I take most of my meetings from my home office, and as a result, about once a month I reference having six monitors on my home setup. Now, while having six or more monitors isn’t exactly rare nowadays—there are dedicated rigs and brackets and braces specifically for setting up six or more—I find most people I talk to haven’t personally met someone with six.
So, they ask to see my setup. My webcam’s cord isn’t long enough to just pick it up and pan it around my office. So, instead, I have to do one of four things:
Spend 5 minutes of our meeting scouring my Twitter history to find that one time I posted a picture of it.
Spend 5 minutes scouring the pictures archives on my computer to find a picture I’ve already taken of it.
Awkwardly take a picture of it to send right then.
Promise to send one later, then forget.
So, I’m writing this post to add option #5, which hopefully I’ll remember as the best option going forward:
Link them to this blog post.
So, if you’re here because I sent you a link to this post, hi! Sorry it’s taken this far into the post to get to the picture. Giant rubber duck for scale:
On a typical day, it looks something like this:
I tend to keep the tall vertical one on the left for email, while the far right one is split between Microsoft Teams on top and Slack on the bottom. Across the bottom are three Raspberry Pi monitors—two 7″, one 10″—but I just have them hooked into a standard DisplayPort for extended monitor space. The small one on the left usually has my to-do list and notes; the small one on the right is usually Messenger for chatting with family; and the middle one lately has just had ChatGPT open all the time. If I have a script running syncing grades or something it’s usually on one of those bottom ones.
The big curved monitor in the middle is a Samsung CJ890, and it alone cost as much as the entire rest of the computer—at the time that seemed silly, but it’s definitely been worth it. Microsoft PowerToys is a lifesaver with managing screen real estate, though.
But while this set-up is nice, I have to admit I’m still more proud of my six-monitor set-up that I originally created 11 years ago, back before this was nearly as common:
The two square ones on the ends came from yard sales. The two vertical ones on my current set-up are the same as the two vertical from 11 years ago, but what you can’t see is the upper middle monitor there held up by three drinking glasses and a pair of toy blocks:
Definitely more character to the old one. But nothing compares to this monstrosity that first got me into multi-monitor set-ups in high school:
Though I don’t know what’s worse: the setup, or color I chose for the wall of that room.
I’ve just finished reading Providence by Max Barry, and it has quickly become one of my favorite books of the year. I previously read Jennifer Governmentand Lexicon (after spending way too much time and emotional energy on the old NationStates game as a kid… which is apparently still around!) and thoroughly enjoyed them, but Providence is my favorite so far.
No spoilers, but a couple things strike me about the book. First, in terms of similarity to other authors, it reads to me like Becky Chambers meets Orson Scott Card. Like Card, it touches on some of the more philosophical elements of science fiction, like the morality of such a war—updated for a modern audience where social media and propaganda are such prominent issues (which, granted, Card touched on too, but Barry touches on these with the benefit of actually knowing what social media is going to look like in 2020 rather than just being surprisingly prescient like Card). But like Chambers, the book is surprisingly tender in its depiction of the individual characters. It benefits from focusing on a crew of only four to be able to really explore each of them individually.
Second, it touches on some interesting issues clearly relevant to my own interests. Throughout the book, the trustworthiness and explainability of AI come up a lot, even bordering on questions like the definition of life and consciousness. It sort of throws out thoughtpieces* to explore certain such questions in depth, like the ship making decisions it can’t explain and its crew attempting to interpret them. Its treatment of sending media home for public consumption and the role of that media in the war effort is handled really interestingly as well. But what put it over the top for me is the undercurrent of questions about human-AI interaction that come up a lot; one of the pivotal developments connects to how AI and humans communicate with one another, and the treatment of the question is impressively sophisticated.
So, highly recommended for fans of science fiction, those interested in human-AI interaction, or anyone who just wants to read a good book.
* – thoughtpiece. noun. a plot development specifically set up to explore some philosophical, psychological, ethical, etc. dilemma. Similar to how movies and video games often set up sequences specifically to explore certain settings or situations. See: Becky Chambers’s Monk and Robot duology.
I use peer review a lot in my classes. There are lots of tools out there dedicated to facilitating peer review. Canvas, Coursera, edX, and other learning management systems have their own in-built tools. I use a tool called Peer Feedback, but there’s also PeerStudio, TurnItIn’s PeerMark, Peerceptiv, Peergrade, and probably a half-dozen more platforms that have launched between when I wrote this and when you’re reading this.
First, to get this out of the way: I only use peer review for review, not for grading. There’s significant literature out there on how to design peer review activities that can generate reliable grades, but the require a ton of effort and oversight—not to mention the generally only work at specific fields and levels. So, this isn’t about using peer review to generate grades, but rather just as a learning activity for writers and recipients.
In my experience, peer review in general has a mixed reputation. On the one hand, in more systematic surveys, students in my classes generally reflect positively on it. One of my end-of-course survey questions is “On a scale of 1 to 7, please rate your agreement with the statement: “The Peer Feedback system has improved my experience in this class.” In my three classes that used peer review last summer, 69%, 54%, and 59% of students selected 5 (“Agree Slightly”) or higher (“Agree” or “Strongly Agree”). Those numbers appear consistent over time: in summer 2020, they were 69%, 55%, and 58%.
At the same time, though, when you look around reddit and other places students share their feedback, there’s a general feeling that peer review isn’t helpful. The evidence cited for that is that students don’t feel their classmates are putting much effort into the peer reviews they write. This has become more pronounced recently as students who previously might have written a short throwaway review instead submit a long, vague, clearly AI-generated review.
Now, first, every semester I go through all the peer reviews I see submitted in my class. I generally see them break down into thirds: one-third are truly insightful and substantive, with multiple takeaways for the reader; one-third are a bit light, but with at least one piece of actionable feedback; and one-third are either entirely or borderline non-substantive. A portion of this last third (typically around a third of this third) aren’t even given credit for participating. So, I do see that on average, every student receives some good feedback every assignment (although that fraction diminishes a bit over time).
But that aside: embedded in this critique is the assumption that the chief value of peer review is in the feedback one receives from one’s classmates. Personally, though, I see four primary pedagogical roles for peer review:
To see others’ approach to a similar problem. There is pedagogical value in learning from others’ examples, in seeing how others would approach the same task and comparing it to one’s own approach, and in seeing the space of possible answers to a question or task.
To alter one’s mindset from the generator of content to the critic of content. There is a fundamentally different thought process at work when one looks at existing work and tries to identify its weaknesses than when one generates some content on one’s own. This different process yields differently learning outcomes.
To remind one that they are surrounded by a community of peers. The weekly reminders that there are dozens—or hundreds, in my case—of other students going through the same assignments yields some sense of connection. We can see the converse of this in MOOCs: when I complete a MOOC, I’ll often submit an assignment and then have to wait months to receive a peer review. It’s a lonely feeling. Seeing classmates’ work weekly is a reminder that one is part of a broader community.
To get additional feedback on one’s own work from one’s peers.
This breakdown is why I see tremendous value in using peer review in education even when one might not receive great feedback from one’s peers: three of the four pedagogical benefits of peer review come from the act of giving a peer review, not from the act of receiving one. In fact, in my upcoming book, I even recommend teachers use generative AI to generate text solely for students to review and critique—not because the AI will learn from their criticism, but because critiquing AI-generated text still captures the first and second pedagogical benefit above.
I can completely understand the frustration that can come from feeling like one is giving great feedback but getting little in return, but the act of giving that good feedback is such a valuable learning activity on its own. This is, similarly, why I give grades on the peer reviews one submits: not just because they give credit for helping one’s classmates, but because a good peer review is a proxy for what one learned from the process of giving such a review.
Mostly a place where I write down things I repeat often so that instead of repeating them so often, I can just send a link.
Disclosure: I use Amazon referral links in some of my blog posts. That's mostly just a lightweight way to track and see if anyone's even clicking through. If you buy something through one of these links, I may get a bit of money back and achieve my dream of one day being able to buy the nicer set of kitchen scissors that Amazon sells instead of the bargain variety.
