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ElizabethwithaZ

@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social

Technology, education, and other random thoughts.

2280 Posts356 Follower118 Folgt
ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · yesterday

Hear me out: Down to the Countryside, but for politicians and AI/crypto tech bros. Like, anyone who argues against a social safety net.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · yesterday

ICYMI — "We need (old/poor) people off of Medicaid & Social Security and back into the workforce."🤔 GEORGIA Republican Congressman Mike Collins ( @ossoff.senate.gov opponent) wants you to work til you die, with fewer benefits, as they cut taxes for the rich and inequality skyrockets.

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d ago

Imagine if the media took the words of climate scientists as seriously as it does that rando from Anthropic… Air pollution and climate change from fossil fuel use are literally killing millions of people every year, but sure, let’s focus on the idiocy that “AI is going to kill everyone in 10”.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 4d ago

It's the next day, and I'm still thinking about how insidious the "you are super special and strong and elite because we are abusing you" messaging is. They're taking kids at a really vulnerable time and tying their self-esteem and group identity/belonging to accepting mistreatment from authority.

Benjamin Riley@benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 5d ago

SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 4d ago

It's really hard to teach kids critical thought around tech when you have a multi-trillion dollar industry shoving magical thinking at them all the time. Had a long conversation with a high school student today.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 4d ago

Reading the quotes from these children is heartbreaking. They are treated like products to be "optimized", not humans whose growth should be supported. They've been convinced that their value lies in they way they endure contrived hardship or collect points in arbitrary tests. Kids deserve better.

Benjamin Riley@benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 5d ago

SPECIAL REPORT Last month, Alpha School invited people to follow student social media accounts "if curious about life in our high schools." I accepted their offer. What I've found shocks me. Forget the AI and ask instead: Is Alpha Schools a cult? Follow along for a summary of my findings.

Alex Hanna@alexhanna.bsky.social · 5d ago

But if your reaction is "it's just a tool" or "we just need to own the means of computation", I encourage you to consider the institutions and power around said tool and said computation.

Alex Hanna@alexhanna.bsky.social · 5d ago

*whispers in analysis of political economy and science and technology studies* Frankly, no. If your technology relies on massive capital consolidation to function at all, then the problem is the technology, not simply who wields it.

Jacob Weindling@jakeweindling.bsky.social · 5d ago

**whispers in socialism** The problem isn't the tech, the problem is the system wielding the tech. I think a lot of this debate exposes a lot of folks here as stone cold libs (compliments for some, insults to others) who disagree with the concept that there is no moral consumption under capitalism.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 6d ago

I'm so tired of the advice to hide little white text with secret instructions to chatbots in my assignments. Setting little traps so I can trick and "catch" students is such a grim approach to teaching. Please don't respond with whether this "trick" even works. It's not relevant. 💔

Ted McCormick@tedmccormick.bsky.social · 7d ago

The idea that classrooms are chiefly spaces for product testing, and that it is irresponsible pedagogy not to enforce this, is both cynical and vile, and “fuck off” is a cogent response from any professional educator to any non-teaching salescreep or tech-but-not-subject-matter expert who voices it.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 7d ago

"Cheating" is not even the issue for me, per se. It's circumventing learning. It's the message that if you think through a problem yourself, use your own voice, develop your own vision, you are a sucker. These are the biggest dangers of "AI" in the classroom.

ElizabethwithaZ@elizabethwithaz.bsky.social · 7d ago

Consumption of these "AI" products prevents development of the very skills needed for their critical analysis. If we do not prepare our students to reject the project of "AI", if we do not teach them the critical skills to understand and respond to it, these are the waters in which they will drown.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 7d ago

1. Students are being lied to about the harms of AI, and they ARE cheating, on scales never seen before and brushing past that is not going to hurt them and society is not great. 2. In some fields, banning AI is absolutely fine why are people outside of those fields insisting that we MUST use it?

Yet reacting to these new technologies by putting barriers up, as many instinctively want to do – banning, admonishing, punishing – just cannot be right. To begin with, this is the water in which the next generation will swim: we are letting them down if we prepare them for the world that we grew up in, not the one they will actually inhabit. How often, for instance, have you heard people accuse students of cheating if they use AI to help them with their work? But at what point are we cheating them by failing to overhaul the way we are educating them? If AI is making education “too easy” for young people, at what point does the burden shift on to us, the adults, to make their education more testing, to push them on, to stretch them?
Alan Richardson@alanrichardson.bsky.social · 7d ago

I think I have to get Dewey’s credo tattooed onto my forehead: “I believe education is a process of living, not a preparation for future living.” Easy-hard is a stupid dimension along which to think about education. Meaningful-meaningless is better. (comment on original text in the black box)

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 7d ago

1. Students are being lied to about the harms of AI, and they ARE cheating, on scales never seen before and brushing past that is not going to hurt them and society is not great. 2. In some fields, banning AI is absolutely fine why are people outside of those fields insisting that we MUST use it?

Yet reacting to these new technologies by putting barriers up, as many instinctively want to do – banning, admonishing, punishing – just cannot be right. To begin with, this is the water in which the next generation will swim: we are letting them down if we prepare them for the world that we grew up in, not the one they will actually inhabit. How often, for instance, have you heard people accuse students of cheating if they use AI to help them with their work? But at what point are we cheating them by failing to overhaul the way we are educating them? If AI is making education “too easy” for young people, at what point does the burden shift on to us, the adults, to make their education more testing, to push them on, to stretch them?
Pause AI in BC Schools@aicaution.ca · last wk.

2,000+ signed a petition asking for a pause on AI in BC. The BC Ministry of Education and Childcare took the easy way out and said it's not their responsibility to pause AI use in classrooms. With enough public support and political will, we can make them care. actionnetwork.org/petitions/pa...

Pause on Generative AI in BC Schools

We demand that the Ministry of Education and Child Care enact a two-year pause (moratorium) on AI usage in classrooms in British Columbia. This means that for two years, in schools in BC: - Students...

actionnetwork.org

Charles Logan@charleswlogan.bsky.social · last wk.

Wins against GenAI are “win[s] for democracy - for all the teachers and parents and students who said to district leaders that moving fast with ‘AI’ was going to break things, break people; who asked that their needs be met, their voices be heard over the needs and voices of vendors” Audrey Watters

Move Slow, Remake Things

In the prologue to their book Tinkering Toward Utopia, historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban highlight the tensions in how Americans think about schooling: we have, almost since the nation’s outset, ...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

Tyler Kingkade@tktk.bsky.social · last wk.

NEW: While everyone focused on NYC's ban on AI in schools, LA also quietly banned AI tools for all students, and DC public schools laid out new restrictions on screen time It's all b/c parents organizing and pushing them to do it. And more cities are going to follow www.nbcnews.com/news/educati...

How parent activists pushed schools to restrict AI and screen time — and won

New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., announced changes this week in response to a growing grassroots movement against technology in schools.

nbcnews.com