After conducting a Gen AI workshop this week with OCBC bank employees, a participant said to me, “Your course is different from other courses, you teach it in quite a playful manner.”
I said, “That’s because I really enjoy learning this topic and I want other people to discover the same joy.” I didn’t tell him that I am genetically wired to crack jokes all the time, something that annoyed several sourpuss school teachers in my youth. As I got older, I learned how to put on a poker face that hid the giggles underneath.
Life is tough and full of struggles, and we often have to deal with the silly problems that other people create. Now, it’s good to have problems to solve, so people can declare you a “problem solver”. But if you don’t laugh at the silliness of things, the work becomes a drudgery and the problems you deal with become dreadful annoyances rather than creative challenges.
And I suspect that’s why some management gurus tell you things like “It’s okay not to enjoy your work.” Hmm, I’ve worked for 27 years since my first internship and I can tell you I’ve enjoyed every job so far.
BUT! In order to enjoy your work, you have to put in a lot of daily effort, gain expertise, earn the trust of others, and keep improving yourself with self-learning. You can’t enjoy work that you can’t do well in, or work that has become obsolete.
That’s why I continue to pound away at improving my writing, teaching, and use of technology. I’m currently working on my first dissertation, for which I have to interview 30 lecturers from my university, and the topic is on how Gen AI is impacting the way they assess students. I didn’t think I would enjoy doing 30 hours of research-style interviewing, but I am! I’m making new friends, learning new techniques in teaching, and energised by our common quest to impart critical thinking in world disrupted by AI.
I’m enjoying this!
What I wrote this week
My thoughts on “Pedagogy x AI”, as shared with teachers from Nan Hua High School during their Professional Learning Day.
I made an interactive app to demonstrate why Gen AI is just a guessing machine with no feelings or a soul.
Here’s how I used PowerPoint to design the app.
Three communication tips that work, whether you talk to humans or to machines.
I show this same slide in every Gen AI workshop, regardless of the participants’ AI proficiency. It contains the two-word prompt that I use daily. This week, I shared this with employees from OCBC Bank.
I discovered the author Norton Juster!
Here’s our team of NTU lecturers who teach Basic Media Writing, a course which is anything but basic. I tell the students that it’s not an English language writing class, but a course where in the pursuit of the truth, they will learn why “writing is thinking”.
What to do when your clunky 140W USB-C charger cannot fit into a wall socket.
Unlocked NYT articles
Are Some Sugars ‘Less Bad’ Than Others?
How A.I. and Social Media Contribute to ‘Brain Rot’
Fine-Tune Your Feed and Get News You Can Use