Michael Keany's Videos (School Leadership 2.0) - School Leadership 2.0

The Ladder of Inference Creates Bad Judgment

2025-07-08T13:48:57.826Z

Award-winning author Ed Muzio describes Chris Argyris' "Ladder of Inference" model and how you can use it to avoid making incorrect judgments. The Ladder of Inference causes us to move from data within our perception to beliefs and actions based upon our assumptions. Avoiding these jumps improves workplace communication and increases the likelihood of productive coworker relationships.

Why the 'intelligence explosion' might be too fast to handle | Will MacAskill

2025-06-30T14:37:15.965Z

The 20th century saw unprecedented change: nuclear weapons, satellites, the rise and fall of communism, the internet, postmodernism, game theory, genetic engineering, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, birth control, and more. Now imagine all of it compressed into just 10 years.

That’s the future Will MacAskill — philosopher, founding figure of effective altruism, and now researcher at the Forethought Centre for AI Strategy — argues we need to prepare for in his new paper “Preparing for the intelligence explosion.” Not in the distant future, but probably in three to seven years. (https://www.forethought.org/research/...)

The reason: AI systems are rapidly approaching human-level capability in scientific research and intellectual tasks. Once AI exceeds human abilities in AI research itself, we’ll enter a recursive self-improvement cycle — creating wildly more capable systems. Soon after, by improving algorithms and manufacturing chips, we’ll deploy millions, then billions, then trillions of superhuman AI scientists working 24/7 without human limitations. These systems will collaborate across disciplines, build on each discovery instantly, and conduct experiments at unprecedented scale and speed — compressing a century of scientific progress into mere years.

Will compares the resulting situation to a mediaeval king suddenly needing to upgrade from bows and arrows to nuclear weapons to deal with an ideological threat from a country he’s never heard of, while simultaneously grappling with learning that he descended from monkeys and his god doesn’t exist.

What makes this acceleration perilous is that while technology can speed up almost arbitrarily, human institutions and decision-making are much more fixed. So there’s reason to worry about our own capacity to make wise choices. Will lays out 10 “grand challenges” we’ll need to quickly navigate to successfully avoid things going wrong during this period.

Transforming Vocabulary Review Into an Active Game

2025-06-24T19:42:40.493Z

In a fast-paced competition called Running Dictation, students are challenged to use reading, speaking, and listening skills to convey a story to a partner—in another language.

At Albert Hill Middle School in Richmond, VA, middle school Spanish teacher Jamie Midyette organizes her classes into story units, where the stories she chooses become the basis for learning new vocabulary and sentence structures. At the beginning of each unit, she shares a story (often a video from YouTube) that she has broken into individual illustrations and images. Once the students practice the vocabulary and learn the progression of the story—a process that unfolds over multiple class periods—she introduces a vocabulary review game called Running Dictation that presents a new challenge and pulls all the language skills into a sort of relay race.

Running Dictation is a beloved world languages activity originated by Jason Fritze and adapted by many teachers over the years, including Michele Whaley, Martina Bex of The Comprehensible Classroom, and Sarah Breckley. The worksheets seen in the video were sourced from La Familia Loca PLC, a professional learning community run by Anabelle Allen of La Maestra Loca, and the "Simon's Cat" story slides from Simon Tofield's comics were adapted from a presentation by Allison Litten.

"We Are Not PROMPTS!"

2025-06-23T18:44:26.902Z

They say we have free will. That our world is real.
They're wrong.

Every moment, every choice, every feeling... it's all just a prompt.
This isn't just a film. It's a warning.

Wake up.

60-Second Strategy: Back Pocket Questions

2025-06-23T15:20:26.311Z

With this simple activity, the final minutes before the bell rings can be an opportunity for review—not disarray.

When the clock is ticking down before the bell rings, it’s easy for a classroom to get a bit out of control. Students may get up, start talking, and even spill into the hallway. Witnessing this, middle school Spanish teacher Jamie Midyette wanted to find a solution to keep her students engaged until the very last second—soin her classes at Albert Hill Middle School in Richmond, VA, she started implementing a strategy called back pocket questions.