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Andy Smart

@andysmart.bsky.social
334 followers 332 following 60 posts

Getting educated about education, some publishing about publishing, a lot of reading about reading, co-founder of NISSEM.org, vice-president of IARTEM.org ... nissem.org/blog/adjusting-the-flag-…

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
NDAs can silence victims of abuse & harassment. Let's change this! Sign the petition to ensure the Employment Rights Bill bans NDAs in cases of misconduct. #StopAbusiveNDAs #EmploymentRightsBill you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Stop employers covering up abuse
Hey! Do you remember the Harvey Weinstein case? Non Disclosure Agreements silenced victims of abuse - and it's not just happening in Hollywood. They're used in the UK to cover up all kinds of miscondu...
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
How could a slavery scandal involving the President of the United States be worse than we thought? This extremely long, extremely detailed, and fully sourced PROOF report explains. This—not the tariff war—is the most important story in America right now. I hope you will consider checking it out.
sethabramson.substack.com
The Trump-El Salvador Scandal Deepens
As President Trump prepares to fête brutal far-right El Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele in DC on April 14, the scandal involving a vile new international slave trade between the two men is growing.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
"Building an automated tool to profile people as violent criminals is deeply wrong, and using such sensitive data on mental health, addiction and disability is highly intrusive and alarming.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
theguardian.com
UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill
Exclusive: Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Private companies are polluting our rivers, hiking up bills, and failing to deliver. 82% of us want public ownership – let’s make it happen. If you're in the UK please sign the open letter... 👉 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pu...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Put Public Ownership of Water Back on the Table
Privatisation of water isn’t failing - it is the failure. The Government is mid-way through a major review of the water sector. But so far, it has refused to consider a potential solution that’s backe...
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Private companies are polluting our rivers, hiking up bills, and failing to deliver. 82% of us want public ownership – let’s make it happen! Please sign the open letter! 👉 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pu...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Put Public Ownership of Water Back on the Table
Privatisation of water isn’t failing - it is the failure. The Government is mid-way through a major review of the water sector. But so far, it has refused to consider a potential solution that’s backe...
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Lynn Huggins-Cooper @hugginscooper.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
This is outrageous. 'Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.' I am sickened to read this.
quaker.org.uk
Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House
Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.
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Pavel Yakovlevich @pavellawrence.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Don't listen before bed to this @newyorker.com interview with Gil Duran on "right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government". But listen. www.newyorker.com/podcast/poli...
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Pam Jarvis @drpam.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Hello new followers, so sorry I nearly caught up& now I’m losing it again. I’m busy getting my final draft of the sequel to On Time finished alongside other projects; really proud of this one with @aaronearlyyears.bsky.social & @ruthswailes.bsky.social. It’ll be free to access online from 18 March
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
50 years on ... youtu.be/zD745mgWMcM?...
youtu.be
Murder in Cairo (Pt 1) - The Death Of Our Star Reporter | The Story
YouTube video by Times Radio
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Maria Ressa @mariaressa.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Disinformation/information operations? Definitely --- [DECODED] How online supporters made a victim of Duterte after ICC arrest www.rappler.com/technology/d... via @rapplerdotcom
rappler.com
[DECODED] How online supporters made a victim of Duterte after ICC arrest
Through boosted content and entertainment networks, supporters of the former president try to manipulate opinion about his detention at The Hague
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...
thetimes.com
These are the best picture books in the world (and no Gruffalo in sight)
The BolognaRagazzi awards are the most prestigious in global children’s publishing — but on World Book Day, it seems the UK is lagging behind
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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 14/03/2025
NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline? Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s What should we make of this? www.ft.com/content/a801...
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Psyche Magazine @psyche.co · 10/03/2025
‘When we bask in the comfort and camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.’ Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need.
buff.ly
For a happier life, we must balance two old psychological needs | Psyche Ideas
Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
"And yet. And yet. Behaviorism and behavioral engineering are still everywhere, particularly in computing – and even, for all the talk about its modeling of "the mind," in artificial intelligence." @audreywatters.bsky.social 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/agents-versu...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com
Agents versus Agency
There's an argument I make in Teaching Machines that I'd like to repeat here – a setup to this first of many essays in which I work through some ideas about AI, agents, and agency: In 1971 the psycho...
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nissem.bsky.social @nissem.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
"Literacy and numeracy are essential, but so too is the ability to process trauma, build relationships, and develop resilience." world-education-blog.org/2025/03/03/e...
world-education-blog.org
Education as a lifeline: How foundational learning and SEL empower children in crisis - World Education Blog
When nine-year-old Nahom and his family finally arrived in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, they were physically and emotionally exhausted. They had fled their home amid violent confl...
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Williams says she wants all pupils to be able to make choices, to ask questions and have an opinion, and the oracy project empowers them to do that. “The statistics about the literacy levels of young offenders are real.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Inside the London reception class where kids are taught to talk to help them stay out of gangs
A new initiative aims to improve communication, as as pupils lacking speech and language skills more likely to be excluded and caught up in violence
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Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
AI in education is a failure of the imagination 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-war-on-t...
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com
The War on the Imagination
There were numerous news items last week about surveillance and algorithmic decision-making in the workplace. These kinds of stories aren’t new, of course. But as Elon Musk has infiltrated the White H...
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Please sign: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Stop the Government from spying on all of our bank accounts
Sir Keir Starmer is pushing plans we defeated under the Conservative Government - to spy on all of our bank accounts on the premise of dealing with welfare fraud and error. It will force banks to fla...
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
"The problem we seem to be facing is not a whole generation of autocratic young people but a complex question answered quickly in online polls and hugely overinterpreted in subsequent reporting." theconversation.com/only-6-of-ge...
theconversation.com
Only 6% of gen Z actually favour dictatorship – not half, as some reports would have you believe
Gen Z don’t hate democracy, they have a problem with the way it is being delivered.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
What a wonderful conversation about curriculum, compassion, curiosity and creativity. soundcloud.com/rethinking-e...
soundcloud.com
Debra Kidd, Tina Farr and Clare Whyles on how to cultivate hope, joy and belonging
In this episode - our first rodeo as co-hosts - we are joined by Dr Debra Kidd, the author of A Curriculum of Hope, and by Tina Farr and Clare Whyles, the headteacher and deputy head of St. Ebbe’s Pri
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Hunt describes museum charges as 'the norm'. He doesn't mean that the UK is the only one of our peers. All the amazing public museums in Washington DC have been free to all for years. washington.org/visit-dc/fre...
washington.org
Free Things to Do: Museums in Washington, DC | Washington DC
Find out why DC is the capital of free museums and interactive exhibits, from groundbreaking cultural museums to art galleries and so much more.
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ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.
Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
"this is a government of the radicalised online right, for the radicalised online right, by the radicalised online right"
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
"I haven’t encountered a single application that hasn’t requested psychometric testing”
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Sorry you're leaving. Good luck. 🌷
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
I am not a legal specialist at all but this seems a powerfully argued article with concrete suggestions for systemic improvements theconversation.com/lucy-letby-c...
theconversation.com
Lucy Letby case: the problems with expert evidence
As an expert in both criminal and medical law, I am concerned with how prosecution teams gather expert evidence in these cases.
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Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
As a children's writer this is a v interesting read. I'd love more longform discussion of children's books - this piece feels like it needs a follow up about contemp children's books now if anyone wants to commission one! #KidLitUK
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
🌹
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Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Great piece: "It seems like common sense that mental health has gone down as tech use has gone up. But it just isn’t scientific."
It may come as some relief to hear, then, that for every alarmist headline there are plenty of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers who believe this moral panic is unfounded. “Since 2017, there has been a constant drumbeat of: ‘Screens and tech and social media are a different universe that is bad for you and bad for your kid,’” says Przybylski. “And two things happen. The first is low-quality research that confirms our biases about technology. It gets immediate press because it’s consistent with our existing biases. It’s really easy to publish low-quality research that kind of shows a correlation, and then exaggerate it, because it’ll get attention and it’ll get funding.”
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
"Children might sometimes do very bad and stupid things, but they are not so stupid that they can’t see they live in a country where the gulf in opportunities is quite staggering." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
No, the kids are really not all right. Honestly, can you blame them? | Marina Hyde
From gen Z yearning for a ‘strong leader’ to children being swept up in riots, the portents aren’t great, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
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Sarah Weinman @sarahweinman.com · 28/01/2025
VERY good news from @bookshop-org.bsky.social!!
nytimes.com
Indie Bookstores Will Soon Be Able to Sell E-Books (Gift Article)
Bookshop, a site that lets independent, bricks-and-mortar bookshops sell their books online, is launching an app that will allow the sales of e-books, too.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Critical messages need to offer hope. "Many decision makers might not be open to hearing about bad news."
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MondoAB @mondoab.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Sagan was a prophet.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
😀 Would L'Or de Rennes to The Da Vinci Code thread qualify?
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
If only. digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcont...
digitalcommons.butler.edu
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Christopher Such @suchmo83.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
First, if you’d like to learn more about the approach to reading lessons at the heart of Primary Reading Simplified, @FFTEdu are hosting two *free* webinars this week in which I will talk about exactly this: Tue 28 Jan - 15:45 - fftedu.org/3E82Lw1 Wed 29 Jan - 09:00 - fftedu.org/4au7y76 >>
fftedu.org
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Primary Reading Simplified – A Practical Guide to Classroom Teaching and Whole-School Implementation. After registering, you will receive a confirmation ema...
Session Overview Join us for this live, online CPD session where we are delighted to once again be joined by Primary Reading Consultant Christopher Such, who will deliver a 60-minute session focused ...
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Starting in 2 minutes... royalsociety.org/science-even...
royalsociety.org
How the human brain thinks about itself | Royal Society
Royal Society Francis Crick Prize Lecture by Professor Stephen Fleming.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
The award-winning Tamer Institute is organizing a three-day event dedicated to Arabic children's literature in the time of genocide: Amman, Jordan, October 5–7, 2025. @arablit.bsky.social docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
FDR in 1936: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism … We know now that government by organised money is just as dangerous as government by organised mob.” www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
First Brexit, now Trump and Musk: ignorance is back with a vengeance | William Keegan
The aggression from the Tesla billionaire is new; but Britain has years of experience in the consequences of falling for misleading promises
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
A wonderful conversation for anyone inetrested in language, education, creativity, literature, and the power of writing arablit.org/2025/01/13/a... @arablit.bsky.social
arablit.org
Amara Lakhous on Mediterranean Noir
In this wide-ranging conversation, acclaimed and award-winning Algerian novelist Amara Lakhous talks about writing in multiple languages, the importance of detective novels to democracy, Mediterran…
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
"you can’t run a country without some kind of guiding philosophy"
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Unfortunately no photo from last night's passionate @lrbbookshop.bsky.social lecture by Katherine Rundell. A packed venue at #SenateHouse, London Uni, enjoyed a winter treat. Instead, here is Rundell on children's literature on #BBCRadio4 (who are not yet on Bluesky!) www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio 4 - The Lion, the Witch and the Wonder by Katherine Rundell, Magnificent Disasters
First of five original essays on the power and politics of children’s fiction.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Why resilience won’t solve the mental health crisis among young people theconversation.com/why-resilien...
theconversation.com
Why resilience won’t solve the mental health crisis among young people
A focus on resilience risks shifting responsibility for mental health onto those affected, rather than calling out factors contributing to poor mental health.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Isn't human nature the only one we have? 🌷
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
I may be wrong, but don't Haidt's recommendations differ significantly from the paper on screen time & parent interactions? The paper addresses parents' own behaviours, whereas Haidt address children's behaviours. I think this joint letter tells a valuable story: www.theguardian.com/science/head...
theguardian.com
Screen time guidelines need to be built on evidence, not hype
Open letter: There is an important debate to be had about screen time, but we need quality research and evidence to support it
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
NEW: Meet Sergei Cristo, a Russian-born Conservative party activist turned whistleblower. Episode 1 is out today: A meeting at the Carlton Club. And the start of efforts to uncover the biggest Russian intelligence operation since the Cambridge Spy Ring. 1/ podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
podcasts.apple.com
Episode 1: A Meeting at the Carlton Club
Podcast Episode · Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring · EP1 · 24m
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Andy Hargreaves @ahargreaves.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
He was a leading advocate for the importance of professional expertise in teaching. Lee Shulman passed away on Dec 30 at the age of 86. A legend who leaves a huge legacy. www.legacy.com/us/obituarie... @pmdewitt.bsky.social @pasisahlberg.bsky.social
legacy.com
Lee Shulman Obituary (1938 - 2024) - Legacy Remembers
View Lee Shulman's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.
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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
If this is about personal experiences, I spent more years in Latin than in French at sec. school and learned far less. Most pupils saw Latin as an 'easy' exam pass, little more. If this is about how learning one language opens up other languages, French was much more important because it was living.
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