Lincoln S. Smith

“Who made the world?” asked @theaieducator.io's son. ChatGPT can't answer (yet?) But it makes me wonder - what questions do we not WANT AI to answer, whether it can or not? That is, what questions are sacred to our own becoming, as individuals and as a species?

preview.mailerlite.io/emails/webvi...

Exciting and profound things happen when we create hashtag#neurodiversity-affirming spaces! Always love presenting with @drkaradymond.bsky.social and Kathy Broad at #CSSE on our ongoing work exploring and experimenting with accessible pedagogy.

Small changes can make a big difference!

CSSE is only one week away! So much to be excited about!

Example: our Sunday keynote from Jim Cummins, "Language, Literacies, and Action Research: Reconceptualizing the Relationships between Theory, Research, Policy, and Educational Implementation!"

Full schedule: sites.google.com/view/caare-a...

Coming to CSSE? Dr. Jim Cummins is delivering our keynote this Sunday at 12:15 PM!

Language, Literacies, and Action Research: Reconceptualizing the Relationships between Theory, Research, Policy, and Educational Implementation

📆 June 1 (Day 1)
⏱️ 12:15 pm
📍 Waterfront Limberlost Place (WFL) - 501

Really excited by this year's program!

Trimming the Edtech Fat: How Districts Are Streamlining Their Digital Ecosystems - EdSurge News It’s time to give tired tech the boot: “We can’t hold on to systems that don’t align with our vision,” says Grace Magley of Natick Public Schools in ...

This is important for judicious #EdTech use in #k12 in general!

Also, while #student voice and engagement is integral, we must be able to differentiate between superficial, attention-grabbing engagement and constructive engagement driving meaningful growth!

www.edsurge.com/news/2025-05...

Great blog on political vs partisan and why science is always political.

Social AI Companions Social AI Companions - Learn more and get Common Sense Media's research-backed tips.

#CommonSenseMedia: No social companion AI use under 18.

This is incredibly important.

In using and exploring #GenAI, especially with #youth, we have to be committed to understanding and proactively addressing BOTH it's positive AND negative potential.

www.commonsensemedia.org/ai-ratings/s...

The Power of Mattering at Work Quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, chronically low engagement numbers, increasing numbers of labor disputes, demands for equity and dignity in the workplace—business leaders have been warily watch...

Love this. SO true in #k12 #classrooms as well.

" #Belonging is feeling welcomed and accepted in a group, whereas mattering is feeling significant to the group’s individual members. #Mattering is an even more fundamental need than belonging.

hbr.org/2025/05/the-...

All the Conversations That Kids Are Missing Alison Wood Brooks on the science of conversation and the art of being ourselves

I think we don't talk about this enough: "the costs of device use aren’t just about what #kids experience and absorb. It’s also about what they miss." And vice versa!

We need to think about both sides of the coin when digitization or the opposite in #k12 #schools!

open.substack.com/pub/jonathan...

AI Glossary for Educators | Flint See our comprehensive AI glossary for K-12 teachers and students who want to learn AI terms and develop AI literacy in the classroom.

@flintk12.bsky.social just released an AI glossary for educators - it's great!

#AI #AIforEducation

www.flintk12.com/ai-glossary

Beyond digital literacy: Why K-12 educators must prioritize data literacy Using digital tools does not mean students or educators possess data literacy or understand the quality, context, or implications of data.

WE teachers need #dataliteracy! E.g. #k12 #teachers AND #students should:
- ask questions about what data does (and doesn’t) show
- recognize bias in data collection or interpretation
- consider the ethical use of data, especially personal information

www.eschoolnews.com/innovative-t...

Brief is this existence, like a brief visit in a strange house. The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness whose center is the limiting and separating ‘I.’ When a group of individuals becomes a ‘we,’ a harmonious whole, they have reached as high as humans can reach./ Einstein

RAND study on AI training adds to the new #digitaldivide between lower-poverty and higher-poverty schools: more digitization is happening in the latter!

Why? B/c of the luxury good of human interaction re Jessica Grose? More urgent problems needing to be addressed? Or?

www.rand.org/pubs/researc...

Values in the wild: Discovering and analyzing values in real-world language model interactions An Anthropic research paper testing which values AI models express in the real world

"At Anthropic, we’ve attempted to shape the values of our AI model, Claude, to ... generally make it—for want of a better term—a “good citizen” in the world."

Most important takeaway? #GenAI cannot be value-neutral! We need to recognize the profundity of this.

www.anthropic.com/research/val...

I deeply appreciate efforts like this from AI-for-Education. We desperately need better ways to evaluate #EdTech. Two problems:

1. We need something #TEACHERS can use, with agency.

2. We need something that gives space to see and locate NEGATIVE impacts as well.

ai-for-education.org/qa-for-ai/

Great insights re #copyright & #AI. Eg
4 Support for the centrality of human authorship
7 Support for greater transparency to facilitate determining liability
9 Some support for labelling of AI-generated content

Glad #Canada is working to clarify these issues!

ised-isde.canada.ca/site/strateg...

Why we need a minimalist mindset when it comes to AI and tech use for young people Rebecca Winthrop proposes that we all take a minimalist approach to using AI, particularly when interacting with young people in our lives.

"This isn’t meaningful connection—it’s performative and mediated."

We need to be judicious. #EdTech can be powerful when it enhances complexity and/or relationships. But mediating something through digital tech does not itself make anything better!

www.brookings.edu/articles/min...

Unfortunately, #k12 #schools are top targets for cyber attacks. We are, generally, "target rich, security poor." This is why attacks on schools are increasing. While we need cybersecurity, we also need to all adopt a #securityculture.

Thanks #MikeBiocchi!

blog.checkpoint.com/research/a-c...

To Change the Way You Think, Change the Way You See Part of thinking differently is learning to see differently. We can learn to do that from various sources — people like Robert Taylor, who invented Softsoap after he saw how goopy bar soap became afte...

Love the thesis of this piece. "When we look at the world, we should not just examine, but examine with a deliberately different perspective."

It takes intentionality and cognitive energy, but it is the heart of progress, personal and social.

It is challenging to discuss effective vs ineffective use of #GenAI with students. Here, I borrow James Nottingham's #learningpit to show how GenAI can be a #bridgeofillusion, tricking us into thinking we can skip the hard bits but in reality doing so leaves us in the same place as where we started.

In my own research on #professionallearning for #teachers in #K12 (shout out to Terra Nova school!), I've found that while choice is hugely important, its value is intimately intertwined with questions of #capacity and #motivation as well. If either are deficient, choice alone is not enough!

YouTube video by Alliance for Responsible Citizenship WATCH: The Most Compelling Argument Against Tech In Schools | Sophie Winkleman

It's not black and white. I agree that #k12 #EdTech use needs to be more intentional. Too often we succumb to disempowering, cognitively disengaging uses that degrade learning. At the same time, #digitaltechnology use can be empowering and enriching. We need less of the former, more of the latter.

Not only important to know, but I would think that the very universality of it is itself a significant concern. We thrive on mosaics of diversity and variability; what are the second and third layer implications of increasing linguistic and theoretical homogenization?

What this teenager wants you to know about the damaging effects of AI | CNN Teens increasingly don’t trust the online content they consume, and AI is making it worse, according to a new study. A high school senior explains why that matters.

Yes, we need to label #GenerativeAI content, and/or we need to label real content. But the fundamental questions is, how do we verify the distinction?

"generative AI “should have visible warnings that its outputs could be harmful, biased, or wrong" / and should “be labeled or watermarked"

How ‘Innovation’ Fails Education (Opinion) "Innovation” is mostly an unserious distraction from the real work of rethinking education.

Love this critical take on minless celebration of " #innovation," the ubiquity of "innovation peddlers," and a call to "clarify education’s purpose." Rick says, "the most critical thing we can do with these institutions is think about what they need as human beings." #holisticeducation #k12

This is an interesting use case, however, there will always be a layer of positionally that is, itself, significant to any theoretical or practical pursuit. It also requires interrogation, but this layer is obfuscated (but still there!) when we have LLMs synthesize/summarize.

This #Microsoftstudy shows #AI users are shifting from information gathering to verification, "from problem-solving to response integration," and "for analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, [...] from task execution to task stewardship." Not what we want in #k12 - underscoring need for guardrails/care

Forget “tapestry” or “delve” these are the actual unique giveaway words for each model, relative to each other. arxiv.org/pdf/2502.12150

Meta has an AI for brain typing, but it’s stuck in the lab The social network company hopes neuroscience will give it an advantage in the AI race.

"... neuroscience and AI researchers working for Meta have managed to analyze people’s brains as they type and determine what keys they are pressing, just from their thoughts." !!!