I so enjoyed listening back to this conversation with Dan Guberman, Assistant Director for Student-Centered Pedagogy with the Center for Instructional Excellence at Purdue University; co-author of Designing Impactful College Courses; and co-organizer of the annual Grading Conference.

The news was in a flurry about Meta's new AI tool, Muse. You can't download it from Apple's app store, since it doesn't meet their privacy and security standards. As John shares, there are sometimes good reasons why apps are "sandboxed" (have to be downloaded somewhere other than the app store). But in this case, Muse goes too far for many of us to even imagine installing it on our computers and letting it "help" us.

John also closes with a wonderful story about Gary Choyka, a teacher who had a big impact on him. Even though the parallel between John's thoughts about Muse and Mr. Choyka's focus on civil rights and liberties, John still found his commonly-said phrase coming to mind, in this situation:

​I'll Wait, by John Gruber on Daring Fireball​

I'm leading a faculty learning community on public scholarship this academic year, based around Jim Lang's Write Like You Teach and David M. Perry's The Public Scholar.
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Because I am who I am (😇), I've decided to make a board game, to help us pursue the goals that those who have signed up so far have indicated that they have.
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While designing the game, I realized I wanted a character builder, so each person could customize their player and then add them to the game board(s). It turned into something I'm having tons of fun with in the early stages of creating:
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​Campus Character Studio​
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Pick your body shape, hair, glasses, clothes, and what you carry. You can use a wheelchair or a cane and each character comes with ready-made alt text. If you try it out, I welcome your feedback.

This is an early look at phase one, by the way. In phase two, I plan to add more accessories and options, like hearing aids, head scarves, and more hairstyles, before building out the game board itself, over on Miro. I'm also sure that there are major flaws in this version, given how little I know what I'm doing here (as in I can barely get something like this on Github, for example).
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Your feedback will help to shape the next phase.

Last week, I asked for something you would have liked to have known, early in your teaching.

This week, I'm wondering:

Who outside of higher ed has shaped how you teach?

Hit reply to let me know. I'll choose a few to include in the next Field Journal. Let me know in your reply if you prefer to remain anonymous, as otherwise, I'll assume it is ok to include your name.