Month: May 2026

I’ve said it before and been proved wrong but I think that we are moving towards an understanding about the impact of AI on education or more precisely on learning. There is a growing understanding that while Generative AI chatbots are good at supporting performance they are not effective in supporting learning. Indeed a series of research studies report that despite impressive performances while using AI for assignments, subsequent similar tasks undertaken without the support of AI display poor learning returns. In his substack post Ethan Mollick, a long time AI enthusiast of AI in education,illustrates this with an account […]

A new report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) offers a sobering diagnosis of the current state of our digital public sphere. Enitled Fractured Reality: How Democracy Can Win the Global Struggle Over the Information Space, the report details how the fundamental architecture of the internet—specifically the “attention economy”—is systematically undermining democratic resilience in Europe [1]. For practitioners and leaders in education the report is not just a theoretical warning. It outlines a set of structural challenges that directly impact how citizens learn, how they engage with civic life, and how educational institutions must adapt to a world […]

Just a quick following up on my last post where I reported on the growing opposition to AI in the USA. The most up to date comparative survey of attitudes to AI in different countries that I van. find was publihsed. in Sp[etemeber last year and undertaken by Pew Research. They say: As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) increases rapidly, most people across 25 countries surveyed say they have heard or read at least a little about the technology.And on balance, people are more concerned than excited about its growing presence in daily life. A median of 34% of […]

The Growing backlash against AI We are not short of information about the rapid development of Large Language Models for AI. It would be quite easy to spend every working day reading Substack newsletters and LinkedIn posts. However, it could become somewhat dispiriting. Its worth noting that while the owners and shareholders of the big tech companies daily boast of the progress AI is making in building a better world, the backlash against AI grows daily – see Alberto Romeo’s comprehensive summary in a post entitled How America Turned Against AI According to the Poll Data: A (Very Big) Compilation. […]

The initial wave of uncritical enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence in education is beginning to break in the face of pedagogical reality. A growing scepticism is taking root with teachers, students, and parents increasingly questioning the narrative that generative AI is an unalloyed good for learning. This opposition is not driven by technophobia, but by a mounting body of evidence suggesting that AI, rather than enhancing cognitive development, often acts as a barrier to it. Recent research provides empirical weight to these concerns. A 2025 study from the MIT Media Lab, which used EEG scans to measure brain activity during essay […]

Over the past several decades, schools and universities have done exactly what every other institution has done: they have systematically outsourced their operational backbone to technology products and the companies that build them. The list of platforms that now mediate the basic functions of education including attendance, grades, assignments, communication is almost comically long. Most educational institutions are running ten to fifteen different EdTech products that all promise efficiency, but in reality, create confusion, frustration, and complicate what was once much simpler [1]. The trade-off has always been framed as giving up a degree of control and data in exchange […]