Tyler Watts

HOW MUCH WILL YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT LOSE? Federal budget cuts to public education will eliminate afterschool and summer programs, arts and technology classes, teachers, emergency preparedness, mental health services, and more. Search for your state and school district to see how much your child’s education will be impacted. DES MOINES INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT will lose $8,175,391 in federal funding.

You can use this tool to find out just how much funding your local district (or any district in the country) will be losing in the new federal budget:

"DES MOINES INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT will lose $8,175,391 in federal funding."

public.tableau.com/app/profile/... #EduSky #EdChat

2025 AAUP Faculty in the South Survey The Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP] and its partners in states across the South have been at the forefront of fighting attacks on higher education. To as...

The 2025 @aaup.org Faculty in the South Survey is live. If you are a professor in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Texas it's for you. Ends 8/29 at 5pm Eastern forms.gle/v7T3BH2w9LXs...

Here's a thread about a virtual conference that's actually accessible. How? Because it was designed and executed by disabled people who care about access and know what it takes to build meaningful community. Take notes. 1/11

Yes. I am right. I am seeing how Chat GPT is ruining students critical thinking and writing skills in real time. It is not the future. It is a tool designed to render the populace helpless, to make people doubt their innate intelligence, and to foster overreliance on technology.

Will someone please dust @jeffreykeese.bsky.social’s skeets.

Congrats Dr. Logan!

AI can try to summarise Wikipedia articles but the detailed recaps of DC Comics crossovers will defeat it like the Russian winter defeated Napoleon

the only thing that allows teachers to spend more time focusing on individual students is smaller class sizes, but sure, let's try magic beans.

Brian Wilson, Beach Boys visionary leader and summer's poet laureate, dies at 82 Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has died at 82. One of the world’s most beloved and influential musicians, his family posted news of his death to his website Wednesday.

Incredibly saddened by this loss. 😢 apnews.com/article/bria...

you don't have to acknowledge the legit use cases for AI when you hate on AI. you can just hate. the legit use cases will be fine

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine Hey team. It’s your CEO. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase: It’s come to my attention that some of you have been bad-mou...

"It just really comes as a shock that such accomplished intellectuals, who’ve spent their entire careers pushing the upper bounds of human achievement, could be judgy about a machine that runs the entirety of human imagination through a shredder and glues together what comes out."

The Catholic Church has been fairly consistent about this for awhile. I think the adage that the Church “thinks in centuries” actually helps in disconnecting tech from its novelty and being clear-eyed that genAI is an anti-labor tool.

A screenshot of a Reddit post with the image of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker receiving medals after the Battle of Yavin. The title reads “It’s so funny to me to think of all the work and sacrifice that went into building the Rebellion just for these two idiots to stumble into it and get all the glory.”

I feel like this Reddit post captured something narratively that might be at play? Remove the Force and you need really capable and complex characters to solve the problems that can’t be answered with plot resolutions involving lightsabers and lucky shots.

The Rise of Generative AI Calls for New Approaches to Grading A piece co-authored by my students and me

I'm seeing more and more people coming to the realization that student misuse of AI is a problem in large part because grades are a problem. My students and I came to this conclusion *two years ago*--and we wrote something about it! emilypittsdonahoe.substack.com/p/the-rise-o...

We are right at one month away from the 2025 Grading Conference (June 11--13), and have just posted the schedule. Check out all the amazing presentations we will have this year!

www.centerforgradingreform.org/grading-conf...

For Silicon Valley, AI isn’t just about replacing some jobs. It’s about replacing all of them | Ed Newton-Rex AI will do the thinking, robots will do the doing. What place do humans have in this arrangement – and do tech CEOs care? says Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained

As far as its funders are concerned, the purpose of AI is literally and explicitly to oppress labour. If you wanna post how LLMs are useful for something and you ignore the literal reason for all that funding, you’re whitewashing and you know it.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I had this realization this week. I wanted to introduce my students to other forms of alt assessment & also try some out, but it just wasn’t working with my overall course design. Went with values.

"What makes me angry is a society that has so few values, such an attenuated sense of human worth and flourishing, that it jumps to sell off the brains and potential of its young people for — what? A technological fad?" Preach! @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social

After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵

The move to push LLMs into everything is like a giant game of Jenga, where the technology is used as an excuse to keep removing humans from essential roles, while placing pretend computer people on top of everything until it all collapses.

Questions: How do students feel about using a tool or 'creative collaborator' that: - has been trained on other people's creative output, without permission? - depends on exploitative and potentially abusive labour practices? - is a massively carbon-emitting and environmentally damaging technology? - is based on a belief in the power of scaling, when this creates so many basic problems? - is used to put people out of a job or to deskill them, even though it can't actually do the job tasks properly? - is touted as supporting people at work but is so unreliable it actually creates more work to check it? - is claimed to improve efficiency but undermines people's skills and capacities? - that will be pushed into schools and universities while degrading education and learning? - is really a way to privatise public services like health and education? - is claimed to be ethical while helping to fill the internet with slop? - is supposedly on the way to becoming a genius but carries on making really dumb mistakes? - is ranked as 'intelligent' using measures that are ultimately derived from eugenics? - is being made 'safe' in ways that actually make it a more powerful tool for potential dictators? - has as a central goal, according to its founder, American global dominance? - is increasingly turning towards the military for both funding and purpose?

'Questions for Anthropic (or any other LLM-pusher)'. Sharing the questions I prepared for a panel about Claude in education, in case they're useful to anyone else resisting the narrative of AI inevitability danmcquillan.org/questions_fo...

YouTube video by Taskmaster Taskmaster Season 19, Episode 1 - 'Sometimes spit.' | Full Episode

Jason Mantzoukas on Taskmaster?! Yes, please and hey nongman! www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3u...

Trump posts AI-generated photo of himself dressed as the pope The image — which first appeared on Trump's Truth Social — comes as cardinals are set to convene next week to begin the process for electing the next pope.

Sacrilege - the use of AI in the classroom can’t be divorced from what it’s enabled in the hands of terrible people. www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/05/...

The actor Nathan Fielder smiling alone and looking off camera - from a meme tweet I which he posted “Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too.”

Me too. Me too.

EdTech salesperson writing a pitch: “If this dude can rewrite HUD regulations with AI, just imagine what it can do for your students in BIO 202!”

The people I follow for their pedagogical takes also have amazing indie rock takes?! Yes! @charleswlogan.bsky.social

A Burger King with black smoke billowing out of the roof

Nearby Burger King has failed to elect a new ruler. www.wyff4.com/article/burg...

YouTube video by More Perfect Union Zuckerberg Doesn’t Want You to See This

This video, on Meta's data center in Mansfield, Georgia, is really good public communication from @moreperfectunion.bsky.social

youtube.com/shorts/cKUR2...

A herd of Uncle Baby Billies is a formidable force.

I'm Team Goggins, but Arcade Fire has like 14 members - are they all allowed to fight?