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Howdy hey ,

I'll admit it: I was too overwhelmed with stuff these past two weeks to write something substantial for today's email. Ball State's classes just kicked off this week, and it's been a firehose (plus, y'know, ample client work and life :D).

So, enjoy the links below, and I'll bring back the longer-form work next time.

Thanks, team!

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Stellar content about content

When Online Content Disappears

By Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero

Many picture the internet as eternal. Books rot and stone chips, but data lives forever, right?

Nope.

The reality of digital decay is catching up with us all. A report from the Pew Research Center found an alarming trend across the internet: things keep disappearing. As per the report:

• A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023. In most cases, this is because an individual page was deleted or removed on an otherwise functional website.
• For older content, this trend is even starker. Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023.

This shifting or disappearing content has first- and second-order effects across the web. That SEO backlink a few years ago? Worth checking if it's still there. Got published on a digital media platform? Your article could be gone.

Online content folks, let this be your warning: Backups, backups, backups.

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How Pearson's AI assistant can help teachers save time

by Radhika Rajkumar, ZDNet

There's a lot of talk about how students can (or should) use AI in their educational journeys. But how 'bout dem professors (yours truly included)?

Well, Pearson is on it with their AI teaching assistant tool. There's still a wide gap between professors understanding even the basics of AI and actually using it in the classroom, and Pearson wants to fill that gap. From the article:

Similarly to many AI tools, the goal of Pearson's assistant is to reduce administrative workload and create more time for the elements of teaching that can't be automated, like working directly with students or giving more attention to specific topics as needed. Other studies have also found that educators are warming to the idea that genAI can offload some of their manual tasks. Considering how many challenges teachers have faced in the last few years, the tool could be a welcome help. 

I'll have to dig into my ability to access these or similar tools. But I like the forward-thinking approach, even if Pearson doesn't quite solve every extant teaching challenge.

They are right — academics and teachers are totally overwhelmed. Any tool that can truly help us would be greatly appreciated.

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I Love a Great Bad Intro

If you're unfamiliar with the Bulwer-Lytton Awards, it's an annual writing contest to create the worst opening paragraphs possible. Each entrant models Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's infamous "dark and stormy night" opener to his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. Every year, judges crown new Worst Opener winners in genre categories.

Bookmark this page for those days when you're struggling to start an article. You'll feel better afterward.

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Content from my pocket of the galaxy

How Can Businesses Actually Use Generative AI?

Appreciate everyone who joined me at the Columbia Club yesterday to talk about generative AI's actual use cases in business! If you missed it, I've linked the slides in the title above.

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See you soon,

Alex