, the give-and-take of a classroom debate. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Practically speaking, I’m treating GPT like a calculator: Most of us used calculators in math class and still didn’t get perfect grades. After discovering my first ChatGPT essay, I decided that going forward, students can use generative A.I. on assignments, so long as they disclose how and why. I’m hoping this will lead to less banging my head against the kitchen table–and, at its best, be its own kind of lesson. – Slate
As academe adjusts to a world with ChatGPT, faculty will need to find fresh ways to assess students’ writing.The same was true when calculators first began to appear in math classrooms, and professors adapted the exams. “Academic integrity is about being honest about the way you did your work.” Spell checkers, David Rettinger, president emeritus at the International Center for Academic Integrity, pointed out, are a prime example of artificial intelligence that may have been controversial at first, but are now used routinely without a second thought to produce papers. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Just as calculators and the internet once upended teaching and learning, generative AI represents “a new, major disruption,” says Mike Prizament, senior product marketing manager at Adobe. “It’s also an opportunity to tackle the main challenges in higher education.” – EdTech