Digital literacy – Learning Aloud

Avoid Social Media Bias

In so many areas, the potential of the Internet seems subverted by the design decisions made by those who have built businesses on top of what seemed an innovation with so much potential. My focus here is on the political division and animosity that now exists. Since the origin of cable television, we have had a similar issue with an amazing increase in the amount of content, but the division of individuals into tribes that follow different “news” channels that offer predictably slanted accounts of the news of the day to the extent that loyal viewers are often completely unaware of important stories or different interpretations of the events they do encounter.

The Internet might have seemed a remedy. Social media services are already functioning as an alternative with many now relying on social media for a high proportion of the news individuals encounter. Unfortunately, social media services are designed in ways that make them as biased and perhaps more radicalizing than cable tv news channels.

Social Media and Internet News Sources

Here is the root of the problem. Both social media platforms and news sources can use your personal history to manipulate what you read. Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, X, Instagram) use algorithms that analyze your past behavior, such as the posts you’ve liked, shared, or commented on, as well as the time you spend on certain types of content. They use this information to curate and prioritize content in your feed, including news articles, which they predict will keep you engaged on their platform. You add the way algorithms work on top of the reality that those we follow as “friends” are likely to have similar values and beliefs and what you read is unlikely to challenge personal biases you hold. To reverse the Rolling Stone lyric, you always get what you want and not what you need.

News sources are different from social media in which you identify friends and sources. However, news sources can also tailor their content based on the data they gather from your interactions with their posts or websites. These practices are part of a broader strategy known as targeted or personalized content delivery, which is designed to increase user engagement and, for many platforms, advertising revenue.

Many major news organizations and digital platforms target stories based on user data to personalize the news experience. Here are some examples:

Google News: Google News uses algorithms to personalize news feeds based on the user’s search history, location, and past interactions with Google products. It curates stories that it thinks will be most relevant to you.

Apple News: By using artificial intelligence, Apple News+ offers a personalized user experience. Publishers can adapt content based on readers’ preferences and behavior, leading to stronger engagement and longer reading times.

The New York Times: The New York Times has a recommendation engine that suggests articles based on the user’s reading habits on their website. If you read a lot of technology-related articles, for example, the site will start to show you more content related to technology.

Are Federated Social Media different?

Federated social media refers to a network of independently operated servers (instances) that communicate with each other, allowing users from different instances to interact. The most notable example of a federated social media platform is Mastodon, which operates on the ActivityPub protocol. On Mastodon, you can follow accounts from various instances, including those that post news updates. For example, if a news organization has an account on a Mastodon instance, you can follow that account from your instance, and updates from that news source will appear in your feed. This system allows for a wide range of interactions across different communities and servers, making it possible to follow and receive updates from diverse news sources globally.

Your Mastodon timeline is just a reverse chronological feed of the people you follow, or the posts from people on your instance only (and not across all of Mastodon). There’s no mysterious algorithm optimized for your attention. So, with Mastodon, a news source you follow may have a general bias, but you would get the stories they share without prioritization by an algorithm based on your personal history.. This should generate a broader perspective.

With Mastodon, you can join multiple instances some of which may have a focus. For example, I first joined Maston.Social which at the time was that instance most users were joining. I have since joined a couple of other instances (twit.social & mastadon.education) that have a theme (technology and education), but participants post on all kinds of topics. An interesting characteristic of federated services is that you can follow individuals from other instances – e.g., you can follow me by adding @grabe@twit.social from other instances.

This brings me to a way to generate a news feed the posts from which will not be ordered based on a record of your personal use of that instance. Many news organizations have content shared through Mastodon and you can follow this content no matter the Mastodon instance you join. Some examples follow, but you can search for others through any Mastodon account. You follow these sources in the same way you would follow an individual on another account.

@npr@mstdn.social

@newyorktimes@press.coop

@cnn@press.coop

@wsj@press.coop

@bbc@mastodon.bot

@Reuters@press.coop

Full access may depend on subscriptions. For example, I have a subscription for the NYT.

So, if a more balanced feed of news stories appeals to you. Try joining a Mastodon instance and then follow a couple of these news sources.

The Advantage of Paper? Why?

Happy New Year. My final post of the year will return to one of the issues I have written about several times during this past year. I would describe the issue as seeking an answer to the questions “Does reading from a screen reduce understanding immediately and reduce the development of reading skills long term?” At one level, I know what I think personally. I read nearly everything from a screen because what I am doing is more than reading. I am using the digital advantage of reading from a device in the process of taking notes and annotating I see as beneficial in the long run. I have made my own decision regarding my behavior in what I consider a logical way. The issue of skill development is a different issue. I see the amount of time our grandkids spend on their devices mostly watching video. I really don’t know if this preoccupation with screen-based information is damaging to their development of reading and thinking skills. I do think it is an important issue that deserves attention.

I just finished working my way through a new meta-analysis related to this issue (Altamura and colleagues). Like so many articles I have read on the topic, the results are troubling as related to the concern for younger readers. However, the results because of the limitations of the methodology employed are open to questions and alternative interpretations. I will describe the review as best I can and as always invite those interested in this issue to read the original document for themselves.

The authors begin their approach by noting a widely accepted relationship between “out of classroom” reading to reading skill development. The relationship is proposed based on a positive spiral. As younger readers are exposed to gradually more demanding texts, they develop improved skills important to reading comprehension. These improved skills make possible successful understanding of even more demanding material which tends to be more informative and enjoyable and the upward spiral of capabilities continues. This relationship relates to other literacy correlates such as having access to more reading material in the home and being read to more frequently.

With an interest in digital reading, the researchers decide to review literature relating screen-based reading to reading proficiency as readers age. Does the same relationship between reading digital content and reading skill hold developmentally for what they define as recreational reading? With their definition of recreational reading comes the first methodological issue? They include pretty much any text-based experience one might have on a digital device – text messages, social media interactions of any type, blogs, and digital books. Obviously, there is not a meaningful equivalent to social media and text in previous studies of the relationship between text consumption and reading proficiency. The researchers did code from the difference between these short and long form samples of text in their statistical approach and this distinction will end up being important in my comments at a later point in this post.

The researchers propose they are testing two competing hypotheses. The displacement hypothesis suggests digital text is a replacement for text on paper and the shallowing hypothesis suggests that shorter segments of text so frequently available in digital environments require less in processing skill and encourage scanning and skimming. Shallowing may prevent critical skills from being applied and developed.

The researchers summarize their results as follows:

This relationship is significantly moderated by the reader’s educational stage. At early stages (primary and middle school) negative relationships are observed between leisure digital reading and text comprehension, while at later stages (high school and university) the relationship turns positive.

While the pattern of reading activity and comprehension skill differs from what is found with paper-based text, neither of the hypotheses was cleanly supported. This was the case because age was the only moderator variable achieving significance and the relationship was not consistent. The differentiation of the type of reading material was not significant. That is, the division between time spent on the more purely social and short content versus longer content was not a significant predictor of skill differences. The researchers suggest that studying the combination of screen and paper could be important. In other words, a focus on digital reading ignores other reading the participants might have done with text on paper which would likely have been longer-form reading.

So, this paper can be added to others (e.g., Delgado at colleagues) that offer concerns especially for younger readers. As I have suggested in other posts, this question is difficult for researchers to address because important variables are difficult to control with carefully controlled research studies. The developmental nature of reading skill is not consistent with an experimental approach that would control a treatment such as whether individuals read from paper or screen over an extended period of time. I question how much “reading” children actually do from screens. Few are allowed or can access social media services as a matter of personal safety. A more significant issue would seem to me to be whether reading is being replaced by watching. Research typically fails to provide actual quantification of the amount of time individuals are exposed to text. Without total exposure perhaps differentiated as screen vs paper, what conclusions are possible?

References

Altamura, L., Vargas, C., & Salmerón, L. (2023). Do New Forms of Reading Pay Off? A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Leisure Digital Reading Habits and Text Comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 00346543231216463.

Delgado, P., Vargas, C., Ackerman, R., & Salmerón, L. (2018). Don’t throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension. Educational Research Review, 25, 23-38.

Follow bloggers for a deeper context

I have had at least one blog since 2002. Since that time, I have also had control of the server on which my blog and other content I created was stored. At the beginning of this period of time, I worked at a university and was able to run a server through the university network. This translates as I had a dedicated IP for my site and once someone found my content and bookmarked the site, the site would always be available at that address. I can’t remember the exact address, but it did indicate my server was identified as a part of the more general university network.

When I began to generate free content I intended to supplement the textbook my wife and I had written through what was originally Houghton-Mifflin, I decided it might appear that even though the content I was offering was free to any viewer, it might seem I was using university resources to benefit me financially and so I began renting server space. I have continued to host my content through Bluehost since that time. This company provides services at multiple levels. My blogs make use of WordPress, but I have a general account because I use Bluehost for content other than blogs.

I spend about $200 a year for the server space and the cost of two domains (learningaloud and curmudgeonspeaks). I include this financial information because part of the issue of how you provide online content has a financial component. Among the financial issues are whether you want to make money and whether you want to minimize personal costs. None of the content on my server is behind a paywall and there are Google ads on some of my content. The income from ad clickthroughs is less than $25 a year. So, I must recognize that my site is a hobby and the inclusion of ads is pretty much a matter of personal curiosity. I follow the analytics my site generates as part of this hobby. The activity level the site generates is sufficient to maintain my interest, but has declined in this last decade. I attribute this decline to moving from having textbooks sold through a textbook company to self-publishing via Amazon. My motives for this transition have been documented in my blog posts and were related to my interest in investigating a different model for textbooks that combined a smaller and less expensive book with online resources.

I am writing this post partly as an extension of a previous post that considered cross-posting my blog content to Medium and Substack. One way to look at the purpose of this post might be to explore the question of why with the availability of services such as Medium and Substack (and other outlets) would anyone want to continue to pay to host personal content. I am not alone in asking this question. My take is related to, but not equivalent to the concept of COPE (compose once publish everywhere), but focuses on different values and factors.

I find that a core belief I have about having a location where you store and host your own content has considerable overlap with my beliefs concerning the value of books. I believe book authors and content providers bring a perspective and context to their creative work that is not maintained in pieces of content experienced in isolation. You might argue that this is fine because as a consumer you will build your own understanding based on the elements of information you pick up from multiple authors. I agree you might and probably should do this. However, models of understanding are transferable and can be used to build on and contrast with personal efforts to develop understanding.

Yes, this sounds pretty abstract and vague. Think of what I describe as a model as a way of understanding – how you see things working and what causes what to happen. Ways of understanding (models) can be general and specific and they can be complete or incomplete. Sometimes we have flawed ways of understanding that seem to work in some situations, but we may at some point find our way of understanding does not work in others. We can be convinced we have things figured out when this is really not the case and only when we try our models in actual situations or compare them to the models of others with different and perhaps more experience that we see a bigger picture.

I have generated thousands of posts over the 20+ years I have been involved in blogging. I am certain some of my posts are naive and wrong and some may be inconsistent. Like a book, the collection does emphasize a limited set of ideas and provides connections among these ideas. These posts are tagged and organized so any interested party can explore related ideas to explore the broader context of my ideas. You just don’t get this with the selection of posts I add to Substack or Medium.

Prebunking offers some advantages over debunking

Preparing learners to deal with the faulty information they encounter in their lives has become another task educators are expected to accomplish. This expectation is a reasonable response to the mixed quality of online resources including some attempts to purposefully mislead viewers.

What follows is a lengthy post about approaches that can be applied to deal with exposure to misinformation. The primary focus is on a technique called “debunking” which represents a general approach for helping individuals not be taken in by misinformation. By general, I mean that the techniques do not involve rejecting specific misinformation by the introduction of convincing information after the initial exposure to misinformation. Prebunking involves approaches that prepare individuals to reject misinformation and as a general strategy has certain advantages of not having to be tailored to address false understandings after false beliefs have taken hold.

For those who want a quick alternative to reading my entire post, I will explain that prebunking involves familiarization with common approaches used to encourage the acceptance of false information. The study I will describe created this sensitivity through short videos. These videos are available and educators may find them useful in their classes. The videos can be found here:

https://inoculation.science/inoculation-videos/

This post uses some language that may be new to those who don’t read the scientific research I read. Allow me to first offer definitions for these terms as used in this research. These concepts are interrelated and I have attempted to identify some of these connections.

Debunk – to provide evidence intended to call into question faulty beliefs

Prebunk/Inoculation – to provide explanations of faulty beliefs before they are encountered in an attempt to prevent acceptance of these flawed beliefs.

Conceptual change – the attempt to bring into awareness and then counter faulty information accepted by a learner

Cognitive conflict – the proposal that a learner must be aware of the inconsistency between an existing belief and information relevant to this belief before change can occur (related to conceptual change and inert knowledge)

Naive theory – a personal theory based on an interpretation of life experiences

Inert knowledge – stored knowledge that is called into awareness only when certain contextual conditions are met. Inert knowledge implies that a second stored understanding also exists that is activated under different conditions. This term is often used to explain how naive theories that are flawed can persist despite learning more appropriate things in an educational setting. Hence, one understanding is activated in a school setting and a different understanding in day-to-day situations outside of school.

Motivated cognition – a psychological concept that refers to the tendency of individuals to interpret and process information in ways that align with their preexisting beliefs, values, and desires. This phenomenon can occur across various domains, such as politics, religion, social issues, and personal beliefs.

Confirmation bias – one example of motivated cognition that involves the selection or interpretation of inputs to sustain existing beliefs.

Conceptual change and naive beliefs

I think of misinformation in terms of what I know about conceptual change. This is a way to understand learning and also changes in understanding. I think of the topic of learning in terms of personal knowledge building. Each of us builds personal knowledge as models of how the world works. We use these models to interpret new experiences and when new experiences do not fit our understanding of how something works (a model), we may make adjustments in our model. Piaget called these two complementary processes assimilation and accommodation. We interpret experiences in terms of an existing model (assimilation) and when this will not work, we adjust or update our model (accommodation). The mismatch between experience and model when recognized is described as cognitive conflict and results in a motivation to create an adjustment.

My exposure to conceptual change theory occurred within the context of science education. There are many concepts in the formal study of science that explain phenomena we experience all of the time (e.g., gravity, inertia). Before we are educated in formal explanations we develop our own models of these phenomena. For example, what I sometimes describe as the “roadrunner” model of inertia and gravity imagines a roadrunner speeding off a cliff and speeding through the air. At a point, the roadrunner realizes it is no longer on solid ground and then plunges straight down. This model is an example of a naive theory – it kind of works, but is not how inertia and gravity actually work. Eventually, we learn a more accurate understanding. Assuming heavy and light objects (say a bowling and tennis ball) fall at the same rate often works as another example. It seems logical, but isn’t accurate.

Some naive theories have an interesting characteristic. They may persist even after learners have learned a more accurate account of a phenomenon. A learner may store and retain inconsistent models. One model active in daily life and the other in the school setting. This is the challenge of inert knowledge. It is thought that this is possible because recall is context dependent and there are some interesting demonstrations that the likelihood of formal knowledge can be activated by preceding a question about a phenomenon by suggesting a context. For example, you may remember from school the story of Galileo’s famous Tower of Pisa experiment before asking which of a heavy or light object will fall fastest. Without the prompt and reminder of the school context, it might seem logical that the heavier object will fall faster. The prompt changes the context.

Inert knowledge is a significant challenge. How does education (one context) prepare learners for functioning in a different context (daily life)? Learning alone is not enough. It is also necessary to activate and modify existing ways of understanding that are incorrect. That two-step process – activate and then experience limitations – is cognitive conflict. Physical demonstrates work great if preceded by outcomes that are unanticipated. Computer simulations can in some cases provide similar experiences. Even mentioning common misconceptions before providing accurate explanations can be successful. Textbook authors can use this strategy. This approach to conceptual change might be described as debunking.

What is frustrating is that in some situations calling out false understandings and then providing information that supports a different understanding seems inadequate. Our present circumstances with political differences of opinion are a good example. We find it completely illogical when we point what seem obvious contradictions to certain arguments and someone is willing to persist in a flawed understanding. We have encountered a challenge of motivated cognition.

Motivated cognition is a psychological concept that refers to the tendency of individuals to interpret and process information in ways that align with their preexisting beliefs, values, and desires. My favorite example when I was teaching was to recognize the predictable reaction of sports fans who witness a close call say charging or pass interference and come to the opposite opinion on what the correct call should be. Same data, different interpretations easily predicted from the team they were rooting for. Such examples involve a cognitive bias where people are more likely to accept, remember, and give greater weight to information that supports their existing views while disregarding or downplaying information that contradicts their beliefs. In essence, motivated cognition can lead to selective perception and interpretation of information to maintain a preferred mindset or belief system.

This phenomenon can occur across various domains, such as politics, religion, social issues, and personal beliefs. Motivated cognition can significantly influence how people form opinions, make decisions, and engage in discussions or debates. It plays a crucial role in the formation and reinforcement of attitudes, as well as in the persistence and spread of misinformation.

What can be done in such situations which have become predictive of how people take positions on such important issues as climate change or the value of inoculations? Prebunking, originally called inoculation in the research literature, proposes an intervention before flawed inputs have been fully processed. It is technically a little different from techniques that attempt to create cognitive conflict by acknowledging flawed beliefs as might be the case in a textbook. but similar. I came across a field research study making use of short videos to point out common misinformation techniques. The idea is that by labeling misinformation as it is encountered the processing of that information will be modified or the information ignored.

The prebunking intervention in this study (reference appears below) consisted of short videos explaining six different manipulative strategies – using strong emotional language, using incoherent arguments, presenting false dichotomies, scapegoating individuals or groups, and ad hominem attacks (attacking the person rather than the argument). Exposure to these videos (experimental vs control) resulted in more accurate detection of misinformation immediately and after a year. The researchers also tested their technique by posting two of their videos on YouTube as ads and then comparing the impact on those who had viewed and not viewed their ads on a dependent variable – reaction to misinformation.

Other writers have recognized the potential of debunking in the context of predicting AI will only increase the amount and personalization of misinformation. https://thedispatch.com/article/fake-news-meets-artificial-intelligence/

While the researchers do demonstrate significant consequences for exposure to the debunking videos, it is important to recognize the practical magnitude of the benefits is not great. Prebunking videos perhaps like other educational efforts to sensitize learners to propaganda techniques does not come close to eliminating the problem. Debunking efforts must continue as well.

Again, I think educators could make use of the videos the researchers have made available. https://inoculation.science/inoculation-videos/

References:

Nickerson, Raymond S. (June 1998), “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises”, Review of General Psychology, 2 (2): 175–220

Roozenbeek, J., Van Der Linden, S., Goldberg, B., Rathje, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2022). Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Science Advances, 8(34), eabo6254

The Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health

A couple of recent resources concerned with the relationship between social media use and mental health. As an educational psychologist with an interest in technology. I find myself in the middle when addressing this topic. I see value in the use of online sources and I also have studied cyberbullying through social media and have some insights into at least that peril. A significant challenge in the actual study of this general question is the difficulty of applying experimental research methods. When you collect data without control (correlational research), you must deal with problems interpreting the direction of causation (does too much social media cause mental health issues or do those with mental health issues turn to social media) and the illusion of a relationship because both variables are related to a third variable. There is also the possibility that the relationship works differently for different individuals. Some may benefit and some may be harmed. What do you do then?

People often tire of researchers offering the results of their studies and then arguing more research is needed. However, this is probably the best advice as looking for simple answers often does not seem to fit the data. Why does this caution matter? Consider that politicians are being pressed to address social media issues. Those who work in specific fields frequently ridicule the knowledge of politicians. Aside from situations that this is legitimate, there are many situations in which there seems great pressure from the public for action. However, sometimes simple responses are not ideal.

In the digital age, social media has become a significant part of our lives, especially for the younger generation. However, its influence on youth mental health is a topic of growing concern and research. A summary of the two sources I mentioned follows. As always, I provide links and encourage your own reading of these documents if the material covers a topic you find of great importance.

According to the Surgeon General’s Report on Social Media up to 95% of youth aged 13-17 report using a social media platform. The influence of social media on youth mental health is shaped by complex factors, including the amount of time spent on platforms, the type of content consumed, and the degree to which it disrupts essential activities like sleep and physical activity.

While social media can provide benefits by fostering positive community and connection, especially for marginalized youth, it also poses significant risks. A longitudinal cohort study found that adolescents who spent more than 3 hours per day on social media faced double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, including symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The Atlantic Article on Teens and Social Media further explores this complex relationship. It suggests that social media’s effects depend a lot on the person using it, playing different roles for different demographics and at different stages of life. The article also highlights the need to identify which aspects of social media are riskiest and which adolescents are most susceptible to its harm.

The article also discusses the importance of externalizing our thoughts and feelings, suggesting that those who view social media more positively and feel in control of their use report better outcomes. This highlights the potential for social media to be a tool for expression and connection when used mindfully and responsibly.

However, the relationship between social media and youth mental health remains complex and potentially bidirectional. It’s crucial to continue researching and understanding this relationship to develop effective strategies for mitigating potential harms and promoting positive online behavior.

The Surgeon General’s Report includes specific recommendations for policy makers, companies, parents, and young people.

AI writing is here – teachers be aware

I intend this post as a public service announcement of a sort for educators at all levels. If you have not personally explored AI assisted writing, you need to do so. I will explain how. I say this because your students will soon explore AI services that will generate written products for them and you will have to adjust how you think about writing assignments as a consequence.

My suggestion is that you give a service called ChatGPT a try. Sign up and get a free account. The service is very easy to use. Once you have an account, you simply enter a description of what you want into a text box and wait for a reply. I think the sophistication of what is generated is likely to shock most and this reaction should cause you to consider what access to a service like this means for the tasks you describe in your classroom.

Here are a couple of examples. These examples relate to topics I might raise in a graduate educational technology course. My point is these are challenges I might offer students first to see if they understood a topic we had covered and then if they could connect this topic to other cognitive phenomena.

Me: What is a semantic network?

ChatGPT: A semantic network is a graph-based representation of a knowledge domain. It is a way of representing structured knowledge by modeling the relationships between concepts. In a semantic network, concepts are represented as nodes in the graph, and the relationships between concepts are represented as edges that connect the nodes. This allows for the representation of complex ideas and their relationships in a clear and intuitive manner. For example, a semantic network could be used to represent the relationships between different types of animals, their characteristics, and the ways in which they interact with each other.

Me: How can a semantic network explain the tip of the tongue phenomenon?

ChatGPT: The tip of the tongue phenomenon, also known as “TOT,” is a common experience in which a person knows that they know a word or a piece of information, but they cannot recall it at the moment. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the information is present in the person’s semantic network, but it is not easily accessible at the moment. In a semantic network, information is typically represented as nodes in the graph, and the connections between these nodes encode the relationships between different pieces of information. When a person experiences the tip of the tongue phenomenon, it may be because the information they are trying to recall is present in the network, but the path to access it is not easily accessible. In other words, the person knows that the information is there, but they cannot retrieve it easily because the connections between the relevant nodes in the network are not strong enough.

Me: Can the semantic network explain the testing effect?

ChatGPT: Yes, the semantic network can help explain the testing effect, which is the phenomenon whereby taking a test on material improves subsequent recall of that material compared to simply studying the material. The testing effect is thought to occur because taking a test forces a person to retrieve information from their memory, which strengthens the connections between the relevant nodes in their semantic network. This makes it easier to access the information in the future.

——–

Just so you appreciate what you are reading try this. Take the final question “Me: Can the semantic network explain the testing effect?” and enter it as a Google search. You will generate plenty of hits, but the hits are not really answers to the question. The hits at the top of the list I received were explanations of what a semantic network is and represented content I would have to read to generate an understanding. I did find an explanation of what the testing effect is in another hit further down the list. I did not find a resource near the top of the list that would cover a possible connection between the two. Educators may be familiar with the testing effect, but why it works so successfully is fairly speculative. I explain it by connecting the concepts of a networked associative model of memory and the cognitive mechanisms of the retrieval process which is kind of what I would be looking for if I had asked the question of students who have discussed these concepts with me. I was impressed AI put it together in a similar way.

So, AI writing is not simply retrieving what someone else has written (search), but is building from a huge collection of content at a more abstract level.

So? Well, students can “write” impressive products by giving an AI bot instructions. They may do this because they want to read how the AI bot generates a response they would find informative (Note: Search may soon be replaced by this type of AI process because it answers questions rather than just providing resources you can use to answer them yourself). AI can be your teacher.

However, if you are teacher using writing to evaluate learning or writing skill or if you are a teacher using writing as a way to encourage student learning (writing across the curriculum), the “writing” generated by AI is a challenge for you. It does not require much from the student in terms of content review, application of writing skills, or personal understanding. Like math teachers who figured out students could take a picture of a problem the students were assigned and have an online service solve it and show a solution process, you are now dealing with a new reality. Writing extended content is also a process that is much more difficult to monitor. You can watch students write a theme in class, but a research paper is a different beast.

Let’s start with this. Take some time to explore ChatGPT. You really need this personal experience to understand present capabilities. Don’t start by thinking how you might ban access. This will not be realistic AND it ignores the positive opportunities this type of tool offers. Are there opportunities you can think of? Now, what about limitations? What about citations? This service strikes me as a very intelligent colleague who can spout off on nearly any topic, but leaves me with little I can read and consider myself. How could I as a writer even use content a service like this might generate in something I would write? How would I justify the statements made? My first reaction is that educators review what they know about the Flower and Hayes writing process and consider what tangibles they might ask students provide at each stage of the process. For example, what are the notes they generated from the sources they intend to cite in their final product. How did they put these notes together in getting to this final product?

One more thing. I wrote a previous post about ChatGPT for Medium and in this post I included the response to a question about how AI writing might limit what students learn from writing themselves I asked of ChatGPT. I thought the response was quite useful and honest (now I am anthropomorphizing). Honesty is not always something you get with human authors.

Twitter Manipulation

We are now in the heat of election season and social media sources are constantly feeding us ads attempting to encourage our vote for one candidate or another. In general, I don’t find short-form ads very useful. There is a statement intended to impact me in some way or another and little in the way of justification or evidence. Twitter must fall into this approach because of the length of messages that are allowed.

I think political season offers a great opportunity to explore social media and consider how the algorithms and our own choices may mislead us. I have two explorations to suggest.

Twitter with and without the algorithm

The default in Twitter makes use of an algorithm to prioritize what we see in our feed. In other words, the algorithm decides what will appear at the top of the feed and content assumed to be less interesting based on our past behavior will appear further down as we scroll.

It turns out we can turn this algorithm off and if we decide to do so the content in the feed will be arranged chronologically. In other words, the feed is arranged based on when our friends generated tweets.

It is interesting to compare these feeds. Here is how.

At the top of the Twitter display, you should see what I describe as stars. If you hover over this icon you will see your current setting. In the image below, you can see I have my feed set to the chronological option.

If you click on the “star” icon, you will find a way to activate the other display option. In this case, it would be the algorithmically driven alternative. Toggling back and forth gives you a feel for how you have been categorized by the algorithm.

What are the other folks posting to Twitter.

The Polarization Lab at Duke University has been investigating how social media exposure increases or decreases existing political extremism. I review some of the tools they make available and some of the research they have conducted in an earlier post.

One of their more interesting experiments involves the use of bots they have created to forward the input from moderate liberals and conservatives. They propose that exposure to extremists of either orientation leads to greater polarization, but exposure to moderate positions taken by those with a different position than your own may lead to a lessening of polarization.

I have been following both Twitter bots for several months now. You can participate as well. If you don’t want to participate, you call always search for one of the bots just to see how the feeds from moderates of both perspectives differ.

@Polly4Conserv – for liberals to learn about moderate conservatives

@Polly4Liberals – for conservatives to learn about moderate conservatives

Educators looking for an interesting project might ask students to come up with a system for studying political orientation and apply this system to the two different sets of tweets.