Stephen Downes

Definitely worth a read, this article (27 page PDF) introduces and then presents a chain letter of responses from women and gender fluid academics describing their experiences with AI. "These recurring tensions mirror the broader global context in which critical and feminist scholarship is under threat (Butler 2022). Insisting on collective and experiential knowledge production is also a political and ethical claim. Understanding GenAI in education requires attending to how people actually live with it, and to who is permitted to say so with authority."

It's easy for me to forget that people don't know how to make their own websites by hand any more (mostly, they never did, which is why platforms and social media become so popular). These days, people are using AI to work with website-creation and hosting sevrices. In this post, Pete Millspaugh conduct vibe coding trials with Lovable, v0, Replit, Claude Artifacts, and ChatGPT Sites all making the same website, feeling the same prompt to each tool. It can be annoying; for example, he writes, "I'm using up 'credits' as the machine works—0.70 so far, now 2.30, now 3.10, oh boy—and I have no clue what that means. There are no units. I'd prefer dollars." It's pretty easy to make a website in 2026, he says, lauding the fact that "end-user programming, the idea that everyone should be able to customize their own software, seems more possible than ever." Still, "a slopsite, an AI-generated website with little to no human thinking involved, is often worse than no website at all." Via Jim Nielsen.

As a short-term list this isn't bad, though it generally points to things that are already happening or are very clearly in the planning stages. As such, it's a good monitor of what's happening, but the list doesn't prepare for or account for change. What I do notice (and it's a trend not limited to this list) is that its focus is mostly on the formalization of AI processes using existing structure or schemas. AIs are thus expected to conform for workflows, credential schemas, interoperability standards, structured data, and public policy such as accessibility requirements. This isn't necessarily bad; as the systems AI builds get larger and more complex, they need to interoperate, which means standards and requirements. But tehse standards are currently the best humans can come up with, and AIs might actually be better at designing these. That's what I would be looking for longer term. Via SmartBrief.

I used to spend hours playing Sim City and Cities Skylines, and one of my favourite features was designing the transit network. Now here's a game that focuses on that, while using maps of real cities. I was in danger of frittering away my entire morning. I can imagine all sorts of uses for this, beginning of course with working with people to understand why the city's transit network looks the way it does. Via Alan Levine.

I am supportive of this argument. "Few educators would defend endless scrolling, constant notifications, or technology that encourages passive consumption rather than active learning." However, "who might be affected when those tools are taken away?" It's an important question. "A learner who struggles with written expression may use speech-to-text to communicate ideas, demonstrate understanding, and contribute to classroom discussions. These tools do not interfere with learning. They make it possible." It's not the tool itself that is the problem. It's the ineffective use of the tool. "The real challenge facing schools is not reducing screen time at all costs. It is distinguishing between purposeful and passive technology use."

The part of this post that caught my attention wasthe detailed explanation following the phrase "reading texts is a social practice in that it involves, inter alia, imagining the author and other readers." That, writes Martin Lenz, points to a significant difference between how we read an text and how a machine does. The comouter is not imagining what the author was thinking or lived through, and is not considering what other readers might make of the text. All this, writes Lenz, happens in "the process of decoding and comprehension." I'm not a fan of this phrasing because I don't really see language as (shall we say) 'encoded meaning'. It evokes thoughts and ideas; it doesn't reprsent them. That's how it can make sense to say that reading involves imaging what other people are thinking.