Derek Hunt

"They’re not necessarily trying to cheat; they’re just being efficient" Part 2 of my interview with Tawnya Means

"They’re not necessarily trying to cheat; they’re just being efficient... That kind of cognitive offloading happens when students don’t see value in doing the work themselves."
aiedusimplified.substack.com/p/theyre-not...

How is generative AI changing the way educators teach, design courses, and support student learning? This episode features insights from the Teaching, Learning & Technology team at the University of… S2E4 Human Learning in the Age of AI: Supporting Educators at U of T

I interviewed for a TATP (Teaching Assistants' Training Program) podcast. You can check it out here -
Short:
youtube.com/shorts/1p0d8...
Full podcast:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUn0...
TATP website:
tatp.utoronto.ca/resources/th...

A pre-show warning that reads, "Just a heads up: It turns out when you film college students for an extended period, they use a lot of mature language. Oh also, do not attempt any of the stuff they are doing at home. Or frankly, in any location. College, huh? What a time. Viewer discretion is advised."

you know a series is going to rock when this is the parental advisory

The science of learning is not the same as “back to basics” How teachers can move past educational pendulum swings to a more evidence-informed future.

Science of Learning has some overlap with "back to the basics", but also key evidence about how brains process and retain information:
- Working memory is limited.
- Students forget.
- Learning requires effort.
- Understanding builds on prior knowledge.
scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/the-scienc...

AI on autopilot: Navigating the risks of an automated web - Information Security at University of Toronto The way you interact with your browser is fundamentally changing. Forget traditional browsers that just show you a page; agentic browsers are intelligent assistants that can understand your goals and…

Information about risks to the #UofT community around agentic browsers - intelligent assistants that can act on your behalf. Read through good and bad scenarios to understand how this transformation brings new possibilities and challenges.
security.utoronto.ca/best-practic...

Is Misinformation More Open? A Study of robots.txt Gatekeeping on the Web Commentary on Is Misinformation More Open? A Study of robots.txt Gatekeeping on the Web by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments,…

Unsurprisingly, the misinformation sites are happy to welcome AI while AI-blocking by reputable sites (increased) from 23% in September 2023 to nearly 60% by May 2025... raising essential questions for web transparency, data ethics, and the future of AI training practices."
www.downes.ca/post/78392

Hosting A Website On A Disposable Vape For the past years people have been collecting disposable vapes primarily for their lithium-ion batteries, but as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these …

Friday tee hee -
"as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these too have become an interesting target for reusability. [BogdanTheGeek] decided to turn one of these vapes into a webserver, appropriately called the vapeserver."

hackaday.com/2025/09/15/h...

Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment Commentary on Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments, new literacy,…

Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment - "Given that AI exists in the world, and that students are likely to use it, what evidence of learning would I now find persuasive?'"
www.downes.ca/post/78140

An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now What AI to use in late 2025

www.oneusefulthing.org/p/an-opinion...
Notable ideas from this article:
- the AI doesn’t know “why” it did something, so asking it to explain its logic will not get you anywhere.
- Sycophancy: act as a critic. Otherwise, you might be talking to a very sophisticated yes-man.

Edu-Snippets Why knowledge matters in the age of AI; What happens to learners' neural activity with prolonged use of LLMs for writing

"it’s a call for balance: to use digital tools to augment our thinking rather than to offload the mental processes that we need to learn and develop expertise. Learners can't think critically with knowledge they don’t have."
scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/edu-snippe...

- Skills are in flux: people are becoming more “full-stack” by working beyond their core expertise
- Social dynamics are changing: engineers report that they “work more with Claude than with colleagues,”
- Careers are fragmenting: some double down on AI fluency, others bet on human-only skills

Economic Futures Symposium, interesting observations: "The productivity story looks simple. The cultural story is not."
- Roles are shifting: engineers now see themselves as managers of AI agents
- Mentorship is eroding: junior staff turn first to Claude for answers
www.linkedin.com/posts/adrian...

I was about to say - what, not a nebula? But then I loaded up nebula and there it is 😂

AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence -
marketoonist.com/2025/09/ai-s...

Professors experiment as AI becomes part of student life As AI use surges among students, Canadian educators are finding ways to integrate AI responsibly while preserving critical thinking to best prepare the students for the working world

“We must prepare students for a world where the question is not, ‘Can you use AI?’ But rather, ‘Can I trust your thinking without using AI?’”
www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

Your Politics Are Not a Costco Membership Why Left and Right Are Less Real Than a $1.50 Hot Dog

“The Left” and “the Right” aren’t real.
They’re made-up clubs, invented and sold to the public by the people in power…
and by the loudest people with the most to gain.

I study AI cheating. Here’s what the data actually says. What the panic about kids using AI to cheat gets wrong.

- AI use is increasing for cheating, but was high before GenAI.
- Students being incorrectly accused leading to unexpected behaviours like using AI so it looks like they didn’t use AI.
- Confusion about when AI is permissible (varies from teacher to teacher).

www.vox.com/technology/4...

Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens. Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation.

"Sycophancy" - a new term I learned today that describes one of the main things that bug me about ChatGPT / GenAI chatbots - "Sycophancy, in which chatbots agree with and excessively praise users"

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...

"The search and retrieval isn't done by the LLM itself ... is a hack using Azure AI Search with naive, vector-based semantic similarity scoring and ranking."

"The problems come with unstructured documents and the inherent ambiguities and assumptions in language that an expert human can pick out, but non-experts (LLMs) can't."

This is very helpful to understand why custom GPTs using resources do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also… | Der... This is very helpful to understand why custom GPTs using resources do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also points...

This post was very helpful for me to understand why custom GPTs do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also points out that well structured documents perform the best -
www.linkedin.com/posts/huntde...

"So you might reasonably wonder: If artificial intelligence can do these things, why should you spend four years learning to do them yourself? You need to learn these things precisely because machines can now do them. Your ability to think for yourself has become more precious than ever."

Opinion: To the freshman class of 2025: Will you let AI think for you, or learn how to think for yourself? The challenges and frustrations that can come with thinking deeply - a skill that’s more valuable than ever - are a feature, not a bug

"To the class of 2025: Will you let AI think for you, or learn how to think for yourself?: The challenges and frustrations that can come with thinking deeply - a skill that’s more valuable than ever - are a feature, not a bug."

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

AI Updates for Fall 2025 (University of Toronto #UofT)
memos.provost.utoronto.ca/ai-updates-f...

Chapter 3 – Knock Things Over Strategically
"Knock things over strategically. Start with their illusions of control."
📖 MagnaCata.com
#CatLogic #TinyActsOfRebellion #SurvivalLessons

'Can I see some ID?' As online age verification spreads, so do privacy concerns | CBC News The U.K.'s Online Safety Act took effect last Friday, putting age gates on content deemed unsuitable for minors, including pornography and content about suicide and self harm. While some sites have pulled...

" 'Can I see some ID?' As online age verification spreads, so do privacy concerns "

www.cbc.ca/news/online-...

"It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

- 1973 Hannah Arendt
hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/o...

"What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer"

Talk is cheap: why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI Generative AI (GenAI) challenges assessment validity by enabling students to complete tasks without demonstrating genuine capability. In response to this challenge, institutions have developed and ...

"This might mean building in authenticated checkpoints where students must demonstrate their evolving thinking." - Talk is cheap: why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"structural changes frequently involve reorienting assessment from output to process. Rather than evaluating only the final product, which could potentially be AI-generated, assessment may be designed to capture the student’s development and attainment of understanding and skill over time."