Joanna Tai

Picture of 3 men and 1 woman standing on a stage

It was great to welcome you Jo. An excellent afternoon on all things assessment, feedback and generative AI.

I'm at the University of Buckingham this afternoon thanks to @heharriet.bsky.social, talks also from Graham Jones and Philip Fine about assessment & feedback and GenAI. @leonfurze.com and @dannydotliu.bsky.social your work mentioned!

There's research to suggest that just ONE consistently safe adult makes a huge difference to a kid's outcome. It doesn't have to be a parent or relative. It can be a teacher, a neighbour, someone else's parent, anyone. What matters is safety and consistency and here it is. Good on ya, bodega man. 🥹

Bodega owner gives kids free food for good grades: ‘I like seeing the smile on their faces' Wail Alselwi, co-owner and manager of Zack’s Finest Deli & Grocery in Staten Island, New York, rewards the hard work of neighborhood students.

More about this lovely soul-
www.nbcnewyork.com/news/nationa...

STOP DOING AI

YEARS OF MARKETING yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND

Want to chat with a PDF? We had a tool for that: It was called "EMAILING THE AUTHORS"

"Let’s shove this feature at users. Let’s do this EVERYWHERE" - Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged

They have played us for absolute fools

Totally normal feelings. I go every six-ish months for a clean check up and worry about it every single time.

Every time you hear Sam Altman say something about the level of “intelligence” of his most recent product, replace the phrase he uses with “super fuckin wicked wizard smart,” and if that sounds like words that a ten-year-old would say about a plastic action figure, good. That’s what he sounds like.

OpenAI claims new GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to ‘PhD level’ GPT-5's release comes as tech firms continue to compete in an effort to claim the world's most advanced AI.

Obviously a lie, since the definition of PhD-level expertise, standard across universities worldwide, is that you can produce original knowledge.

Liz Crowe, Wellbeing Specialist, RBWH, standing at podium looking over her glasses like a stern librarian.

Liz Crowe always has gems. My fave today- 'as well as fight, flight and freeze, there's FLOCK. When you feel threatened, so you find your crew and go OMG and talk amongst yourselves.'

But no-one tells whoever seemed 'threatening'... and that's how exclusion and mobbing starts.

Eating chips regularly raises risk of type 2 diabetes by 20%, study finds Baking, boiling or mashing potatoes raises risk by 5% and replacing with whole grains lowers risk significantly

There is an *association* between eating chips regularly and developing diabetes. The authors acknowledge their study design cannot demonstrate causality. Shall we stop doing food frequency survey research and instead study how to address obesogenic environments?

www.theguardian.com/food/2025/au...

I'd love to hear any feedback on this position statement we have developed. It aims to clearly communicate to students our approach to using AI, and the underlying reasons and motivations for our approach. Would you use something like this in your teaching? What changes would you make?

Generative AI by definition is conformity. It is an averaging of anything you ask of it - quite literally guessing what the most likely version of a thing might be. It is, by definition, mainstream, as is everything it creates old and deeply ideological, as every model trains on similar data.

👋 Hi! Time Perception researcher here. Emotional time dilation has been studied pretty extensively with some neat findings. (I recognize OP was meant as joke but this is what I do). Check out my recent Psyche article if curious psyche.co/guides/how-t...

As a physicist I can easily calculate time dilation from relativistic motion (time slows when you're moving fast) or proximity to a massive object (time slows in gravity) but I have yet to find a solution for emotional time dilation (the task takes five minutes to complete but six weeks to start) 🫠

Comic. PERSON 1 [to person with white hat]: It’s so weird reading these 18th Century scholars argue about minor Biblical details. It’s like they’re an online fandom or something—They’ve developed this whole elaborate canon. [caption] It’s fun when a word’s usage goes full circle and, by analogy, lands back on its original meaning.

Canon

xkcd.com/3123/

Photo of a page out of an educational book. The "learning outcome" is "practise writing letters"

Uhh. Learning outcome. Those words do not mean what you think they mean... 🤔

Image from ABC TV News Melbourne showing King Street Bridge with protestors, and police blocking their way onto the bridge.

I'm no expert in crowd control, but preventing a protest from blocking a bridge by blocking it yourselves seems like an interesting strategy. #Melbourne

Women scientists promote their research online less often than men, study finds Many women scientists are staying silent online—and it could be costing them professionally. A new University of Michigan study finds that women are about 28% less likely than men to promote their sci...

Well sure, because they are also building a new program, mentoring 18 students, and carrying the service load.

phys.org/news/2025-07...

Why don't we name and follow the evolution of every influenza virus variant? Or RSV variant? Or measles virus variant? Etc.
Why are so many studies published investigating *JUST* SARS-CoV-2 & sign/symptom/disease X, when other viruses have yet to get this level of intense attention?

Mind blown! Ottawa & AMEE together again in 2026 after so many years... It'd be cool if it were in Asia rather than Europe.

An eloquent image:

Setting aside the content under the tarp for a moment, teens were asked to make art expressing what it is like to be a teen, and the end result was a mural wrapped in a tarp by adults.

I bet a lot of teens would find this expressive of their experience.

And to bring to an end this thread about rain on a sunny note… There’s a Scottish version of “every cloud has a silver lining” that goes “today’s rain is tomorrow’s whisky.”

Graphic advertising Waterstones' 25% off on upcoming books sale. Pre-order now with code SUMMER25. 28-31 July. Online only. Graphic also features the cover of An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister.

UK pals - An Academic Affair* is part of Waterstones' summer pre-order sale! If you pre-order between July 28-31 with the code SUMMER25, you'll get 25% off.

*the one about two academics who DEFINITELY aren't in love, don't let the fact they're married fool you

www.waterstones.com/book/an-acad...

My very first paid research job was for the 160th anniversary of the University of Melbourne, which required me to read lots of books written by non-historians about the history of their school/faculty. They were mostly atrocious, and easily the worst were the veterinarians

American musical satirist Tom Lehrer dies at 97, US media report Lehrer, a Harvard-trained mathematician, wrote darkly humorous songs, often with political connotations.

Vale Tom Lehrer. Didn't realise the extent of his academic career!

www.bbc.com/news/article...

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Haha. Have not done any of the things I said I'd get done today, instead done some other things which are productive. That still counts rights?

every day we get closer to having a machine write the paper and then give feedback on its own paper and then argue with itself about its own grade and we can all go lay on the quad and sheepishly avoid eye contact while we wonder what the point of life is

CRADLE Blog: Join us to discover new directions in AI research and practice What are students’ perspectives on AI, and how do they study in a world where AI is commonplace? This webinar brings together an expert panel to explore these questions and more, in the first…

Join us to discover new directions in AI research and practice. Our expert panel will discuss what has been learned so far about students' perspectives and practices for studying in a world with AI. Join online on Friday 29 August at 1pm. Register now: blogs.deakin.edu.au/cradle/join-...

Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results In a March 2025 analysis, Google users who encountered an AI summary were less likely to click on links to other websites than users who did not see one.

that's it folks, the world wide web was nice while it lasted, time to pack it up and go back to printed material I reckon - the incentives to put anything up on the web now are so slim, why would anyone do it? why do I do it??

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...