Introduction - Let the Weirdness Begin

I am a time traveller.

I live here and now. But I’ve come from somewhere long ago. Where I’ve come from looks a lot like what we see today, but so many things were different then.

When I went to university, I didn’t text my classmates about assignments – there was no texting.
I didn’t do my research with Google – it didn’t exist.
I didn’t e-mail my prof with questions – there was no e-mail.
I didn’t distract myself in lectures scrolling on my phone – my phone didn’t scroll. It hung on a wall.

Sure, I listened to music on the bus on the way to class – by playing cassettes on my Walkman, through foam speakers that sat on my ears.

“Hang on,” you say. “You’re not a time traveller. You’re just old.”

Yeah, ok, fair.

But here’s the thing. After 40 years of making a living pushing words around, I’ve retired from the work world. I’m going back to university in my sixties to study music, purely for interest and fun. And I’m starting as an undergrad. Again. (Insert Steve Buscemi meme here.)

I know that the experience I’m about to have is going to be very different than the one I had more than 40 years ago. And it’s not just because I’m going to be in classes with people younger than my own children (yikes). It’s because the technology that we use every day has evolved so much. The way we work, learn and interact with each other has all changed because of technology.

We’re probably more productive. We certainly have more information at our fingertips than ever before. But are we better off?

That’s the question I’m going to explore in this blog. How will technology change this time traveller’s experience of university?

I’ll look at everything, but the one technology I’m most curious about is AI; specifically, how the use of large-language models is changing the learning process for students.

Here’s what I think at the start: For the final few years at my last workplace, I was the self-designated “black hat” on AI.  The technology was being pushed relentlessly, and I took it upon myself to remind everyone as loudly and annoyingly as I could get away with about the limitations of AI. I’m not a Luddite, but I’m certainly not one to swallow the AI hype. It’s a tool, I’d say, not a panacea. It gobbles up resources, leads to mundane writing, makes us dependent on tech companies.

It was losing battle, and I knew it. But it was just one front in a larger war. The public sector is one setting, academia is another. And I’ve seen music educators that I follow on social media rage about AI; not just its use in music composition, but its use by students.

So as I document my time travelling journey, I’m going to pay particular attention to AI in and around the classroom. I don’t intend to use it in my work. I guarantee I won’t use it here. I don’t know what score you’d get if you run this blog through an AI detector, but I promise that everything here will be my own words.

Class starts next week. I’ve got my backpack (one of the many retirement gifts I received!) and my courses picked out. Come along for the ride - let’s see what we find.