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Tyler Watts

@tylerwatts.bsky.social
942 followers 367 following 95 posts

Coordinator of graduate program in Instructional Design | Dabbler in all things online learning, OER, alt assessment. Just here for the zipline.

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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Abolish the death penalty.
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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 13/09/2026
An AI flyer is a brown M&M test. If your event or business is cutting corners by using an AI flyer, where else are you cutting corners? What else are you cheating out on? Why should I be bothered to go somewhere you couldn't be bothered to promote with a little of your own personality?
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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
@linkletter.org congrats to you and all the other OEGlobal Award shortlisters! Inspired by your work! awards.oeglobal.org/2026-shortli...
awards.oeglobal.org
2026 Shortlist of Finalists – Open Education Awards for Excellence
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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Child: walking with water bottle clanging rhythmically. Me: you’re going to love the opening track for Radiohead’s 2001 album Amnesiac.
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Civics of Technology @civicsoftech.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Our 2026 Conference schedule has been posted! You won't want to miss these excellent sessions. New research, lessons to share, workshops, and more! www.civicsoftechnology.org/2026conference
civicsoftechnology.org
2026 Conference — Civics of Technology
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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
It's conference season, so I wanted to share the AI refusal statement I put at the end of my presentations and book talks. Feel free to use it!
AI Refusal Statement
I did not use generative AI at any point in the production of this book or presentation, including the literature review, writing, editing, translation, organization, or any other task (e.g. brainstorming). To the extent that it is possible to know, I did not cite any studies that used generative AI.
Justification: GenAI technology is based on stolen labor, anti-solidarity between workers, class exploitation, structural racism, misogyny, environmental injustice, and climate destabilization.
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Jeffrey Keese @jeffreykeese.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Gross. This just appeared on our LMS (Canvas) today. After only a couple of hours, it disappeared. Anyone else notice it at their institution? Looks like they're still trying to push their AI tools but couching them in some "you're still in control" language.
Save time on grading with IgniteAI

Two tools work together to help you grade faster and give better feedback, without losing your oversight.

1. Check Insights for Discussions before you grade - IgniteAI analyzes your discussion threads and surfaces participation and engagement patterns across your students' posts. See who's engaging and how often and at what depth.
2. Let IgniteAI draft your scores and feedback - In Speedgrader, Grading Assistance suggests a score and starter feedback for open-ended assignments. It's a first draft, not a final call so you stay in control.
3. Review, adjust, and submit - Check the draft, make any edits, and submit. Your judgment leads. IgniteAI just handles the heavy lifting. 

Try it on your next discussion or assignment.
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Dr Matt Mahmoudi @docmattmoudi.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...
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Civics of Technology @civicsoftech.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Want to present at our 2026 conference? You've got two weeks to put a proposal forward! Share your research, your instructional approaches, proposal a panel, or something else that you think would interest our audience. forms.gle/rKEwypkdJpHL...
forms.gle
Session Proposal Form: 2026 Civics of Technology Conference
Please use this form to submit your session proposal. Proposals are due June 14.
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Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski.com · 16/05/2026
“That’s why the students are booing, I think. They’re experiencing AI in realtime as a forecloser of futures; as the cruel new face of hyper-scaling capitalism, as the prime agent moving a world that’s become a deck stacked against them.” — @bcmerchant.bsky.social really nails it, as usual
bloodinthemachine.com
AI as the new avatar of American capitalism
Why "AI populism" is just "populism"
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librarypunk @librarypunk.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Every day I watch the tech industry build The Boot On the Neck Of Humanity Machine and watch universities say “we are going to sustainably and ethically prepare our students to become innovators in The Boot On The Neck Of Humanity Machine space”
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 22/04/2026
Q: Why weren’t faculty consulted? A: On the contrary, Skynet was trained on an extensive archive of pirated humanities articles—hence its misanthropy, overuse of the em dash, and proclivity for always already predictively adding “already” after “always.”
buff.ly
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Innovative New EdTech Collaboration
“With a free Skynet Edu account, students can gain the career-readiness needed to navigate an exciting future in which they will be hunted by a remorseless, ...
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I really appreciate @elizabethwithaz.bsky.social's reflections on how she explored the social impacts of technology with her students by introducing them to the people - the ghost workers - whose labor makes “AI” systems possible. Read this week’s @civicsoftech.bsky.social and find the lesson at:
civicsoftechnology.org
Introducing Middle School Students to "The Secret Ghost Workers of 'Artificial Intelligence'" — Civics of Technology
Upcoming Book Clubs: We’re reading The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms our Kids’ Learning - And How to Help Them Thrive Again by Jared Cooney Horvath. Join us on Wednesday, Ap...
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Racially-Just, Inclusive and Open STEM Education @rioscommunity.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
**Implementing Alternative Grading** The Center for Grading Reform and the RIOS Institute are hosting a six-week Learning Community on alternative grading. Participants will apply a structured approach in a course. Prior familiarity and a target course required. Starts May 5: bit.ly/48J4sMF
bit.ly
RIOS Learning Community Application: Implementing Alternative Grading
The Center for Grading Reform, in partnership with the RIOS Institute, is pleased to sponsor a Learning Community on Implementing Alternative Grading for post-secondary faculty. In this six week…
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 12/04/2026
"In lieu of learning outcomes, we now ask whether students have a warm sense of what learning might feel like and whether they can recall, with confidence, that they took 'chemistry.' If so, we mark that as 'exceeds expectations.'"
buff.ly
The Next Innovation in Higher Education: Vibe-Teaching™
As the associate vice provost for the Office of Asynchronous Online Courses for Student-Centered High-Impact Learning (OAOCSCHIL, an office we crea...
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Drew Lewis @drew-lewis.com · 13/04/2026
The RIOS Institute @rioscommunity.bsky.social is sponsoring a learning community on Alternative Grading, beginning May 5 (and ending right before @thegradingconference.com). Join me and @melanielenahan.bsky.social for a weekly community where you design an alt grading scheme for your upcoming class.
qubeshub.org
QUBES - Implementing Alternative Grading - A RIOS Learning Community
QUBES Hub - The Power of Biology, Math, and Community
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Yung En Chee @yungenchee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Joep Schuurkes On the Acceptance of GenAI 🙏 smallsheds.garden/blog/2026/on...
On the acceptance of GenAI

Joep Schuurkes — 5 April 2026

By using GenAl:
• I accept the models were trained on stolen data.
• I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers.
• I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models.
• l accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company.
• I accept these companies don't have a viable business model.
_ I accept that I am granting more power to big tech and their vision for the world.
• I accept that I am granting more power to the United States.
• I accept that all this effort could have been spent elsewhere.

If any of these facts are new to you, you haven't been doing your due diligence.

I have the deepest respect and sympathy for people who are forced by circumstances to accept these things.

I acknowledge the people's ethical behavior is neither deterministic, nor consistent.

But yeah, GenAl radicalized me.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/04/2026
When you see one set of footprints, that’s because a chatbot is non-corporeal.
indy100.com
Artificial intelligence Jesus chatbot sparks debate over future of faith
For some evangelical Christians, a personal relationship with Jesus is central to their faith. Now, a tech company called Just Like Me is offering to take that concept to an unprecedented level, allowing users to engage in video calls with an artificial intelligence-generated avatar of Jesus for $1....
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Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
“By using GenAI: I accept the models were trained on stolen data. I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. I accept the environmental costs of the data centers running these models. I accept that I am outsourcing some of my skills to a company. I accept …”
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
GenAI is a fascist project.
404media.co
‘BLOCKADE’: The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning
Groups that challenge books have begun using Gemini, ChatGPT, xAI, and other AI tools to try to get books banned.
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Jeff Greene @jeffgreene.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Excited to share this call for proposals to contribute to a new open-access book on the EdTechBooks platform on "Public Scholarship in Education." The editors are looking for "cases of educational researchers engaged in public scholarship, or sharing their research in open and accessible ways."
tiny.utk.edu
public-scholarship-cfp.pdf
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Khakionion (8MB) (for PlayStation®2) @khakionion.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
there is no such thing as a low-value education task
Norman Rockwell speech meme
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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Sharing for the afternoon crowd
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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Sharing our new open access text on transformative care with writings about care as a disruptive force that challenges the status quo. edtechbooks.org/transformati...
Book cover for "Transformative Care: Challenging Educational Practices for Meaningful Change" with a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 07/09/2025
I keep seeing posts about ai models like "actually they're good at this thing now!" but once you understand that ai tools are being built by fascists in service of attacks on humanity, whether or not they can generate useable code or do basic searches kind of stops being the main question
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Waiting for the pitch from tech bros that GenAI is going to save teachers time to focus on what really matters: their side jobs.
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Trip Kirkpatrick @triplingual.myatproto.social · 28/02/2026
Individual solutions won't stop systemic problems, but talking to the children in your life about the myriad dangers of AI is now a necessary part of being a responsible adult.
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Kelly McCullough @kellydmcc.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!
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Peter Keep @mathprofpeter.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
I finished writing it all up: Generative AI ∉ (Teaching ∪ Learning). I'm going to keep using this as a reference, incomplete as it is www.peter-keep.com/2026-02-06-g...
peter-keep.com
Generative AI ∉ (Teaching ∪ Learning)
There are no ethical use cases for generative AI in higher education
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Abigail Nussbaum @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
This is an excellent analogy, because my recollection from grade school is that the pen on the right looks fun and exciting, and then you play with it for a few minutes and realize it's not actually useful for anything and in fact makes some tasks more cumbersome, and never think about it again.
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Br. Dr. Ken Homan, SJ @kenhomansj.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
To all those Catholics still saying "America first," I would like to remind you that the official teaching of the Catholic Church is "the poor first." And neither Christ nor the Church are bound by borders.
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Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 15/12/2025
🚨 THE BATTLE BEGINS 🚨 Your favorite year-end contest is back. It’s time to choose who will be this year’s Worst Person In Tech for 2025! Each day of this week new matchups will drop until we choose the winner on Friday. 🗳️ Cast your ballot: twsu.forms.app/worst-person...
Bracket showing the 32 names in the Worst Person in Tech 2025
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𝚂𝚝𝚎𝚟𝚎 𝙼𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎𝚜 @stevenpmillies.com · 06/12/2025
A long read but Mike Lewis has something here in this analytical framework drawing from Lévi-Strauss. Recommended. "John Paul II insisted that truth requires unity of faith and reason — precisely the unity that bricolage disrupts" wherepeteris.com/bricolage-an...
wherepeteris.com
Bricolage and the Battle for the Catholic Imagination
Catholicism has always possessed a vivid symbolic imagination. The Church embraces a sacramental worldview, filled with signs and mysteries — miracles, apparitions, relics, saints, and sacred gestures...
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 05/12/2025
Remember when the internet wasn't awful? We can go back to that. Some friends and I have released the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call to bring back such a time, to see if we can bring back a world where technology works for us, rather than against us. resonantcomputing.org
resonantcomputing.org
The Resonant Computing Manifesto
Technology should bring out the best in humanity, not the worst—a manifesto for resonant computing built on five principles that reject hyper-scale extraction for human flourishing.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 03/12/2025
Will continue to bang this drum: this is the system university admins are cramming into every aspect of education. This is the system we are told “isn’t going anywhere” so we all have to adjust to it.
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Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy @jitp.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Have you thought about submitting something to JITP but your idea didn’t quite fit with our themed issues? Submit to our **GENERAL ISSUE** by December 15th and show us how you think about the intersection of teaching, learning, and research with technology. See you in our inbox!
Call for Submissions
Issue 28: General Issue
The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) seeks scholarly work at the intersection of teaching, learning, and research with technology
• Textual and multimedia submissions - interdisciplinary approaches in humanities, sciences, and social sciences welcome
• Audio/visual presentations, interviews, dialogues, or conversations; creative/artistic works; manifestos; or other scholarly materials and/or methodologies - work addressing labor and care considerations of teaching and creating projects with digital technology
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
OpenAI is a social arsonist - as Dr. Chris Gilliard reminds us - and the company's attempts to capture education with its "free" version of ChatGPT for teachers should, IMO, be met with vocal resistance and refusal if we as educators are to care for our students, their communities, and our planet.
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Oh hey, I found the war on christmas
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Tyler Watts @tylerwatts.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Excited to dive into "Inclusive Online Teaching" by Katherine McAlvage & Nadia Jaramillo Cherrez and grateful that the authors & Oregon State made it open access! open.oregonstate.education/teachingonli...
open.oregonstate.education
Inclusive Teaching Online – Open Textbook
<em>Inclusive Teaching Online</em> addresses the complexities of teaching diverse and nontraditional adult students in asynchronous online environments. Centered in evidence-based approaches for creat...
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Leigh Graves Wolf @gravesle.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Congrats to Drs. Rebecca M. Reese & Amy Lomellini for putting this OPEN resource out into the world! It was an honour to write the prologue for this fantastic & much needed text. Advancing Accessibility: Practical Strategies for Instructional Designers and Educators edtechbooks.org/accessibility
edtechbooks.org
EdTech Books
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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Educators should look at AI grading of student writing in the same way collective society looked at the potential for human cloning after the arrival of Dolly the sheep, something that is an affront to our humanity and must be rejected completely. There is no rationale to support this.
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Enilda Romero-Hall @eromerohall.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Sneak Preview of “Learning Designers in Context” Over the last few weeks, I have re-read the proofs of my forthcoming book "Learning Designers in Contexts" so many times that I honestly I feel I could recite some of the chapters. Due to some communication issues, the release date has been pushed…
enildaromero.com
Sneak Preview of “Learning Designers in Context”
Over the last few weeks, I have re-read the proofs of my forthcoming book "Learning Designers in Contexts" so many times that I honestly I feel I could recite some of the chapters. Due to some communication issues, the release date has been pushed back a bit. It is all part of the process or at least that is what I tell myself.
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Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 08/10/2025
💯
The Luddites Were Right
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Emily Pitts Donahoe @empittsdonahoe.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Only one week left to apply for the Center for Grading Reform's Alternative Grading Institute! This two-day, hands-on, virtual experience offers opportunities to connect grading with your values and design an alt grading system for one of your courses. www.centerforgradingreform.org/alternative-...
centerforgradingreform.org
Alternative Grading Institute
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The Oatmeal @theoatmeal.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Let’s talk about AI art. theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art
theoatmeal.com
A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal
This is a comic about AI art.
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
My latest column for the Chronicle of Higher Ed is now live. It's an argument for including AI-critical voices in campus conversations and policymaking workgroups, and I'm proud to get this dissenting piece into the mainstream genAI/higher ed discourse. Please read and share if you're so inclined 🙂
chronicle.com
Advice | Sometimes We Resist AI for Good Reasons
Why higher ed needs to listen to the contrarians in setting policies on using tools like ChatGPT in faculty work.
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Grow Beyond Grades @growbeyondgrades.org · 19/09/2025
Our second Growth, Not Grades winner is Sharlyn Barrett 🎉 Sharlyn writes how chasing perfection — whether pounds on a scale or letters on a page — left her ready to give up. She imagines an education that values growth and self-acceptance. Read and share! growbeyondgrades.org/blog/degradi...
growbeyondgrades.org
The Degrading Scale — Grow Beyond Grades
In her essay, Sharlyn Barrett recalls how the pursuit of perfection—whether on a scale or on a report card—stripped joy from both learning and life, and how messages about perfection left her exhauste...
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