From the rooms
What people at my talks made and chose to send me, posted without names. A room for each activity.
At my talks for teachers, faculty, and organizations, people try things out: they sort their week, they freewrite, and more as I add activities. Anyone who wants to can email me what they made, and I post it in that activity's room. Each room says how to send yours and exactly what goes up.
Room 1
Hierarchies of Importance
In my talk “Using AI to Teach Better,” teachers sort their own week: which tasks get their deepest focus, and which they’d let AI handle. Over time, the tallies show which tasks teachers hold on to and which they hand off. They aren’t a survey, only the sorts people chose to send, but they’re a start on a question I care about: where we think our own attention matters most.
So far
1 sort from 1 session
November 2026 · a session
1 sort
Deep human focus
- Feedback on a student’s draft
- A recommendation letter
- Designing a presentation from scratch
Let AI handle
- Grading final exams
- Reformatting an assignment sheet
- Designing the syllabus
- Alt text for slide images
- A citation guide for MLA and APA
- A reminder email about the due date
- Building a presentation from my previously used materials
Room 2
Freewrites
At my talks for teachers, we freewrite: a prompt, a timer, and no going back. These show what writing without stopping looks like from people who teach writing, typos and all, which is the point.
So far
1 freewrite from 1 session
- think (2 times)
- talks (2 times)
- screen (2 times)
- minute (2 times)
- develop (2 times)
- write (4 times)
- freewriting (4 times)
- change (2 times)
- first (2 times)
- need (2 times)
- struggle (2 times)
- test (2 times)
- writing (2 times)
The words used most, at least twice; the bigger, the more often.
November 2026 · a session
1 freewrite
Freewrite
This is me rtyp freewriting on my w own website to test out the freewriting activity before I make it public and start using it in my courses and talks. I really like freewriting; it's a very low-basarrier entry way to get started if you struggle with getting this things on the page. I had to learn to write vbefore AI, so I had to develop practices that got me working and writing quickly, including thigns like freewriting, even if I didn't call it that or understand what I was doing at the time. I tend to "pants' my work, thinking as I go along, discovering things, ideas, characters, and develop the piece as I write it. I do more global revision in one sitting than many of my students, I think. CI don't much care about ypos /typos at first because I just fix those later, and what I write is usualyl going to change so much anway that it really doesn't matter what emy writing looks liek on the first pass. I still have seven minutes to go, so maybe I should have just said 1 minute since this is a test. I'm actually going to do that and change it to one minue and see what happens. Okay istarted counting down from 1 minute now, I just need to force myslef to write for about 45 more seconds. I really hope this is helpful for my lectures and talks; I think it will bne. I really struggle with certain classroom setups with whiteboards and proejctors; many older classrooms require me to fight to get the screen back up or down, and this way I can just put the screen down to share what I need and not worry abou tit.
Room 3
Revision paths
In my revision workshop, people take one draft through four stations, from rethinking the whole piece to how its sentences sound, and mark how much each one changed it. The tallies compare those paths without anyone’s draft: which kinds of revision moved people’s writing most.
So far
1 path from 1 session
November 2026 · a session
1 path
- Reverse outline
- Cut and move
- Say more
- Read it aloud
Room 4
Revision pictures
On the revision bench, people take a draft of their own through four stations and end with a picture of what changed between the first draft and the last. A picture is made of lengths and positions: none of anyone’s words are in it. Counted together, they show which kinds of revising people do, and how much writing each change touches.
So far
1 picture from 1 session · 18 changes counted
| Deletion | Substitution | Addition | Reordering | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word | · | 7 | 1 | · |
| Phrase | · | 3 | 2 | · |
| Sentence | · | 1 | 1 | · |
| Theme | 1 | · | · | 2 |
Counted the way Nancy Sommers (1980) counted revisions: four operations at four levels. Her student writers mostly changed words, and her experienced writers changed the whole piece. These counts are made by rule, not by a reader. A theme is counted as a whole paragraph, punctuation isn't counted, and a count can't tell whether a change altered the meaning.
Each picture is four sheets, one for each station of the bench, with the last draft nearest. Drag a picture to turn it. Click it to see it straight on, and point at a stroke to name it.
November 2026 · a session
1 picture
18 changes, most at the word level