iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I spoke with the New York Times about why transparency and disclosure matter when faculty use AI with students. For me, it is about trust and creating a social contract for AI usage centered on voluntary transparency, not black box AI detection or gotcha moments. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/u...

nytimes.com

Dartmouth Provost Is the Latest College Professor Examined for A.I. Use (Gift Article)

Dartmouth said it would investigate its provost over A.I. accusations. Similar controversies on other campuses have prompted frustration among students.

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Reposted by Marc Watkins

Derek Bruff @derekbruff.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Y’all, Vanderbilt School of Nursing is having me in for a talk, and they ordered piles of the new book! @anetv.bsky.social @marcwatkins.bsky.social

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It’s my birthday today and I got an early gift last night from our publisher, Norton!

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Physical copies of The Norton Guide To AI-Aware teaching have arrived! @derekbruff.bsky.social @anetv.bsky.social, and I wrote about approaches teachers can use to raise awareness about AI’s impact on learning. The guide is loaded with ideas to help students learn about AI, without AI, and with AI.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Beyond grading fears, using a model like Jev for data analysis is remarkable! Here it is structuring data from complaints filed via the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau API. Using an inexpensive, fast, probability LLM is going to upend so many of the resource intensive data activities we do.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The AI detection arms race has been revitalized because of classifiers like Pangram. I was happy to sit down and discuss the current issues faculty face re detection with @willoremus.com . TLDR: I think we should be focused more on assessment redesign than relying on detection.

theatlantic.com

The Pangram Backlash Unfolding on College Campuses

Professors are tearing their hair out over AI detectors.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

There's a new ultra cheap LLM on the market called Jev. It rates and evaluates text, but does not generate it. I tested it across a number of grading tasks and can see how this may upend how we assess students. I will be shocked if this doesn't go live soon in an LMS.

marcwatkins.substack.com

What Happens When Grading Costs Almost Nothing?

Ultra Cheap Machine Intelligence Arrives

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A few weeks ago, I argued education should adopt a duty of care approach for conversations about AI in the classroom. Now the senate is debating a duty of care framework for AI safety for frontier labs. Missing in these conversations is how little regulation covers current uncensored AI.

marcwatkins.substack.com

When AI Developers Regulate Themselves

Safety & AI Regulation Should Include Present Harms, Not Just Future Ones

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I wonder daily where AI is ultimately going. Behind the marketing of safe and responsible AI is a seedy red light district where the lack of guardrails and censorship are exactly what people are looking for. And, no, there are no hard boundaries.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

AI trials for students have become a perennial ritual timed with the start of the fall semester. We can choose to cultivate experiences where learning matters intentionally with technology and without it, but that requires moving from a mindset of passively allowing AI to happen to us.

marcwatkins.substack.com

College Students Get Free Premium AI . . . Again

A year and a half ago, I wrote about the first wave of free trials AI companies gave away to college students.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Both Google and OpenAI are battling for college students. ChatGPT Plus is free to college students for the entire fall semester, while Google is offering Gemini Pro for a full year. Meanwhile, most faculty have little understanding what advanced AI can do vs. the free versions.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The amount of time, effort, and resources campuses are pouring into dealing with AI academic integrity cases is staggering. Assessment redesign is the answer, but at what cost and where will the $ come from? How much are we willing to lose fretting over that before doing it?

thetimes.com

‘My college accused me of using AI to cheat. So I sued — and won’

Professors in the US suspect most students are relying on AI to complete their coursework. But if they speak up, they could risk litigation

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It’s not fun being tasked with this sort of thing.

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Reposted by Marc Watkins

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

At the center of my message to faculty yesterday was: 1.) We may not be adequately prepared for how angry students are about tech. 2.) They are not all angry for the same reasons. 3.) Being angry at it doesn’t mean they aren’t using it. The sense of entrapment fuels the anger.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The MIT report on AI in education mentions the phrase "AI-Aware" some 13 times. @anetv.bsky.social , @derekbruff.bsky.social , and I wrote a book about what being AI aware means for faculty, students, and universities--The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching. Out now as an eBook. In print next month.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The Gary Provost What Sentences Sound Like exercise for close active reading is a wonderful exercise for students. I used Fable to map sentence length of well-known authors, added sound, and built an interface for students to see and hear how a machine maps their words.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Our approaches to AI should be rooted in asking what our duty of care is to our students right now and what our campuses owe faculty. A duty of care is an obligation in strict legal terms, but for educators, it is an ethos that forms the unspoken compact that governs our mission.

marcwatkins.substack.com

Our Duty of Care in the Age of AI

Thinking With, Without, and About Machines

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The dream of a web-based OTA service died in the courts with Locast. Imagine a free network rebroadcasting each city's OTA signal. I built this interface using iptv's database. What would you do if you didn't have to pay an $80 cable bill each month?

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I make countless video walkthroughs for my online students about how to navigate our LMS. Panopto and Loom are cumbersome & overkill, so I had GPT 5.6 and Fable create a simple screen recorder, with visual actions to highlight via clicks. Took me 30 minutes. It's remarkable what you can create now.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Very interesting development. Anthropic is implementing watermarking of AI generated text to comply with new EU laws. It is unclear if watermarking will be standard on models launched elsewhere, including within the US or outside of the EU. support.claude.com/en/articles/...

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I wrote about how the digital ecosystems we communicate with are being rebuilt upon a foundation of generative code and few appear to acknowledge or examine the implications this has for us all. if you can now build something practical using natural language, what would it be?

marcwatkins.substack.com

AI Is Quietly Changing Who Gets to Build Software

What If Universities No Longer Need Edtech Companies?

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Clay Shirky's piece in the Chronicle aptly addresses the wicked problem of AI in higher education. Instead of a solution, he revitalizes what campuses do best-face disagreement and uncertainty. My main criticism is we have stopped managing these challenges and instead endure them.

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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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Why isn't the Dept. of Edu calling on AI developers to ensure their tools "incentivize rigor in the age of AI," instead of putting that onus on campuses? The power imbalance is shocking and such a move will surely pass responsibility to faculty in the classroom. www.ed.gov/media/docume...

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I made Reading Faulkner in the Age of Thinking Machines as a gambit of sorts—could I make something using AI that students would want to engage with and read and not offload to AI? open.substack.com/pub/marcwatk...

open.substack.com

Reading In An Age Of Thinking Machines

I’m releasing a project I created to help my online students read, with the hope that others might be able to use, adapt, or otherwise feel inspired to try something new this coming semester.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I created an illustrated version of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. 59 image plates, interactive student reading experience w/ annotations and voice recording students can create/share with their professor, downloadable PDFs and ePub. It's a whole new ball game for digital humanities!

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Reposted by Marc Watkins

Paige Tutt @tatertutt.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Confronted with a rapidly evolving technology, many educators have little precedent to draw on when creating classroom-level AI policy. For @edutopia.org, I asked 8 educators across disciplines/ grade levels how they establish shared values + expectations about AI use in their classrooms:

edutopia.org

8 Classroom AI Policies Developed by Teachers

Setting clear, shared expectations around student AI use is uncharted territory for many teachers. Educators across disciplines and grade levels share their current policies.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Fable does an excellent job of creating physics for an interactive 3D board with connected string and motion. Very interesting to see how it reacts to implied gravity. For this demo, each note card is a nested site I developed, so it serves as a gallery of experiments. Bonus Always Sunny meme

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

One thing I'm trying to do with my students this fall is focus on local topics that are meaningful to them, like the cost of housing on campus. I used Claude + real sources to create an interactive city builder, including reflective elements, and a survey about housing for their peers.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

It's a trope at this point, one wearing thin on readers. There's little nuance or variation within these articles. I'll also add that it is a shrewd decision that goes beyond fetish to drive clicks and likes across socials. Provocations should do more than decry change.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

App smashing will likely become the norm for AI usage. I designed a prototype of a creepy carnival midway about how higher edu is failing to deal with AI. 1) GPT 5.5 for design/site layout images 2) Gemini 3.1 image to video 3) Fable 5 to code the site Lots of possibilities to consider here!

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Analog learning is a response to AI that education should consider. But if it becomes just another way to police student AI use, it will fail. The better goal is creating intentional spaces to help students understand when AI supports their learning or thinking, and when it quietly replaces it.

open.substack.com

Analog Is Having a Moment. But Is It Sustainable?

The growing backlash against AI-saturated classrooms has created a renewed sense of exploration into analog learning methods.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Claude Code can make a static image interactive. In this case, I had Gemini sketch a reduced distraction classroom, where AI is limited (I know, the irony!) The mouse snaps to areas, zooms in, and guides the viewer around the room. Really simple use case that makes a design pop.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Is it cheating if AI guesses the answers to a test? Students upload course materials to ChatGPT and create a practice test to study. The concepts and themes of the actual questions/answers are nearly identical to the actual test. Proctored assessment isn't a moat against AI.

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Reposted by Marc Watkins

Derek Bruff @derekbruff.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

It’s launch week! The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching ebook publishes tomorrow! To celebrate, today’s podcast features an interview with my co-authors @anetv.bsky.social, @marcwatkins.bsky.social, and me, with special guest interviewer Stacey Johnson. www.buzzsprout.com/2069949/epis...

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Come read along with us! The ebook of the The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching launches 7/1 and you can join 500+ educators for Perusall's 4-week virtual book club. www.perusall.com/events/norto...

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

There are useful things you can create with AI code that function without AI and allow students to think about their values before turning to a chatbot. One example: I adapted the Pause Before Your Prompt activity from BU for my online classes, to include reflection and a visual PDF export.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

We’ve talked extensively in education about the harms and impact of AI through critical AI literacy and how to use AI responsibly through AI fluency, but it feels like few people have had the opportunity to explore the creative possibilities of using these frontier models to code

open.substack.com

Context Is All You Need

Why creative AI use takes judgment, taste, and a willingness to be inefficient.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Granta ending their partnership with the Commonwealth Prize doesn't solve the issue of AI in publishing. Editors need to become familiar with how AI models generate prose, classifiers (AKA AI detectors), and examine proof of authorship techniques and tools. AI isn't going away in publishing.

theguardian.com

Granta stops publishing short story award winners over AI controversy

Literary magazine will no longer engage in ‘external publishing partnerships’ after Commonwealth prize furore

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Reposted by Marc Watkins

Bryan Alexander @edufuturist.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

What does AI-aware teaching mean? Here's our full conversation with the authors of a new book on the topic, @derekbruff.bsky.social @marcwatkins.bsky.social and Annette Vee: youtu.be/XNNWURc24RY

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Honestly, a six month pause in AI deployments would be welcome for nearly everyone in edu. Most campuses haven't processed GPT-4, let alone Fable. Having time to get our bearings and figure out what path we'd like chart is far more valuable than a new model or feature set dropping every few months.

open.substack.com

The Fable of AI in Education

What I built with Claude 5 before it disappeared and why almost no campus can afford to build the same.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Something to consider in light of Fable and other resource intensive frontier models— will any firm even have the capacity to run advanced models for hundreds of millions of users? www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026...

theregister.com

Only half of US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction

Another fun example of AI hype and reality colliding

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I built some impressive applications using Claude’s Fable, but most campuses won’t have access to these features. If we want faculty and students to have creative opportunities with AI beyond text, we need to consider who will have access to advanced AI models. open.substack.com/pub/marcwatk...

open.substack.com

The Fable of AI in Education

What I built with Claude 5 before it disappeared and why almost no campus can afford to build the same.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Trump really doesn't like immigrants using AI. Jesus this is bad.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

The divide between those who don't use AI and those that use the mostly free models deepen when affluent students or well-resourced faculty gain far greater access to AI than their peers. Case in point, I couldn't even make a simple deck using Claude 5, editing w/sonnet, opus @ $20. I'd need $100!

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Anthropic is retaining user data for 30 days with Mythos, supposedly for safety review, including on enterprise plans with zero data retention. This may be a nonstarter for many campuses and industries.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

We shouldn't destroy ourselves in arguments about AI. campuses need to focus on conversations that allow faculty to form shared values and shape what role, if any, AI should have in education. open.substack.com/pub/marcwatk...

open.substack.com

We Shouldn't Destroy Ourselves Fighting About AI

How we talk to one another about AI needs to improve.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

It was wonderful spending time with @anetv.bsky.social & @derekbruff.bsky.social talking about AI-Aware teaching on The Tea for Teaching Podcast. We need to start having serious and sustained conversations across campuses about what role AI should have in classrooms and teaching

teaforteaching.podbean.com

AI-Aware Teaching | Tea for Teaching

While there is substantial debate over the appropriate role of generative AI in higher education, one area of agreement is that AI cannot be ignored. In this episode, Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and De...

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Having critical and thoughtful discussions with students about their AI use and AI’s impact on their community creates the type of creative and curious responses for students to learn about this technology without asking them to use a chatbot. open.substack.com/pub/marcwatk...

open.substack.com

The Norton Guide To AI-Aware Teaching & Using AI As Provocative Pedagogy

Most writing about AI in education treats it as a problem to manage.

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Marc Watkins @marcwatkins.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

A foundation model like Claude or ChatGPT IS NOT trained as a text classifier (aka an AI detector). PLEASE STOP DOING THIS! These are two entirely different AI systems (generative vs. classifier). This is why AI literacy matters. People need to understand how these tools work.

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