Leslie's Laughs

 Published in MyKolkata https://www.telegraphindia.com/my-kolkata/lifestyle/how-ai-and-chatgpt-are-affecting-teachers-and-students-in-kolkata-schools-and-around-the-world/cid/2034104 Intelligence - Natural and Artificial The author, an educator for four decades plus, takes a look at how teachers, especially Language teachers, may be viewing Artificial Intelligence and their own futures. “Well, we got no choice / All the girls and boys / Making all that noise / 'Cause they found new toys /. . . / School's out for summer / School's out forever / School’s been blown to pieces” - Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, was released in 1972 and so was I, from school.  The ISC done, most of us were rocking to the song, and the words and we thought we’d never come back like the song says.  But I did.   A few years later, I was back in school as a Teacher. And I rued the day I sang, “No more pencils, no more books / No more teacher’s  dirty looks / Out for summer, out 'til Fa...

 Here's the link to the published piece in My Kolkata : https://www.telegraphindia.com/my-kolkata/lifestyle/beyond-the-screen-my-five-year-experience-without-tv-in-the-age-of-smartphones-and-streaming/cid/2032629 [No noise, no outage, no calls to cable operators and plenty of Kindle - that’s how I would describe the last 5 years of my life without TV. No, I do not live under a rock, but I choose what I watch!] My son is an expert.  We suddenly decided to watch the T20 World cup finals last week - well, apparently it’s the done thing, even if you don’t watch cricket, to watch your country do stuff on TV. But we had no cable, no dish and no account. He managed to get a live telecast on his mobile phone and then he ‘screencast’ it to the TV set. Every alternate moment the picture refreshed itself, so you actually saw Chaplin type movements jerking across the screen. Not cricket!  After a bit more fiddling, he got a Tab to work and we watched the match in all its 11-inch glor...