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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
I turned my screened-in porch into a home office this summer, so my daughter and I could work our remote jobs side by side
My daughter and I are working side-by-side this summer on our screened-in porch. I get to witness her in her first corporate role and see her grow. I'm also learning to let go, while we also enter a new stage of our relationship. By 9 a.m., my daughter and I are in our "office," which includes two laptops, two mugs of tea, and one very persistent cat who wants in and out of the front door all day. My daughter is 21 and working her first corporate internship remotely. I'm a college writing professor teaching summer courses online. Our home's screened-in porch has become a workplace for the two of us — where we clock hours, share space, and learn how to work side by side. Our work-from-home arrangement wasn't planned, but it feels like a modern extension of Take Your Daughter to Work Day — only it's all summer long. And it's working for us. Working side-by-side is something new for us My four children grew up watching me teach online from this same porch, long before Zoom meetings became a daily phrase in most households. They instinctively learned when to be quiet or when to step around my laptop. Over the years, they saw me not just as a mom, but as a professional — someone who led meetings, answered emails, and managed her own schedule. But now, my daughter sits next to me. Only this time she's not watching, she's working. My husband and son retrimmed the porch and replaced the screen just to make the space more comfortable for us. Now it feels like a real office. We sip tea in parallel silence, break for lunch at the same time, and check in after meetings. There's a rhythm to it: dragonflies buzz on the screen, mourning doves coo, the fan spins. We rarely interrupt each other, but when we do, it's for something worthwhile: a second opinion on a tricky email, a "did you hear about this?" or just a laugh about office dynamics. We both benefit from the shared space My daughter and I aren't just coexisting; we're partnering. I give her space to do her job, and she respects mine. In the process, we're learning how to be adults together, as peers. That shift has felt real for us this summer. My daughter doesn't need me to structure her day or check in on her progress. But she's learning how to balance screen time with self-care, how to navigate ambiguous instructions, and how to read between the lines in professional emails. She's learning adulting skills, and I'm learning to let go. Working together has fast-tracked a whole set of skills that some jobs can't teach remotely, too: how to share space, communicate boundaries, and respect different working styles. She's learning how to manage her time and energy in a professional setting. I'm learning to stop giving advice unless she asks for it. I'm celebrating this new phase of our relationship The impact has been subtle but powerful for us. My daughter sees my professional life up close, and I see her step into her own. Watching her work gives me a front-row seat to the person she's becoming: smart, capable, and focused in a way I admire. We don't always talk about it, but we feel it. And we carry it. When the summer ends, and she heads back to campus for her senior year, I'll miss this: the soft thrum of her keyboard, the way she glances up just to check in, the calm assurance that we've found a rhythm not just for work, but for a new stage of our relationship. On our porch, amid the occasional package delivery and the murmur of email alerts, something else is unfolding: not just the workdays of two professionals, but a portal into the next phase of parenting and adulthood. I wouldn't trade that for a corner office. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
CNET
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Back to School: How Teachers Can Use AI to Create Assignments Students Actually Want to Do
As a college professor, I know that getting students excited about the work I have to grade later can be one of the more frustrating things about teaching. But when an assignment hits the right chord, it has the potential to inspire students and affect your classroom, the whole school and beyond. Reconciling the curriculum and assignments with standards and learning objectives sometimes established out of a teacher's control can sap the creative side of your brain. Here's how artificial intelligence can help broaden your horizons when trying to create assignments that make a lasting impression and keep your classroom excited about learning. (And for more AI tips for the back-to-school season, check out CNET's guides on how students can use AI to manage their time, how to use AI to write an email to your teacher and more on how I use AI as a college professor.) Since there will need to be a fair bit of refinement to create an assignment that is both fun to complete for students and fun to review and grade for educators, I've used ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that uses machine learning and large language models to generate conversational style answers to search queries, so that I could go back and forth brainstorming ideas. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Maintaining student and teacher sanity My area of study is media and communications, so for this example I'm putting together an assignment on media literacy, or the ability to think and interact critically with everything from TikTok content to front-page news. The goal is to create an assignment that's fun, collaborative and impactful for college students who interact heavily with digital media but might not be questioning what they're consuming. The secondary goal was to create an assignment I won't hate myself for creating when it comes time to grade it. On my first attempt, ChatGPT gave me a fully built-out assignment according to specific learning objectives around media literacy for college-level students, but it was about as fun as you'd think writing a 500-word essay on media literacy might be -- not fun at all. Refine for fun, focus and collaboration Since this assignment is in part about getting students to actually interact with media online in a way that's more impactful than just lurking or liking from the digital shadows, I refined the prompt to include using the student body in the assignment somehow and requested less emphasis on written analysis that will ultimately only be seen and evaluated by the teacher. Here's what it came back with: I was actually impressed -- not only did ChatGPT have students interacting with and analyzing media, but it also created a multi-layered assignment that gave students the opportunity to see firsthand the impact media literacy can make on a community as well as an individual. This assignment would also be a darn sight more enjoyable to grade than 30 to 50 500-word analytical essays about whether the source of a Brat summer post on TikTok can be trusted. Finally, ChatGPT offered submission requirements (like linking to the social media content used in completing the assignment and screenshots of the online interactions) and grading criteria for the assignment and even some examples of how the assignment might be executed. Its example in particular about analyzing the role of political memes was timely and felt like a fresh take on an evolving reality of campaign media. I personally would love to see videos from students collaborating on a discussion with their peers about their perception of the presence of President Donald Trump across social media. And who knows -- maybe the students might actually enjoy it too.
