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neilselwyn.bsky.social
Neil Selwyn
@neilselwyn.bsky.social
2K followers 160 following 130 posts
sociology of education + digital | Monash University | research interests: automation, AI, datafication, digital degrowth | host of 'Education Technology Society' podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1301377
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neilselwyn.bsky.social
🎙️🎧new podcast episode: Is using GenAI in education ‘pedagogically irresponsible’?

www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
Using GenAI in education is ‘pedagogically irresponsible’ Education Technology Society podcast new episode with Dr. Gene Fenaldy Quote from the episode: “When I first went to university, it was a transformative experience. I didn't meet chatbots. I met people there who were role models for a different kind of life. My worry is that watering down that transformative experience where you meet people, you meet role models, and replacing that with chatbots cuts the value out of education entirely”
November 9, 2025 at 4:17 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Aidan Walker on why "now is *not* the time to ban phones ...
why Jonathan Haidt sucks"

howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/now-is-not...
If you take Haidt’s premise that phones and social media are hurting children as true, then you should question whether the right policy remedy is an intervention in the way teachers run their classrooms and what children are allowed to see and do online Why not fine the companies for endangering kids or create new rules they have to follow? Why not introduce competition into a monopolized market space, so that parents and kids have more choice in how to spend their time online? Why not put consumer safety standards on the algorithms, the software, the devices themselves? Why is the preferred tool to save a generation from anguish and our democracy from decline a patchwork of laws governing the decisions consumers can make, instead of a strategy to hold bad actors and industry to account?
October 11, 2025 at 8:51 PM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
One of the benefits of our kid's forced-exposure to 'AI search' results is that they are seeing GenAI/ Google Search deteriorate in front of their eyes. Now Google seems to have trouble with simply presenting symbols and words as humans understand them ...
screenshot from a Google search result - AI overview advising the "standard cupcakes typically take 15 to 25 minutes to bake at $350^\circ$F ($180^\circ$C)" ... presumably confusing the ASCII codes with the symbols that should be presented?
October 11, 2025 at 7:46 PM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Should teachers use AI to write emails to parents? ... listen to me talk with Brad Robinson about the rise of AI tools now offering to do teacher tasks, such as lesson planning, grading assignments and writing feedback. A way to 'work smarter' or a slippery slope?! www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
October 1, 2025 at 5:23 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
For those who don't know, I produce a podcast featuring some of the latest thinking in the critical studies of education & tech.

We have just kicked off our third season with an episode on 'Technosolutionism' ... please take a listen & subscribe!

www.buzzsprout.com/1301377
A grey poster with black writing and a pixelated hand pointing to the text. Season three now starting! Education Technology Society - a critical podcast about digital education.
September 24, 2025 at 6:01 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
new podcast episode! Why does education keep falling for techno-solutionism, despite the fact that technology does not seem to drastically improve education? Listen to Dr. Ezechiel Thibaud talk through the perennial problem of 'techno-solutionism' in education ... www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
September 11, 2025 at 5:25 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
new blog post: Thinking differently – rather than dismissively – about AI and education.

... excerpt from the final chapter of my still-being-written book on AI & Education (out late 2026?) ... criticaledtech.com/2025/09/02/t...
full quote: "perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the recent push for AI is how it devalues and debases the status of schools, teachers, students and everyone else involved in education. Any insistence that current forms of AI can improve education is an insistence that we accept a hollowed-out version of education that is routine, formulaic and utterly mindless. Seen in these terms, then, good teachers and students are those who always maximise their time, diligently respond to feedback and can be nudged to make correct decisions. Good education is simply a matter of repeatedly and efficiently doing the same things ‘at scale’. This is a robotic version of education that appeals to managerialists, consultants and tech-bros with little experience and/or interest in the unavoidable messiness of schools and classrooms. Much of the enthusiasm for ‘transforming education through AI’ is rooted in thinly-veiled contempt for the forms of education that we currently have. As Anthony Moser (2025) put it, “the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals”."
September 1, 2025 at 9:06 PM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
AI Dilemmas for Teachers - *free resources & posters* ... a set of high-def colour resources featuring real-life examples from our research on teachers' experiences of AI ...

Feel free to print off, share widely and use in your own professional learning sessions!

www.monash.edu/education/re...
blue poster with picture of robot teacher - title "AI dilemmas - real life examples from Australian teachers" - vignette and questions for use in professional learning sessions
August 21, 2025 at 10:50 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
We need to get more nuanced conversations going around AI and teaching ... as a start, we're producing a series of provocation posters featuring real-life examples that have cropped up in our ARC research on teachers' experiences of AI ... will post links to high-def downloadable versions soon!
bright red poster featuring an illustrated 'AI dilemma' for teachers - would you use GenAI to provide feedback on your students' work?
August 13, 2025 at 2:18 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
new paper 🔓! Teachers are having to put *considerable* amounts of work into making GenAI outputs suitable for their classrooms ... amidst the going hype we need to talk more about what GenAI clearly *cannot* do, and the uniqueness of teacher expert knowledge: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
When the prompting stops: exploring teachers’ work around the educational frailties of generative AI tools Neil Selwyn, Marita Ljungqvist and Anders Sonesson [1] Abstract: Teachers are now encouraged to use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools to complete various school-related administrative tasks, with the promise of saving considerable amounts of time and effort. Drawing on interviews from 57 teachers across eight schools in Sweden and Australia, this paper explores teachers’ experiences when working with GenAI. In particular, it focuses on the large amounts of work that teachers put into reviewing, repairing and sometimes completely reworking AI-produced outputs that they perceive to be deficient. Rather than reflecting teachers’ lack of skill in prompting GenAI effectively, the paper shows how this work foregrounds the educational limitations and frailties of AI and other automated technologies – with teachers having to act on a wide range of complex professional judgements around pedagogical appropriateness, social relations and overall educational value to bear on AI-generated content. The paper concludes by considering the need to challenge ongoing industry and policy claims around the labour-saving benefits of artificial intelligence in education, and instead focus on the ways in which these technologies are dependent on the hidden labour of humans to co-produce the illusion of automation.
July 24, 2025 at 4:16 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
We have a new paper coming out in the next few days about all of the work that teachers have to do around GenAI tools ... I'll post the abstract and link when it is out - for the time being, this quote from the article pretty much sums up our main conclusion!
quote from an article: "As the philosopher John Haugeland notably observed: "the trouble with AI is that computers don't give a damn". In theory, the value of teachers is that they do. from a forthcoming paper published in Learning, Media & Technology - title: "When the prompting stops: exploring teachers' work around the educational frailties of GenAI" (Neil Selwyn, Marita Ljungqvist, Anders Sonesson 2025).
July 22, 2025 at 3:15 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
A plea for the education community to "move beyond real ignorance in the face of the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence" ... www.bera.ac.uk/blog/the-env...
Blog post The environmental ethics of Generative AI: Artificial intelligence or real ignorance? Sarah Clayton, PhD Graduate at University of York Lynda Dunlop, Senior Lecturer in Science Education at University of York Elizabeth Rushton, Head of Education Division at University of Stirling 20 Jun 2025
July 15, 2025 at 9:20 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
<> ... nuestro informe ha sido traducido al español, por favor léalo y distribúyalo a cualquier persona que crea que estará interesada

bridges.monash.edu/articles/rep...
cover page of the report: "Estudios críticos en educación y tecnología... ¿Razones para tener esperanza?"
July 15, 2025 at 6:52 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
"Teenagers & the data economy: understanding their dreams, desires & anxieties" ... not only is this a really interesting paper, but it is also looks great - wonderful visual design ... academic publishing doesn't have to look rubbish! dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
first page of conference paper, title: "Teenagers and the data economy: understanding their dreams, desires and anxieties with metaphor workbooks". A mash-up of photographs (of a face, a phone, a circuit board) with some pink, red and blue patches, and three whited-out text books with the title, abstract and authors. This looks way better than the standard text-only conference paper ... but I'd be interested to know whether it is fully accessible for people using screen-readers?
July 6, 2025 at 11:06 PM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Estoy bastante sorprendido (pero honrado) de ser incluido en esta nueva colección de entrevistas políticas: grandes nombres incluyen a John Dupré, Tim Ingold, Martin Hägglund, César Rendueles y Mario Domínguez, Jo Guldi, Julia Lovell y muchos otros ... irrecuperables.noblogs.org/post/2025/06...
June 23, 2025 at 1:11 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Schools, Datafication and the Rise of EdTech ‘Intermediaries’ ... for the last ETS podcast 🎙️ of the current season we are very pleased to be joined by Prof. Sigrid Hartong to talk about some these latest developments in critical ed-tech thinking! www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
June 16, 2025 at 1:47 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Critical studies of ed-tech are becoming increasingly popular ... but how can they be a useful force for change? New report outlines 8 main areas that the CSET community needs to get discussing! 🧵

bridges.monash.edu/articles/rep...
June 9, 2025 at 4:04 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
Helping students deal with disinformation & AI-generated slop is yet another thing that schools are now being asked to tackle. Listen to this new interview with information studies expert @olofsundin.bsky.social about what 'disinformation literacy' might look like: www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
May 26, 2025 at 11:56 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
We computers demand full employment (Klaus Staeck 1983)
May 18, 2025 at 9:17 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
"No easy answers ... what (social) science says about digitisation and schools" ... short chapter written for teachers in response to the Swedish government's demands to 'follow the science' regarding digital technologies in the classroom!
Download link for PDF: bridges.monash.edu/ndownloader/...
May 14, 2025 at 9:01 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
It is always important to pay attention to how ed-tech is playing out around the world. I got to talk with Dr. Jina Ro (Sungkyunkwan Uni) about Korea's all-in efforts to lead the world in AI integration into schools ... audacious innovation or doomed to fail? www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...
April 23, 2025 at 7:48 PM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
"Digital Degrowth ... perhaps *not* the worst idea on the planet?" ... very happy to be part of this ITU 'Centre for climate IT' seminar series - I'm presenting on 24th April in Copenhagen & online (CET) - scroll down for details: ccit.itu.dk/Seminar-series
CCIT Seminar with Neil Selwyn: Digital Degrowth ... perhaps *not* the worst idea on the planet? On April 24th, about a month before his book 'Digital Degrowth' comes out, we are joined by Professor Neil Selwyn (Monash University, Lund University) for a talk titled "Digital degrowth ... perhaps *not* the worst idea on the planet?" Abstract: In 2020, Wired magazine declared degrowth to be ‘the worst idea on the planet’. Three years later, Marc Andreessen called out degrowth as a ‘bad idea’ and an ‘enemy’ to technological progress. Taking inspiration from Andrew Ahern’s observation that ‘degrowth pisses off all the right people’, Neil Selwyn considers what degrowth and post-growth thinking might have to offer those looking to radically break away from the destructive modes of digital excess that have come to define the first few decades of the twenty-first century. In short, this talk considers a deceptively simple question – how might degrowth thinking support ambitions of sustainable, scaled-down and equitable ways of living with digital technologies? After first sketching out what a philosophy of digital degrowth might look like, this talk will lay out various instances where alternate post-capitalist forms of digital technology are already being realized around the world. It also highlights a range of emerging ideas, innovations and experiments that point to possible future forms of ‘radically sustainable computing’. While we should not be naive about the difficulties of any such change, Neil concludes that solid foundations already are in place from which to establish digital degrowth as a social movement that is locally determined and aligned with a wider societal decoupling from economic growth and capitalist imperatives. Where: AUD 3 and online When: April 24th from 12.00 – 13.00
March 15, 2025 at 7:38 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
"Teachers’ sensemaking around their use (and non-use) of GenAI" - f2f seminar at Lund University on May 21st ... we'll be presenting early findings on what Swedish teachers are doing with GenAI ... if you're in the Lund/Malmö/Copenhagen area do join us! www.uvet.lu.se/nyheter/kale...
Seminar title: Teachers’ sensemaking around their use (and non-use) of GenAI Abstract: In the absence of official guidelines and institutional strategies, teachers around the world have been left largely to make sense of generative AI (genAI) tools for themselves. We present empirical work from teachers across six Swedish and Australian schools to illustrate the complex ways in which staff are beginning to work with genAI tools – pointing to the influence of pedagogical knowledge, professional self-understandings, contextual awareness, values and emotions. On one hand, these teachers’ circumspect approaches might be celebrated as ensuring that genAI tools complement (rather than compromise) key tenets of public education and the standing of the expert teacher. On the other hand, we also consider what might risk becoming lost through these interactions, and the benefits of supporting broader workforce-wide conversations that develop shared understandings around the roles that these new technologies should be allowed to play in contemporary schooling. 21st May 2025 - 13:15 to 15:00 in LUX B:237 on the Lund University campus.
March 15, 2025 at 7:23 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
"Future schools and the energy implications of AI in education: A review of scenarios and method for engaging young people in futures thinking" ... a brand new open-access article from our AI/energy/school futures project!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Abstract: ‘School of the future’ scenarios remain a popular means of animating policy, industry and public debates around issues relating to technological, economic, societal and environmental change. To date, these scenarios rarely involve the perspectives of school students. Purpose of the research: This study explores how scenarios can be used to engage school children in futures thinking, particularly regarding the uncertainties surrounding artificial intelligence and its environmental and energy implications. The research aims to develop participatory tools to help diversify future narratives about schools and foster young people’s ‘futures literacy’ and critical thinking about the future. Major findings: Analysis of 70 ‘future schools’ scenarios from 18 existing industry reports revealed limited approaches to climate change, energy and environmental implications of AI technology. These findings informed the design of scenario cards for engaging young people in imagining their own future schools, challenging dominant policy and industry expectations. Conclusions: The study contributes to knowledge in education and energy by combining scenario development from both sectors. It progresses all stakeholders towards desirable and resilient ‘AI energy futures’ by involving children and young people in the development of futures scenarios, addressing a gap in current scenario-building practices which have typically excluded student perspectives.
February 26, 2025 at 7:46 AM
neilselwyn.bsky.social
I was feeling pretty sick, but was a pleasure to get to talk at the Barcelona EdTech Congress today - I'm really glad that events like this are now open to broad discussions around the messiness of ed-tech ... we need to balance the discourse!
February 19, 2025 at 6:35 PM