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Derek Hunt

@derekhunt.bsky.social
89 followers 76 following 143 posts

Designer of digitally mediated learning at CTSI, the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation, University of Toronto - teaching.utoronto.ca older twitter posts circa 2023 can be found on - twitter.com/HuntDerek

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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Goodbye slide decks? Rethinking group presentations through a classroom mini-conference. "like a supportive mini-oral exam, in a less exposed setting than presenting at the front of the class, they had to keep explaining, refining and responding" educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au/teaching@syd...
educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au
Goodbye slide decks? Rethinking group presentations through a classroom mini-conference - Teaching@Sydney
In many group presentations, only one part of the room is really active: the group at the front. The rest of the class is...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"It does no one any good in the long run if we produce better users of ChatGPT but worse critical thinkers." www.chronicle.com/article/ai-i...
chronicle.com
Opinion | The University Was Made for the Age of AI
Colleges have never been coherent. Their strength lies in managing disagreement and uncertainty.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
How to Design Around Cognitive Offloading - when AI harms learning, when it helps and how to design for the difference. drphilippahardman.substack.com/p/how-to-des...
drphilippahardman.substack.com
How to Design Around Cognitive Offloading
Three new studies shed light on when offloading to AI harms learning, when it helps — and how to design for the difference
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"Can artificial intelligence actually help children learn? What we found supports neither the hype nor the panic. It points somewhere more interesting. Learning requires effort, but AI’s most impressive talent is eliminating effort." www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
theglobeandmail.com
Opinion: The question isn’t whether AI can teach. It’s whether students will let it
Recent research lands somewhere interesting, supporting neither the hype nor the panic
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"while opinions are varied, students can see the value in AI but also mistrust it." - Survey of students registered with Accessibility Services 2026 - Tune into Teaching: Student Perspectives on GenAI from #UofT Accessibility Services. teaching.utoronto.ca/event/tune-i...
teaching.utoronto.ca
Tune into Teaching: Student Perspectives on GenAI from Accessibility Services - Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation
Facilitator: Reginald Oey, Accessible Learning Strategies Team Lead, Accessibility Services  How are students registered with Accessibility Services engaging with generative AI, and what does that…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
marketoonist.com/2026/08/the-...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Pedagogical Engagement Myths- "somehow cameras-on means engagement ... similarly having learners stare at you in an on-campus lecture does not mean they are engaged" "encourage framing engagement as being something that is meaningful to the learner" allthingspedagogical.blogspot.com/2026/07/peda...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Services already weakened through years of underfunding got poor ratings, which justified further cuts." “universities are beginning to realize what a mistake it has been ... They’re increasingly admitting the cost savings aren’t there.” breachmedia.ca/a-notorious-...
breachmedia.ca
A notorious consulting firm is selling austerity. Canada’s universities are buying ⋆ The Breach
The Nous Group, an Australian consulting firm, has raked in millions for “fixing” universities in financial freefall. Their solution? Corporatization
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
"Chromebooks pre-installed suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: “Help me write.” “Help me visualize.” She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: “Help me edit.” “Beautify this slide.”" ^ www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...
newyorker.com
What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?
“I find myself speaking with my kids about A.I. in the same terms that we might discuss a creepy neighbor who lives down the block,” Jessica Winter writes. Read her report on the push for A.I. in…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
"Elias in the Lighthouse, Again? Diagnosing Low Diversity in LLM Stories. We prompt four models to write 20,000 stories - 88.3% of these stories contain at least one of 11 tokens at rates vastly higher than contemporary English literature" arxiv.org/pdf/2605.26492
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
"agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history." nitter.net/eastdakota/s... radar.cloudflare.com/traffic#bot-...
radar.cloudflare.com
Traffic Worldwide | Cloudflare Radar
Global Traffic trends and insights.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
"AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It". AI promised to free up workers’ time. UC Berkeley Haas researchers found the opposite. newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/ai-promised-...
newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu
AI promised to free up workers’ time. UC Berkeley Haas researchers found the opposite. - Haas News | UC Berkeley Haas
While conducting research on how AI was changing daily work at a U.S. technology company, UC Berkeley Haas doctoral student Xingqi Maggie Ye noticed a pattern that raised a provocative question: What…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
"AI should make you think more, not less. “epistemic vigilance” - if something feels 'off', our vigilance kicks in and we evaluate critically. AI bypasses these mechanisms. daviddiviny.substack.com/p/fff-ai-sho...
daviddiviny.substack.com
FFF: AI should make you think more, not less
Back again, against the odds
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
“It’s a harder time to teach right now because it matters more” @uoft-teaching.bsky.social #TLS Teaching & Learning Symposium 2026.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
"what happens to our thinking when we hand parts of it to machines" daviddiviny.substack.com/p/fff-ai-sho...
daviddiviny.substack.com
FFF: AI should make you think more, not less
Back again, against the odds
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Toronto students learn about AI "You can't leapfrog over learning. Learning requires a certain degree of struggle" www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/vide... (the kid has a good point, GenAI is like a toaster: you ask it for toast and you will get toast, but every piece will be slightly different, or burnt 😆)
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
"ASU Atomic, a new tool in beta at Arizona State University, takes faculty lectures and chops them into extremely short clips, that AI then attempts to turn into learning materials. Professors disturbed to find their lectures chopped up and turned Into AI slop." www.404media.co/asu-atomic-a...
404media.co
University Professors Disturbed to Find Their Lectures Chopped Up and Turned Into AI Slop
ASU Atomic, a new tool in beta at Arizona State University, takes faculty lectures and chops them into extremely short clips, that AI then attempts to turn into learning materials.
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Reposted by Derek Hunt
Chris Hanlon @chrishanlon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Meet “ASU Atomic,” a subscription platform that claims to offer customized learning modules for fee-paying users. None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
"The IT department: Where AI goes to die. Ethan Mollick on why employers should treat AI as what it is: weird" www.economist.com/by-invitatio...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
"I’ve always loved tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You should be one, too." "The Real History of the Luddites." The original Luddites weren't anti-technology, they were skilled workers fighting exploitation by early tech titans. techwontsave.us/episode/187_... www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/o... "Because we’ve taken this thing that could just predict things, and we’ve given it the ability to take actions in the world. But sometimes it does something deeply unintuitive."
nytimes.com
Opinion | How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy?
The Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark tells Ezra Klein what he sees coming in the new era of A.I. agents.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
CTV News: Omar Sachedina sits down with popular children's entertainer Raffi to discuss the message he hopes fans will take away from his latest release, 'ABC Democracy.' www.ctvnews.ca/canada/artic...
ctvnews.ca
Popular children’s entertainer releases new single in response to ‘rise of fascism’
For decades, the man who has been called the most influential children’s entertainer in the English-speaking world has created and performed music that parents today are sharing with their own…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
"one of the most common prompting techniques: giving the AI a persona... you aren't going to make the AI suddenly more accurate through role-play... This doesn't mean that personas can't be useful - for example, they change how the AI answers questions." www.linkedin.com/posts/emolli...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
New #UofT teaching examples added to Teaching with GenAI webpage - our U of T Teaching Examples has been recently expanded to include a diverse range of examples from across disciplines and levels of AI engagement. teaching.utoronto.ca/teaching-uof...
teaching.utoronto.ca
U of T Teaching Examples - Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation
Explore teaching examples from U of T instructors showing different approaches to generative AI, including those that intentionally integrate AI tools into their teaching practice, as well as those…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
"I believe the 'Police and Punish' model must now be replaced," writes Mike Larsen. "A reliance upon detection was perhaps once a necessary evil but it has never aligned with the fundamental values of higher education." www.downes.ca/post/78534
downes.ca
From detection to development: how universities are ethically embedding AI-for-learning
Commentary on From detection to development: how universities are ethically embedding AI-for-learning by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
able to look away because they had looked away from so much other abuse and suffering: financial meltdowns helped trigger, wars pushed, monopolies defended, inequality they turbocharged, housing crisis milked, technologies failed to protect people. the.ink/p/essay-my-d...
the.ink
ESSAY: My deep dive into the Epstein emails
An essay in The New York Times today
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... "But professors can be more conscientious of how the timing of their deadlines impacts their pupils. a midnight deadline seems unnecessary."
thecrimson.com
It’s My Right To Pull an All-Nighter, Canvas. | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
As we recover from our fifteen hours without Canvas, we should reflect on how sites like these affect our lives and those around us — for better and for worse. All I ask is this: Professors, please…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
"They’re not necessarily trying to cheat; they’re just being efficient... That kind of cognitive offloading happens when students don’t see value in doing the work themselves." aiedusimplified.substack.com/p/theyre-not...
aiedusimplified.substack.com
"They’re not necessarily trying to cheat; they’re just being efficient"
Part 2 of my interview with Tawnya Means
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
I interviewed for a TATP (Teaching Assistants' Training Program) podcast. You can check it out here - Short: youtube.com/shorts/1p0d8... Full podcast: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUn0... TATP website: tatp.utoronto.ca/resources/th...
youtube.com
S2E4 Human Learning in the Age of AI: Supporting Educators at U of T
How is generative AI changing the way educators teach, design courses, and support student learning? This episode features insights from the Teaching, Learning & Technology team at the University of…
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Reposted by Derek Hunt
Nebula @nebula.tv · 05/11/2025
you know a series is going to rock when this is the parental advisory
A pre-show warning that reads, "Just a heads up: It turns out when you film college students for an extended period, they use a lot of mature language. Oh also, do not attempt any of the stuff they are doing at home. Or frankly, in any location. College, huh? What a time. Viewer discretion is advised."
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Science of Learning has some overlap with "back to the basics", but also key evidence about how brains process and retain information: - Working memory is limited. - Students forget. - Learning requires effort. - Understanding builds on prior knowledge. scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/the-scienc...
scienceoflearning.substack.com
The science of learning is not the same as “back to basics”
How teachers can move past educational pendulum swings to a more evidence-informed future.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Information about risks to the #UofT community around agentic browsers - intelligent assistants that can act on your behalf. Read through good and bad scenarios to understand how this transformation brings new possibilities and challenges. security.utoronto.ca/best-practic...
security.utoronto.ca
AI on autopilot: Navigating the risks of an automated web - Information Security at University of Toronto
The way you interact with your browser is fundamentally changing. Forget traditional browsers that just show you a page; agentic browsers are intelligent assistants that can understand your goals and…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Unsurprisingly, the misinformation sites are happy to welcome AI while AI-blocking by reputable sites (increased) from 23% in September 2023 to nearly 60% by May 2025... raising essential questions for web transparency, data ethics, and the future of AI training practices." www.downes.ca/post/78392
downes.ca
Is Misinformation More Open? A Study of robots.txt Gatekeeping on the Web
Commentary on Is Misinformation More Open? A Study of robots.txt Gatekeeping on the Web by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments,…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Friday tee hee - "as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these too have become an interesting target for reusability. [BogdanTheGeek] decided to turn one of these vapes into a webserver, appropriately called the vapeserver." hackaday.com/2025/09/15/h...
hackaday.com
Hosting A Website On A Disposable Vape
For the past years people have been collecting disposable vapes primarily for their lithium-ion batteries, but as these disposable vapes have begun to incorporate more elaborate electronics, these …
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment - "Given that AI exists in the world, and that students are likely to use it, what evidence of learning would I now find persuasive?'" www.downes.ca/post/78140
downes.ca
Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment
Commentary on Asking a More Productive Question about AI and Assessment by Stephen Downes. Online learning, e-learning, new media, connectivism, MOOCs, personal learning environments, new literacy,…
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
www.oneusefulthing.org/p/an-opinion... Notable ideas from this article: - the AI doesn’t know “why” it did something, so asking it to explain its logic will not get you anywhere. - Sycophancy: act as a critic. Otherwise, you might be talking to a very sophisticated yes-man.
oneusefulthing.org
An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now
What AI to use in late 2025
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
"it’s a call for balance: to use digital tools to augment our thinking rather than to offload the mental processes that we need to learn and develop expertise. Learners can't think critically with knowledge they don’t have." scienceoflearning.substack.com/p/edu-snippe...
scienceoflearning.substack.com
Edu-Snippets
Why knowledge matters in the age of AI; What happens to learners' neural activity with prolonged use of LLMs for writing
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Economic Futures Symposium, interesting observations: "The productivity story looks simple. The cultural story is not." - Roles are shifting: engineers now see themselves as managers of AI agents - Mentorship is eroding: junior staff turn first to Claude for answers www.linkedin.com/posts/adrian...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
AI Slop Fatigue and Analog Intelligence - marketoonist.com/2025/09/ai-s...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
“We must prepare students for a world where the question is not, ‘Can you use AI?’ But rather, ‘Can I trust your thinking without using AI?’” www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...
theglobeandmail.com
Professors experiment as AI becomes part of student life
As AI use surges among students, Canadian educators are finding ways to integrate AI responsibly while preserving critical thinking to best prepare the students for the working world
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Reposted by Derek Hunt
Brittlestar @brittlestar.com · 15/09/2025
“The Left” and “the Right” aren’t real. They’re made-up clubs, invented and sold to the public by the people in power… and by the loudest people with the most to gain.
open.substack.com
Your Politics Are Not a Costco Membership
Why Left and Right Are Less Real Than a $1.50 Hot Dog
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
- AI use is increasing for cheating, but was high before GenAI. - Students being incorrectly accused leading to unexpected behaviours like using AI so it looks like they didn’t use AI. - Confusion about when AI is permissible (varies from teacher to teacher). www.vox.com/technology/4...
vox.com
I study AI cheating. Here’s what the data actually says.
What the panic about kids using AI to cheat gets wrong.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
"Sycophancy" - a new term I learned today that describes one of the main things that bug me about ChatGPT / GenAI chatbots - "Sycophancy, in which chatbots agree with and excessively praise users" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...
nytimes.com
Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.
Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation.
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
This post was very helpful for me to understand why custom GPTs do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also points out that well structured documents perform the best - www.linkedin.com/posts/huntde...
linkedin.com
This is very helpful to understand why custom GPTs using resources do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also… | Der...
This is very helpful to understand why custom GPTs using resources do not always give the greatest results, despite having a clear system prompt asking it to use the included resources. It also points...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
"To the class of 2025: Will you let AI think for you, or learn how to think for yourself?: The challenges and frustrations that can come with thinking deeply - a skill that’s more valuable than ever - are a feature, not a bug." www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
theglobeandmail.com
Opinion: To the freshman class of 2025: Will you let AI think for you, or learn how to think for yourself?
The challenges and frustrations that can come with thinking deeply - a skill that’s more valuable than ever - are a feature, not a bug
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
AI Updates for Fall 2025 (University of Toronto #UofT) memos.provost.utoronto.ca/ai-updates-f...
memos.provost.utoronto.ca
AI Updates for Fall 2025 – Communications for Academic Administrators
From: Susan McCahan, Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost, Digital StrategiesDate: August 15, 2025Re: AI Updates for Fall 2025
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Reposted by Derek Hunt
Brittlestar @brittlestar.com · 26/08/2025
Chapter 3 – Knock Things Over Strategically
"Knock things over strategically. Start with their illusions of control."
📖 MagnaCata.com
#CatLogic #TinyActsOfRebellion #SurvivalLessons
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
" 'Can I see some ID?' As online age verification spreads, so do privacy concerns " www.cbc.ca/news/online-...
cbc.ca
'Can I see some ID?' As online age verification spreads, so do privacy concerns | CBC News
The U.K.'s Online Safety Act took effect last Friday, putting age gates on content deemed unsuitable for minors, including pornography and content about suicide and self harm. While some sites have pulled...
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
"What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer"
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Derek Hunt @derekhunt.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
"structural changes frequently involve reorienting assessment from output to process. Rather than evaluating only the final product, which could potentially be AI-generated, assessment may be designed to capture the student’s development and attainment of understanding and skill over time."
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