This is my contribution to the inaugural issue of AACE's new journal of AI-Enhanced Learning, Cognitive Santa Claus Machines and the Tacit Curriculum. If the title sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because you might have seen my post offering some further thoughts on cognitive Santa Claus machines written not long after I had submitted this paper. The paper itself delves a bit into the theory and dynamics of genAI, cognition, and education.  

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education and Learning (AIEL), a diamond open-access journal published under the auspices of AACE and distributed worldwide through LearnTechLib has just launched its inaugural issue, which includes a paper from me (Cognitive Santa Claus Machines and the Tacit Curriculum). This inaugural issue is a great start to what I think will come to be recognized as a leading journal in the field of AI and education. 

For a few minutes the other day I thought that I had invented a new kind of fallacy or, at least, a great term to describe it. Disappointingly, a quick search revealed that it was not only an old idea but one that has been independently invented at least twice before (Berry & Martin, 1974; Weinstock, 1981). Here is its definition from Weinstock (1981):

I've just submitted a journal paper (shameless plug: to AACE's AIEL, of which I am an associate editor) in which I describe generative AIs as cognitive Santa Claus machines. I don't know if it's original but the idea appeals to me. Whatever thought we ask for, genAIs will provide it, mining their deep, deep wells of lossily compressed recorded human knowledge to provide us with skills and knowledge we do not currently have.

At short notice I was invited to be guest of honour and keynote at Bennett University's International Conference on Blockchain for Inclusive and Representative Democracy  yesterday. I was not able to attend the entire conference - my opening keynote was at 9:30pm here in Vancouver and I eventually needed to sleep - but I made it for a few hours. I was impressed with the diversity and breadth of the work going on, mainly in India, and the passionate, smart people in attendance.

Many people brush generative AI aside as being just a tool. ChatGPT describes itself as such (I asked). I think it’s more complicated than that, and this post is going to be an attempt to explain why. I’m not sure about much of what follows and welcome any thoughts you may have on whether this resonates with you and, if not, why not.

Here's a characteristically well-expressed and succinct summary of the complex nature of technologies, our relationships with them, and what that means for education by the ever-wonderful Tim Fawns. I like it a lot, and it expresses much what I have tried to express about the nature and value of technologies, far better than I could do it and in far fewer words.

The latest paper I can proudly add to my list of publications,  Venturing into the Unknown: Critical Insights into Grey Areas and Pioneering Future Directions in Educational Generative AI Research has been published in the (unfortunately) closed journal TechTrends. Here's a direct link to the paper that should hopefully bypass the paywall, if it has not been used too often.

Here are the slides from my keynote at Thompson Rivers University's Teaching Practices Colloquium this morning. I quite like the mediaeval theme (thanks ChatGPT), which I created to provide a constant reminder that the problems we have to solve are the direct result of decisions made 1000 years ago. There was a lot of stuff from my last book in the talk, framed in terms of Faustian Bargains, intrinsic motivation, counter technologies, and adjacent possibles.

Here are the slides from a talk I just gave to a group of grad students at AU in our ongoing seminar series, on the nature of collectives and ways we can use and abuse them. It's a bit of a sprawl covering some 30 odd years of a particularly geeky, semi-philosophical branch of my research career (not much on learning and teaching in this one, but plenty of termites) and winding up with very much a work in progress.

Dron, J. (2024). Learning: A technological perspective. Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education, 1(2), Article 2. My latest paper, Learning: A technological perspective, was published today in the (open) Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education.  Methodologically, it provides a connected series of (I think) reasonable and largely uncontroversial assertions about the nature of technology and, for each assertion, offers some examples of why that matters to educators.

Thanks to Stefanie Panke for some great questions and excellent editing in this interview with me for the AACE Review. The content is in fact the product of two discussions, one coming from student questions at the end of a talk that I gave for the Asian University for Women just before Christmas, the other asynchronously with Stefanie herself.

Here are my slides from the 1st International Symposium on Educating for Collective Intelligence, last week, here is my paper on which it was based, and here is the video of the talk itself: You can find this and videos of the rest of the stunning line-up of speakers at It was an incredibly engaging and energizing event: …