The Chicago Bears zeroed in on hiring new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron on Monday, but they still have more work to do to fill out their coaching staff.

Bears coach Matt Eberflus plans to name a defensive coordinator after he didn’t fill the position midseason following Alan Williams’ exit.

Eberflus said earlier this month he still was determining whether he would continue to call plays, as he did for most of the 2023 season after Williams left. But he also said the Bears were “going to keep everything open right now” as they considered candidates.

Either way, Eberflus believed the position would draw prime candidates, though the Bears potentially could interview in-house candidates for the job too.

“I think both the offense and defensive coordinator positions are very attractive based on the personnel we have and based on the rise of this team,” he said.

The Tribune is tracking defensive coordinator candidates as they interview for the position.

Jan. 21

Tennessee Titans defensive pass game coordinator Chris Harris will interview with the Bears, NFL Network reported.

The rundown: Harris, a former NFL safety whom the Bears drafted in the sixth round in 2005, has 10 years of coaching experience. With the Titans in 2023, he served as the defensive pass game coordinator and cornerbacks coach. Before that, he coached defensive backs for the Washington Commanders for three seasons, helping the Commanders to top-10 defenses in 2020 and 2022. He was the Los Angeles Chargers assistant defensive backs coach for four seasons after starting his coaching career as a Bears defensive quality control coach in 2013-14.

As a player, Harris made 88 starts over eight NFL seasons, including two stints with the Bears in 2005-06 and 2010-11. He played under coach Lovie Smith and started for the 2006 Bears team that went to the Super Bowl.

He interviewed for Jacksonville’s defensive coordinator position, but the Jaguars reportedly are hiring former Atlanta Falcons DC Ryan Nielsen.

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Retired Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood and his wife, Sarah, have placed their six-bedroom, 11,250-square-foot Georgian Revival-style mansion in Winnetka on the market for $8.49 million.

Wood, 46, first shot to prominence in 1998 when as a rookie he struck out 20 players in a shutout. He pitched for the team from 1998 until 2008, and he returned to the club for his final two seasons. Wood currently is a Cubs Ambassador, after previously serving as a special assistant to the Cubs’ president of baseball operations.

In addition, Wood and his wife founded the Pitch-In after-school mentoring program. And on Friday, the Cubs announced that Wood had been elected to the team’s Hall of Fame.

The Woods bought their three-story mansion in an off-market transaction in 2019 through an Illinois limited liability company. Built in 1902 for Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad executive Charles I. Sturgis and designed by architect William Otis, the mansion is encircled by a curved red brick perimeter wall and wrought iron gates.

Inside, the mansion has 5 ½ bathrooms, five fireplaces, a grand staircase with extra-wide steps, wide-band hand rails and hand-carved balusters, along with millwork, wide-cased openings, restored windows, a walnut-paneled dining room and a living room with a fireplace and arched bookshelves.

The kitchen has white marble countertops, top-of-the-line appliances and a Farrow & Ball blue island. Other features include an eating area with curved bay picture windows, a second staircase, a mudroom, a screened porch and a family room with original bookcases and a restored fireplace.

On the second floor, the mansion has a primary bedroom suite with a fireplace and two new walk-in closets, along with three more bedrooms. The third floor has two additional bedrooms, an office and a game room, while the mansion’s basement, which was refinished by the Woods, has an arts and crafts studio, a gym with a sauna, a wine room and a recreation room with a bar.

Outside on the 0.71-acre property are a swimming pool that was installed by the Woods, along with a new pool house that has a bathroom, a washer/dryer, a changing room, storage and a garden shed. The property also includes a new outdoor kitchen, a new pergola, a fire pit, working organic gardens, a brick driveway and a heated three-car garage with extra storage and a workbench.

“This east Winnetka in-town compound is simply out of this world,” listing agent Jena Radnay of @properties told Elite Street. “If you appreciate beautiful, distinguished architecture and understand the cost, the headache and the vision that is needed to restore to a glorious, high-end level of luxury, then this house is unmatched. We have yet to have a house in this kind of premier location in Winnetka, and I can even say in the North Shore. It’s a mecca of beauty, every square inch.”

Radnay told Elite Street that the Woods are moving because they are “changing up things a bit.”

“They have a son graduating from high school, and Chicago will always be their home. That will never change,” she said.

Earlier, the Woods owned a newly built, six-bedroom, 11,000-square-foot mansion in Winnetka, which they bought in 2015 for $3.8 million and sold in early 2020 for $4.15 million. Prior to that, they paid $4.63 million in 2010 for a historic Tudor Revival-style mansion in Winnetka that they sought to raze but ultimately decided against doing so, instead selling that mansion at a loss in late 2013 for $4.18 million.

The Woods also have owned a four-bedroom, Beaux-Arts-style mansion in Lincoln Park, which they bought for $3.32 million in 2008 and sold in 2017 for $3 million; a vintage house in the Old Town Triangle, which they bought in 2004 for $1.3 million and sold in 2008 for $1.2 million; a River North condo that they bought in 2003 for $712,000 and sold in 2005 for $760,000; and a waterfront mansion in Fontana, Wisconsin, that they bought in 2014 for $3.8 million and sold in 2017 for $4.7 million.

The Winnetka mansion that Kerry and Sarah Wood are selling had a $91,357 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year. The mansion is set to be publicly listed on Wednesday, Radnay said, with showings to begin that day.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

Join our Chicago Dream Homes Facebook group for more luxury listings and real estate news.

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A sculpture of a milky sea monster described as a “unique algivorous cow from the abyss of the Saguenay fjord” won first place in this year’s World Snow Sculpting Championship, which was held Wednesday through Saturday in Lowell Park in downtown Stillwater.

A team of three women from Quebec called the FjordWitches – Fanny-Fay Tremblay-Girard, Joelle Gagnon and Marie-Claude-Paris-Tanguay – won the $4,000 prize.

Team Fjordwitches, from left, Joelle Gagnon, Marie-Claude Paris-Tanguaya and team captain Fanny Fay Trembley-Girard, won $4,000 on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2024, for their sculpture entitled “FJCOWRD, la vachoune de mer, a milky sea monster.” (Courtesy of Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce)

They beat out 11 other teams to take home top honors with “FJCOWRD, la vachoune de mer,” a sculpture of a milky sea monster whose “salty fresh cream is the secret ingredient for making the best poetic aurora borealis tasted cheese in North America,” according to the team’s description posted on the event’s website.

Sculptors had 64 hours to carve their pieces out of 10-by-10-by-10-foot blocks. Spectators were allowed to watch the entire process, visit with the teams and vote for their favorite. The sculpture with the most spectator votes — Pok-Ta-Pok: The Ball Game from Team Colima from Mexico — won “The People’s Choice Award” and $1,000.

The second-place winner was Team Izmit from Turkey, and the third-place winner was Team North Dakota. They won $2,000 and $1,000, respectively.

The sculptures will remain up for viewing in Lowell Park as long as weather permits and as long as it is confirmed safe by city officials in Stillwater, said Robin Anthony, executive director of the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce.

Viewing is accessible during park hours, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Night viewing will be accompanied by lights through Sunday, she said.

For more information, go to worldsnowsculptingstillwatermn.com.

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Most students have a favorite teacher. In the future, could that teacher be … a chatbot? The answer depends in part on whether AI succeeds in becoming the next great educational technology innovation, or joins the long list of ed-tech disappointments.

Two kinds of AI-driven education are likely to take off, and they will have very different effects. Both approaches have real promise, but neither will make everyone happy.

The first category will resemble learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Duolingo, GPT-4, and many other services. Over time, these sources will become more multimedia, quicker in response, deeper in their answers, and better at creating quizzes, exercises and other feedback. For those with a highly individualized learning style — preferring videos to text, say, or wanting lessons slower or faster — the AIs will oblige. The price will be relatively low; Khan Academy currently is free and GPT-4 costs $20 a month, and those markets will become more competitive.

For those who want it, they will be able to access a kind of universal tutor as envisioned by Neal Stephenson in his novel “The Diamond Age.” But how many people will really want to go this route? My guess is that it will be a clear minority of the population, well below 50%, whether at younger or older age groups.

To see why, consider other current options, such as watching YouTube to master scientific or mathematical knowledge (usually free), reading old editions of textbooks (cheap on Amazon), or hiring an expert tutor (more expensive). None of those approaches is currently very popular. People may resort to these services if their education requires it, but otherwise they are not taking advantage of these opportunities even when they are free. They will go to their graves not knowing about entanglement problems in quantum mechanics.

Chatbots will probably make education more fun, but for most people there is a limit to just how fun instruction can be. These kinds of AIs will appeal to the infovores, but most people still will prefer interacting with friends and family — a known and usually cheap source of fun, not unlike listening to music or daydreaming. Educational chatbots won’t be more fun and fulfilling than what you would choose to do with that time on your own.

Experience with YouTube, which most people use, is the best reason to be optimistic about the future of AI tutoring bots. Yet a lot of people use YouTube for fairly specific purposes: to answer how-to questions (reboot their iPad, fix a flat tire, etc.), to watch and listen to music, or just to hear people talking for fun (PewDiePie).

All of which is to say: These kinds of AI chatbots might replace teachers to some degree, and give more individualized feedback. But they won’t significantly increase the total time spent learning.

There is, however, another way AI education could go — and it may end up far more widespread, even if it makes some people uneasy. Imagine a chatbot programmed to be your child’s friend. It would be exactly the kind of friend your kid wants, even (you hope) the kind of friend your kid needs. Your child might talk with this chatbot for hours each day.

Over time, these chatbots would indeed teach children valuable things, including about math and science. But it would happen slowly, subtly. When I was in high school, I had two close (human) friends with whom I often talked economics. We learned a lot from each other, but we were friends first and foremost, and the conversations grew out of that. As it turns out, all three of us ended up becoming professional economists.

This could be the path the most popular and effective AI chatbots follow: the “friendship first” model. Under that scenario, an AI chatbot doesn’t have to be more fun than spending time with friends, because it is itself a kind of friend. Through a kind of osmosis, the child could grow interested in some topics raised by the AI chatbot, and the chatbot could feed the child more information and inspiration in those areas. But friendship would still come first.

Many parents will undoubtedly find it weird for their children to be so close to chatbots. Some may even forbid any relationship at all, as they do now with a human they deem a bad influence. Nevertheless, the friendship-first model is the most promising formula for AI-driven education. And the larger question may be not whether it will work, but how comfortable parents are with it.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the Marginal Revolution blog.