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Catherine Cronin

@catherinecronin.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1.1K following 254 posts

open & higher education | social justice | co-editor, Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures #HE4Good | Bronxite who now calls Ireland home | she/her | catherinecronin.net

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Reposted by Catherine Cronin
Kate Molloy @kate-molloy.net · 24/09/2026
Join us starting on 12 October for our upcoming open course (with digital badge), Using OER and OEP: opencourses.ie/opencourse/o... The course is open to all and was developed by the loveliest group of open educators in Irish HE 😀 @catherinecronin.bsky.social @eam0.bsky.social
Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) open course. 25 hours starting 12 October. Earn a digital badge.
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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Got to work with some incredibly talented filmmakers to turn End Times Fascism into a ten minute video essay. Check it out below. There’s nothing like hearing the derangement directly from the doom profiteers. m.youtube.com/watch?v=aK2n...
m.youtube.com
How modern fascism works | End Times Fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
YouTube video by Naomi Klein
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 08/09/2026
so long as governments, policy makers, and regulatory bodies continue to treat tech companies/products and their underlying anti-democratic and fascist ideologies as something separable, things will continue to get worse for fundamental rights and democracy
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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
New gift link: as.ft.com/r/ceaa8f3a-53d0-47c4-9379-42bd4a0e4979
as.ft.com
Rerun or sequel? Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor on end times fascism
How nationalists, theocrats and tech titans turned their backs on a shared future
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“To become old is to be an immigrant from a country that no longer exists… Much dismissiveness about feminism comes from ignorance about how profoundly feminism changed things that were so deeply entrenched, so normalized into invisibility, so ancient and customary…” Solnit on Steinem. wonderful 🔥
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Thank you! At an event last night I said "If the word hope doesn't work for you try, 'Never fucking surrender.'" The word hope seems too sunny to a lot of people, but the heart of it as I'm interested in it is: we make the future in the present, if we show up, and that never surrender part.
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"...a settlement is not structural reform. Meta denies wrongdoing. The core surveillance capitalism model remains intact." Still much more work to do. dispatch.the-citizens.com/metas-17b-co...
dispatch.the-citizens.com
Meta’s ($17b) Cost of Doing Business
Plus: Burning Up
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
“As citizens, we do not have to submit to being watched, tracked, monitored, and policed all the time. Nor should we… Alone, nobody can do much about the surveillance state. Together, we may.”
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Jacob Ward @byjacobward.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Meta's public reports: bullying/harassment at 0.05–0.06% of content. Meta's own internal surveys of teens: 20–27% experienced it in the last 7 days alone. Self-harm content: Meta said <0.05% publicly, 8.4% internally. Violent content: "100 to 400 times" higher internally.
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Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 06/08/2026
In addition to all the many, many other ways that @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social is so on point, her newsletter's on Ghost (not Substack) which is what actually understanding the crucial importance of the information ecosystem looks like. www.meditationsinanemergency.com/cynicism-and...
meditationsinanemergency.com
Cynicism and Naïveté in the Summer of a Thousand Fires
To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (“They don’t mean me”) or by despair (“There’s nothing we can do”). Eac...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Nice overview of our open-access book, Auditing AI in @the-renovator.bsky.social www.democracyrenovator.com/p/july-13-te... mitpress.mit.edu/978026205172...
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
The Bluesky consensus...
A social media thread features multiple users praising a Cabo Verde football team's performance, calling it unforgettable, wonderful, and full of heart. Several users express admiration and emotional impact from the match.
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Yes. Listen to @merbroussard.bsky.social (Link in thread.)
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Irish Learning Technology Association @iltasky.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
An invitation to conversation: to design differently, deploy differently and refashion our relationships to edtech from @discoursology.bsky.social acknowledging fragility and strengthening our human bonds at #edtech26.
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Equity Unbound @equityunbound.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Registration is now open for #MYFest26! A global, virtual 3-month journey for lifelong learners exploring community, wellbeing, imagination, care, & critical AI literacies. Registration and website: myfest.equityunbound.org 💖Free registration: email unboundeq@gmail.com #OpenEducation #EquityUnbound
myfest.equityunbound.org
MYFest26 - MYFest26
Welcome to #MYFest25! This is Equity Unbound’s fourth annual “Mid-Year Festival” (MYFest). Equity Unbound continues to co-create brave spaces and nurture a caring community for life-long-learners ever...
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Irish Learning Technology Association @iltasky.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
“Education is for the student to come to feel like the master of her own thinking” Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, 1978 A timely reminder from @abeba.blacksky.app at #edtech26
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
so sorry to be missing #EdTech26 (hello to all!) but grateful to @iltasky.bsky.social for livestreaming keynotes ilta.ie/edtech-2026/ this morning's keynote on AI & Education by @abeba.blacksky.app (@aial.ie) was outstanding: core values of education (love, trust, empathy, care) cannot be datafied
AI in education = commercialisation of a collective responsibility
outsourcing a social, civic and democratic process of cultivating the coming generation to commercial and capitalist enterprise whose priority is profit
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Lorna M. Campbell @lornamcampbell.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
While I agree with this post, I had flashbacks reading it. Haven't we been saying this for well over a decade? Possibly two. Perhaps we just need to keep saying it. #oer #repositories Why Can’t OER Just Be All in One Place? medium.com/creative-com...
medium.com
Why Can’t OER Just Be All in One Place?
By James Thibeault — CC BY 4.0
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
The paintings of Mitjili Napurrula, Indigenous Australian artist from the Northern Territories #WomensArt
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
“Nowhere is it written that a multinational conglomerate with a market cap of roughly $4T is fated to command our public schools, or to grant fellowships to the leaders of those schools, or to monetize the inefficient children who attend them.” ⬇️
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 30/04/2026
like the global geo-political climate, public discourse around AI is fast deteriorating and I feel it everyday 1/
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Lauren Klein @laurenfklein.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Experimentation. Iteration. Time. These are pretty much the core ingredients of everything related to DATA BY DESIGN, and the cover is no exception. But now it is final and out there on the internet and also right here for you to see! Preorder at: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205618...
The book cover for Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science. The title is in large block letters at the top left; a hand-drawn area chart in a black to yellow gradient takes up the right side of the image.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 24/03/2026
“Many discussions still approach AI primarily as a digital technology, but in many of these countries, AI is becoming visible through the infrastructures that sustain it: data centers, mineral extraction, energy demand, water-intensive cooling systems, and digital labor chains…”
restofworld.org
From Chile to the Philippines, meet the people pushing back on AI
Individuals and communities are resisting the demands and practices of Big Tech's AI infrastructure — such as data centers and digital labor — due to their environmental and social costs.
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Incredible, sharp, critical reflection on Habermas’ legacy from Nancy Fraser. This is the postmortem I’ve been hoping would come and also sums up so much of my relationship to his work
lrb.co.uk
Nancy Fraser | After Habermas
Jürgen Habermas may be variously described as the moral conscience of postwar Germany, the last great systematic...
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 17/03/2026
Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
"From Tressie McMillan Cottom to Bernardine Evaristo, these Black women writers are shaping literature today—along with the Black-owned bookstores carrying their work." Yesssss
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
The episode also had me thinking of this article by @eam0.bsky.social and Stephen Gow on Authoritarian EdTech and how it "revolves around the oppressive foreclosure of choice, consent, debate and deliberation".
journals.sagepub.com
Authoritarian EdTech - Eamon Costello, Stephen Gow, 2025
Careful and consentful models of digital education are being replaced by Authoritarian EdTech. The pedagogical choices digital learning now offers, such as how ...
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
thanks for sharing, Charles. the podcast also reminded me of @audreywatters.bsky.social post from *nine* years ago: Ed-Tech in a Time of Trump hackeducation.com/2017/02/02/e... prescient as always: "We must rebuild institutions that value humans’ minds and lives and integrity and safety."
hackeducation.com
Ed-Tech in a Time of Trump
This talk was delivered at the University of Richmond. The full slide deck can be found here.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 12/03/2026
“As tech bros shake hands on billion-pound deals and race to stake their claim on the future of AI, it is women and marginalised genders who are left to absorb the real-world fallout.”
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 12/03/2026
“In his new book Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance, George Washington University law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson warns that digital life is creating a form of self-surveillance far beyond what constitutional law was built to handle.”
tpr.org
As smart devices multiply, so do fears over digital surveillance
We are living in a time of extreme self surveillance. We carry with us devices that capture our every location, info about our health, and data about our private lives. This information can be saved, ...
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Ami Fields-Meyer @fieldsmeyer.com · 09/03/2026
ON COURAGE is the story of how they became dissidents and how we can too. We wrote this for communities to take action – and hope you’ll read it with your friends, coworkers, book club, anyone who’s witnessed the assaults on democracy and asked: what can we do? There is so much we can do together.
harpercollins.com
On Courage
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported collection of stories about how anyone can...
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Lifting up the life of civil rights icon Jesse Jackson. Hard to lay out the range of his work and contributions and how much he inspired. They are leaving us one by one, exhorting us to pick up the mantle with courage & determination. Justice work is a lifelong commitment. Thank you Rev. Jackson.
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
If you weren't around at the time and never heard what Jackson's oratory was like, this is what it was like. If you heard it before, you know you want to hear it again.
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
NEW: The story of America’s largest national strike for 100 years. Here are the biggest protests from Jan 30, 2026. And national news still did their best to ignore the scale of what happened yesterday. Soundtrack courtesy of The Boss 💪
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
"the economic system, including companies, financial institutions & other economic actors, does not exist for its own sake... [it] exists to ensure that all people can live a good & meaningful life, in a just society & within the ecological limits of the planet" thank you @ingridrobeyns.bsky.social
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Good morning! Get your day started on the good foot with the one and only genius James Brown.
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Sharing a letter published in yesterday's @irishtimes.com, written by my amazing daughter Sarah Cronin Rodger, in support of a housing movement in Ireland.
Sir, – I am energised by Una Mullally’s article calling on the Opposition to act now on the housing crisis through collective organisation (“United left must build a housing movement in 2026,” Opinion, December 15th).

It needs no repeating that the Government refuses to treat housing as a true emergency; this is evident in their actions or lack thereof. As Mullally argues, this has produced not apathy but defeat at a grassroots level, suiting those in power very well. Following the successful campaign to elect our new President, the united left are well positioned to organise a housing movement to counter this defeat. I believe the scale of support for such a movement could extend beyond Irish shores.

Having moved to London nine years ago, I left an Ireland buoyed by marriage equality and found community in the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, an organically-formed group which rapidly built an effective structure spanning protest, policy, media, fundraising, legal support – and, crucially, had direct links to active campaign groups back in Ireland. A large-scale housing movement in Ireland would no doubt see similar satellite groups form here in London and across the globe. Over the past decade, the Irish diaspora have already proven they care deeply for our country through support for abortion rights and successive #HomeToVote campaigns.

However, I believe there would be greater support behind a housing movement, as housing not only affects those who stayed but also those of us who left. Many of us want to return but see no viable path to doing so. The belief and energy to fight for a better Ireland exists – and not just from within. What is missing is leadership to harness it. – Yours, etc,

SARAH CRONIN RODGER,

London.
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
So today I found out that my TED talk ‘This is What a Digital Coup Looks Like’ was TED’s most watched talk of the year. It’s sort of amazing & terrifying. Because this *is* what a digital coup looks like. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZOo...
youtube.com
This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like | Carole Cadwalladr | TED
YouTube video by TED
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
beautiful by Rebecca Solnit: “The fabric of this country is forever being torn apart by hate & exclusion; it is forever being stitched into new patterns, new connections, new relationships… a quilter's art of bringing the fragments together into a whole” thinking of Frances Bell & #FemEdTechQuilt
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Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
What a wonderful President we have. #translivesmatter #transrightsarehumanrights
Letter from President
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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
brilliant news! 👏👏👏
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actualham @robinderosa.net · 29/10/2025
"This work is not easy, it is risky, and there’s no guarantee that those who do it will see its benefits. But it is essential." I am grateful for those in #HigherEd who stand alongside me. In the work. And now, when the work is trying to leave me behind. catherinecronin.net/reflecting/p...
catherinecronin.net
Postscript to Open Access Week 2025
Two years ago this week Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures, edited by Laura Czerniewicz and myself, was published openly by Open Book Publishers. To our amazement, the publica…
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Sheila MacNeill @sheilmcn.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
So lovely to see images of the #femedtech quilt peppered through @gabiwitthaus.bsky.social keynote this morning - here's a post about it from a previous conference howsheilaseesit.net/oer/transcen.... #altc25 - @lornamcampbell.bsky.social @francesbell.bsky.social @catherinecronin.bsky.social
howsheilaseesit.net
Transcending the digital and physical at #altc22 – the #femedtechquilt
It’s always tricky to try and summarize a conference experience in one post, so this post like so many other of my past conference posts is not going to try to do that. Instead I want to take…
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Paul Prinsloo 🏳️‍🌈🇿🇦🇵🇸 @14prinsp.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Two days to go for submissions (closing 22 October) - please consider submitting a proposal - #Springer #OpenAccess On-Demand Learning in a Changing World: Philosophical, Technological, and Practical Perspectives on Workforce and Vocational Education iasle.net/call-for-cha...
iasle.net
CALL FOR CHAPTERS – International Association of Smart Learning Environments
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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
I resent having to learn so much about a cabal of ridiculously wealthy mostly, but not exclusively, white tech dudes who believe they should inherit the earth. They really will be the death of us all.
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Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 20/10/2025
Can't work because AWS? It's a good time to read this piece if you haven't! www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-r...
noemamag.com
We Need To Rewild The Internet  | NOEMA
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
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edifiedlistener.bsky.social @edifiedlistener.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
What an honor to be featured in this series! Shout out to @brennacgray.bsky.social for making this a reality. 🙏🏾
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Jennie @unabridgedopinions.com · 10/10/2025
The nomination is absolutely lovely and so, so true: “In a world of overwhelming content and increasing educational precarity, MYFest offers something different: a space of possibility. It is a deeply human, thoroughly open practice—responsive to community, designed for care, and grounded in equity
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
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