Work From Home, Computers & Renovation Projects

Yakima Valley College is online for nearly all classes this quarter and for winter quarter, just like we have been since March. At our house, this means three people (and three cats) are home, together, all the time, two of them trying to do school, and the other one doing fairly extensive home renovation projects.

The cats did not approve change. Furniture moving, window seats disrupted, hiding spaces uncovered. Why doesn't everybody just lie down and rest instead. Unless you're going to feed us?!

In spring, my "work-from-home office" was mostly the dining table with my work laptop. I tried using my desktop Mac, but the room we use as an office has literally two plugs and one light, so if I used Zoom or tried to record a video, the lighting was really bad (worse than the lighting in all the pictures in this post, even). My desk also faced the wall, meaning that everything (and everyone) in the room showed up in my background. I couldn't use a Zoom background either, because the poor lighting caused my face to be treated as the background. And, I couldn't add a light, because the two plugs in the room were already in use.

One of the two plugs in this room. seems legit.

So, I mostly used my work laptop at the dining table. I was able to sit with my back to the wall and a lovely Kristin Michael (psst, this is a link to her Etsy shop, go buy her Scout ham stickers!) print behind my head. Usually I packed everything up in a stack on a chair beside me when it was dinner time. Occasionally dinner happened next to a Zoom meeting I was attending ;-)

Kristen Michael print in my dining room/zoom office (I never seem to notice how bad the lighting is until I take a photo.)

During the summer and into this fall quarter I have still be using the dining table/laptop/Kristen Michael setup for Zoom meetings, but I also continued to use my Mac for some stuff, especially union stuff. In fact, I got into a habit that at the time seemed efficient, but in retrospect should have alerted me to trouble. When the Mac would be really slow to load a program or a page, I would walk into the dining room and work on something else using the laptop. When the laptop, likewise, slowed down, I'd walk back to the Mac in the other room. I figured I was getting exercise and being efficient, but things might have been more efficient, if not more physical, if either computer could handle what I needed it to do.

Current dining room/office setup (ugh, that light)

Of course I also have used my phone a lot. My home clay studio doesn't get very good WiFi, so I use my phone to record videos, then I come back into the main house to upload the videos directly to YouTube, bypassing my iMac which takes 16 years to open iMovie. I was hoping to use these spy glasses I bought for video demonstrations, but they stopped working and I haven't had the energy to figure out if I can get them working again. I've also started uploading images of Design work directly from my Phone because iPhoto on my computer takes just 2 years to open, but another year to actually let me do anything.

The walls are blue except where they are grey, the floor has paint everywhere, the window trip is dirty white, the wall just above the windows is white, and the walls have stripes from the lath and plaster. (We don't always have a crowbar hanging on the wall.)
 

In around the second week of the quarter I was in a 10 minute meeting with a student where I got kicked out maybe 4-5 times. I then had to attend another meeting with colleagues using my phone. (Zoom on a computer is annoying. Zoom on a phone is the worst!) I assumed the issue was the internet, so I called Spectrum, and spend valuable work time waiting on hold and resetting the router. At that point, the work laptop speed improved, but not my desktop (or my phone). So I called Apple and after about a week or two of trying things I finally admitted that my 2012 iMac is no longer a fully-functioning machine. 

yeah, sure, that's what color that desktop picture is supposed to be

Just today, I have been writing this blog on my Mac (obviously, it's not school work), and I could not get it to load images except for screenshots. Apparently I can upload photos from my phone onto my blog. My daughter keeps laughing at me for using two computers for everything. Shows what she knows; I've been using three!

Surprisingly valuable tool this quarter: tripod with a cell phone mount. It is tipped forward to I can record from above.

A few weeks into the quarter, I am accustomed to things being super slow, needing to walk between rooms, and looking at tiny pictures on my work laptop. I even stopped booting up my Mac. The other day, in a last ditch effort to will the machine into new life, I booted it up and did some grading. The laptop screen is about the size of a piece of computer paper. The iMac has a 21.5" screen. And what a difference that size makes when grading artwork! I can actually see what they've made.

One of several pictures/videos showing students how to make-shift a clean photo background in their home work space

This past week I ordered a replacement desktop (with an even bigger screen!) and I have marked the day of its arrival in my planner in great anticipation. I am very much looking forward to relearning how to work without artificial delays (lol, remember the internet in 1996?). SoftChalk, which I use A LOT for all three classes, crashes regularly on my Mac, but using it on my laptop is barely better as the text becomes very, very, excessively wide (editing view is different than how it shows up in a browser). Editing Canvas pages on my laptop makes me cry, because I sometimes accidentally brush my fingertip or my sleeve across the trackpad and all the editing I've done for the past hour (or two) will magically disappear. Neither computer will consistently allow me to highlight text in Canvas's SpeedGrader features.

SoftChalk is neat as an interactive, but annoying too. I've been making one lesson per week for Design, based on lessons for Art History, but it isn't possible to copy/paste tool tips, images, and activities so I have to do a lot of re-making. Just today I discovered two erroneous tool tips in this two-week old lesson that copied incorrectly from a different lesson. Sigh. 

Granted, some of the blame belongs to Canvas (and SoftChalk). I am convinced that some of Canvas's idiosyncrasies are designed specifically to be cruel to teachers. Every other civilized app or program auto-saves (Outlook, Google Docs, Blogger), why can't Canvas? Outlook saves things I don't even want saved; Oh, you clicked the wrong button because your computer is slow and now there's a blank email addressed to L (not an abbreviation), I supposed you want Outlook to save that blank email FOREVER. But Canvas allows me to lose an hour of text and edits if I don't remember to save at regular intervals (even though students might get an alert about those intermediate saves if I'm editing a published page). 

This basement crawl space has been converted into Legoland (plus train tracks and RC cars)

There's been another huge change in my working space this week. My husband, who took a sabbatical before the pandemic, has been working on house projects ever since. He painted the house, redid my clay studio, did an extensive project to reclaim the basement crawl space (terrible picture above), and is now starting on the computer room.  Which means we needed to clear out our desks, computers, file cabinets, bookshelf, and other stuff from that room. This also allowed us the opportunity to ask each other why we have so much stuff.

The custom-built bookshelf is too tall to fit in the clay studio, and to big for any other wall in the house.

As of Thursday, our dining table is smaller (we took out a leaf), and my Kristen Michael computer space is inaccessible (because we moved the table. My computer desk is now taking up nearly half the dining room, and my school books are now in a drawer in the file cabinet (because the bookshelf is outside). Meanwhile the custom made bookshelf is outside, the books are in a pile on the floor, and my husband's desk is in the living room.

The view behind my desk. Only the Tieton River poster (by Justin Gibbens) shows up in the Zoom, but there's a Cheryl Hahn painting in the top right (and my daughter's cat in the rain below).

In someways, though, even a doing room desk is an upgrade. I now have access to two (count em!) two plugs, allowing my laptop to be on the same desk as my desktop--and both are plugged i! I can use the same desk for Zoom meeting (with a Tieton River Canyon poster in the background and both a ceiling light and a window lighting my face). I can alternate between standing and sitting set-ups without moving the computer. The main disadvantage is that the cats don't have room to sit in the window next to me.

My homemade standing desk (utilizing small pedestals and a cardboard box). My laptop is under the planner next to the window.

I'm pretty excited about the computer room renovation, actually, even if it does mean that all of our other rooms are extra crowded right now as they swell to accommodate books, files, desks, etc. The main problem with the room is the aforementioned lack of outlets. The floor in the room is pretty bad, too. When we moved in there was fairly ugly blue carpet that matched the baby blue walls (and the baby blue carpet in the bathroom). We abused the carpet pretty badly because we didn't like it, and finally pulled it out to reveal hardwood underneath. The hardwood, though, has paint all over it, and stains, and even carpet staples we never took out. We've had a rug over it, but it was always something we intended to refinish or replace eventually.

The wood would look nice, I suppose, if it weren't covered in paint.

 

The baby blue walls are my least favorite in the house. The color is what I describe as soggy baby teddy bear. It makes me want to put doilies on tables, buy Precious Moments figures, and carpet my toilet seat lid. The color makes me think of the kinds of sappy, droopy, soggy teddy bears that get put on baby blankets and onesies. I think the intent, there, is that they be perceived as cute (or maybe they were a futile attempt to convince people that babies sleep a lot) but they always made me cringe.

I've reached the end of my edits for this post, which, unfortunately, means I need to go find a place to put these books.

PSA: Back up your images

In the culmination of a lengthy multi-week saga regarding my computer, the things I want it to do with it, and my inability to be patient with technology, I thought (for several hours and then overnight) I had lost all my images yesterday.

New images of newly fired first amendment cups--not lost.

It turns out that ignoring the problem for 20 hours solved it. The only missing images ares one I didn't actually take, but it reminds me that one should back up one's images periodically. The best time to do this, of course, is right after you terrify yourself by actually, or (one hopes) almost losing all your stuff.

I'm missing a good image of this piece and any image of it's partner. Both are now at Boxx Gallery in Tieton for their holiday show (opening this Saturday 11-4 during the Mighty Tieton Holiday Bazaar).

I remember a few years ago, I was in my office at work when the power went out, followed by groans and screams all up and down the office as faculty called out that they hadn't saved whatever they were just working on, along with a few relieved people saying they'd just saved. We probably all saved our progress regularly for the next few days.

I never successfully printed my design, but the kid used TinkerCad and hers printed mostly ok.

The problem I had yesterday had to do with updating my computer and updating iPhoto. A few weeks ago, I had to update my OS because I was trying to learn software for making objects for our 3D Clay printer. The software I was trying to use required an updated OS. So I updated the OS and spent the next week annoyed at Safari for discontinuing the bookmarks bar. Chrome's fine, but I use Chrome for Canvas and Safari for stuff like my blog and goofing around online. (I acknowledge that this may be silly, but Safari has my bookmarks.)

 I never did get the software that required the OS update to save correctly, but look at this dinosaur duck a student made.

Apparently I hadn't updated my blog in some time, because I also hadn't opened iPhoto in the new OS until last night. Once I opened it, I was offered an exciting opportunity to pay Apple more money for iCloud storage. I declined, then iPhoto proceeded to update? without any sign of progress for over an hour. After a couple hours, I thought there must be a problem, so I tried to investigate and was met with several alarming surprises, one of which being a pop up that said iPhoto is unavailable in my country, another being that when one searches for iPhoto or Photos in the App store, there are no results. IDK

Don't mock my pain, Apple!

After this glimpse at the terrifying possibility of losing all my photos, and realizing that if I did, it would be my stupid fault for not backing them up, I went to bed. This afternoon when I got home from work, iPhoto had updated (I couldn't look this morning because it would have ruined my day if it was still stuck on that mocking orange "Have fun with Photos" screen). So, all's well that ends well.   I'm going to back up my photos now.

There may be more cats in the future, Camden.

3D Clay Printer: First Weeks

This was our first "print." While the machine was priming it began to extrude and wouldn't stop when we "stopped" the "print" so I just caught the clay on a piece of paper on my hand, twisting as it came out.

Yakima Valley College Gets A 3D Printer for Clay

At last year's NCECA Conference in Portland, I saw a 3D Clay printer being demonstrated. I also saw a good deal of 3D printed clay at the conference, though I only saw one person (Brett Freund) who was using the printer in a really interesting way. But I thought the newness of the process and the fact that this machine prints wet clay, rather than liquid slip, which means that we could print, then alter the prints immediately, meant that there were possibilities for my students to be creative and really explore the unknown possibilities of this process.

Our first successful print came during a day when we worked at it for more than 5 hours, but only managed two successful prints total--and then broke the microSD card inside the machine.

After the conference, I submitted a proposal for my school to purchase a printer for our classroom. The proposal was approved quickly and we received the printer early in the fall. Of course I didn't anticipate that it would be that easy to get started. We got the printer, but the pug mill attachment was incorrect and we spent 5 weeks looking for a solution. Eventually the YVC facilities folks hooked us up and we were able to print for the first time at the end of October.

First Attempts to use the 3D Clay Printer

The first print that wouldn't stick. I can tell the machine starts too fast, but I didn't know that then, in part because the instructions and videos don't actually say how fast to print.

I took some videos of the printing process in October, but was feeling really frustrated because the clay often didn't stick to the printing surface and the extruded layers sometimes didn't stick to one another. I didn't understand why and had trouble finding out why from someone with experience. 

Our first successful print, stuck to the base, even though almost all the other prints needed a clay base prepare ahead of time in order to stick to the base. The company contact condescendingly told me that we should have had a piece of red constructions paper, and later, re-watching the videos I see where the paper was mentioned, but I still submit that a paper checklist with this sort of information would be much more helpful than videos I can't watch easily in my studio.

Since that first day, I've used the printer 4 or 5 days to print a variety of digital objects that came with the printer software, as well as some student designs. Of course it would be really helpful if I were just working with the printer during this time, but I was teaching class, grading assignments, helping students, attending meetings, and completing other full-time faculty obligations, so my time with the printer has been relatively limited. 

Troubleshooting & Trial and Error

The 3D Clay printer comes with no written troubleshooting instructions and minimal written instructions of any kind, including set up. The customer is advised to view online videos, which I did before setting up and attempting to print, but all the videos assume that you are more familiar with the process and 3D printers in general than I was when we began. I needed a list of definitions before I could even understand the videos.

Our second successful print on the first day shifted and leaned because the printing speed was faster than I would recommend. I can't say it is faster than recommended, because I cannot find any speed recommendations.

In our initial prints, we followed all the directions we could remember from the videos, but without much guidance as far as speed of the extruder, speed of the movement, or much of anything else, we mostly were just trying stuff at random. At the time, I wasn't sure that I would be able to figure out the issues without help from someone with experience with this machine. Now, however, looking back at the first video, it is pretty easy to see what went wrong at the time--it was printing too fast at the start. We've also learned that putting down a layer of wet clay for a base is usually essential.

This print was done on the second day, when the speed controls didn't appear to relate to the actual experienced speed of the print.

The thing I am not able to figure out is why the printer/software/file combination sometimes prints at a different speed using the same settings. You can hear me explaining the situation on the video to a student. This print is moving much more slowly than the previous print, but I'm printing the same file, the clay is coming from the same tube, minutes later, and the extruder speed and x/y movement speed are set at the same speeds as in the print immediately before this. The only difference is the actual experienced speed of the x/y movement is much slower.

A successful print on the second day, when the speed varied at random.

The machine seems to be working basically fine and is generally fairly reliable, but the support is difficult to navigate and frustrating when much time and effort is wasted--especially when I can't get much more than a couple hours at a time to work on it. I get the impression that the company is overwhelmed with the machines they are sending out, but they could provide much clearer instructions, troubleshooting, advice, and support--at least from this new customer's perspective. 

The second shape we printed requires some work after printing to open the closed top and open the negative space of the handle.

Students Figure the Thing Out

At NCECA last year, I had asked how hard it was to learn the online object making software. The woman at the booth suggested that the students would just figure it out. After making a few attempts to learn various 3D object making programs, and discovering that they and the tutorials are often designed to now work with a Mac (they keep directing me to right click on my one-button mouse), I was hoping the students would come through for me.

This student's design worked fairly well except for the open section on top of the leg. 

I opened up use of the printer to my students, letting them know that I am not much of a resource for the object making software. I told the students they could look into online tutorials for programs like TinkerCAD, but that I wouldn't be able to help. One student came back with a design she had made herself and it printed correctly on the first try and, to my surprise, the second. Then she and another student proceeded to print successfully or semi-successfully over the course of 2 days and 4 prints. There were some unsuccessful prints mixed in too, but fewer than at the start of our printing process.

This student design was also the first object to successfully print twice in a row. 

Hopefully soon I will be able to print some finished images of work and maybe even get some time to spend on the printer and software myself.

Classroom Adjustments for Spring (based on NCECA programing)

I just got back from the NCECA conference in Milwaukee. It was nice to see people from college and graduate school. It was also nice to spend some time with my parents. I found a couple of really useful things in the conference programming and saw some interesting shows.

NCECA 2014 conference program

I've been having fun the last few days preparing my new spring quarter Intro to Clay class with some of the NCECA ideas in mind. The class is new to me this quarter. It had been on the books years ago but I made adjustments to it last spring and put it back on the schedule this year. I was on sabbatical in the fall and busy with something else in winter, so this will the first time I get to teach the "new" course.

posters and magazines and bags from the NCECA conference

The best thing I went to as part of the conference programming was a topical discussion called "Immaterial World" led by Sara Parent-Ramos. The online description indicated that we would focus on classroom structure and using new technologies in the classroom, something I am very interested in. Unfortunately the listing in the physical conference program gave the correct title and name, followed by an unrelated description, so attendance was sparse and people were a little confused. Ironic, I think, that those of us using technology to plan our conference activities got the correct description and people looking only at the paper booklet were misled.

the erroneous program description (with my edits)

The topical discussion focused on flipping the classroom and ways to use blogs, online student portfolios, videos, and video-conferencing to support student learning. I went to the discussion because I've started to do some of these things but would like to know how other people are using them. I figured I was just trying stuff out and didn't really know what I was supposed to do. The discussion, as it turned out, felt like a validation of what I am already doing.

When the discussion leader introduced the topic, she asked if the audience knew what it meant to flip the class. I indicated that I was familiar with the term since I regularly flip my Art Appreciation class and occasionally my design class. I explained how my students come to class having done the readings, then, during class, instead of lecturing, the students discuss, present or do a group activity based on their reading. Instead of being the "empty vessels" filled with knowledge by the "sage on the stage" the students are active in their own learning, spending class time applying what they've learned or articulating their knowledge as they present to their classmates. The discussion in class is more detailed and more valuable since the students are building on and refining their knowledge base rather than hearing the information for the first time.

Parent-Ramos then went on to talk about other technologies people are using in the classroom and why these technologies might be beneficial. She made a point of saying that technology should be an means to an end. My mom and I had been having an ongoing discussion about 3D printed work at the conference shows. There seemed to be excitement about this particular new technology, but I saw few examples where people are using it to do something they couldn't do using traditional throwing or hand-building techniques. This is an example of using new technology just because you can.

Printed work by Del Harrow at "Flow" (the NCECA Invitational exhibition). Why couldn't this work be thrown on the wheel?

The next day I went to a co-lecture about work being done at Otis College of Art. They showed examples of work created using a 3D printer, but also talked about their policy: if the work could easily be done using other methods, do it that way. The technology could only be used if it was the most appropriate way to achieve the form. The result was pieces where the technology was the means, not just an expensive toy to replicate existing forms.

Printed work by Christopher Basil Fong. This would be tough to throw or build with slabs.

The other interesting bit of the panel discussion was the conversation with other people using, or trying to use, new technologies or to adjust the classroom structure. I am apparently not the only one to make my poor students keep blogs of their work for class. Lots of folks are putting up videos of their own demonstrations for students, but this discussion was the first I had heard of using video-conferencing in the classroom. Parent-Ramos suggested using video chats to connect classes with artists who are geographically distant. The video-conferencing could be used to introduce students to other artists' work or methods, to demonstrate techniques using equipment not available locally and even to invite a "guest artist" to hold critiques with students at another campus. Exciting stuff! I'm looking forward to exploring more of these options.

The discussion gave me the sense that I am already doing somethings right. This confirmation and the ideas and suggestions from various participants got me thinking of ways I can increase my use of these technologies and classroom structure adjustments. Interestingly, though I frequently flip my other classes, I hadn't really incorporated much flipping into my clay classes. I have the students watch videos, handle pottery, and even read articles outside of class, but I've often considered this as supplemental to the class. Since it was the way I learned, I always assumed that clay class was for demonstration; homework time was for practice. I appreciated Parent-Ramos' phrasing of the issue: she said any information that can be "poured" into the students can be flipped. Students, in this approach, can watch demonstrations outside of class time, and come with that knowledge base. Then the classroom demonstrations are building on a foundation of knowledge, rather than starting from scratch.

new physical resources to supplement the virtual resources we discussed

Another idea brought up in the discussion was that instructor should act as a guide to help the students discover new information and help them navigate the resources. I've prepared some assignments and hand-outs for my students that are a kind of introductory guide to the world of out-of-class demonstration videos, new techniques and new ceramic artistss. I will give the students some choice in what they study outside of class and ask them to bring their favorites to class (or to one of our online resources). I can never cover, in class, everything that might be of interest to my students, but with this approach, the students will bring their own research and discoveries to class. It will be interesting to discover what they they find valuable on their own..

Learning from our Mistakes

I frequently tell my clay students that mistakes are good. If they aren't making mistakes, I am concerned that they aren't trying hard enough. If each of their attempts at making a bowl succeeds, they probably are making thick, wobbly little "kiln bombs." (A kiln bomb is a piece of clay that is thick and therefore likely to explode in the kiln during firing, taking out its neighbors and the damaging the kiln wall in the process.)

a "kiln bomb" might also be a hollow space inside the clay with no way for the air to escape (well, no way except an explosion)

It is easy to tell students that mistakes are good. I have been there. I've made many mistakes and had to recycle the work and start over again. But as a professional potter I probably make fewer mistakes than a beginning student. I've wondered, as I've gotten older and more experienced, whether teachers have a hard time remembering what it is like to be a student, failing and making lots of mistakes in an attempt to learn a new technique or process. We were there, we remember failing, but can we really remember what it felt like to make the mistake at that time?

Today I was given the opportunity to fail in a painful and frustrating and disappointing way. And to add that extra level of annoyance to the experience, I was being foolish when I failed. I made a mistake. It was a combination of not knowing and not doing what I should have known well enough to do.

I lost a page on this blog. Click over to Quick Links for Art Appreciation to see the results of the mistake and my attempt to repair the most immediately problematic damage. I was adding some "important" content to the blog, but to admit the embarrassing truth, I was messing with the blog right then to avoid grading. I hit something wrong, the entire content disappeared. I tried to "undo" but I forgot or misread the button on the blogger interface or had a brain malfunction and instead clicked "revert to saved." Which, apparently, saved my "new content" as a draft and permanently erased all the actual content that I had accidentally and somewhat mysteriously managed to delete.

I may have sworn at the computer. I do not recall.

I pieced together the content students need to know this week and put up the disclaimer at the top of the screen telling them where the missing content had gone (I don't know). I probably should have started grading at this point, but by now I was so wholly engrossed in the mistake and the missing information and the problem and finding a solution that didn't involve me piecing together hours of work done over the course of a year.

But, remember, I tell the students that mistakes are good. You learn from mistakes. And, I wasn't lying to the students. You do learn from mistakes. Even frustrating, maddening, annoyingly-timed mistakes. See, I know that one should back-up one's blog, I just never knew how. I have tried to back-up my blog according to directions I have found online and even directions offered by fellow Blogger bloggers. I was unable to follow these directions. I never did determine if the fault lay with me, Apple, this old Mac, the directions or what. I have been backing up my blog by automatically having Blogger send my posts to my e-mail. However, this method does not work for pages. (Uh, I don't think it does.)

Given that I do not back up, I knew I was not able to just recover the page content, but I thought perhaps I could see the page in the cache from my browser. I thought I could select "work offline" and look in my browser history. Surprise, Safari doesn't have "work offline." (I wonder when I last actually saw "work offline" as an option.) But I happened to have my laptop with me, so I was able to use the browser without internet access enabled. Surprise, Safari doesn't just remember pages it once visited.

Next, I tried the Wayback Machine (this is supposed to let you access webpages that are no longer "there" but are still archived in the magic tubes of the inter web). Surprise, the Wayback Machine only lets you access pages that have actually been archived it it, somehow. But as of today the Wayback Machine has archived my empty "Quick Links for Art Appreciation" page.

Finally, I looked up how to "work offline" in Safari and ended up, eventually, at an answer that told me how to use .webarchive files. Yipee! Finally, a solution! Safari can save .webarchive files that have all the information about the webpage on them. You can access these offline. I looked in my history. I searched my computer files. I stumbled, I failed. Um...you need to actually save the page as a .webarchive first.

The end result is that I do, in fact, have to recreate and relocate all the lost content from the page I mistakenly deleted today. However, I now know how to back it up (or at least, I know a way to save a .webarchive version). And as of this afternoon, I have saved a .webarchive file of my Quick Links for Clay Classes page.

Somehow, though, I never did get back to the grading.

"Mining Data" in the Classroom

I've been subscribing to The Chronicle of Higher Education for a year or so. I thought I subscribed to read about new ideas in higher education. As it turns out, I read this journal simply to give me a target for specific frustrations. I find it more satisfying to yell at The Chronicle than to yell at Fox News. I'm not sure why.

Anyway, today's target is the article by Marc Perry, "Colleges Mine Data to Tailor Students' Experience". I only got about 7 paragraphs in before I was yelling at the paper--and Bill Gates, of course.

The article is advocating technology that can group students by their interests, grades and responses on test. Those things sound strikingly like part of the job description of teachers and advisors. I'm not saying I would never use a technology that could do some of these things, but it would be an aid to something instructors already do. Grouping students for in-class discussion based on the answers to their tests is NOT new. I do that all the time.

a typical group discussion

Bill Gates earned my ire with this gem: "I know more about my 11-year old son's sixth-grade basketball team than the average college faculty member knows about their incoming class..." I wonder if his son plays on a basketball team with a new roster of 35 students each term. I wonder if he's met any of the players before the first game (class).

Teachers learn about their students during the course of the class. In the best case scenario, they interact with students in and out of the classroom, but is it feasible that college level instructors know the "...key variables that are going to make them successful or not successful" before the class begins? I just learned the "key variables" of 70 other students, most of whom will not take class with me again this year.

So, anyway, the technology will fix all this. Student scores, and a "college-admissions algorithm" will enable teachers to serve students better. I might be overly sensitive today, but this seems like the folks who believe this don't value my skills as an instructor very highly.

I get that there are folks out there who believe that my job is to deliver a product service to my customers students, but I think this is a dangerous way to look at education. If I sign in to Amazon to buy a book, its fine that Amazon suggests other books I might like, but it gives me suggestions based on author's names, best sellers and general topics of books I've purchased in the past. Amazon doesn't know what is useful for me and it has a superficial idea of what I might like. Amazon certainly doesn't encourage me to try books by authors or genres I haven't tried before. As a "provider" of higher education, I hope I am giving my students more than that with which they are already familiar.

To use a computer to track test answers and quickly group students for discussion sounds fine, but when we get into having computers (alone) direct students to career paths based on their previous success, I start to get nervous. Its not a bad idea, but it seems like a potentially limiting idea. Just the same, using a computer as an assistant to an instructor is fine, but I get nervous when the folks touting the technology aren't acknowledging that instructors do performed these "tasks" before the computer came along. And skilled instructors can perform these tasks with or without the technology.

Support the instructors, don't try to replace them. Writing about or developing programs that act like instructors don't know this stuff sounds like a step towards de-valuing those instructors and their specific skills and experience.