We were visited by guest speaker Sandy Eix to talk about Digital Literacy and AI, an excellent and relevant presentation. She covered a number of online tools, some new to me and some that I knew of but forgot about. Quick, Draw! is great practice for abstraction of 2D images, drawing from memory and for considering how an AI “thinks,” as well as just being a fun game. There were tools for considering how we decide to vote, presenting guided information on fictional candidates that highlight the difficulties in discerning the truth. There was a delightful BBC April Fool’s video about flying penguins featuring Terry Jones as narrator, elements of which still fooled some people despite obvious fake bits elsewhere. Everyone had a chance to share their experiences online and reflect on the meaning of our technology.

It is easy to forget that our students are growing up in a different age than us. I didn’t have a computer at home until I was about ten, then we connected to the internet when I was about fourteen. Even then there was only so much you could do: anything beyond a text file took half an hour to download. Also, I had to walk through the snow, uphill, both ways.