Episode #166. Saturday September 16, 2023, 11:00 Eastern
NOTE: Our apologies, due to technical error (i.e. forgetting to hit record) we do not have this episode archived. Oops!
We do include some screenshots from the Zoom call below – just because.
During the past year, you might have spent some time wondering about the role of the instructor in a post Generative AI world. Bryan Alexander will give a keynote talk at Online Educa Berlin in November where he will posit an answer. Alexander argues that the role of instructors might be helping with prompt generation and evaluation, facilitating groupwork, teaching critical and creative thinking while nurturing problem solving, providing emotional support, role modeling, and inspiring curiosity. Donald Clark has also written on this topic and engagingly debated Bryan Alexander. Clark believes that AI technology is now in a quite dynamic relationship with humans as we now co-create dialogue and co-synthesize, co-organize, and co-evaluate knowledge with the AI technologies that surround and support us. In this age of co-creation of multimedia for learning, we have a new form of pedagogy emerging which Clark dubs ‘pedAIgogy.’ He also argues that the final refuge of human exceptionalism can be found in 21st century thinking skills like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.
Clark and Alexander will not only discuss teaching and learning in the age of Generative AI, they will also address emerging ethical issues and ethical and doomsday misconceptions as well as a wide range of other concepts. Clark, who has several AI books, argues that while many ethical issues and warnings have already been aired and declared about Generative AI, minimal consideration has been given to the upsides or benefits of its use. In a July 11, 2023 blog post, Donald Clark stated, “Learning, in my view is the biggest beneficiary of this new form of AI, health care second. Hundreds of millions are already using it to learn.”
In Episode #166 of Silver Lining for Learning (SLL), Clark promises to expand on the benefits and learning possibilities of Generative AI and push our thinking into new territories that few of us have contemplated. Don’t miss it. With Bryan and the real Donald, Episode #166 of SLL promises to be a most entertaining, informative, eye opening, and engaging event. Know this: if there is a conference being held involving emerging learning technology and the future of education, Donald Clark and Bryan Alexander will likely be among those invited as keynote speakers.
Some screenshots from the conversation
Donald Clark is Professor, CEO, international speaker, prolific blogger, book author, from Brighton in the UK. With an unmatched passion, knowledge, and optimism related to advances in learning technology, Donald Clark has over three decades of experience at the intersection of technology and learning. As a blogger, he’s written a series of posts on 100 learning theorists who have shaped the world of learning. He’s also author of the book Artificial Intelligence for Learning. He was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, which established itself as the leading company in the UK e-learning market, floated on the Stock Market in 1996 and sold in 2005. Describing himself as ‘free from the tyranny of employment’, he is now the CEO of an AI learning company WildFire, investor, and Board member of PlanB learning, LearningPool, and Cogbooks. He has been involved in consulting and implementing online learning in schools, FE, HE, corporate, and government. Donald has been involved in film, games, web, mobile, MOOCs, and Oculus Rift and has won many awards for the design and implementation of online learning. He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences, having delivered talks in the US, Europe, Far East, Middle East, and Africa, and won several ‘Best speaker’ awards. Donald Clark is also a regular (and controversial) blogger on online learning!
Links
http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/
Is Ethics doing more HARM than GOOD in AI for Learning (blog post by Donald Clark, July 11, 2023
http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2023/07/ethics-ai-and-moral-high-horses-6.html
PedAIgogy – new era of knowledge and learning where AI changes everything, Donald Clark, March 2, 2023
http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2023/03/pedaigogy-new-era-of-knowledge-and.html
21st Century Skills – the last refuge of human exceptionalism!
Donald Clark Plan B
https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2023/05/21st-century-skills-last-refuge.html
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Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future. He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry. Shortly after, Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. There, he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative. From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies. With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow. Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda. In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC. He recently published Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education for Johns Hopkins University Press (January 2020), which won an Association of Professional Futurists award. His next book, Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Age of Climate Crisis, is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins. His two other recent books are Gearing Up For Learning Beyond K-12 and The New Digital Storytelling (second edition). Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program. You can find his c.v. here: BryanAlexander_cv 2023.
Online Educa Berlin: https://oeb.global/oeb-insights/
Bryan’s upcoming OEB keynote: https://oeb.global/oeb-insights/bryan-alexander-instructors-after-ai/