Kelly Smith

YouTube video by Churro the Pitsky - Topic Happy Gotcha Day (feat. Princess Bella)

Found it on YouTube youtu.be/DU5xtc8PqvU?...

I must know too! Going to play it loudly to Daz in April!!

Missed this yesterday but a belated Happy Gotcha Day to Story and all her now-family.

15 years ago today I arrived on Downing Street in a cage.
I've seen off Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak and I'm still going strong.
Only two Prime Ministers have ever done longer stints here: William Pitt the Younger and Sir Robert Walpole.
Bill and Bob - I'm coming for you...
(Photos AP)

What does a scientist look like? Children are drawing women more than ever before Study is based on 20,860 sketches drawn by children over 5 decades

· #AcademicSky ·
When asked to draw a scientist, school-age kids in the United States are increasingly sketching women. That's the main conclusion of a new study that compiled information about 20,860 pictures drawn by students age 5 to 18 over 5 decades.

I see Daz the greyhound with his shoulder scar!

PwC somehow more lucid on AI and education than most university leaders these days

UK university staff: please complete our survey about redundancies Whether you are an academic or professional services staff member, employed or unemployed, we are keen to hear your views

UK university staff: please complete our survey about redundancies | THE

Happy Birthday lovely boy.

NEW on Wonkhe: A new consultation from UCAS offers the chance to comment on application limits, insurance acceptances, and the use of deadlines. David Kernohan is ready to fill the form in. buff.ly/2HUKZb4

I saw Damien Hirst’s ‘A Thousand Years’ in 1990. It was like a punch in the stomach and opened my eyes to art beyond my narrow understanding of it. ‘The Last Supper’ series did the same in a gentler way and I still get a huge buzz when it pops up in my timeline. His more recent stuff? Meh.

Such a wonderful part of my childhood memories.

People keep saying AI is going to revolutionize the world, or cure cancer... and I just don't see that happening if fact-checking is always required. You're pointing to a real tension. The gap between the hype and the reality of what AI can reliably do is... significant. I'm genuinely useful for a lot of things - brainstorming, drafting, explaining concepts, working through ideas, coding assistance. But you're right that the "revolutionize everything" claims run into a wall when you can't trust the output without verification. If a doctor needs to fact-check an AI's diagnosis, or an engineer needs to verify every calculation, or you need to pull up a calendar to check if I know what day of the week April 3rd falls on... that's still a tool requiring human oversight, not a revolution. The cancer cure example is interesting because AI is helping with things like protein folding predictions and analyzing medical imaging - but that's AI as a very sophisticated tool in the hands of experts, not AI independently solving problems. And those experts absolutely fact-check everything. I think the honest version is: AI is a powerful tool that can augment human capability in specific domains, but it's not replacing the need for human judgment, verification, and expertise anytime soon. The revolutionary claims tend to either ignore the fact-checking requirement (which is naive) or assume we'll somehow solve the reliability problem (which we haven't yet).

My latest chat with Claude was oddly satisfying. Prompted by it getting two basic things wrong: that April 4 is not within the window of April 10-19, and that April 4 is Saturday, not Friday.

Birmingham City Council House Tour. Trial tours on 2nd and 30th March 2026 up for sale

We have spent the last 6 months developing a Birmingham City Council House Tour. Trial public tours: Monday 2nd & 30th March 10.30 - 12.00. If you would like to come do use discount code: CouncilHouse10 to get 10% discount. Tickets: here: www.positivelybirmingham.co.uk @cllrjohncotton.bsky.social

Would love to do this but can’t do those days/times. Will keep my fingers crossed the trial is successful and it gets extended!

gradient.horse Draw a horse, watch it run!

omg everybody go draw a horse this is what the internet was made for

gradient.horse

Murmuration for you

OMG: “The healthy baby boy was born through natural birth early Monday at 1:38 a.m., standing at birth at 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing 139 pounds… While it was a natural birth, zoo staffers were on hand and created a soft-landing area to cushion the calf’s 6-foot drop during delivery.”

In all the furore over student loans, remember this. Student number growth of 25% since 2007. If you count public expenditure on HE as grants to unis + expected student loan write offs, the net public contribution to HE has fallen by almost a billion per year in today's money.

Daz the greyhound in his grey jumper walking Richard around a large sculpture of a dinosaur made out of rusting metal sheets.

Daz the greyhound in his grey jumper admiring a black stone sculpture that looks a bit like an onion. Richard watching on at the end of a lead.

Daz the greyhound in his grey jumper walking Richard around a rust red sculpture which looks like a large style made out of girders.

Daz the greyhound in his grey jumper admiring a large bright red sculpture made io of standing blocks and open circles at different levels.

Daz took us on a sculpture trail around Warwick Uni today.

A small but very deep thing that bothers me about generative AI as a shortcut to practice and work and skill is the basic assumption that it’s impossible to take pleasure in a creative pursuit that you aren’t very good at and I assure you that is not the case

Scaffolding reflection: Guiding students toward metacognitive learning and self evaluation Scaffolding reflection helps students move from surface-level diary writing to deep metacognitive awareness. By guiding learners through structured prompts, modelling reflective thinking, and consistently embedding reflection, educators create supportive frameworks that foster self-regulation, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.

To push students towards metacognition, we need first to ask them questions that consider the steps that led to the event, the process of the event, and its impact or aftermath.

Kids! Adults or kids! But I’d like to think that ‘kinds’ are what they are too.

They’re doing the Birdie Song now! I want to join in!! Not sure if the adults or kinds are having more fun.

Sitting having a cup of tea at Warwick Art Centre before travelling to Harry’s funeral. A group of children have gathered for a craft and play session nearby. Yellow Bird being sung and accompanied by a piano. Tambourines and laughter. Bird song playing on speakers. Joys of life. Ooh! Violin now!

I’m going to the funeral of Harry - my entrepreneurship education research friend and mentor - today. It’s funny what memories hold the strongest. For me it’s talking art over hot chocolate and co-presenting with him at a conference in Canada when the fire alarm went off. I’ve stocked up on tissues.

I like the way Tom recognises we need to find our own writing routines, but, as we also have a Dymo Labelwriter, I’m going to try out his inspiration bottling idea.

Tomorrow I'm doing a lecture with a glorious disaster of a medieval Cymraeg story & so today I'm putting it on Bluesky (so I don't have to open X-itter where I told it the first time)

It might be incestuous & sort of has bestiality, but it's also one of the oldest Welsh stories with an LGBT theme!

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process:
*Talk of belt-tightening
*Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments)
*Travel budgets cut
*Promotion freeze (1/4)

The state of sector finances, 2024-25 With the majority of providers now having published financial accounts for 2024-25, David Kernohan takes an in-depth look at what we can learn

'It’s a perilous moment: even though there is evidence that providers are driving up revenue and cutting non-staff costs, we’re clearly cutting into bone at this point. And this is (unless managed very carefully) to the likely detriment of applicant choice and the student experience.'