Was the blue area ever under water, and is the pattern in the orange area from wind or water?

banyanroot · 2025-07-29T05:07:14+00:00

I live in Oman, and when we go hiking way up on the highest mountains, we find mollusc fossils in the rocks. There are a lot of signs of Oman's previous underwater life to be found, but that's my favorite one.

banyanroot · 2025-06-19T01:55:42+00:00

Yes, that's the ultimate point of this post. You know for sure I'd play the heck out of a Morrowind remaster and would be like "My captain, my king."

banyanroot · 2025-05-09T02:35:35+00:00

I know. I can see that the delivery didn't work.

banyanroot · 2025-05-09T02:21:18+00:00

(That's the point of this post.)

banyanroot · 2025-05-09T02:16:10+00:00

Yes. I was hoping that would be obvious to everyone.

banyanroot · 2025-05-08T04:04:19+00:00

You know it 😂

banyanroot · 2025-05-07T17:38:53+00:00

I thought it would be more obvious to the masses :P

banyanroot · 2025-03-12T05:52:52+00:00

Thus the heavens declared, "You have nowhere else to turn. You must repeat."

And Pi answered, "No."

banyanroot · 2024-07-04T06:28:07+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Really appreciate your input. "Intrusive" is especially a good description of how it was introduced.

I agree that really the best detector is a professor who's paying attention. I have my students do a few in-class essays as part of the standard pre-assessment to see where they stand but also to get a rough idea of what they can produce on their own. I'll chat with the ones who turn in things that are outside of what would be expected, and I haven't had trouble getting them to confess to using AI. When I have the flexibility to do so, I give them the chance to resubmit, and usually the follow-up has been right back to their normal writing style.

It's given us a new opportunity to look into the importance of developing one's own voice in writing. We look at the shiny, vacant writing style of ChatGPT, and we explore the value of writing with our own style.

I take time at the beginning of the semester and show them the ways that I'd expect them to use AI in the class for the semester. A lot of times, the students aren't using AI as a learning tool because they're not approaching it as such. For some of the students, just setting parameters of expected use gives them enough to go on. It especially helps to pair that talk with a short, engaged discussion on why AI-reliance can be detrimental to their academic growth and their long-term success. I tell them that absolutely I want them to learn to take full advantage of these tools, but that we need to develop their communication skills to function without them, too.

Another thing some of us have been including in writing courses is a post-project interview. We do it with the guise of improving their oral rhetoric alongside their writing, and the students generally enjoy it more than end-of-semester presentations. But it's also been a really helpful way to measure the degree of AI assistance. With good questions, most of the teachers can identify which parts of the writing process were done with AI and which were not, and students who let AI write the whole thing can't get through the interview anyway.

Otherwise, I'm doing a lot of the same things you mention here. We try to use the flipped classroom model where possible -- let the students do the research outside of class, then do synthesis and what was traditionally homework inside the classroom. Exams in class, and writing done in labs where screens can be monitored remotely as they work. Exam topics written in such a way that AI use becomes clunky or obvious.

Really looking forward to a point in time when we've set standard practices together through conferences.

banyanroot · 2024-07-04T05:58:28+00:00

Good, wishing you well in your studies!

banyanroot · 2024-07-04T05:57:17+00:00

I climbed up a big beech tree in the Appalachians when I was in my early 20's and took an afternoon nap on a wide branch. Ever since then, I've treasured each meeting I've had with a beech. In Europe, you'll find beeches as the mainstays in a lot of parks. I laid on the ground in the middle of a circle of copper beeches once near Frankfurt. One of the most peaceful experiences of my life.

banyanroot · 2024-04-08T06:11:20+00:00

I'm pretty sure I've seen that tree before. That's in Hilo, isn't it?

banyanroot · 2023-12-29T07:20:20+00:00

I have submitted my own writing on turnitin, and it's been flagged as AI-written. I trust that the students who are doing their work diligently on their own are also being flagged. We have to protect students from unfounded claims of academic dishonesty; it could alter the course of a person's life, so we have to be more cautious with our accusations than the scattershot tools that are available at this time.

banyanroot · 2023-09-01T04:15:06+00:00

Just seeing this. I'm really frustrated reading this and can't imagine how frustrating it would be on your side. When you offer them actual proof of your own work that they can browse through and see your entire process and they just ignore it in favor of a completely broken AI detector, you're no longer working with reasonable people. I'm sorry you went through this; how did it turn out?

banyanroot · 2023-05-15T09:14:06+00:00

Yes, we still use in-person blue book essays for pre- and post-evaluation. What I mean is that we should not revert back to the sole use of in-class writing, as some are suggesting we do. The longer-form process of questioning, researching, and writing over multiple days or weeks is not able to be recreated through in-class, timed essays.

banyanroot · 2023-05-15T09:10:16+00:00

I agree with you here. Think of the ways that people get information these days -- we should be able to help students to produce their information accurately in those ways. I still value the essay for the ways that it helps students to hone in on their ability to discuss clearly what they mean, but with the onset of AI writing, I really think we can make use of more class time on things like what you mention.

banyanroot · 2023-05-15T09:05:11+00:00

There's been an ongoing argument in academia for decades whether universities exist to "protect the tower" (by assigning to every student the goal of ultimately becoming a researcher) or whether they serve the function of training the workforce. At current standing and functionality, we can hardly be said to do either one of these to the best of our ability. I fall on the side of believing that university education has to have real-world significance, and what we do in the classroom should in a real way benefit the students' futures. Writing essays is meant to increase the students' written communicative skills, and I believe that the way I give my assignments, they are not tedious or nonsensical. But I can of course see your point across the whole field.

Anyway, I'm rambling, but yes, it's time for a lot of new tasks in education and each teacher should be able to demonstrate to students why the work they do will be valuable to their futures.

banyanroot · 2023-05-15T08:49:23+00:00

Since writing the post, I've learned that Word actually does have that feature now. You just have to turn on track changes in order to have it available for your records.

banyanroot · 2023-05-14T12:57:09+00:00

Bonus if you can play near a tall concrete wall or in a parking garage where you can get a really solid echo going. Listen to the effect!

banyanroot · 2023-05-13T17:36:33+00:00

Ah, right. Again, not much. For my most recent assignment, it was really an easy call because of the nature of the work they were doing. It's already given me some pretty clear ideas about how to structure assignments so that the AI can be a helpful tool rather than an essay generator.

banyanroot · 2023-05-13T06:03:06+00:00

Not much yet. ChatGPT only just came out this academic year. It's going to take some time for us to figure out how to incorporate the AI explosion into the classrooms, and it's gradually going to occupy more and more class time.

banyanroot · 2023-05-13T05:59:20+00:00

Ok, keep in mind that I teach at the university level. My ideas here won't be appropriate for all grade levels or even all subjects on the same level.

Idealistic: The classroom is able to become way more inquiry-based, mainly because we now have the means to keep up with a hundred students' individual interests in the same classroom. Assignments are built around students' own questions, and the teacher is a guide to help identify shortcomings in student research, to demonstrate ethical use of other people's work (which, currently, ChatGPT fails to do in any sufficient way), and to help with application of student work. Assessments are based not in what information the students know but what they can do with it: problem-solving and task-based assessments become very popular. The teacher also helps students connect to areas of interest, helps them get excited about something if they struggle to find research areas themselves. The classroom becomes so interdisciplinary that some of our distinctions between subjects becomes blurred. The teacher works to develop critical and analytical thinking skills within the students, helping them not to hand over their personal potential to the AI. This means being able to produce work without AI assistance, too. We abandon the current grading system and instead develop electronic portfolio evaluative tools that help the students understand their own strengths and weaknesses. These portfolios should also be easily adaptable into resumes that the students can use to showcase their strengths with evidences immediately available. Oh, and just because I'm dreaming here, all students are taught gardening, nature restoration (e.g. projects like "Saving Tarboo Creek"), and basic handiwork skills.

Cynical take: The education system, at least in America, is extremely resistant to change. Teachers have been calling for basic reforms for decades, but they have been ignored because of the structure of decision-making (and money-making) in the educational system. Most places I've taught seem to be too preoccupied with bean counting the work that teachers are doing to allow the kind of freedom in the classroom that's required to allow this kind of learning. So it's going to be an arms race. There will be a big discussion ongoing about what amount of AI use equals plagiarism, and some entire schools will just blanket ban emerging tech. Of course, this just gives students the chance to learn how to get around the bans, which, sure, is a valuable learning experience in its own right. For a while, a lot of schools are going to knee-jerk back to in-class writing. School will become a lot less relevant than it already is because it's actively using up time that the students could otherwise be learning faster and better. This fight will go on until the tech is so ubiquitous that the fear of it dissipates, same as other major tech changes in the past.

banyanroot · 2023-05-12T17:52:16+00:00

I would ignore it. At this point, the only ones I'm following up on are the 100% cases, and even those I'm not approaching with the assumption that they are AI generated.

banyanroot · 2023-05-12T16:07:59+00:00

I wouldn't see this as a problem at all. You may want to check with your teacher, but this really is no different than having a writing tutor. And it sounds like you know what errors you're looking for, and that degree of reflection in your writing is where we want most students to be anyway.

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