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markbetnel.bsky.social
He/him. I'm a curious teacher.
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Would the existence of strong (and cheap, and benign) AGI still be compatible with human education? I say yes -- because learning is fun! markbetnel.com/blog/posts/w...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

markbetnel.com/blog/posts/s... I wrote a little response/expansion on Eryk Salvaggio's www.techpolicy.press/anatomy-of-a.... I'm wondering with Musk believes that AGI is imminent or not, and whether that explains why he's apparently helping to eviscerate the funding of US scientific work.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

This is a fantastic resource. I've been reading through it the last two days and will definitely be including some of it in the spring run of my high school "AI & the Future" the course.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Snow day!

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

My officemate is *committed* to the bit. He's teaching an environmental science class right now, leading students through a case study about wildebeest migration, and he's up in the front of the room in overalls wearing a sandwich board sign proclaiming that he's a "wildebeest wrangler".

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... FTA: "efforts to demystify AI may inadvertently reduce its appeal, indicating that maintaining an aura of magic around AI could be beneficial for adoption" Flip this on its head and you kind of have my motivation for the high school AI class I teach.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

Email from a student this morning: "I hope you are having a good weekend. I couldn't stop thinking about the problem you gave us last class, so I solved it this morning." Yeah, I think I'm having a good weekend. :) #iTeachPhysics

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

100 years ago today, #OTD in 1925, Edwin Hubble announced that Andromeda and other spiral nebulae were definitely separate galaxies outside the Milky Way, in a paper read to an AAS meeting by H.N. Russell. There was no doubt that the Universe was more than just our little island of stars. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

submitted 53 days ago • 42 comments

mail.cyberneticforests.com/how-does-ope... Great read from @eryk.bsky.social. My favorite: "But why are we saving time? We can also save time by undercooking fish, but it’s not ideal. What is lost when we outsource planning time and attention to the shape of the curriculum?"

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Just messing around, I recreated a desmos graph I've seen from others (can't recall who) that draws two circular orbits and the line connecting the planets after each time step. www.desmos.com/calculator/m... #iTeachPhysics

submitted 90 days ago • 1 comment

I would like to speak up today for the trans community. You see, I know a bit of what it’s like to be politically scapegoated. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, suddenly anyone in America who had any amount of Japanese ancestry became suspect. Politicians preyed upon ignorance and fear. /1

submitted 98 days ago • 826 comments

After 20+ years of teaching in colleges and private schools, I am *this close* to being certificated. I start student teaching (in my own classroom) next week after finishing all the MAT coursework yesterday. #iTeachPhysics

submitted 481 days ago • 0 comments

The old PhET Lunar Lander simulation was defunct (they made it in Flash - phet.colorado.edu/en/simulatio...) so I made a new version for my class. Took about 20 minutes using GPT assistance (rocketsim-2.markbetnel.repl.co) to get a working version, then quite a bit more to fuss with it.

submitted 486 days ago • 2 comments

What's the connection between Nightshade (arxiv.org/abs/2310.13828) and the argument about the long term un-viability of poisoning facial recognition databases (arxiv.org/abs/2106.148...)? Is the short term deterrence benefit of poisoning valuable in some way even if it won't work long term?

submitted 487 days ago • 0 comments