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People and trust first, technology second
Anne-Marie Scott, 2025/03/13

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I don't have the space to give this post the attention it deserves, but I'll highlight a couple of points: first, the need to invest in people first, technology second; and second, the question of ethics with respect to an educational instituition's operational side (ie., the but that runs the buildings, in frastructure and technology). "Shifting 'institutional cultures towards greater ambition, experimentation and the sharing of/ learning from that experimentation' will not happen by buying everyone a license for . That's the worst kind of esssentialist and instrumentalist thinking. Organisational culture work is people centered work and requires us to grapple with complexity and human messiness.

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The ethics of collaborations between academia and commercial parties — Crooked Timber
Lisa Herzog, Crooked Timber, 2025/03/13

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"There might be a silent normalization process in which it becomes a matter of fact that academics accept money from commercial parties," writes Lisa Herzog in the context of the Alliance of European science academies (ALLEA) statement on ethical problems in collaborations between academia and commercial parties. "And that would, in the long run, be extremely dangerous – especially for the humanities, but arguably also for many other fields." ALLEA also published a response to the attacks on academic freedom and academic institutions that are currently happening in the U.S.

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Philosophers Develop AI-Based Teaching Tool to Promote Constructive Disagreement (guest post) - Daily Nous
Simon Cullen, Nicholas DiBella, Daily Nous, 2025/03/13

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"Campuses need more respectful, scaffolded environments where students can practice constructive disagreement, honing skills like intellectual humility, perspective-taking, and critical thinking," write Simon Cullen and Nicholas DiBella. I'm not sure that's exactly what the problem is these days, though I applaude their effort to address the problem. I haven't tried it, but here's their platform called Sway. "Sway connects pairs of students who disagree over topics chosen by their instructor and then uses AI to facilitate more open, reasonable conversations between them." More artificial pairing, which doesn't speak to me. 

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We Need a Zelensky Moment for Education
Jeanne Allen, Forza...for Education, 2025/03/13

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This article doesn't refer to the 'Zelensky moment' as the disgrace it was. No, instead it compares it favourably to cuts at the U.S. department of education and says both were "Forward looking, solutions focussed." The new education agenda turns its back on public education. Public funds will now be used to support private schools. And lest there be anyone around to track the impact of the change, that research, too, was cut. If nothing else, the moment brings clarity to what was an oft-denied 'hidden agenda' on the part of the education reform movement in the U.S. Decades of lobbying, 'research' groups, foundation projects, and 'journalism' like the Forza newsletter, have brought us to this point. The American people will pay the price, and I feel for them.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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