A conversation with Chris Weidenbach, an English professor at Laney College in Oakland, California, and the longtime chair of the English department. We are joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching, learning and using “AI.” Our conversation started with Chris’s lifelong engagement with human rights advocacy and expanding access and equity in his multicultural urban institution.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

A conversation with Joe Lambert, an innovator of telling stories using digital technologies, educator, and co-founder of StoryCenter.org (originally the Center for Digital Storytelling), about his work in these unsettled times. We are joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching, learning and using “AI.” Joe reflects on his work designing ASU’s 100 Year EdTech Project and other futures work, past and present. Much of our conversation was about adapting or resisting the new political climate both in higher education and the general culture.

Joe and his team have brought digital storytelling to nearly 100 countries in circumstances ranging from universities to war torn refugee camps and their traumatized survivors. After more than four decades, this summer he’s looking forward to not seeing his boss in the mirror as he plans the next phase of his life.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

A conversation with Dr. Chris Gilliard, Co-Director of The Critical Internet Studies Institute, about his approach to writing, privacy, and “artificial intelligence.” We are joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching and learning, and Chris starts by explaining his stance as an “AI abolitionist.” He shares his critiques of the many aspects of “AI”: their creation, use, and the culture that produces these digital tools. Chris asserts that ideology is built into digital technology, and he quotes Rob Horning: “GenAI is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge.” Chris goes on to observe: “Some of the worst people in the world want us to use these tools.”

Resources

The Critical Internet Studies Institute

Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities;

Defining AI by Ali Alkhatib 06 December 2024

Rob Horning AI - GenAI is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge.

David Golumbia

Brian Merchant

On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜

Facebook Has a Genocide Problem by Alex Shephard March 15, 2018

Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University by Emily J. Levine

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

A conversation with Dr. Maha Bali about “Intentionally Equitable Hospitality” (IEH) and how this professional development journey emerged from her earlier projects Virtually Connecting and Equity Unbound. A professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, we were joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching and learning with digital technologies. IEH offers opportunities to engage with marginalized perspectives, encourage critical thinking and accessibility, and create more welcoming and equitable learning spaces. We explored the many literacies needed today, including visual thinking, creating and using images, and the use of “AI” models despite their limitations, especially for language translation.

Intentionally Equitable Hospitality 2025 registration

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

This episode of “Talking with machines” features a conversation with Professor Robert Brem from California State University East Bay and the College of Alameda community college. I was joined by Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander as we discussed recent challenges in higher education, the US Department of Education, and the political factions supporting change. We talked abut the structure and administration of our institutions, how they adapt to new technologies, and then compared our different positions, experiences with learners, viewpoints on recent trends, and what the future of education may hold.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

This episode of “Talking with machines” featured a conversation with Stephen Downes. I was joined by Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander as we discussed “Augmented Info, Ethics, and the Duty of Care.”

Resources from Stephen Downes

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

In today’s conversation Ruben Puentedura acknowledges the limitations of “AI”, shares his research and experience with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technologies, and talks about the affordances of home grown LLMs (Large Language Models) combined with external resources. We are joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes.

Dr. Puentedura is the Founder and President of Hippasus, a consulting practice focusing on transformative applications of information technologies to education.

From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization

Code a simple RAG from scratch

More from Ruben Puentedura https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenpuentedura/

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

In today’s conversation, I’m again joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. We started our discussion around Tom’s recent post “The AI Revolution Will Be Small.”

More from Tom Haymes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

In this premier of the Talking with machines podcast, I’m joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. Inspired by Bryan’s recent post “Some notes on how culture is responding to generative AI”, we discuss this horizon scan where Bryan asks, “How are we responding to AI through stories, art, religion, relationships, media, and symbols?”

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media

The Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) is an accredited alternative graduate school in Berkeley, California. I created a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) using Google’s NotebookLM to collect dozens of documents and ‘chat’ about “The WISR Way” - WISR’s personalized learning method based on on the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. I generated this podcast using NotebookLM’s podcast generator, edited all the places the ‘hosts’ mispronounced ‘WISR’ and added an introduction.

Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media