Since the start of this school year, we have been surveying teachers in South Australia about sexist views among students. This is part of our research into how online worlds are shaping Australian schooling. In May, we reported the first round of our research. We found South Australian teachers were experiencing a rise in sexist and […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
‘Not my boy.’ When teachers are harassed by students, some schools and parents fail to help
The mystic and the mathematician: What the towering 20th-century thinkers Simone and André Weil can teach today’s math educators
Like most mathematicians, I hear confessions from complete strangers: the inevitable “I was always bad at math.” I suppress the response, “You are forgiven, my child.” Why does it feel like a sin to struggle in math? Why are so many traumatized by their mathematics education? Is learning math worthwhile? Sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing, André and Simone […] … learn more→
Why teenagers don’t talk to adults about their problems on the Internet
“I don’t listen to adults when it comes to this kind of thing,” a 17-year-old told me. We were talking about how digital technology affected his life in the context of a project I ran with colleagues in the West of England to explore young people’s mental health, including the impact of digital technology on their emotional wellbeing . […] … learn more→
AI pioneers want bots to replace human teachers – here’s why that’s unlikely
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy envisions a world in which artificial intelligence bots can be made into subject matter experts that are “deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world’s languages.” Through this vision, the bots would be available to “personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.” The embodiment of […] … learn more→
Anthropology students present their research in poetry, plays and op-eds in this course
Title of course: Multimodal Anthropology What prompted the idea for the course? “Multimodal” simply means using more than academic written text to present research findings. My first multimodal science project was a third grade project on humpback whales, which was inspired by a vinyl LP recording of their “songs” that National Geographic mailed out to subscribers. In […] … learn more→
Talking out of school: counting the cost of return-to-office mandates
In a recent post on world.edu , two anonymous authors decry the universities’ rush to wind back work-from-home arrangements that were instituted during the COVID crisis. In particular, the authors argue that return-to-office (RTO) arrangements are counterproductive for introverts. Their post adopts a widely-accepted definition of an introvert as someone who finds social encounters taxing, rather than energising, […] … learn more→
What is ‘model collapse’? An expert explains the rumours about an impending AI doom
Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”. But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway? Discussed in 2023, but popularised more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of […] … learn more→
An exposé of whatever-it-takes culture, Eric Beecher’s The Men Who Killed the News is an idealistic book for the times
Eric Beecher is a rare beast: a combination of journalist, media owner and idealist. In 1984, aged 33, he became the youngest-ever editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and he has worked around the world as a journalist. He is currently chair and the largest shareholder in Private Media, owner of several Australian news websites, […] … learn more→
Meta just closed a vital online research tool. It’s bad news for the fight against misinformation
For more than a decade, researchers and journalists have relied on a digital tool called CrowdTangle to track and fight the spread of viral falsehoods online. But earlier this week, the owner of CrowdTangle, Meta, shut the tool down. The tech giant has replaced it with its new Content Library, which it says will serve the […] … learn more→
Common mistakes in academic writing: Top pitfalls to avoid
Academic writing can be challenging, even for experienced scholars. You may find yourself making common mistakes that undermine the quality and credibility of your work. Recognizing and avoiding these errors will significantly improve your academic writing skills. Common Grammatical Mistakes Subject-Verb Agreement Errors Subject-verb agreement is essential for clear communication in academic writing. Errors occur […] … learn more→
