I feel like a lot of it comes from the desire for an easy, binary checklist approach to evaluating sources, especially when it’s seen as an intermediary task to speed through rather than engage with. Even in meetings with other instructors this gets snagged as an argument.
Entering real Shirley Jackson witch territory (complimentary, obviously)
(I think she had nine)
I don't see this said enough: the widespread use of generative AI is not only making our jobs as educators harder logistically, but also emotionally. It is genuinely sad to be suspicious of students when you have spent so much time building a pedagogy based on trust and not being a cop. It sucks.
Oh I was one of those girls, too. They even videotaped us and his parents complimented me on how patiently I tolerated their son being a jackass.
I feel this so much in teaching first-gen, "non-traditional" college students. People talk about the "nuanced" use of AI with discernment & seem totally uninterested in how discernment actually develops. They've got theirs, so who cares what it's doing to people who didn't get the time to learn?
more seriously: both an adult life spent teaching and an adult life spent on message boards and sites like this one have underscored to me that reading and communicating about reading is very much not a trivial skill. the recent tech developments further underscore this for me
I have tried, at least, to state absolutely in my syllabus and out loud when I talk it through, to state unequivocally I am not asking them to do something I am doing; that I do not use AI for lesson planning, grading, or anything else, and that I will never put their work into an AI program.
Oh, I’ve been wanting to do this so badly and I’m not allowed! I’m glad someone gets to!
Makes my time and effort teaching this first-year writing class of 45 students feel for $1450 feel really valued.
I love that my institution will support the claims of students that I told them the final paper (broken into components we spent weeks on, and the importance of turning in even if incomplete was discussed in every class and every GClassroom post for the last three weeks) was optional. #teaching
I’ve also heard I’m obligated to teach and encourage its usage for my marginalized college students as an equity issue
David Lynch "FIX YOUR HEARTS OR DIE!"
Happy Trans Day of Visibility ❤️🏳️⚧️❤️
ty for the reminder! I had the tab open and had gotten distracted, so it turned out to be a nice finished-submitting-the damn-winter quarter-grades for myself
thank you for a genuine laugh after I just finished submitting grades for the worst teaching experience of my life, one week after saying good-bye to a beloved kitty. In the depths of the darkness there is always Rahm to mock.
(also definitely absolutely no relation, lol)
ugh, v. embarrassing for a Swarthmore alum tbh
Trying to find grace for students demanding I grade an entire term’s worth of work submitted this week, after the most miserable teaching quarter of my life and saying an abrupt good-bye to one of the two cats I’ve had for sixteen years on Monday. It’s hard.
photograph or a poster on cream colored paper. "Dear President Ambar, we are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old. This is a machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of institutional 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-called 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini subscriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeemable tunnel of intellectual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as.advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' with no books in stock and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all costs through automated rather than hand pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it." there's more that doesn't fit in the 2000 character limit :(
OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚
I spoke with @blockclubchi.bsky.social about Alpha School opening in Chicago and why Alpha School's approach to education is anti-student, anti-teacher, and anti-democratic.
:nod: I work pretty much exclusively with “non-traditional” students and I feel like at least half my colleagues have just shrugged off everything we’ve always said about why reading and writing and thinking outside the narrow confines of a job track matters.
Status Scoop | ProPublica's Walkout Warning: The possibility of ProPublica staffers walking off the job just got far more serious. Unionized staffers at the nonprofit newsroom voted overwhelmingly this week to authorize a strike, Natalie Korach has learned. The ProPublica Guild represents about 150 journalists, videographers, and other newsroom employees. A major sticking point in the negotiations with management has centered on the use of artificial intelligence in reporting, with the union demanding protections from having jobs replaced by the rapidly advancing technology. “We are ready to walk off the job to show management that their refusal to agree to basic protections will not be tolerated and that we will not accept anything less than a fair contract,” said Agnel Philip, unit chair of ProPublica Guild.
these are the best reporters in the country, give them whatever the fuck they want
www.status.news/p/cbs-news-l...
Props to Nilay for doing this work. Also posting this again, because Grammarly & so many companies & LLM-pilled techies built whole business models around ignoring consent & stealing shit & I don't like it. Grammarly stopped Expert Review but the gross mindsets remain www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
I have been really frustrated by the reluctance of pro-generative AI in the educational spheres I personally work in to acknowledge or grapple with this
yes! I'm particularly burnt out this quarter, but I try so hard to create coursework that rewards anything that shows the "thinking" over perfection and I just feel like I'm undercut so much--and when it's the institution, it's the hardest.
People are characterizing this as a situation in which Wachspress describes the inappropriate relationship as beginning after Daniel Biss was no longer her teacher.
No. That's not what she's describing.
Won't be voting today, since I already turned in my mail-in ballot last week. But remember to hit the polls if you're an in-person type, Illinois.
How a Philadelphia high school is fighting AI slop and internet lies: www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia...
Their persistent bad faith readings are exhausting (and also possibly a clue as to why they are satisfied with GenAI content, if this is evidence of discernment and interpretation).
A neon light art piece of Samuel Beckett's famous quote "I can't go on. I'll go on" but spaced - it would seem inadvertently- so that it reads "I can't goon. I'll goon".
The formatting of this Beckett quote does still represent resilience and determination, just of a very different sort.
This is how I feel when my boss apologizes for giving me 45 students in a first-year writing class by recommending I just use ChatGPT for lessons.