Nigel Caplan

Just found a new way to teach teachers to avoid the phrase non-native speaker

Every day is Yorkshire Day

Where can I get a bumper sticker that says "it's between me and my grammarian"?

<high hat>

Feature not a bug

this is just to say
I have released
the funding
that was in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
counting on
to fund your vital programming for multilingual learners, their families, and communities

The IT/ed-tech/academic tech services needs to hear from faculty, staff, and students who don't want to see (more) extractive, surveillance, anti-pedagogical tech in their schools.

The irony is that it would be a phenomenal business decision that's a gift to your marketing and branding (sorry, comms) unit. But pro-tip: just because Canvas's VC overlords push AI slop doesn't mean unis have to adopt it. They can choose not to deploy new "features". Mine did! But ...

"The Ed. Dept. Wants to Steer Grant Money to AI **CORPORATIONS**. What That Means for **FUNDING OF PUBLIC** Schools" Fixed it for you, @edweek.org

Respectfully, there's a critical 4th point here for those of us who are able, and that's to petition IT departments to resist or refuse the unwanted and unwarranted intrusion of anti-educational "features" and products. I get the "free" incursion strategy, but there's often a choice not to deploy

There's more. "All of the new Canvas features are optional. Instructors can opt out of using AI entirely. " - Not acceptable. Must be "opt in" only. And per the AAUP statement this week, faculty should be consulted before this bullshit is forced on us and our students.

"We need to meet them where they are" - no, we don't. Our job as educators is take them someplace new in their thinking and understanding. Go away.

"The modern student expects it; they’re on their phone all the time." Oh so there's only one student in the whole of higher ed and they all think the same way? The point of education is for them to put down the damned phones and learn something. That's what they actually expect.

"We’ve moved beyond the age where educators can simply not use technology in the classroom" - never was such an age. Mechanical pencils, chalkboard, and overhead projectors are technology. You just mean you want us to use extractive surveillance technology. No.

Instructors Will Now See AI Throughout a Widely Used Course Software New features integrated into Canvas include a grading assistant, a discussion-post summarizer, and even a way to pair assignments with generative AI tools.

No, no, and no. Every word uttered/generated by the venture capitalists behind Instructure/Canvas betrays utter ignorance of teaching. Here's why ...

www.chronicle.com/article/inst...

So let me get this straight. In 24 hours we have: (1) EO demanding that "AI" products only output regime-sanctioned biases; (2) brand-name university agrees to federal oversight of all decision making; (3) Instructure force-feeds "AI" slop into Canvas. Do you see a through-line here?

This had better be opt in. Directly contravenes everything in the AAUP statement. Petition your IT department. I will

This is actually very good. Hopefully @aaup.org will take this opportunity to distance itself from AFT's sell-out to OpenAI etc. This document needs to be the basis for every CBA renewal from here on. (Forgive me for having zero faith that will happen here.)

In my other life, I'm a crew hand for a community theater production of Little Mermaid. I finally understand. AI is the dinglehopper. It's a shiny new thing someone found. It must have a use. So we're going to do things like brush our hair with it until we work it out. (The dinglehopper is a fork.)

May I add one (as chair of our promotion/peer review cttee - we're non-tenured)? Please actually evaluate the candidate's work, don't just describe it. I know what they taught and published and what cttees they served on. I read all that too. I need you to tell me if it's any good so I quote you!

Good. Most people (especially those who haven't bought into the hype) see so-called "AI" for what it is. An anti-productivity and anti-competence tool.

#linguist needed in Aisle 2. Can anyone help me explain why this lyric from the Little Mermaid musical (don't judge, community theater keeps me sane) is a funny syntactic mangle: "It's love that she's in" (the song inevitably is "She's in Love")?

An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education

Signed. You should, too, if you care about education.
"An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education"
openletter.earth/an-open-lett...

This is a laundry list of rhetorical strategies to defend the adoption of a given technology for the purposes of advancing an ideology & economic regime: inevitability, unquestioning praise of “innovation,” buy-in from concerned stakeholders, assurances that partnership is not capitulation. 1/n

time to stop paying union dues? seems like AFT/AAUP doesn't need my monthly paycheck if they're I funded by big tech now

Tl;dr: AI is inevitable because big tech told us so, so they made us a course for us to inevitably use their products

But why listen to experts, AFT, when you think you know everything? AAUP needs independence from this dumpster fire. It's going to make it impossible to negotiate for contract protections against slop

AAUP sold out to AFT, who sold out to Microsoft. Do I have that right? So my choice is to leave the union and give up my ability to vote on employment conditions I will be bound by or see my dues go to this slop
Great

It is entirely possible to shape how AI is and is not use by *not using it*. This is the worst kind of capitulation.