Benjamin Riley

"A computer...can never know a student. It can never know anything. It cannot know what it means to look someone in the eye, to touch their hand, and to, in utter silence, signal that you are there, you believe in them, you will be there for them."
- @audreywatters.bsky.social

@thevogelman.bsky.social perhaps of interest

Will New AI Academy Help Teachers or Just Improve Tech’s Bottom Line? AFT says its AI training initiative will modernize teaching, while critics say it’s ‘a gigantic public experiment that no one has asked for.’

On a personal note, that I'm now to left of the head of a major teachers' union regarding the role of AI in education is, uh, strange.

www.the74million.org/article/will...

"We must have abundance!"

Like, knowledge abundance? Widespread advanced literacy abundance? Educational abundance, if you will?

"No, an abundance of screens. Reading is going the way microfiche."

The Abundites are such a f'ing joke.

This, but for schools.

The unintended comedy of this "story" is quite high!

What is the purpose of this story?

Have you used GPT5?

Pretty sure I'll be writing about it this week!

She does literally none of those things. I too admire her conviction and also her approach.

It's realistic in Ms. Bond's classroom! We are not slaves to this technology.

Quote slightly paraphrased for space. And @heymrsbond.com you continue to inspire me. Thank you for speaking out.

What Happened the Year I Banned AI The choice to keep artificial intelligence tools out of my class has been the most impactful decision that I have made as a teacher.

"Authentic student voice, acquiring essential skills, and the environmental impact of AI use are three important reasons I’ll continue to ban AI. My commitment is to ensuring that students grow and nurture their voices and acquire the skills that our education system promises." - @heymrsbond.com

An excellent summary of OpenAI's full-throttle assault on global education systems. We have met the enemy, and it is Altman.

The one part of this I agree with is that we are indeed suffering a revolutionary moment, and it's explicitly fascist. So therefore there must be a counterrevolution to preserve democracy. We need to start thinking in these terms if we want to meet the gravity of the peril we face.

Too much "we're cooked" & not enough "we're not gonna take this shit"

The DJ on my local radio KUTX -- the best station on the planet by the way -- just declared "I'm a human being not an algorithm" and I guess that's just where we are nowadays.

Whaaaaa? Well I dunno if it's me or BlueSky or my former org or what. But again, googling using the terms I suggested should get you there.

The delicious, unacknowledged irony here is this Princeton professor begins with a discussion of the Encyclopedia, a synthesis of shared knowledge, while pointing to a colleague who loves AI because "I can construct the ‘book’ I want in real time."

AI is the Anti-Encyclopedia.

The Case Against Rushing AI in School with Pip Sanderson Expert Intelligence with Paul Estes · Episode

Final thought, and to connect some dots, I believe that having a basic understanding of these principles helps to build educator resistance to AI. This podcast with a director of UK Natl Institute of Teaching is what I hope to see broadly:

open.spotify.com/episode/6bf2...

That second link didn't work either?! Well if you google "science of learning DFI" that might get you there.

The Science of Learning | Deans For Impact | Deans for Impact (DFI) Discover tools, reports, videos, and guides to promote evidence-based practices in teacher education. Enhance teaching with resources on instructional materials and more.

Well shoot, try this (may take a few clicks):
www.deansforimpact.org/tools-and-re... The Science of Learning | Deans For Impact | Deans for Impact (DFI)

Well perhaps have a peek at that document I linked to? Those are some of the concepts I think are relevant. I founded and built an entire nonprofit organization to advance their understanding in schools of education.

Well we may just disagree on that! But whether cog-sci or cog-psych, I can guarantee that UK teachers will on average have more basic familiarity with concepts from those fields than in the US.

If by "marketing" you mean a term I used in order to make ideas from cognitive science more accessible to non-experts, then sure.

Ha, well you're talking to the person who helped coin that term in order to make "cognitive science" more palatable to teachers.

www.deansforimpact.org/files/assets...

Well I won't keep asking but I'm curious what specifically you find inaccurate (to the point of being creepy). I'll just say that the mental model of the mind that UK teachers have is far more influenced by cogsci than, say, teachers in the US.

Well I'm asking you, what feels off?

What's creeping you out?

Very true, although by this analogy the manufacturer of said ink blots claims that the armadillos are already smarter than you.