I really appreciate @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social's reflections on how she explored the social impacts of technology with her students by introducing them to the people - the ghost workers - whose labor makes “AI” systems possible.
Read this week’s @civicsoftech.bsky.social and find the lesson at:
**Implementing Alternative Grading**
The Center for Grading Reform and the RIOS Institute are hosting a six-week Learning Community on alternative grading. Participants will apply a structured approach in a course. Prior familiarity and a target course required. Starts May 5: bit.ly/48J4sMF
"In lieu of learning outcomes, we now ask whether students have a warm sense of what learning might feel like and whether they can recall, with confidence, that they took 'chemistry.' If so, we mark that as 'exceeds expectations.'"
The RIOS Institute @rioscommunity.bsky.social is sponsoring a learning community on Alternative Grading, beginning May 5 (and ending right before @thegradingconference.com). Join me and @melanielenahan.bsky.social for a weekly community where you design an alt grading scheme for your upcoming class.
On the acceptance of GenAI Joep Schuurkes — 5 April 2026 By using GenAl: • I accept the models were trained on stolen data. • I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. • I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models. • l accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company. • I accept these companies don't have a viable business model. _ I accept that I am granting more power to big tech and their vision for the world. • I accept that I am granting more power to the United States. • I accept that all this effort could have been spent elsewhere. If any of these facts are new to you, you haven't been doing your due diligence. I have the deepest respect and sympathy for people who are forced by circumstances to accept these things. I acknowledge the people's ethical behavior is neither deterministic, nor consistent. But yeah, GenAl radicalized me.
Joep Schuurkes On the Acceptance of GenAI 🙏
smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on...
“By using GenAI:
I accept the models were trained on stolen data.
I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers.
I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models.
I accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company.
I accept …”
Excited to share this call for proposals to contribute to a new open-access book on the EdTechBooks platform on "Public Scholarship in Education." The editors are looking for "cases of educational researchers engaged in public scholarship, or sharing their research in open and accessible ways."
there is no such thing as a low-value education task
I just wish there was some consortia that could come together and have a truly open access LMS (minus the M?) for universities so we aren't beholden to every little update from a stack of tech bros in a teaching & learning trenchcoat.
Sharing for the afternoon crowd
Book cover for "Transformative Care: Challenging Educational Practices for Meaningful Change" with a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
Sharing our new open access text on transformative care with writings about care as a disruptive force that challenges the status quo. edtechbooks.org/transformati...
I keep seeing posts about ai models like "actually they're good at this thing now!"
but once you understand that ai tools are being built by fascists in service of attacks on humanity, whether or not they can generate useable code or do basic searches kind of stops being the main question
Waiting for the pitch from tech bros that GenAI is going to save teachers time to focus on what really matters: their side jobs.
Individual solutions won't stop systemic problems, but talking to the children in your life about the myriad dangers of AI is now a necessary part of being a responsible adult.
I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.
www.elearningcolorado.org/2026-cfp.html has a research in action option that seems open enough that you could probably do that? (At least the organizers have always been chill with ideas). I’m putting together what is essentially a focus group as proposal.
I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!
I finished writing it all up: Generative AI ∉ (Teaching ∪ Learning). I'm going to keep using this as a reference, incomplete as it is
www.peter-keep.com/2026-02-06-g...
Don Caballero - Details on How to Get ICEMAN on Your License Plate youtu.be/d5yeE8NvSSo?... or Sufjan Stevens - The Black Hawk War, Or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About...
youtu.be/QRnY5g9vXE0?...
This is an excellent analogy, because my recollection from grade school is that the pen on the right looks fun and exciting, and then you play with it for a few minutes and realize it's not actually useful for anything and in fact makes some tasks more cumbersome, and never think about it again.
To all those Catholics still saying "America first," I would like to remind you that the official teaching of the Catholic Church is "the poor first."
And neither Christ nor the Church are bound by borders.
Bracket showing the 32 names in the Worst Person in Tech 2025
🚨 THE BATTLE BEGINS 🚨
Your favorite year-end contest is back. It’s time to choose who will be this year’s Worst Person In Tech for 2025!
Each day of this week new matchups will drop until we choose the winner on Friday.
🗳️ Cast your ballot: twsu.forms.app/worst-person...
A long read but Mike Lewis has something here in this analytical framework drawing from Lévi-Strauss. Recommended.
"John Paul II insisted that truth requires unity of faith and reason — precisely the unity that bricolage disrupts"
wherepeteris.com/bricolage-an...
Remember when the internet wasn't awful? We can go back to that.
Some friends and I have released the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call to bring back such a time, to see if we can bring back a world where technology works for us, rather than against us.
resonantcomputing.org
Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.
Will continue to bang this drum: this is the system university admins are cramming into every aspect of education. This is the system we are told “isn’t going anywhere” so we all have to adjust to it.
Call for Submissions Issue 28: General Issue The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) seeks scholarly work at the intersection of teaching, learning, and research with technology • Textual and multimedia submissions - interdisciplinary approaches in humanities, sciences, and social sciences welcome • Audio/visual presentations, interviews, dialogues, or conversations; creative/artistic works; manifestos; or other scholarly materials and/or methodologies - work addressing labor and care considerations of teaching and creating projects with digital technology
Have you thought about submitting something to JITP but your idea didn’t quite fit with our themed issues? Submit to our **GENERAL ISSUE** by December 15th and show us how you think about the intersection of teaching, learning, and research with technology. See you in our inbox!
OpenAI is a social arsonist - as Dr. Chris Gilliard reminds us - and the company's attempts to capture education with its "free" version of ChatGPT for teachers should, IMO, be met with vocal resistance and refusal if we as educators are to care for our students, their communities, and our planet.
