1. Ethan Mollick’s blog, One Useful Thing, focuses on AI and its impacts on work and education. Here’s his latest post, The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation: taking AI timelines seriously https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-lazy-tyranny-of-the-wait-calculation I’m now debating whether I can afford not to spend $20 a month on a subscription to Chat GPT Plus so I can play with some of the GPTs that he’s created. (And, no, I’m not quite sure what creating a GPT for oneself involves.)
Here’s a recent paper he co-authored with his wife, Lilach, Assigning AI: seven approaches for students, with prompts https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4475995 You’ll need to sign up to SSRN here, if you’re not already a member https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/
More Team Mollick papers here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=5621131 and PDFs of all three below.
2. The first Green Action ELT event this year, Staff fridge to conference buffet: reducing our food emissions, at 16:00 UK time this Friday, 26th January, looks at how we can reduce emissions from food and food waste, from snacks in the board room to full catering at residential schools https://green-action-elt.uk/events/
3. Three recent pieces from Engelsberg Ideas https://engelsbergideas.com/
Grey zones and dark tourism in Europe’s hinterlands by Hannah Lucinda Smith https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/grey-zones-and-dark-tourism-in-europes-hinterlands/
Roald Dahl’s readable but regrettable Uncle Oswald by Alexander Larman https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/roald-dahls-uncle-oswald/
Best of Engelsberg Ideas in 2023 https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/best-of-engelsberg-ideas-in-2023/ Ten for the price of one, that last one!
4. I am way off the pace according to Trinity’s new report, Trinity uncovers the new slang that worldwide Gen Z wants to master when learning English https://www.trinitycollege.com/news/viewarticle/trinity-uncovers-the-new-slang-that-worldwide-gen-z-wants-to-master-when-learning-english
Of the twenty words Trinity list, I only knew ‘rizz’ – and that’s only because it was OUP’s word of the year. I bet Mr Beast knows them all!
Trinity also researched “the turns of phrase which cause the most difficulty for Gen Z”: ‘Elvis has left the building’; ‘cock and bull story’; ‘neck of the woods’; ‘get someone’s goat’; ‘have a bone to pick with someone’; ‘best thing since sliced bread’; ‘sacred cow’; ‘earworm’; ‘monkey business’ and ‘the tail wagging the dog’ – all of which I know and use …
The one my younger colleagues were already flummoxed by a few years ago when I used it was ‘a sprat to catch a mackerel’.
5. And, finally and photographically, the winners in the 2023 Travel Photographer of the Year competition https://www.tpoty.com/galleries/2023-winners/
Be sure to scroll right down the page: there’s some great videos at the end.
Roy Cross's Blog 