Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
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jengo.bsky.social
Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
@jengo.bsky.social
Teaching & Learning Center Director at Vermont State Uni, Student Affairs Professional, Faculty at Comm Coll of Vermont. Here for a mix of Women's Soccer, Higher Ed, Social Justice, and Ornithology. Views expressed are my own.
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
evergreen
November 22, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Aye
November 21, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Thank you @sdsirens.bsky.social for gathering your supporters group and making two out-of-town NWSL fans feel right at home at your watch party. It was a blast being with other woso peeps for the final.
November 23, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
This video is so overwhelming I had to sit down & stare at the wall awhile. I was physically shaking.

I had heard some of these anecdotes before - Proctorio & Tubman bot - but Tanksley synthesizes them (with much much more), revealing undeniable regime of EdTech racialized surveillance & policing…
I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ
Howard University AI Panel
YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley
youtu.be
November 22, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Massive shoutout out to whoever handles the Royal Canadian Air Force’s social media account. They responded to every single comment on their already very solid Trans Day of Remembrance post and they responded like this…
November 22, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
This is a really good piece on how higher ed employees are affected when their colleagues are laid off. As much of higher ed is tightening its collective belts, this is certainly worth reading.
Anxiety and Exhaustion Stalk Those Spared From Layoffs
What it’s like to be one of the “lucky” ones.
www.chronicle.com
November 15, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
A real loss. Rest in power, Alice Wong.
November 15, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
No it’s important to listen to this. Because then you understand that many of them will do ANYTHING to keep power. Remember Musk got involved in the 2024 election after saying to Tucker “if she wins” I am definitely going to prison.

So we need to move knowing that nothing is off the table for them.
Steve Bannon: If we lose the midterms and we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison, myself included.
November 7, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
From Evan: it's a huge night of hope for the trans community. The Republicans went all in on anti-trans ads in multiple races and so far there's no sign it got them anything.

Perhaps the page can be turned on blaming us for Harris' loss last year.
November 5, 2025 at 1:51 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Hmmm. Anyone think we’ll now get the punditry class to engage in weeks long debate about the need for the right to moderate and move more to the center to improve its electoral chances? …Anyone??
November 5, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
one problem w/so many analogies is that we intuitively gravitate to useful stuff; there's no easy shorthand for something as obviously counterproductive and disastrous that still tracks. it feels more like saying "DraftKings is collaborating with Cal to register undergrads to bet on course outcomes"
“It’s not a partnership…If you switch out the product, we would never say, ‘Xerox is collaborating with San Francisco State to offer photocopiers to all the members of its community.’”
Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground
www.nytimes.com
October 26, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Who would of thought spending nearly $1B on LLM textbooks would get you rubbish?
South Korea blows $850m on failed AI school textbooks

‘The overall quality was poor, and it was clear it had been hastily put together’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIUU... - video
pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251019-sou... - podcast

time: 4 min 36 sec
October 19, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Great article on how the AI bubble is just the latest ed tech grift that's part of a "broader effort to snatch away decision-making power over teaching, learning, and research from subject matter and pedagogy experts and give it to donors and administrators."
October 23, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
ChatGPT gave a significant portion of my students the wrong answer to an easy quiz question that everyone used to always get right

I had two groups of students turn in annotated bibliographies that were ChatGPT generated - not a single citation actually existed
October 17, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Think of this as equivalent to removing the merit system from government employment.

Your tax dollars deployed to serve the goals of a personalist authoritarian system. All the talk about banning DEI because of merit shown to be nonsense when they also remove merit-based processes.
Awarding scientific grants based on scientific merit? That pales in comparison to my strategy, giving grants based on political loyalty

www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
September 28, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Just another "Pro-LGBTQ" Democrat coming out very strongly against the trans community.

Harris claims she can discriminate against trans girls without vilifying kids, while repeating incorrect transphobic ideas and vilifying kids.
"Kamala Harris cites concerns about trans athletes in her book"

And, there it is.

ttps://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/19/kamala-harris-book-trans-athletes-00573966
Kamala Harris cites concerns about trans athletes in her book
The Trump campaign attacked Harris over her positions on transgender rights. She says they were misconstrued.
www.politico.com
September 20, 2025 at 6:50 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
yeah, i’d take an old school recipe card over this any day.
LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI
September 18, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
Bertrand Russell, at 89 years old, to Sir Oswald Mosley, a man most famous for founding, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists.

I'm all for civil discourse. But everyone can and should draw a line at who they will talk to.

Notice that Russell did not demean himself with incivility, either.
September 16, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
also imagine being a graduate student and willingly degrading your own learning by using gAI; it is genuinely alarming to think of how it is going to impact generations of creativity and original thought
'It has even picked up a nickname: “People just call it ‘Chat’,” she says.'

This is about the level of creativity I'd expect from a habitual user of ChatGPT.
Vacuous, generic and scattershot advice for incoming 1st years on the use of AI at university. Especially liking 'Chin recommends giving it class notes and asking it to generate practice exam questions.' Surely we can't be the only programme that supplies students with past & practice exams?
September 14, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
“You can have a verbal conversation like you would with a professor”

We have office hours for this exact purpose.
Vacuous, generic and scattershot advice for incoming 1st years on the use of AI at university. Especially liking 'Chin recommends giving it class notes and asking it to generate practice exam questions.' Surely we can't be the only programme that supplies students with past & practice exams?
How to use ChatGPT at university without cheating: ‘Now it’s more like a study partner’
The ubiquitous AI tool has a divisive effect on educators with some seeing it a boon and others a menace. So what should you know about where to draw the line between check and cheat?
www.theguardian.com
September 14, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
I enjoyed it when the student said it doesn't damage her critical thinking skills, and then 2 paragraphs later says she uses it to summarise difficult topics.

Students don't know how much this is going to ruin the key skills they're paying a premium at University to develop.
Vacuous, generic and scattershot advice for incoming 1st years on the use of AI at university. Especially liking 'Chin recommends giving it class notes and asking it to generate practice exam questions.' Surely we can't be the only programme that supplies students with past & practice exams?
How to use ChatGPT at university without cheating: ‘Now it’s more like a study partner’
The ubiquitous AI tool has a divisive effect on educators with some seeing it a boon and others a menace. So what should you know about where to draw the line between check and cheat?
www.theguardian.com
September 14, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”
September 13, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Jen Garrett-Ostermiller
look Charlie Kirk started, maintained, & promoted turning point usa’s professor watchlist

I’ve been on it for over a decade and until this year I was the *only* UVM professor on it which means

his life’s work = my death threats
the media rush to canonize charlie kirk is legitimately maybe one of the weirdest things of this nature i have ever seen in my life
September 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM