Derek Hunt

'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."

My brain had not brained this before 🤯 (re: how to scale education with personalized learning).

- "How do you scale a personal trainer? How do you scale a plumber? How do you scale an electrician? You don't. You just have lots of them.
Derek Muller (Veritasium).

youtu.be/0xS68sl2D70?...

Headline: Walmart, Amazon Mull Dollar-Pegged Stablecoins in the US: WSJ

Headline: Coinbase torched by crypto community for US army parade sponsorship<br>Justin Sun-linked firm to go public in US with TRX acquisition strategy; Eric Trump expected to take role: FT

Headline: Trump made over $57 million from World Liberty Financial's WLFI sales, new disclosure shows

Headline: Coinbase unveils an American Express-powered credit card offering up to 4% in BTC rewards<br>Shopify teams up with Coinbase and Stripe in USDC stablecoin payments push

just checking in on the financial revolution that was meant to sidestep banks, tech giants, and the state

"ChatGPT’s vision for campuses. My biggest complaint for universities is the weak response of leaders to meaningfully plan for AI’s impact on learners and on the future of society." George Siemens' Sensemaking, AI, and Learning (SAIL) newsletter - buttondown.com/SAIL/archive...

GenAI Literacy Course Modules - Open UToronto Introduction This Coursework and GenAI: A Practical Guide for Students open educational resource is intended to provide instructors with customizable content modules designed to enhance Generative AI…

#UofT Faculty - new resources for your students in GenAI Literacy, integrates into your Quercus course.

ocw.utoronto.ca/innovation-p...

Closing Plenary: Hope Circuits at a time of Seismic Change: Re-wiring our classrooms and institution for Human and Ecological Flourishing 12:45pm-1:45pm: Hope Circuits at a time of Seismic Change: Re-wiring our classrooms and institution for Human and Ecological Flourishing Dr. Jessica Riddell, Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergradu...

How to balance "Student vs Learner" - Student will maximize their grade output within the structure and systems vs Learner who wants to grow their knowledge. Thanks @drjessicariddell.bsky.social for the facilitation at the @uoft-teaching.bsky.social T&L symposium.
tls.utoronto.ca/event/hope-c...

Teaching for more equitable outcomes: The missing ingredient Why equity initiatives can fail and what teachers can do about it.

"Equity can’t be achieved through good intentions and inclusive practices alone. It requires students build the knowledge they need through explicit teaching, feedback, and practice. If we’re serious about equity, we have to be serious about learning."
scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/teaching-f...

Hey Jet Lag crew @thewheatgerm.bsky.social @adamchase.bsky.social @samfromwendover.bsky.social - you were so focused on Ball in the first episode of Hide + Seek NY, you didn't notice the guy absolutely draining this 3-pointer dog poop bag behind Amy in episode 2 😂

With CBC now having called all ridings it's time for the land-vs-people-vote animation.

Teaching with Generative AI - Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation Teaching with GenAI This resource offers guides, explainers, and idea generators related to planning for and integrating generative AI into courses, structured according to four key teaching phases:…

CTSI resource: Proactive strategies to address unauthorized GenAI use:
- Foster academic honesty through thoughtful course design
- Educate students on proper attribution and original thinking
- Recognize and address potential cases of academic misconduct

teaching.utoronto.ca/teaching-uof...

ah, I see, asked and answered -
bsky.app/profile/nebu...

Canadian kid raises hand for metric version 👀 ✋ 🇨🇦 😆

This explains a lot! It only takes 6 times for someone to hear the same lie to start to believe it.
@jeffmacarthur.bsky.social's segment on The AmberMac Show today is 🇨🇦🔥.
@aaron.bsky.team

CTSI’s Effective Prompting Strategies resource is grounded in evidence-based learning science principles and designed to help students structure AI interactions that both enhance knowledge retention and foster critical thinking. Sample prompts focus on:

AI Index 2025: State of AI in 10 Charts | Stanford HAI Small models get better, regulation moves to the states, and more.

State of AI in 10 Charts (from Stanford's 2025 AI Index Report)
hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-inde...

(Smaller Models Get Better, Become Cheaper, China Catch Up, A Jump in Problematic AI, Rise of Agents, Sky-High Investment, Corporate, Health AI, USA Regulation Moves to States, Asia more AI Optimism)

ElectoFacts ---

Elections Canada has a pretty thorough fact-checking page on its website. On one side of the page, there is a list of inaccurate or misleading information circulating online; on the other side, there is a list of accurate information to dispel those myths.

I’m a recent Stem grad. Here’s why the right is winning us over Corporations started wooing my friends as soon as college began. It’s time for the left to reimagine its relationship with tech

"I’m a recent STEM grad. Here’s why the right is winning us over "

[TL:DR - right-leaning tech businesses have more incentives and $ to offer recent grads, and way more out there. Left-leaning employment may have noble goals, but that's all they really offer]

Elbows up, Canada.

Teaching with Video in a Digital Age | Welcome to TeachOnline Work Smarter, Teach Better: Video Tools to Up the Engagement As a pioneer and prominent scholar in online and blended learning, Contact North | Contact Nord Research Associate Dr. Tony Bates has…

"What is the most important thing you have learned from your 50 years of research into learning technologies? I think the most important lesson is that video is greatly underused in higher education teaching."

In 2019, Iceland Approved the 4-Day Workweek: Nearly 6 Years Later, All Predictions by Generation Z Have Come True In 2019, Iceland made headlines by becoming one of the first countries to officially approve a four-day workweek. But rather than passing a blanket law,

In 2019, Iceland Approved the 4-Day Workweek. 6 years later nearly 90% working reduced hours (36 hours a week instead of 40), with no loss in pay. Productivity remained steady, but in some sectors it increased. Workers report reduced stress and better work-life balance.

#TheMoment a Manitoba family deployed googly-eyed hockey sticks to poke fun at Trump Shannon Proudfoot, Aaron Maciejko, and KJ de Groot recount the moment googly-eyed hockey sticks were stuck in a snowbank to poke fun at Donald Trump and his demand for 24/7 eyes on the border.

24/7 eyes on the Canadian border 😆 - www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

HyperNormalisation - Wikipedia

An example describes the paradoxes of Soviet life during the 1970s and 1980s where everyone knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine an alternative. This led to a mass delusion where the failing system was accepted as the new norm.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNo...

Learned a new word today - "Hypernormalisation" — a state where everyone knows the system is broken, but we all pretend it’s working anyway.

What happens if you put an AI in charge of national defense?

In war games, LLMs tend to escalate & do arms races. Base models are more aggressive & unpredictable. The authors speculate that it is because there is lots of training data on escalation, little on de-escalation. arxiv.org/pdf/2401.03408

The Use of AI-Detection Tools in the Assessment of Student Work [Sarah Eaton]. "Tools to detect text written by artificial intelligence aren’t really reliable or effective. It would be wise to be skeptical of any marketing claims to the contrary."

https://drsaraheaton.com/2023/05/06/the-use-of-ai…