This week contained a lot of learning from a lot of different sources. With another round of peer teaching, I found it to be very enjoyable once again. Being at a table with some very interesting, respectful, and engaged students helped to create a lovely experience. Starting off the week, though, we moved further with our conversation about AI, taking a look at text and image generators. Using the Markov Chain, I input the Bee Movie script as the source text file and generated some sentences:

make_sentence() function:
“I told you, stop flying in an insect-like pattern?”
make_short_sentence() function:
“Between you and I have an idea.”
larger_state_text_model.make_sentence() function:
“You do? – He’s back here!
I’ve got a couple of bugs in this case, which will be tight.
Step to the point of weakness!
Oan anyone work on this?
If you don’t fly everywhere?
I believe I’m out!
Hold it! – You wish you could. – Whose side are you doing?
Sorry I couldn’t hear you.
I’m helping him sue the human race for stealing our honey, you not to yell at him.
Janet, your son’s not sure he wants to go to waste, so I called Barry.
He looks like we’ll experience a couple of bugs in this court.
Hey, what are you helping me?”

Even though there’s little to no rhyme or reason as to how these sentences are developed, it’s fascinating to see what the code develops to analyze just how close to a real sentence the AI got. Instead of being returned complete gibberish, it almost looks as if a non-native English speaker is trying to communicate a more advanced thought.

For peer teaching this week, I went over the process of expanding to the edges of your comfort zone and trying new things, whether they’re things you’ve been wanting to try for a while or something you hadn’t considered before but are interested in. My big project has a lot to do with this idea, as it directly involves me taking a big step out and learning skills that I’ve been fascinated with but have always been too intimidated in the effort necessary to learn. It’s proven to be quite a big challenge, so I wanted to capitalize on this fact and teach a bit about my process. I’ve found that committing to this process has been a lot easier considering that filmmaking and music making are both on the edge of my comfort zone, keeping me inside as they relate to heavy interests of mine, but also pushing me out as lately I’ve stayed in my own bubble and haven’t learned many new skills that may form new hobbies. I taught about how if you’re going to be tackling a large project rather than reaching for a smaller, more achievable goal, that the process should be broken into 5 steps: research, planning, practicing, diving in, and reflecting. I applied these 5 steps to my own big project for the class while also providing an example of the same technique being used to address fitness. It seemed as though my audience was appreciative of the advice and insight.

In terms of being taught by peers, this week I got the opportunity to learn from a few interesting and bright classmates. Chris taught about the differences between a couple popular podcasts and what makes them stand out against each other and against the rest of the crowd. Bryce showed troubling statistics about pollution and what big business is doing to essentially pass blame onto consumers while attempting to overlook the damage being caused by massive corporations. He also showed some very useful tools on Canva for creating attractive and professional looking posters, flyers, graphics, and other designs for presentations and projects. Caitlin offered some insight into her project and had a bit of a lightbulb moment when talking about body image, especially when relating to women and social media. She became inspired to do interviews with individuals on campus to get a better understanding of what the topic looks like in our community, something I’m looking forward to potentially being a part of.

All in all, this week was great for getting more work done on the big project while also having some low pressure teaching and learning moments. I’m looking forward to moving forward in the class and especially getting more work done on the final project for the course.