David Buck
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dbuckedu.bsky.social
David Buck
@dbuckedu.bsky.social
2K followers 3K following 780 posts
Professor of English at a community college. Teaching composition (online & hybrid). #TempleMade. Interested in #SDGs, #pedagogy, #ungrading, #AIResistance, & #OER. Ungrading.weebly.com
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dbuckedu.bsky.social
Had a great session of the #MoreThanWords virtual book club yesterday!

A wonderful group of caring, compassionate educators hoping to guide their students through the ubiquitous sludge of GenAI.

We focused on writing as thinking, a uniquely human endeavor rather than a transactional experience.
Image of a brain merged with a computer chip. Under the image are the words: More Than Words Virtual Book Club
June 4, 2025 at 3:21 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
An idea from The AI Con that has really helped me answer the Q: Why do some surrender voice, agency, & trust to a GenAI tool? — the human tendency when processing language to engage w/ “the mind behind the text.” When there’s no human behind the probability/plagiarism machine, we tend to invent one!
Though the most basic and fundamental use of language is in face-to-face communication, once we have acquired a linguistic system, we can use it to understand linguistic artitacts even in the absence of co-situatedness, at a distance of space and even time. But we still apply the same techniques of imagining the mind behind the text, constructing a model of common ground with the author, and seeking to guess what the author might have been using the words to get their audience to understand. Language models, problematically, have no subjectivity with which to perform intersubjectivity. Despite the frequent claims of Al researchers, these models do not learn "just like children do." Simply modeling the distribution of words in text provides no access to meaning, nothing from which to deduce communicative intent. Language models thus represent nothing more than exttensive information about what sets of words are similar and what words are likely to appear in what contexts. While this isn't meaning or understanding, it is enough to produce plausible synthetic text, on just about any topic imaginable, which turns out to be quite dangerous: we encounter text that looks just like something a person might have said and reflexively interpret it, through our usual process of imagining a mind behind the text. But there is no mind there, and we need to be conscientious to let go of that imaginary mind we have constructed.
May 30, 2025 at 3:12 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Looking for some summer reading?

Check out the FREE More Than Words virtual book club beginning in June! Join others actively considering how to center authentic writing/thinking in the age of AI.

@biblioracle.bsky.social will be planning to join us for most sessions! forms.gle/ksGsyZjkzhwz...
Image of a brain merged with a computer chip. Under the image are the words: More Than Words Virtual Book Club
April 23, 2025 at 6:33 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Much of my #AIResistance in college comp courses is rooted in what I would like my students to DO with their writing.

"[T]teachers don't ask students to write essays since the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students' critical-thinking skills."
Image of a presentation slide. Pedagogical concerns: "As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way."
April 16, 2025 at 7:01 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Am wondering how college profs using Gen-AI can square up ethically to what is happening to some of our international students on multiple campuses. How does endorsing a tool from a company aligned with student surveillance and harassment fit into anyone's pedagogical ethos?! #AIResistance
Image of presentation slide. Political concerns: “Axios cited senior State Department officials to report that an AI-fueled ‘Catch and Revoke’ effort will include AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts.” Photo of an article with students protesting in front of a university building while holding up a white banner.
April 16, 2025 at 6:52 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Exactly⎯it seems like we need to contort ourselves into rhetorical pretzels to rationalize the good in all of this!

One of my favorite slides in my presentation is about the WHY of our writing classrooms. ⬇️ #AIResistance
Pedagogical Concerns As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way. Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art: To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence.” The New Yorker
April 6, 2025 at 5:50 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
One small nudge that I make in my #AIResistance pedagogy is the use of "Completion Statements" for student blog postings. We make an ethical agreement that we've resisted the use of GenAI in our writing⎯for the sake of our writing improvement & developing our unique writing voices, warts & all!
Question 3: I have NOT used any GenAI tool (ex: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grammarly, Copilot, etc.) to generate content in my blog posting. My blog posting submission complies with Professor Buck's 🌐 Policy for AI Usage in ENGL-121Links to an external site.. My blog posting is 100% my wording and sentence structure (warts and all!). This ensures that I am interested in developing my unique writing voice. My focus is not on being perfect but on growing and improving within my writing practice. True/False
April 6, 2025 at 5:43 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Been thinking about how good this point is⎯thanks for this!

Reminds me of one of my presentation slides. I'm planning to read Dan's book. ⬇️

#AIResistance
Broader Concerns “AI can't be relied on to give a useful answer to a factual question, but it will still give an answer no matter how conspiratorial or delusional the question is. We can see how useful this is to the technofascist agenda in the way Elon Musk's DOGE team is using LLMs to decide which money to cut and who to fire, based on imaginary connections to hated concepts like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’” —Dan McQuillan (interview with Diyar Saraçoğlu) Image of Dan's book. Resisting AI on a blue background with technical webbing.
April 6, 2025 at 4:53 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Awesome!

Love the ethos to “Do no harm.”

And here is my version of the “AI is bullshit” point. ⬇️
Full-on Clarity! “Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone [AI] to talk [write] without knowing what [it’s] talking [writing] about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s [AI’s] obligations or opportunities to speak [write] about some topic exceed [its] knowledge of facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life [college], where people [LLMs] are frequently impelled — [. . .] by the demands of others [students] — to speak [write] extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.” —Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, 2005
April 6, 2025 at 2:07 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Yes—I’m so happy that I’m following your lead! Here is my thesis slide—I’m arguing that all those webinars/presentations about “ethical AI” are basically about teaching student how to use GenAI “appropriately” w/o cheating. Nope—there’s a whole other world of ethics we should be talking about w/ Ss!
Ethical Concerns (which ethics are we talking about?) The 3 Es of AI refusal: Ethically compromised, Extractive (environment), Exploitive (human labor). An image of a webinar presentation.
April 6, 2025 at 1:49 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
GenAI tools are so extractive that the LLMs are running out of training data. They’ve scraped so much that they’re looking for more human-produced intellectual property to steal. Plus AI models are training other AI models. The ouroboros myth come to life! Crappy data training crappy systems.
Image of a black snake eating its own tail. Based on the ancient Egyptian symbol representing the infinite cycle of time.
April 6, 2025 at 1:40 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Working on an AI-refusal presentation detailing my resistance to using Gen-AI tools in my freshman writing courses, and this is such a timely affirmation of my intentional choice to refuse! As @biblioracle.bsky.social consistently argues—our Ss writing can (& should) be so much more than mimicry.
An A.I. tool may learn how to superficially mimic the end result of writing, but it will never mimic a writer’s soul or how he or she actually produces meaningful writing — that process by which an individual idiosyncratic mind works out a problem, granting readers access to the inner life of another actual person, that constitutes the lifeblood of writing and storytelling.
March 23, 2025 at 6:41 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
📢 Celebrate today's release of @biblioracle.bsky.social's More Than Words by signing up for our FREE Virtual Book Club! Join others actively considering how to center authentic writing (& thinking!) in the age of AI.

John will be planning to join us for most sessions!

forms.gle/ksGsyZjkzhwz...
Image of a brain merged with a computer chip. Under the image are the words: More Than Words Virtual Book Club
February 4, 2025 at 3:22 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
The #unessay — another wonderful authentic activity to disrupt the compliance-based nature of traditional schooling and restore the JOY of learning! 👇🏻
UN (prefix): used for giving word the opposite meaning • UNgrading-instead of grades, use feedback and student reflections to focus on learning rather than performance • UNessay-instead of traditional academic formats, use authentic modes of writing (blogs, memes, websites) • UNsyllabus—instead of boring, policy-driven syllabi, use a "liquid syllabus" as a humanizing first contact with students #HumanizeOL (via@brocansky.bsky.social) • UNtextbook—instead of a costly commercial text, use a free openly licensed one #OER • UNLMS—instead of using an LMS, display your content in open, outward-facing platforms • UNdiscussions-instead of a discussion board in an LMS, use social #annotation • UNdisposable assignments-instead of using assignments that die with the course, design assignments that students can use in their lives after your course has ended (via@brocansky.bsky.social) • UNconference—instead of traditional events with a keynote and a schedule of pre-planned sessions, encourage participants to drive the conversation and their learning #Edcamp • UNleading-instead of a leadership based on compliance, hierarchy, or fear, lead from a position that encourages humanity, inclusion, reflection, and systemic change (via @VidyaShah6) • UNstuffing-instead of over-packing a course with stuff like content/assignments, create moments of rest that enable curiosity and make pedagogic choices that allow students to marinate, to listen to their bodies, and to develop their curiosities organically (via @jessicazeller.bsky.social) • UNlecture —instead of long, drawn-out traditional lectures, provide micro-lectures and bumper videos (2-3 min videos that clarify a sticky topic) (via @brocansky.bsky.social)
January 18, 2025 at 10:33 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Please join us for a promising and meaningful book club with author @josheyler.bsky.social.

Josh has been wonderfully generous with his time and expertise.

We have 76 folks signed up already. Hope you can join us in February! 😀
Image of a globe (earth) with a graduation cap on its top. On a banner midway across the globe are the words: Failing Our Future Virtual Book Club. The cap and globe are blue.
January 8, 2025 at 5:50 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
#UngradingChat A3: Love this Q, it hits at the criticism that gradeless classes lack motivated Ss. But there is something special when Ss produce effort & motivation bc there ARE NO grades to limit them. When they are laboring for themselves & their own learning goals & they're enjoying the work!
What happens when we focus on labor rather than on grades? "I believe that the amount of time that went into my work showed in how well I did each assignment. I worked my hardest in this class, not just because I wanted a good grade. I worked hard because I thoroughly enjoyed the work that we did. I like being able to focus on labor because don't need to stress out too much about what grade I will get, and I feel that if I'm less stressed out I can produce better writing compared to when I'm anxious." — student reflection
December 12, 2024 at 3:45 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
For me, something that *always* appears in these articles is this idea of “repurposed” time, where the AI deals w/ the supposed laborious work of teaching—like assessment. But if we do assessment in good-faith, we’re building those very relationships lauded in these types of pro-AI articles.
Assessment derives from the Latin “assidere” meaning to sit beside. Conferring is one of the most effective forms of authentic assessment.
December 8, 2024 at 1:57 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Love this one, Cate!

Reminds me of E.B. White turning down an invitation from the Eisenhower administration—“I must decline, for secret reasons.”

Perhaps we should start a collection of refusal statements to help folks make #AIResistance a reality! 😄
September 28, 1956 Dear Mr. Adams : Thanks for your letter inviting me to join the committee of the Arts and Sciences for Eisenhower. I must decline, for secret reasons. Sincerely, E. B. White
December 7, 2024 at 12:44 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
I remember teaching Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” in my intro to lit course. The more I contemplate the ubiquitous presence of GenAI in education, I think there are some interesting parallels between the act of #AIResistance and the message/theme of Whitman’s poem. 1/
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
December 6, 2024 at 1:42 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Re-upping the free Failing Our Future Virtual Book Club w/ author @josheyler.bsky.social in Feb. 2025. Join us!

Meetings via Zoom—I'll be emailing details to club members soon!

Register Here: forms.gle/gXVsSe41ao3R...

Purchase Book Here: tinyurl.com/4mrhf9vf

#ungrading #assessment #edusky
Image of a globe (earth) with a graduation cap on its top. On a banner midway across the globe are the words: Failing Our Future Virtual Book Club. The cap and globe are blue.
December 5, 2024 at 6:15 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Virtue must be exercised under duress, temptation, or conflict. So we get to the part in Areopagitica where Milton explains Adam’s ability to reason as a choice. If Adam had no agency, he would be merely an automaton, an “artificial” Adam. Milton absolves God from any wrongdoing 👇🏻 10/
If every action which is good, or evill in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance, and prescription, and compulsion, what were vertue but a name, what praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just or continent? many there be that complain of divin Providence for suffering Adam to transgresse, foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had bin else a meer artificiall Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We our selves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence.
December 4, 2024 at 4:14 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Then God says one of my favorite lines in PL: “I made him just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” There it is—humankind has the capacity, the free will, to either stand or fall. But then God goes on to flesh out this topic of free will & what his creation can do w/ it.👇🏻 3/
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, [ 105 ] Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild, Made passive both, had servd necessitie, [ 110 ] Not mee. They therefore as to right belongd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate, As if predestination over-rul'd Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree [ 115 ] Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less prov'd certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of Fate, [ 120 ] Or aught by me immutablie foreseen, They trespass, Authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I formd them free, and free they must remain, Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change [ 125 ] Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain'd Thir freedom, they themselves ordain'd thir fall. The first sort by thir own suggestion fell, Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd [ 130 ] By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace, The other none: in Mercy and Justice both, Through Heav'n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel, But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine.
December 4, 2024 at 3:37 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Milton may portray God in PL as a flat character, one who’s bound by his moralistic principles & sense of justice, a brutish ogre who banishes mankind from paradise, there is a flash of self-realization. He speaks w/ Adam abt his solitary state. Is God happy being alone? Does he want a partner, too?
What think'st thou then of mee, and this my State, Seem I to thee sufficiently possest Of happiness, or not? who am alone [ 405 ] From all Eternitie, for none I know Second to mee or like, equal much less. How have I then with whom to hold converse Save with the Creatures which I made, and those To me inferiour, infinite descents [ 410 ] Beneath what other Creatures are to thee?
December 4, 2024 at 1:49 AM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
Continuing my journey of grad school Milton. One sonnet that I find myself teaching in multiple lit contexts is Sonnet 19/“On His Blindness.” Analyzing the octave (8) & sestet (6), I always made the point that Patience invades the octave to correct the speaker’s thinking. Every person has use! 1/
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent “When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, And post o’er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait.”
December 3, 2024 at 9:32 PM
dbuckedu.bsky.social
#UngradingChat A2: One major shift was rebalancing the power dynamic in the classroom. Centering the student voice, de-centering mine. Using personal conferencing to “come alongside” students’ learning & invite them to articulate their progress, process, & growth.
Assessment derives from the Latin “assidere” meaning to sit beside. Conferring is one of the most effective forms of authentic assessment.
December 3, 2024 at 9:11 PM