\n<\/p>\n
On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I\u00a0was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I\u00a0was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I\u00a0started thinking about generative AI.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0was thinking about generative AI\u00a0because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I\u00a0am, had disappeared into the distance, visible only because we were on twisting roads and she was several switchbacks ahead. <\/p>\n
She also powered past my older brother, who competes in triathlons, and (I\u00a0was told later) a French couple that muttered some apparent swears in their native language. Ultimately, she arrived only three or four minutes ahead of me at the top-of-the-hill way station, but as I\u00a0huffed and puffed the final couple hundred yards, down to my next-to-lowest gear, moving at a just-above-walking pace, the gap felt enormous.<\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t figured it out, my wife was riding an e-bike, while I\u00a0was on a conventional (though very nice) bike. For the most part, the biking was very doable, but there were moments where I\u00a0was not entirely sure I\u00a0could or should keep peddling.<\/p>\n
But I\u00a0made it! Because we were touring with Backroads, an active vacation company, there was a delicious snack waiting for me at the top, which I\u00a0enjoyed with great relish, knowing that I\u2019d burned quite a few calories with many more to come that day.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0believe those French riders might\u2019ve said something about \u201ccheating\u201d by using an e-bike, but this is obviously a case where what is cheating is in the eye of the beholder and significantly dependent on what you\u2019re valuing about the experience.<\/p>\n
If the point of our Ireland cycling vacation was to expend maximum effort on physical activities while cycling around the southwestern Ireland countryside, using an e-bike would prevent you from achieving your objective. But this is not the point of these kinds of trips. Yes, we have a desire to be active, outside and engaged, but the point is to use these methods to experience the place we\u2019ve traveled to, and if\u2014as happened to me a different day\u2014you are perspiring so hard that the sweat dripping into your eyes has temporarily blinded you, it is tough to say that you are maximizing the experience.<\/p>\n
Having the \u201cbest\u201d vacation on this kind of trip is often a matter of balance. At times, I\u00a0actively wished for the boost an e-bike could\u2019ve given me. Other times, particularly on a day where we did 60 miles, and my brother and I\u00a0were the only ones doing the whole itinerary, and we managed to go fast enough on the closing stretch to beat the Backroads van back to the hotel, I\u00a0was thrilled with what it felt like to put my full physical effort behind the task.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0think my body paid for that big effort for a couple of days afterward, but I\u00a0don\u2019t regret it. <\/p>\n
Like I\u00a0said, it\u2019s a matter of balance and values.<\/p>\n
The e-bikes are great because they made it easier for my wife and me to ride together. The bottom-level boost had her toasting me up the hills, but on the flats, we were essentially the same speed, with us both working at levels we were comfortable with. The e-bike isn\u2019t a motorcycle. You are still working plenty hard at the lower levels of boost.<\/p>\n
But at the higher levels, you might find yourself speeding through the itinerary, as a group of four gentlemen in our group seemed to do, frequently arriving at our stopping points 20 minutes ahead of the rest of us. <\/p>\n
I\u00a0was thinking of generative AI\u00a0because of the different lenses through which you can look at the use of an e-bike in the context of a bike-touring vacation. <\/p>\n
You could see it as supplementary, allowing someone to experience something (like the view from a particular peak) that they wouldn\u2019t otherwise unless they substituted something entirely nonbiking, like a car.<\/p>\n
You could see it as substitutive, removing effort in exchange for feeling less tired and taxed at the end of the day.<\/p>\n
You could see it as cheating, as those French riders did.<\/p>\n
Because I\u00a0don\u2019t bike all that often at home, my primary \u201ctraining\u201d for the trip has been my regular Peloton rides, and for sure, those helped. My metrics on the stationary bike suggested I\u00a0was well prepared. And I\u00a0was, but well prepared doesn\u2019t mean you aren\u2019t going to face some very challenging moments. <\/p>\n
There were several times\u2014like that sweat-pouring-down-my-face period\u2014where I\u00a0would have gladly kicked in an e-bike boost in order to reduce my effort to conserve something for a different aspect of the trip, e.g., not being exhausted over dinner. But at no point did I\u00a0need the boost to continue or finish the route, and if I\u00a0was so inclined, Backroads is happy for you to hop in the van and get a ride the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m stubborn enough to not do that, but knowing myself, there were many times when an e-bike boost wouldn\u2019t have been necessary or even desirable, when I\u00a0would\u2019ve switched it on in order to alleviate some measure of present discomfort. If it\u2019s available, why not use it?<\/p>\n
This would have signaled a shift in the values I\u00a0initially brought to the trip. Whether or not it should be viewed as a betrayal or merely a change with its own benefits is a more complicated question, but at least for this trip, I\u00a0was glad to not<\/em> have the temptation.<\/p>\n I\u00a0like to look at my opportunities to travel through the lens of experience. We aren\u2019t going somewhere to check a box, but instead to literally spend time in a different place doing different things than our regular routines. I\u00a0often know that I\u2019ve had a good trip by the number of pictures I\u00a0take\u2014the fewer the better, because it means I\u00a0was too absorbed in the experience to bother reaching for my phone to document something.<\/p>\n As we consider how to teach in a world where students have a superpowered e-bike instantly and constantly available, I\u2019ve found looking at learning through the lens of experience is helpful, because focusing on the experience is a good way of identifying the things we should most value.<\/p>\n For my focus, writing, it seems almost irrefutable that if we want students to develop their writing practices, they should be doing the work without the assistance. The work must be purposeful and focused on what\u2019s important in a given experience, but if that\u2019s been achieved, any use of a boost is to miss out on something important. Learning is about riding up that hill under your own steam.<\/p>\n For writing especially, it\u2019s axiomatic that the more you can do without the boost, the more you could potentially do with the boost. <\/p>\n Perhaps more importantly, the more you do without the boost, the greater knowledge you will gain about when the boost is truly an aid or when it is a way to dodge responsibility.<\/p>\n Figuring out where these lines must be drawn isn\u2019t easy, and ultimately, because of the nature of school and the fact that students should be viewed as free and independent actors, the final choice must reside with them. <\/p>\n But we can act in ways that make the consequences of these choices and the benefits to opting for unboosted ride as apparent and inviting as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a recent vacation in the southwest portion of Ireland, as I\u00a0was slogging away, trying to get the bicycle I\u00a0was peddling up a reasonably daunting hill, I\u00a0started thinking about generative AI. I\u00a0was thinking about generative AI\u00a0because my wife, who is quite fit, but historically not as a strong a biker as I\u00a0am, had disappeared into<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3222,585,552],"class_list":{"0":"post-15986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-hill","9":"tag-learning","10":"tag-ride"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}