Intellectual Sprawl

Sticking with Evernote

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 19:22:06 -0700

After experimenting with both Obsidian and DEVONthink for a month (as discussed here), I’ve decided to stick with Evernote.

It isn’t perfect. I don’t like the bloat in the application, and I don’t use it as my to-do list or calendar. But it does a few things incredibly well:

It handles a wide range of document types, and getting them in is effortless.
I organize at two levels: a few folders (Inbox, Archive, Personal) plus tags, and Evernote handles this quite well.
Every PDF and even the JPGs I’ve saved over the years are automatically OCR’d, so they turn up in search easily.
Cross-device compatibility is built in and just works

Those strengths matter more to me than the architectural advantages that drew me to the alternatives (plus, avoiding the lock-in ¹).

The last time I tried to bulk move files out of Evernote using its export, it was messy. This time, Claude helped with several Python scripts that I ran via Terminal, and cleaned-up the exported files. ↩︎

Political Advocacy analysis, Fall 2027

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:21:20 -0700

As I have been doing for the past few years, students in my four psychology courses (two sections of Social-Cognitive Psychology and two sections of Behavioral Neuroscience) completed the “political advocacy” assignment, wherein they write to elected officials about some topic they are concerned with, connecting it somehow to topics we’ve covered in the course. This year, approximately 70 students sent 210 letters.

I downloaded the submissions and fed them into Claude Opus 5.5 for thematic analysis, resulting in the following top-five topics.

School-based mental health services (~17 students) This is again the most common topic, and now the clear leader rather than tied for first. Students asked for more school counselors, wellness centers, and early-intervention services, often citing California’s Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. A related group of about four students wrote about student stress more broadly: homework limits (extending the Healthy Homework Act to private schools), mental health education to reduce stigma (SB 531, which also appeared last fall), and physical activity during the school day.
Mental health and healthcare access and affordability (~12 students) Students wrote about Medi-Cal patients struggling to find therapists, incentives to bring mental health providers into underserved areas (H.R. 7324, a Medi-Cal loan repayment program), CARE Court, copays for low-income patients (AB 2208), LGBTQ youth mental health (H.R. 3757), and research funding for youth mental health, dementia, and diverse clinical trials.
Poverty, housing, and homelessness (~8 students) Five students wrote about homelessness and affordable housing, often after volunteering with unhoused families, and one wrote about AB 1556’s sober housing requirements. Others addressed food insecurity (AB 1734) and the CalEITC, framing poverty as a source of chronic stress for children and families.
Violence, crime, and personal safety (~7 students) Topics included domestic violence and shelters, support for crime survivors (H.R. 8426), law enforcement coordinators for trafficking victims (AB 2720), consent and sexual assault prevention education, anti-bullying policy, firearm safety certificates (SB 948), and package theft.
Social media and youth mental health (5 students) Students supported KOSA and California’s SB 976, focusing on addictive feeds, late-night scrolling, and social comparison.

Overall

School counseling and mental health access remain the backbone of the assignment. Below them, the class shifted away from social media, immigration, and guns, and toward economic hardship, housing, and personal safety. Topics were also more spread out this semester, with a longer tail of one- and two-student issues.

Fall 2025 Comparison

Comparing submissions this semester to those from Fall 2025, we find the same core: school-based mental health services and general mental health and healthcare access again led by a wide margin. School counseling grew to a clear first place (~17 students). Social media (9 to 5 students), immigration (7 to 4), and gun violence (5 to 1) all shrank. Immigration letters also shifted from family separation toward the effects of enforcement, such as ICE keeping students out of school and evictions after a family member is detained. In their place, two new clusters rose into the top five: poverty, housing, and homelessness (~8) and violence and personal safety (~7), covering domestic violence, trafficking, crime survivors, consent education, and bullying. Veterans’ mental health held steady. Topics were also more spread out overall, with a longer tail of one- and two-student issues ranging from dementia research and green space to classroom political bias, women’s sports, and foster care.

Conclusion

I do this assignment because my psychology courses are hosted by the Social Science department, and in our department handbook one of the key goals of the department is increasing political engagement. I very explicitly tell students that while I’m interested in the topics they choose to write about, their grade in no way depends on their political stance. Being one-quarter through the semester-long class, I’m confident they believe me.

The Mattering Gap, a report

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:33:06 -0700

The Walton Family Foundation and the good folks at Gallup have partnered for a series of reports on the current state of Education in America. The latest is “Teaching for Tomorrow: The Mattering Gap Among K-12 Educators.”

Page 4 has the key findings, which are absolutely worth everyone’s attention. I’ll share just the first:

Roughly one in three K-12 educators (35%) say they matter a great deal at their school. Mattering varies slightly by school type and subject taught, but the differences are small. This suggests mattering is less demographically driven and more a function of the system in which educators teach.

I have my own thoughts on why this is so low, but I recommend faculty and school administrators read the report linked above

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 11:24:46 -0700

Hello, world!*

the classic

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:33:00 -0700

Reposted from SFMTA’s MUNI Instagram.

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:31:00 -0700

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SFMTA (@sfmta_muni)

Boooooo — why can’t I just embed the video here!?

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 09:50:00 -0700

Rethinking my PKM: Moving beyond Evernote

TL;DR: After more than a decade with Evernote, I’m evaluating a move because my archive has grown to about 42 GB across 6,311 files, and I want better long-term control over the underlying data. The two strongest replacements are Obsidian and DEVONthink. Obsidian has the architectural advantage: notes and attachments live as ordinary files, which minimizes lock-in and makes the archive especially well suited to future AI tools. DEVONthink has the operational advantage: it is stronger at managing large collections of PDFs, scans, images, and mixed documents, has built-in AI/MCP integration, and is likely cheaper over ten years. I do not want to split my knowledge across multiple apps, so the goal is one canonical repository. The next step is a controlled migration pilot using the same representative Evernote subset in both systems, testing fidelity, sync, mobile use, document handling, AI retrieval, and ease of eventually leaving the new platform.

[[MORE]]

After more than a decade as a paying Evernote user, I am considering moving my personal knowledge archive to a different platform. Evernote has served me well, but the accumulated size and value of the archive have made one concern increasingly important: I do not want decades of personal information locked inside a proprietary application and data model.

This is no longer simply a note-taking application decision. My Evernote account now contains approximately 42 GB and 6,311 files, including thousands of text notes, hundreds of PDFs, images, scans, and other attachments. I routinely read and write this material from a Mac laptop, iPhone, and iPad. Whatever replaces Evernote must function as a unified personal information repository across all three devices.

Generative AI has also changed the requirements. A modern personal knowledge system should make it possible for an AI assistant to search and reason across the entire corpus—for example, to answer a question using relevant notes, PDFs, images, receipts, research, or other material accumulated over many years, while ideally citing the underlying sources.

After considering a broader set of alternatives, Obsidian and DEVONthink are the two leading candidates. My current inclination is that the final decision should be made after a controlled migration pilot rather than from feature comparisons alone.

The central tradeoff is straightforward:

Obsidian offers the stronger long-term data architecture. DEVONthink offers the stronger integrated document-management application.

Why Leave Evernote?

The problem is not that Evernote has stopped being useful. In fact, it continues to add significant functionality, including AI features, semantic search, and connectivity to external AI tools through MCP. Its current Advanced plan is designed specifically for high-volume users and provides unlimited notes, attachments, storage, and synchronized devices.

The concern is instead one of long-term ownership and optionality.

Over more than a decade, Evernote has become the container for a substantial portion of my personal digital memory. Moving away from it now is already a significant project. If I simply replace Evernote with another application-centric repository, I may recreate the same problem and face an even larger migration ten years from now.

My objective is therefore not merely to find “another Evernote.” It is to establish a system in which the underlying information remains durable, accessible, searchable, and usable independently of any one software vendor.

Cost contributes to this decision as well. A rough reconstruction suggests that I have probably spent on the order of $1,000–$1,300 on Evernote subscriptions over the past decade-plus. More importantly, Evernote’s current Advanced plan costs $249.99 per year in the United States. Given the size of my account, the lower Starter plan (with a 1,000-note, 1,000-attachment, and 5 GB limit) is not a realistic option. Further, I’ll be maintaining this PKM longer than the seven-years I have until retirement when the costs become my own :)

At today’s price, another ten years of Evernote Advanced would therefore cost approximately $2,500, before future price increases. Retired-Eric will not be paying that much

The Two Leading Alternatives

Obsidian: Files First

Obsidian’s defining advantage is architectural. An Obsidian “vault” is fundamentally a directory of ordinary files on my computer. Notes are stored as non-proprietary Markdown text files, and PDFs, images, and other attachments remain files. Obsidian explicitly describes this model as keeping data locally under the user’s control.

That directly addresses the issue that prompted this evaluation.

If Obsidian disappeared in the future, the underlying collection would remain usable. Markdown can be read by countless applications—or with nothing more sophisticated than a text editor. PDFs remain PDFs. Images remain images. The archive could be indexed by future search products, scripts, databases, or AI systems without first requiring an export from Obsidian.

Obsidian also provides an official Evernote importer. It consumes Evernote’s ENEX exports and converts notes into durable Markdown, with options for controlling metadata and folder structure during migration.

This open-file structure is particularly compelling in the era of AI. The permanent asset would not be “my Obsidian database.” It would be my corpus of files. Search indexes, vector embeddings, AI models, and applications could all be treated as replaceable layers above that corpus.

The disadvantage is synchronization cost at my scale. Obsidian itself is free for personal use, but its official Sync service has storage tiers. Sync Plus provides 10 GB for $8 per month when billed annually and can be upgraded to 100 GB for $16 per month billed annually. My existing 42 GB Evernote collection therefore requires the 100 GB tier if I want the entire archive synchronized through the official service.

That puts the current ten-year cost at approximately $1,920, assuming unchanged pricing.

DEVONthink: Documents First

DEVONthink approaches the problem from the opposite direction. It is a mature Mac-oriented information and document manager designed to handle heterogeneous collections of notes, PDFs, scans, images, records, and other documents.

For a 42 GB archive with thousands of attachments, this matters. My collection is not merely a collection of interconnected text notes; it is also a substantial document repository. DEVONthink’s document-management, OCR, classification, search, and organizational capabilities are particularly well aligned with that workload.

DEVONthink 4 has also become considerably more interesting because of AI. In 2026, DEVONtechnologies added a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. Compatible AI tools can search DEVONthink databases, read and summarize records, create and update documents, move items, add tags, and perform other operations. Access can be restricted at the database or individual-record level, and DEVONthink provides controls for redacting sensitive content before information is sent to an external AI provider.

That maps directly onto the future use case I care about: asking an AI a question and allowing it to consult my personal archive as part of answering.

DEVONthink also presents a more nuanced lock-in situation than Evernote. By default it imports copies of files into its database, but it can alternatively index files that remain in ordinary Finder folders, maintaining references to those external files while adding DEVONthink’s search and classification capabilities. This creates the possibility of preserving a filesystem-based corpus while using DEVONthink as an intelligence layer over it.

Its cost structure is also favorable. DEVONthink 4 Pro currently costs $199, including two Mac seats, five DEVONthink To Go mobile seats, and one year of updates. Importantly, the purchased Mac application does not stop working when the update period expires. Current customers can extend updates before expiration for $89 for one year, $159 for two years, or $209 for three years.

Using the three-year extension option, ten years of continuously current DEVONthink Pro would cost approximately $826 at today’s prices: $199 initially plus three $209 extensions.

Current Comparison

* At current published prices, excluding general storage, backup, taxes, AI subscriptions/API charges, and future price changes.

AI Changes the Decision

Five years ago I would have evaluated this largely as a synchronization, search, editing, and file-portability problem.

Generative AI adds a new requirement: the archive should be machine-accessible as a coherent knowledge corpus.

The goal is not to upload 42 GB into a chatbot; a better architecture is retrieval-based. (And, as much as possible, retain local control of all files — keeping them out of Skynet’s hands…) Software indexes the corpus, identifies the material relevant to a question, and supplies only those sources to an AI model. Ideally an answer is accompanied by citations back to the original notes or documents.

For example, rather than searching manually through old notebooks, I should eventually be able to ask:

“What decisions have I made over the years about replacing the heating system, and what contractors, estimates, rebates, and technical considerations were involved?”

A useful system should locate information even if I variously described the subject as “furnace,” “HVAC,” “heat pump,” or a manufacturer’s name.

This capability makes open, durable source data more valuable, not less. AI models and retrieval technology will change dramatically over the coming decade. I do not want today’s AI integration to become tomorrow’s new form of lock-in.

It is worth noting that all three platforms are now moving toward AI, including Evernote itself. Consequently, “has AI features” is not a useful differentiator. The better question is how easily the underlying corpus can be connected to whatever the best AI technology is five or ten years from now.

On that criterion, Obsidian’s file-based architecture has a fundamental advantage.

One Repository, Not Two

One possible design would be to divide the collection: Markdown and active notes in Obsidian, large PDFs and archival documents in DEVONthink.

I have rejected that as the preferred architecture.

I do not want personal knowledge management to require remembering that “the recipe is in DEVONthink” while “the blueprint is in Obsidian.” A fundamental requirement is that there be one conceptual home for the entire archive.

It may eventually be reasonable for another application to index or provide an alternate interface to that repository. That is different from splitting ownership of the information across applications.

The choice should therefore be between a unified Obsidian corpus and a unified DEVONthink corpus — or possibly a filesystem corpus for which one of these applications serves as the primary interface.

Preliminary Conclusion

At this stage, Obsidian has the strategic advantage and DEVONthink has the operational advantage.

Obsidian most directly solves the problem that started this evaluation. Its working data consists of ordinary files, providing maximum independence from both Obsidian itself and from today’s generation of AI products.

DEVONthink is arguably the better application for the collection I actually have today: 42 GB of notes, PDFs, images, scans, and attachments. Its lower projected software cost, sophisticated document-management capabilities, and built-in MCP interface make it a very serious alternative.

I do not think the decision should be made from specifications alone.

The next step should be a representative migration pilot, using the same subset of Evernote material in both systems. The test corpus should deliberately contain ordinary text notes, complex formatted notes, PDFs, image-heavy notes, scans, large attachments, tags, internal links, and older material.

The pilot should answer practical questions: How faithfully does each product preserve the archive? How does each perform on the Mac with a substantial corpus? What is the experience on an iPhone and iPad? Are PDFs and images easy to retrieve? How reliable is synchronization? Can an AI answer questions across the test archive and identify the sources it used? And, perhaps most importantly, how confident am I that I could leave the new platform ten years from now without facing another major extraction project?

The objective is not simply to select better note-taking software.

It is to convert more than a decade of accumulated information into a durable, application-independent, AI-ready personal knowledge archive that I can continue using for decades.

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:29:00 -0700

Kind Notes

I primarily teach 12th graders; somewhere else on campus, they were given the opportunity to write a short note, and several chose to write to me. These are exceedingly kind, and I make note of them here only so that in darker days, I can look back on them.

“I’ve had so much fun in your class this year. My highlight of the day was always [Cognitive] psych and neuro because it has always been such a safe and fun classroom environment.”

“I wanted to write… to thank you for everything you did for me in class in the first semester. Your class was the only reason I came to school. Seriously, I would look forward to fifth period so much and have never been more interested in a class before.”

“Your realness and honesty is so appreciated.”

“Thank you for being such an amazing teacher… You made everything so interesting while also making us feel supported.”

I appreciate these notes because I try very hard to balance the academic rigor of my class with their engagement level *and* while still having time and focus to be with my students in personally meaningful ways. I do not strike that balance with every student, I know; but I do try.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:08:00 -0700

It’s behind a paywall obviously but I have a chapter in a recently published book:

Castro, E.E. (2026). Generative AI, Psychotherapy, and Secondary Education. In I. Katzarska-Miller, M. Jackson, and M. Fortner (Eds.) Integrating Generative AI in Psychology Courses (pp. 94–102). Society for the Teaching of Psychology. https://teachpsych.org/ebooks/genai

And my abstract:

This chapter presents an introductory psychology activity utilizing generative AI to explore psychotherapy techniques. Each student selected a disorder from the DSM-5-TR and was assigned a specific psychotherapy technique. They researched both using traditional in-class methods available to them on a personal computing device. Students experienced a realistic therapy session through AI simulation. Group discussions examined the advantages and disadvantages of AI-based telehealth. This activity introduces students to the intersection of technology and mental health treatment while encouraging critical evaluation. Student responses suggest engaging with AI can help develop a foundational understanding of psychotherapy techniques and AI’s potential impact on therapy.

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:22:00 -0700

Watching the Crew-kids practice was thoroughly impressive! The precision movements required reminded of the micro-movements of golf, paired with the coordination of synchronized swimming or cheer, paired with the strength of rugby. Really, it was thoroughly impressive to watch!

Having said that, there’s no way I’d go and watch as a spectator from the dock or the shoreline. Being out on the launch with the coach was fun; being sidelined as a spectator would be borrrrring :)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:18:00 -0700

I was asked by some students to “come watch” their practice at Lake Merced. I thought I’d just be on the dock, watching them go by, but noooooo. Coach invited me into her launch, and I rode alongside as the two Varsity 8 boats warmed-up.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 03:11:00 -0700

A student in Social-Cognitive Psychology last semester (Fall 2025) wrote to their federal elected representatives about the inaccurate claims that Tylenol caused Autism Spectrum Disorder. The student came to my room this week to show me the attached letter. The student was surprised to have gotten a reply – especially a physical letter – and was upset that the letter did not address his original concerns at all.

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 03:43:00 -0700

Fall 2025 PEERS Goal Analysis

November Goal

On November 4, 2025, I submitted the following:

I will evaluate the effectiveness of transitioning from in-class, timed, weekly quizzes to at-home checks-for-understanding by conducting correlation analysis between students’ formal assessment scores (ie, Midterms & Final) and their check-for-understanding performance to determine the impact on content recall and mastery.
I’ll use Pearson’s correlation coefficient to see the relationship between students’ self-check scores and their score on the Final Exam

Classes had started in mid-August, and for the first two chapters I had gone with the plan that I developed over the summer, in which students would complete an in-class quick-write in Lockdown Browser, based on the assigned chapter. This eliminated the chance of students using generative AI, and maximized the probability that their score on these formative assessments were an accurate measure of what students know and are able to do. But based on… students’ feedback… after the first two chapters and in-class quick-writes, I changed to the at-home self-checks.

December Analysis

Regular coursework has largely concluded at the point of this analysis (Dec 10, 2025). Few students will be taking the Final exam next week seriously, and so the analysis here will compare students’ Chapter-based self-check quiz scores against their two Midterm exam scores.

There are two things to keep in mind regarding this analysis. First, our Social Science courses are offered in both Honors and non-honors format. All instruction and in-class activities are undifferentiated; the differentiation is in the formative and summative assessments. Second, the formative assessment “self-checks” allow unlimited attempts. Generally speaking students score the maximum number of points after four- to six-attempts on each of the eight chapter-based self-checks. Though the self-checks are graded on accuracy because of the unlimited attempts allowed, this is functionally a completion-based assignment. This, for the analysis below, rather than comparing self-check scores to midterm scores, I will instead compare by completion-rate.

The research question thereby becomes: “Does consistent engagement with low-stakes practice predict performance on high-stakes exams?”

For each group (Honors/ non-honors), the following was calculated:

Mean midterm scores for “completers” vs. “non-completers”
Sample sizes and standard deviations
An independent-samples t-test (Welch’s, which doesn’t assume equal variances)
Cohen’s d effect size, which tells you the practical magnitude of the difference

Behavioral-Neuroscience

A Cohen’s d of ~0.4 means that completing the self-checks is associated with roughly a 0.4 standard deviation improvement in midterm scores. In practical terms, if the midterm SD is around 15 points, completers scored about 5-6 points higher on average (which translates to a course grade 5-6% higher). At half-a-letter grade for the course, that’s noticeable but not transformative.

This doesn’t mean self-checks are ineffective or that I should abandon them and return to the original in-class quick-writes. A few important caveats:

Correlation ≠ causation. Conscientious students both complete self-checks and study more effectively elsewhere. The self-checks might just be a proxy for general engagement rather than the cause of better performance.
The unlimited attempts issue. Students can click through repeatedly until they hit 100%. This decouples the self-check score from actual learning—a student who struggles, reviews, and retakes thoughtfully looks identical in your gradebook to one who just guesses repeatedly until they pass.
Ceiling compression. Most of my “completers” cluster near 100%, which limits the ability to detect a dose-response relationship between how much someone learned from self-checks and their exam scores.

NeuroPsych TL;DR

Students who consistently completed the self-checks scored higher on midterms than those who didn’t — and this held for both Honors and Regular sections. The relationship is statistically significant and in the expected direction.

Social-Cognitive Psychology

Something different and interesting is happening with the CogPsych students; they seem to be using the self-checks differently.

Honors (d = 0.89): A large effect. For these students, even moderate engagement with self-checks is strongly associated with exam performance. This is the clearest evidence that the self-checks “matter.”
Regular (d = 0.05): Essentially no effect. Completion vs. non-completion at the 60% threshold tells me almost nothing about how Regular students performed on midterms.

Honors students may be engaging in genuine retrieval practice: reviewing mistakes, spacing attempts, treating it as study. Regular students may be more likely to click through for completion credit without the reflective component that drives learning.

CogPsych TL;DR

Self-check completion predicts midterm performance for Honors students (d = 0.89, a large effect) but not for Regular students (d = 0.05, essentially zero effect). Unlike in Behavioral Neuroscience, here the value of self-checks appears to depend entirely on how students engage with them, not just whether they complete them. The same tool, used differently, produces dramatically different outcomes.

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 05:31:00 -0700

Political Advocacy, Fall 2025

I, again, asked students to choose a political issue that was important to them, think of how it intersects with their study of psychology, research this issue, and write a letter to their elected representatives, sharing their policy or funding hopes. This assignment resulted in 471 letters being written and sent to various local, state, and federal politicians.

I am just interested in developing a habit of civic engagement, and I am in no way interested in what their policy or funding requests are. But, I am curious as to the general topic these 17- and 18-year-olds chose to write about. Feeding their letters into Claude for thematic analysis, I got those following.

1. School-Based Mental Health Services (~11-12 letters)

Students wrote extensively about the need for more counselors, psychologists, and mental health professionals in schools. They referenced specific bills like the PEER Mental Health Act (H.R. 1448), Senate Bill 224 (Mental Health Support in Schools Act), Senate Bill 531, and H.R. 5557. Students emphasized inadequate counselor-to-student ratios and the need for early intervention.

2. Mental Health/Healthcare Access and Affordability (General) (~11-12 letters)

Many students advocated for broader mental health coverage and affordability, addressing issues like insurance coverage for mental health treatment, Medicaid expansion, Medicare reimbursement rates, and reducing financial barriers to therapy and counseling services.

3. Social Media Impact on Youth Mental Health (~9 letters)

A significant number of students wrote about the harmful effects of social media on teenagers, including anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. They supported legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Stop the Scroll Act, and called for stronger regulations, warning labels, and age verification systems on social media platforms.

4. Immigration Reform and Mental Health (~7 letters)

Students connected immigration policies to mental health, focusing on the psychological trauma of family separation, the need for family unity, and access to mental health services for immigrant families. They referenced bills like the Reuniting Families Act and Assembly Bill 495.

5. Veterans Mental Health Services (~5 letters)

Students advocated for expanded mental health care for veterans, addressing PTSD, depression, housing instability, and the need for better VA services, including methadone clinics and outreach programs.

Honorable mention: Gun violence/control also received 5 letters, making it tied with veterans’ mental health for the fifth spot.

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 04:39:00 -0700

6* Social-Cognitive Psychology lesson on observational learning from September 3, 2025.

Began with a review worksheet on classical and operant conditioning, which had been the previous meeting’s topic; this in-class check-for-understanding allowed students to work in a small group (or, as can be seen, individually). Then there was lecture on Bandura’s research on observational learning. And finally a demonstration of Bandura’s four stages of observational learning wherein students watched a video of me folding a paper airplane, which they copied — and then tested in a nearby open space (the observation deck).

This is how I would like many of the our class period’s to go: there is individual work and small group work; there is direct instruction reinforcing key elements from the assigned readings; and there is a personal experience for students of the psychological principles being learned. It doesn’t always work out that way though. There is a lot of material in a cognitive psychology class for high school students to learn; and not all of it can be experienced by students in a high school.

But, this class period is my goal

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 04:07:00 -0700

I’m not sure why it took this long, but rather than gesticulating wildly with my arms, I went to our IT department and asked for three-feet of discarded electrical cabling. From that, I removed the insulation from 12". This will now serve as a manipulative in-class to demonstrate Myelin sheathing — and the effects of multiple sclerosis and demyelination.

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 06:27:00 -0700

Instructional practices versus time-available

Years ago “full-time” meant four classes for faculty where I teach now. Then that was changed to five classes. Since starting at the school in 1998, our median class size has also increased. This year, I’ve finally had to change some instructional practices that were too costly in regards to time.

For example, when teaching four classes, a reading quiz in one of my psychology courses could be the following:

Grading these, however, was just too time-consuming when there are other demands – such as an added course, and, some semesters, three distinct courses to prep.

Consequently, I’ve changed my formative assessments back to simple multiple-choice questions. I don’t like it. I know that my earlier, written quizzes, were better measures of students’ knowledge and abilities, but those just take too much time.

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 07:51:00 -0700

Tumblr vs Wordpress

Since school let-out at the beginning of June, I’ve been debating as a summer project: moving this blog from Tumblr to Wordpress. Years ago, when I started this blog, I chose Tumblr because it allowed me to use my domain name with the blog for free. Other solutions cost extra money to use a personal domain, and since I was already paying for the domain, I didn’t want to pay more… you know, being lowly school teacher

A student found this blog this past semester, and rather than remark on the contents of the blog at all, they just made a big deal about me having “a Tumblr.”

Using Wordpress wouldn’t change much from the current setup; I’d still be using the blog for the exact same things — it just wouldn’t be branded by/ identifiable as “a Tumblr.”

BUT, for what I use this for, I still just can’t justify paying more money to have a blog elsewhere, using my existing domain name, and so for the time being I’ll just stay here.

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 02:47:00 -0700

GWSF side-quests 2025

When summer hits and I’m no longer teaching, my brain rebels at its idleness, and so I often make up little tasks for myself. For example, one year, I decided to walk from our condo to every branch of the San Francisco Public Library. This year, I created a photo scavenger hunt of sorts for some online-friends. This is a Flickr-thing, really, but I share it here as an archive of my “work”.

Flickr post:

Just living our lives, we end up in most parts of the City at some point. When you’re there, grab a nice photo of the baker’s dozen described below. There’s no need to add them to the GWSF pool, as these are not obscure City locations, and a bunch of people will be taking pictures of the same places. More details at the bottom

Thanks to SqueakyCleanDave for telling me about the Alley Cat races by the City’s bike messengers — that got me thinking of this.

It’s art

It might be the middle of June gloom as I write this, but you may only need a sweater at the first destination; it can be quite balmy. This outdoor gallery transforms a simple alley into political canvas.

I like raisin snails

Bring a coffee and a pastry to where the land ends, and think about Eduardo.

Not the destroyer of worlds

It doesn’t have a keyboard but this musical instrument does have one or more pipe divisions.

Crux immissa

The stars-and-stripes were raised at the City’s highest point to signal that the Civil War had ended with a Confederate surrender.

The Gruff Brothers’ Former Pasture

This tiny summit — named for its former inhabitants — is home to California saxifrage, but we’ll miss its February to April-bloom

Heptad of saltwater sanctuaries

The ocean always reclaims its own, once the playground of a mining millionaire.

“What am I? A duck?”

Near Anthony R Grove High School, these elegant risers offer stunning bay views earned through cardio commitment.

1966 Sit-in to 1973 slide

A sign reads “No adults unless accompanied by children,” but if you’re just taking pictures, you won’t need cardboard, and you don’t need kids.

A simple park now but once quite Nobel

You might be looking for our forktail damselflies, our garter snakes, or a Mission Blue, but you’ll probably just see a lot of chert and greenstone

Our own Braceros program

Find the whimsical wooden sculptures carved by a former city gardener in this neighborhood park.

70-foot Gnomon

Thanks to Tony Hawk, this park is a real dish again

Any ceramic climb

These community art projects bloom with ceramics and volunteer hours throughout the City. Spend time at any of of them

Franklin’s idea, but Burnham’s gift to the neighborhoods

Some are Beaux-Arts, mine was just a leased storefront at 45 Leland Ave. Go to yours, or your favorite, or one of the 31 you haven’t been to yet (like the new kiosk?)

Quest Guidelines:

2025: Most of us have pictures of these locations in our archives, but for the purposes of this, please get a new picture :)

Documentation: Take a nice picture of/ at the general destination hinted at above

Reveal Strategy: Make your photos Public on/ around January 9, 2026, and tag them GWSFsidequests2025. On Saturday, January 10th, I’ll tally the entries and see who’s completed all the side quests

Not a race: This is scored simply on completion; and I have prizes for 25 participants. There’s no rush; do these at your own pace over the next six months

Fri, 30 May 2025 03:48:00 -0700

From PeerWise to a Self-Check

Since the Fall of 2019, I have been having students use PeerWise for their reading quizzes. They had a two-part assignment to complete at PeerWise for each chapter they read. First, they created original multiple-choice questions based on the chapter’s content, and then they answered questions that had been developed by classmates.

The second part was just good old-fashioned low-stakes retrieval practice; they were graded on completion not on accuracy. It was the first part that I found the greatest educational benefit in. Actually writing multiple-choice questions that their classmates would respond to and rate, and authoring the explanations for the correct responses, was where the real learning reinforcement occurred. There was an added element of a leaderboard which ranked students by the number of questions authored, answered, accuracy when answering, and peer-rated quality of original questions, which motivated some students to do more than required.

Unfortunately, with generative AI, the best part of the assignment – students struggling to translate material they read in the textbook into a quiz question – is gone now. Students can simply have generative AI crank-out questions, and submit them as their own.

So, for next semester, I will no longer be using PeerWise, and instead will have a two-part assignment/ assessment for each chapter.

After students read the assigned chapter, first, they will complete a “Chapter X self-check.” That will consist of five multiple-choice questions pulled from a bank, relating strictly to the content in the chapter. This will look like a quiz but it will not be in a secure testing environment (eg, Lockdown Browser for Canvas, which is what we use). Students will be able to retake the quiz as many times as they like until they get a score they’re satisfied with. These are done outside of the classroom and class time.

The second part of the new assignment will be an in-class quick-write, in “Lockdown browser” so that students cannot access generative AI. This quick-write will have three short questions (which I’d written years ago as an at-home writing assignment based on the book Make It Stick). These are timed to 15-minutes, which I really hate to give-up from my 200-minutes a week with students — but with generative AI, I can’t think of a more efficient way of keeping them on their reading schedule

Sun, 25 May 2025 08:25:00 -0700

Atomic Habits assignment, the first year

The Genesis of an Idea

When we – Yosup Joo and I – designed the Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience course, we wanted it to be more than just memorizing vocabulary… which is what the AP Psychology course had been, largely. We wanted students to live the concepts they were studying. That’s how I ended up assigning James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” as a semester-long project — not just to read, but to implement.

The premise was simple: over 18 weeks, students would select, develop, and maintain a single habit while connecting their experience to neuroscience principles. What unfolded was far more complex and revealing than I anticipated.

The Assignment Structure

I divided the project into six parts, mirroring Clear’s book:

Introduction & Part One: Students reflected on who they are versus who they want to become
Part Two - Make it Obvious: Implementation intentions and environmental design
Part Three - Make it Attractive: Temptation bundling and community support
Part Four - Make it Easy: The two-minute rule and friction reduction
Part Five - Make it Satisfying: Tracking and accountability
Part Six - Advanced Strategies: Personality alignment and long-term sustainability

Each submission required 3-4 paragraph responses, encouraging moderate reflection rather than surface-level reporting.

Linked here are the six assignments.

What the Students Taught Me

The Universal Struggle with Technology

Nearly 70% of my students identified procrastination as their primary challenge, with phone addiction as the universal villain. One student wrote with striking honesty: “Apps like Opal to reduce screen time are too easy to override, just like Apple’s built-in time limit.” This wasn’t just a side issue—it was the issue that undermined nearly every other habit attempt.

The Power of Identity-Based Change

Students who grasped Clear’s concept of identity-based habits showed remarkable insight. One wrote: “I want to become a person who is confident, kind, and resilient…someone who stays calm under pressure, trusts themselves.” They weren’t just trying to do things differently; they were trying to become someone different.

The Emotional Undercurrent

What surprised me most was the vulnerability in their responses. Behind the academic language were stories of:

Burnout: “I have been working hard for most of my entire life…but now I just feel so tired of it all”
Social anxiety: “I rarely raise my hand, even when I know the answer”
Self-doubt: “I frequently doubt my instincts and question whether I am making the right choices”

This wasn’t just a habit-formation exercise; it was a window into their struggles with life, identity, and growing up.

For the complete analysis of student responses across all six assignments, see this summary by Claude.

What Worked Well

The Two-Minute Rule

This concept resonated universally. Students discovered that “the hardest part is honestly just starting,” and the two-minute rule made that starting achievable. One student noted: “Usually, once I begin, I naturally keep writing more.”

Environmental Design

Students who reorganized their physical spaces saw immediate results. Simple changes—moving phone chargers away from beds, placing yoga mats beside their beds, reorganizing kitchens for meal prep—created powerful behavioral shifts.

The “Never Miss Twice” Rule

This principle was transformative for many. As one student reflected: “This rule honestly changed how I deal with failure. Before, if I slipped up, even once, I’d feel like I ruined everything and just stop trying.”

What Worked Less-Well

Overly Ambitious Initial Goals

Many students chose habits that were too complex or time-consuming. They needed more guidance on starting small and scaling up gradually.

Weak Neuroscience Integration

While students engaged deeply with behavior change, most didn’t naturally connect their experiences to course concepts about neuroplasticity, dopamine pathways, or basal ganglia function. This was a missed opportunity for deeper learning.

The Weekend Problem

Consistency crumbled on weekends for many students. Different schedules, social pressures, and the absence of weekday structure created a recurring failure point.

Limited Peer Support

Despite Clear’s emphasis on community, most students worked in isolation. Those who found accountability partners succeeded more consistently, suggesting we need better peer support structures.

Lessons for Next Year

Based on this year’s experience, here’s how I’ll improve the assignment:

1. Mandatory Phone Management Module

Since technology addiction affected everyone, I’ll add a dedicated class lesson on digital wellness before Part Two, with required phone management strategies regardless of chosen habits.

2. Structured Habit Selection

I’ll provide:

A “Habit Feasibility Checklist” (Can it be done in under 10 minutes? Do you already have the resources?)
Categories with difficulty ratings
Required 2-minute versions for the first two weeks

3. Neuroscience Integration Checkpoints

Each submission will include explicit prompts connecting experiences to:

Habit loops and basal ganglia (Part 2)
Dopamine and reward systems (Part 3)
Neuroplasticity and repetition (Part 4)

4. Built-in Accountability Systems

I’ll implement:

Mandatory habit buddy partnerships
Weekly micro-check-ins (2-3 questions)
A class discussion board for sharing wins and strategies

5. Weekend-Specific Planning

Students will create separate implementation intentions for weekdays versus weekends, acknowledging these as different contexts requiring different strategies.

6. Formal “Habit Pivot” Protocol

After Week 4, students can officially change their habit with structured reflection on why the change is necessary—normalizing adaptation rather than viewing it as failure.

Running the assignment and every student submission through Claude, a more complete (and thorough recommendation) was generated; that’s available here.

The Bigger Picture

This assignment revealed something profound: behavior change isn’t just about willpower or technique—it’s about identity, community, and self-compassion. Students learned that small changes compound, that environment shapes behavior, and that failure is data, not defeat.

One student’s reflection captures the transformation: “By simply doing that, I’ve started off unconventionally, but at least I started.” That’s the real lesson—not perfection, but progress. I should know this! As a distance runner, I regularly tell myself – and any beginning runner who talks to me about it – that “running never gets easier; you just get better at it.”

As educators, we often focus on content delivery and assessment. This project reminded me that sometimes the most powerful learning happens when students apply concepts to their own lives. The neuroscience they’ll remember won’t just be the textbook definitions but the lived experience of rewiring their own brains, one small habit at a time.

Looking Forward

Next year’s students will benefit from this year’s pioneers. I’ll share anonymized success stories, create templates based on what worked, and address common pitfalls upfront. But I’ll also preserve the space for vulnerability and self-discovery that made this assignment so powerful.

Because ultimately, this isn’t just about building better habits—it’s about helping students become the people they want to be, with neuroscience as both the map and the territory.

Wed, 21 May 2025 01:46:00 -0700

Research Participation Requirement

“Research Participation Requirements” are common in undergrad psychology courses – because the graduate students need participants for their studies. The requirement to participate in research is far less common in secondary education because most studies are designed for, or IRBs require, adults for consent. I submit that using the format below, 12th graders can be expected to participate in research studies to (a) help them better understand research methods in the social sciences, and (b) contribute data to Higher ED students and projects.

After reviewing submissions from students in both psychology courses that I teach (Social-Cognitive Psychology, and Behavioral-Neuroscience), it’s clear that having students participate in real research surveys is an effective teaching approach. Instead of just reading about research methods in textbooks, these students actively took part in academic surveys they found online. They then analyzed these surveys, looking at elements like question design, response options, and ethical considerations (assignment details here). As one student noted when evaluating a survey on short TikTok videos: “The format was easy to follow, however, there were no open-ended questions, and a limited range of agreement. I dislike the check boxes that range from ‘strongly disagree’ - 'strongly agree’, I find it doesn’t always align with how I feel because I’m usually in the middle of two options, so I prefer a sliding scale of some sort.”

The quality of student work varied considerably. Some submissions showed thoughtful analysis of survey methodology, with students identifying specific problems like unclear questions or limited response options. Others provided more basic observations about the surveys they completed. This range suggests that while all students gained exposure to research methods, some were better able to apply critical thinking skills than others. One student demonstrated sophisticated analysis in writing: “The survey on music piracy follows a clear and logical progression by beginning with introductory and demographic questions, then moving into thematically grouped sections focused on experiences, beliefs, and perceptions, which helps maintain respondent engagement and coherence. It uses branching logic to ensure relevance, guiding participants through only applicable questions.”

What makes this assignment particularly valuable is how it connects classroom learning to real-world research. By experiencing surveys as participants and then evaluating them as critics, students develop a more complete understanding of research methodology. They can see both the participant and researcher perspectives. Students often identified issues that professional researchers sometimes overlook, such as cultural sensitivity in demographic questions. As one student observed: “At some point the survey asked what demographic I am a part of and it didn’t have a section for others. I am mixed and I identify with all three of my ethnicities… It’s always so hard to just identify as one ethnicity when I fit into multiple categories.”

For educators, this approach offers a simple but effective way to teach research methods. It requires minimal resources while giving students authentic research experience. The variation in submission quality suggests that some students might benefit from additional guidance or examples before completing the assignment, but overall, this hands-on approach appears to successfully develop students’ critical research skills while engaging them with diverse psychological topics.

At the end of the first year, I ran a simple survey of students on their experience with the assignment. Here are two interesting points from that:

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 09:06:00 -0700

With my one section of Introduction to Ethnic Studies this semester, I recently reimagined my approach to student writing assignments in response to the growing presence of AI tools like ChatGPT. Frankly, there is no writing prompt that we can imagine which generative AI cannot undetectably answer with skilled prompting. Following the screening of “Race: The Power of Illusion, Part 1” in my 9th-grade class, I shifted from traditional take-home essays to in-class quick writes. While this adjustment presented some logistical challenges, including the allocation of precious class time and accommodations considerations, it addressed a critical concern in modern education: ensuring authentic student work in an era of accessible AI writing tools.

My pilot of this new approach proved surprisingly effective, despite a minor technical hiccup with our Canvas setup. While I had configured the assignment to display word counts within the required 100-200 word range, this feature only functioned on laptops, not iPads. As a result, several students had to manually count their words or submit and revise their work, with one student needing to trim her response and others adding sentences to meet the requirements. Even with this technical wrinkle, my class of 12 students achieved a mean score of 98%, with an average writing time of just under 14 minutes. This actually surpassed the historical average of 93% for take-home assignments, though I have no data on how long students spent writing their paragraphs at home in previous years.

Perhaps the most significant insight from my experiment came from adjusting the assessment criteria. By placing greater emphasis on students’ ability to construct arguments and support them with evidence from the documentary, rather than focusing heavily on grammar and syntax, I’ve created what I believe is a more authentic evaluation of their understanding. This shift in grading philosophy raises important questions that I’m eager to discuss with my fellow Ethnic Studies teachers and perhaps the broader Social Science Department. While this approach may seem like a Sisyphean response to technological change, my initial results suggest it could be an effective way to maintain academic integrity while adapting to our evolving educational landscape.

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 02:09:00 -0700

It’s always nice to see students write about their psychology classes in the school newspaper.

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 03:48:00 -0700

https://www.apaservices.org/advocacy/news/high-schoolers-democracy

An article published by the APA about a lesson in my psychology courses.