Howie

New research paper on using AI to ease teacher workload. Verdict: based on this sample it’s largely ineffectual as yet, and resources created often need modifying www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/13...

Blue sky shite tho innit, really

Some may have noticed a rising number of people from Gaza in my comments. I’ve been privately trying to give as much as I can to people there in desperate need, but I’ve honestly hit my maximum daily dollar donation limit. And the pleas for money for food keep coming in. Please help if you can.

New research paper for FE and especially GCSE resit interested colleagues. The paper was three years coming together and is built on a student’s assignment (co-author), involved 70+ English FE teacher participants and is open access here. Very proud! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

HOME secretary Yvette Cooper's move to proscribe activist group Palestine Action under anti-terror laws has been opposed by civil liberties groups, who say it lowers the bar too far to bracket paint attacks on planes or arms factory break-ins alongside groups like Al-Qaeda... To overcome squeamishness, Home Office officials had floated the unevidenced idea that the direct-action group is secretly funded by Iran. Before MPs voted on the proscription, an article in the Times last month reported that unnamed officials were investigating Palestine Action's source of donations "amid concerns that the Iranian regime, via proxies, is funding the group's activities" The Eve asked the Home Office if the article was correct and whether it was investigating covert Iranian support for Palestine Action. It told us it did not recognise this claim. The story was so thin the Times turned to an organisation called NGO Monitor - described as "a research institute that holds campaign groups to account and promotes transparency" - for supportive quotes suggesting there was something fishy about Palestine Action's funding. In reality, NGO Monitor is an Israel-based organisation whose latest annual report celebrates "naming and shaming of NGO "superpowers' - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, and Doctors Without Borders" over Gaza. The report opens with an account of its "evening with Douglas Murray", the extremely right-wing British pundit. NGO Monitor describes Human Rights Watch as having an "absence of professional standards" and a "deep-seated ideological bias against Israel" and has said Doctors Without Borders "abuses its status as a humanitarian organisation to launch venomous anti-Israel political campaigns". Perhaps not the most reliable authority on which to base the "Iran funding" claim.

One hand washes the other

I think a lot about how Aaron Swartz committed suicide while facing a probably long jail sentence for download some of JSTOR, but no one at Meta is going to face any repercussions for using all of Libgen to train its AI.

#C4News find the girl escaping the fire in the burning classroom after an Israeli strike

"I walked through the fire all by myself"

"The rubble fell on them (her siblings)"

"I want to see my sisters, to be with them, but they're dead"

"I want to be with them"

Happy birthday Jeff. Have a fantastic day

and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?

Not forgetting that he had such a high pitched whiny voice that they used an actor for his speeches. Mimicry is presumably allowed then, but no mocking of the voice actor

New publication: Is education better because of us? How ed tech can answer the call to produce research that matters.

rdcu.be/ekuFN

#EdTech
#AcademicSky
#eLearningDesign

let’s be clear that personalisation amounts to determining a person’s future based on recurring patterns of the past. if you belong to a groups that society has not been kind to in the past (black & brown, LGBTQI, poor, disabled, etc), AI personalisation ensures your future encodes past injustice

Yes, you’re right. It does. Yes.

A good game to stay entertained on the motorway is to get your kids to do nazi salutes at every Tesla driver you see

It’s a cracker. Hilarious stories and courage through and through.

@tonyevans92a.bsky.social reading your book on 83-84 in the sunshine. The chapter Iron Will is magnificent writing and perfectly captures the intensity of football in what was a mad season. First year I think I saw the Reds at Anfield as a kid. Great warm up for the derby and hopefully more victory.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

Meta used at least 16 of my books, and numerous articles, to help train the AI it will use to make billions.

Authors, search your name here:

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Cool Balkan road trip up in the Accursed Mountains and down the Montenegro coast

Screen grab of eBay's policy on AI Development and Training Preferences, showing where you can opt out of having your data pilfered. It's in the Privacy section of your eBay account. Note it only applies to people in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK. If you live otherwise than there, it would appear that users cannot opt out.

eBay and AI

I see eBay have amended their privacy settings to include a section on AI. If you're fortunate enough to live in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK, however, you can opt out of having your data used for AI training. If you don't opt out you will stay opted in!

DeepSeek database was just exposed.

DeepSeek allegedly trained on ChatGPT's knowledge base (which probably includes user inputs).

This is precisely why you don't put sensitive or proprietary info into chatbots.

HE chancellors with records of systemic destruction, who value concrete over people, who achieve nothing but notoriety for dissolving collegiate relations, who go from uni to uni scorching earth and firing recklessly, then leave for $$, who talk in empty platitudes as if they’re rebels need to STFU.

Postdigital Learning Analytics With the ubiquity of Learning Management Systems (LMS), Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), wearable technologies, mobile applications, and web-based platforms in education, Learning Analytics (LA) h...

And to give this event a plug, I’m linking my new publication in the Postdigital Science and education encyclopaedia on learning analytics. Here: link.springer.com/referencewor...

Here, q for you Theo. If Gomez was so close to Newcastle in a summer swap for AG, doesn’t this point to us having an eye on another centre back? Arguably needed now, with injuries, iffy Konate fitness and VVD potentially away in June. Makes you wonder who and why they didn’t pursue this month.

Why in the year of 2025 is anyone still using Fb, let alone unaware of the priority/responsibility for privacy exercised through decentralised platforms.

A philosophically informed glossary of key concepts in AI

www.aiglossary.co.uk/index

Up above Corwen today into the white bright and early. Sheep and stone circles and cloud wandering.

The CSET 2025 critical technologies and education discourse event is coming in February. Contribute to the conversation by registering with the West Midlands webinar www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cset-2025-... repeated on Thursday for those who can’t make the first option. Thanks @neilselwyn.bsky.social

It is time people stopped sharing the outrageous photo of Liz Truss and the "I crashed the economy" poster. Please do not share this as it is highly upsetting to the former tory prime minister, who holds the record for the shortest term ever!

we have not collectively invested anything to creating training data. most of us haven’t even consented (or made aware or compensated) for our digital traces to be used as training data. your “we”, can only refer to big tech and large firms whose business model is to aggregate and sell data

Because people would simply access it through the browsers, as they should anyway. Apps are whack.