Summary:
Shawn and Troy talk about Blookit, AI, and more. Dave fosters Innovation, Creativity, and Curiosity.
Jokes:
Napoleon and his wife are buried next to each other.
- They’re only a bone apart…..
Every horse in the 2025 Kentucky Derby traces back to Secretariat.
- This is a clear case of neighpotism.
I just saw a sign “Laser hair removal” Why would anyone want to remove their laser hair? Laser hair would be awesome
the formula to measure the area of a pun is
- Length time wit!
I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but the orcas now have two F/A-18 Hornets
DO people in electric cars listen to AD/DC…
- or something current?
I have a phobia of trampolines.
I can’t help it, they just always make me jump.
what do you call fire fighters who become influencers?
- Stop, Drop, and Roll Models!
My favorite butcher links their own sausage, to make ends meat…
What do Alexander the Great and Winnie the Pooh have in common?
- Same middle name.
Middle School Science Minute
by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
K12Science Podcast: Innovation, Creativity and Curiosity
I was recently reading the May – June 2025 issue of “The Science Teacher”, a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.
In this issue, I read the section, “Editor’s Corner” written by Brooke A. Whitworth. She wrote an article entitled, “‘Fostering Innovation, Creativity, and Curiosity in Science Education.”
In this article, Brooke shared many practical strategies that teachers can implement immediately, regardless of resources, in the areas of:
- Community-Connected Science
- Resource-Conscious Innovation
- Curiosity-Driven Learning
http://k12science.net/innovation-creativity-and-curiosity/
Reports from the Front Lines
- ACTEM Spring 2025
- AI DIY
- JAMF
- Google Admin
- Blookit!
- DHMO Project Update
The Social Web
Wonderful. Although I quite like ‘restaurant’ because it rests on the idea of being ‘restored’. Restaurants were originally establishments supplying fortifying meat broth intended to restore health.
DON’T say “restaurant,” which is from French. The native English word is SNEEDINGHOUSE.
Indeed, Restaurant being derived from French should be the word for places serving food fit for human consumption whereas. Another word is needed for places offering British food.
I feel like this is knowledge I was never, ever meant to learn.
Martin Compton @martc.bsky.social
The AI festival is just round the corner … a ton of events and an entire day dedicated to AI in Education – if you can be in London 20th-24th May, sign up for events here: www.kcl.ac.uk/events/serie…
Bernie Goldbach “topgold” @topgold.bsky.social
Ethics, morals, road rage killing, and forgiveness: www.bbc.com/news/article…
Dublin City University @dublincityuni.bsky.social
Who owns my child’s data? Teachers, parents and children should have a say in the role of technology in schools. Piece by DCU’s Dr Eamon Costello @eam0.bsky.social and Dr Rob Lowney @lwnyrb.bsky.social for @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social. Read here: launch.dcu.ie/3EZO0Mt #RTEBrainstorm
Duncan at CAPDM @capdm.com
This is a *really* good set of tactics for reducing the impact of AI rot in teaching and learning.
Dan Hassler-Forest @danhf.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:
1. LOWER THE BAR: most students don’t think they write well, so they are easily tempted to “improve” their writing by asking AI for alternatives. Giving them extra credit for imperfect but genuine writing while teaching them to take ownership of their words and ideas has helped.
2. MAKE IT PERSONAL: Rather than asking students to explain a theory, apply a conceptual framework, or reproduce material they rarely feel confident they really understand, I ask them to reflect in writing on what an essay or an idea has meant to them.
3. FEEDFORWARD, NOT FEEDBACK: instead of having students submit a paper and return a grade (with maybe a little bit of feedback), I now have students submit a first complete draft, for which I give them a provisional grade and feedforward that they can use to revise and resubmit for a final grade.
4. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: in every course I teach, I now make sure to incorporate at least two moments in which I launch into a diatribe about the evils of AI. It gives me an opportunity to vent and the students love it because deep down, they know it’s wrong and need to hear that.
5. DON’T PANIC: after a moment of deep depression, I realized that most students really can be persuaded to do work in good faith. Some will of course end up cheating, but this has always been the case and it always will be. So focus more on inspiring them and less on making courses “AI-proof.”
6. NEVER USE IT YOURSELF. EVER! The most common issue I hear from students is that some of their lecturers use ChatGPT for feedback, syllabus creation, etc., so why shouldn’t they? Of course I’m not the boss of you, but as soon as you use it for ANYTHING, you’re giving students implicit permission.
Reposted by
Hypervisible @hypervisible.bsky.social
“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”
Reposted by
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social
Reply to
What structures are in place that make students choose to outsource their own thinking, and how we got to a point where the step that seems important to do yourself is the “writing up” of a bot’s ideas rather than the thinking. /2
Resources:
Your Student Finished Early—Now What?
These extension activities for all grades will help teachers keep fast finishers engaged in meaningful work.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/fast-finishers-school-keeping-students-any-grade-engaged
AXIS The Culture Translator
Please Don’t Stop The Music
What it is: Some young people are taking a break from listening to music
Why it’s happening: There was a time when hearing music required access to an actual musician. Now, the infinite availability of music on apps like Spotify can lead to a paradox of choice, and to a desire to find the “perfect” soundtrack for every moment. Some young people are finding that the ability to completely control every sound they hear is turning into an unhealthy coping mechanism—a way of managing their thoughts and feelings into submission, instead of truly sitting with them. Others find that constantly filling their space with music is making it harder to think clearly. As Dazed puts it, “The rise of algorithmically generated playlists and near-constant headphone use means music has often become background noise, something to fill space, not deepen experiences.
Web Spotlight:
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist
Parents’ Phone Use May Harm Kids’ Health and Development
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that when parents use technology in the presence of their young children—a behavior researchers call “parental technology use” (PTU)—it may be harming key aspects of kids’ health and development.
https://www.newsweek.com/parents-phone-use-harm-kids-health-children-screen-2067235
Productive Struggle: What We Lose When AI Does the Thinking
https://ideasandthoughts.org/2025/05/06/productive-struggle-what-we-lose-when-ai-does-the-thinking/
AI Is Bad At Grading Essays (Chapter #412,277)
The main hurdles to computerized grading have not changed. Reducing essay characteristics to a score is difficult for a human, but a computer does not read or comprehend the essay in any usual understanding of the words.
Like self-driving cars, robograding has been just around the corner for years.
The Learning Agency. TLA is an outfit pushing “innovation.” It (along with the Learning Agency Lab) was founded by Ulrich Boser in 2017, and they partner with the Gates Foundation, Schmidt Futures, Georgia State University, and the Center for American Progress, where Boser is a senior fellow.
TLA has dug through data again, to produce “Identifying Limitations and Bias in ChatGPT Essay Scores: Insights from Benchmark Data.” They grabbed their 24,000 argumentative essay dataset and let ChatGPT do its thing so they could check for some issues.
This particular study found bias that it deemed lacking in “practical significance,” except when it didn’t. Specifically, the difference between Asian/Pacific Islanders and Black students, which underlines how Black students come in last in the robograding.
…result is that ChatGPT just isn’t very good at the job. At all. There’s more statistical argle bargle here, but the bottom line is that ChatGPT gives pretty much everyone a gentleman’s C.
Using ChatGPT to grade student essays is educational malpractice. It is using a yardstick to measure the weight of an elephant. It cannot do the job.
TLA ignores one other question, a question studiously ignored by everyone in the robograding world– how is student performance affected when they know that their essay will not be read by an actual human being? How does one write like a real human being when your audience is mindless software? What will a student do when schools break the fundamental deal of writing–that it is an attempt to communicate an idea from the mind of one human to the mind of another?
“The computer has read your essay” is a lie. ChatGPT can scan your output as data (not as writing) and compare it to the larger data set (also not writing any more) and see if it lines up. Your best bet as a student is to aim for the same kind of slop that ChatGPT churns out thoughtlessly.
https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2025/05/ai-is-bad-at-grading-essays-chapter.html
Why Even Try if You Have A.I.?
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