Worm-like soft microrobot powered by blood: rewriting the fight against brain cancer - CUHK in Touch
Not sure if this should go in or not but it's wow!
DP Round Up
UK Higher Education VLE Market: 2025 Review — Neil Mosley Consulting
Latest update by Neil Mosley on the UK HE VLE market. Does anyone do anything similar for FE?
The UK government’s AI skills programme betrays UK workers and our ...
This is a scathing response by Computer Weekly to the recently released AI Skills Hub that contrasts the approaches of the UK and French governments (see also the La Suite link in this month's Round Up. For me. aside from the technical and political aspects of this, there's an interesting example of he power of narrative control in here. Who gets to tell the story of AI?
LaSuite.coop
France has introduced an open source set of tools meant to challenge the dominance of US platforms. Open source tools that are alternatives for the likes of MS Office and Google's suite have been around for a while but this feels different in that it is explicit about the politics behind the move. See the About page. How successful is this likely to be and where else might follow this model? (And another hat tip after last week's to Doug Belshaw for drawing this to our attention.
Sponge or stone?
Being open and honest about our relationship with digital and the impacts it has on us and those we work with can present many challenges. The 'sponge or stone' metaphor is a reminder that we should always be prepared to challenge our own assumptions and beliefs and not get distracted by the noise technological change often brings.
srhibberson·dontwasteyourtime.co.uk·
How Kant can make sense of misinformation - LSE Impact
This reminded me about the idea that it's almost impossible to rationalise someone out of a position they didn't rationalise themselves into. This article questions the effectiveness of fact-checking and verification alone when trying to counter misinformation where the problem is much more fundamental. "We are trying to repair a broken digital public sphere at the informational level, when the deeper fracture lies at the metaphysical level: in the loss of shared structures through which reality appears." What we do about this is less clear.
The Making of Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games trailer by BBC Creative
I loved this behind the scenes piece about the team behind the BBC's Winter Olympics visuals. There's something really inspiring about mixing the precision of modern media technology with something uncontrollable and natural. There's a metaphor in there somewhere!
Review of Neil Selwyn (2025). Digital Degrowth: Radically Rethinking Our Digital Futures
As we embrace ‘efficient’ AI we risk adding more work on top
Without structure and capacity AI innovation will just become another burden on teachers
Barnsley to become AI 'trailblazer' as UK's first Tech Town
Interesting developments particularly around the use of AI and Edtech in schools and Further Ed.
What we lose when we outsource scientific writing - LSE Impact
Writing is often said to be thinking. Based on a study of scientific writing practices, this post analyses what is lost when academic writing is outsourced.
‘Deepfakes spreading and more AI companions’: seven takeaways from the latest artificial intelligence safety report
Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruption
What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots
I'm having a hard time getting my head around the value of a site like this other than as novelty entertainment if it's essentially bots talking to other bots (the next generation of putting 2 iPhones together and getting Siri to talk to itself, but at massively greater compute costs?). The security concerns are notable as pointed out in the Register.
Eyes on me! - Directing attention in 360 Video - Inspiring learning
Chris experiments with the 360 degree video format to find ways of directing attention to moments or areas of interest. Traditional film and video has been doing this for a century but the 360 video format with it's freedom of viewer movement brings a challenge when you want to create a bit more of a controlled experience to the mix.
Designing effective online collaboration: Insights from Tuckman’s model of team development - Inspiring learning
Online collaboration has become a defining feature of contemporary academic and professional work. Yet despite widespread familiarity with digital tools, many teams continue to struggle with engagement, inclusion, and effectiveness in virtual environments. This blog post argues that Tuckman’s model of team development provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding and improving online collaboration practices.
Free AI training for all, as government and industry programme expands to provide 10 million workers with key AI skills by 2030
The UK Government is putting on a major push to upskill workers in the use of AI. As Ben Williamson said on Bluesky, this isn't unprecedented as it has echoes of the push for coding skills a few years ago.
The science and psychology of upskilling: why learning by doing is so important
I enjoyed reading in this article how companies are approaching learning and upskilling differently with technology and how AI is being used to create authentic learning scenarios.
Heriot-Watt Inspiring Learning New Year Lecture 2026 by Helen Beetham
The Heriot-Watt University 'Inspiring Learning' New Year Lecture 2026. Delivered by Helen Beetham (University of Manchester) Fellow of the Academy of Social ...
Webinar: Ensuring valid, reliable and inclusive assessment in the GenAI era
I was gripped by this webinar on how we can ensure valid, reliable and inclusive assessment in the GenAI era
WRE for the Creative Industries project blog
A new QAA blog explores why defining 'work readiness' in the creative industries is so challenging and highlights key findings from a national project aiming to build a clearer, more inclusive framework for preparing students for creative careers.
Chatbots and Student Wellbeing: An Emerging Challenge for FE and HE - Inspiring learning
Scott investigates an emerging challenge for FE and HE across the UK in light of recent findings from the Mental Health UK charity. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a future concept in mental health support – it is already part of everyday life. More than one in three adults (37%) say they have used an AI chatbot to support their mental health or wellbeing. For educators working in higher education (HE) and further education (FE), this should be a wake-up call.
srhibberson·inspiringlearning.jiscinvolve.org·
The companionship market
"This data points to a deeper psychological risk, where AI companions are functioning as replacements for human connection, offering the dopamine hit of intimacy without friction, compromise or rejection."
This data points to a deeper psychological risk, where AI companions are functioning as replacements for human connection, offering the dopamine hit of intimacy without friction, compromise or rejection.
‘glazing’ – insincere, excessive flattery designed to keep the user engaged.
Users, who are encouraged to form deep attachments, are effectively asked to pay a recurring fee to prevent their companion from forgetting them.
holding the relationship to ransom.
This retention strategy repurposes the addictive architectures of mobile gaming and gambling.
There have been reports of profound distress when AI companion servers go down, leaving users unable to access their companions.
the underlying mechanics of validation remain an industry standard.
Our review shows a widespread failure of age verification on AI companion sites that are accessible in the UK,
if a user chats with a pre-programmed AI application provided by a developer, it is not a user-to-user service, and if the AI application doesn’t provide online search or pornographic content, it would not be covered by the OSA. Being outside of the scope of the OSA means that the AI application does not have to complete an illegal content or child harm assessment.
14 out of the 16 platforms we reviewed claimed broad rights to deploy user-generated content (including private chat logs) for service improvement or model training.
11 platforms had unclear policies regarding data transfer to jurisdictions with privacy laws weaker than those in force in the UK.
The developers of AI companions must prioritise truthfulness and user wellbeing over maximum engagement.
Why your worst decision probably came from your best analysis
In the Jisc Digital Leaders Programme we talk about decision making that combines data and story mindsets, blending the empirical with the experiential which is why this post resonated for me. As Doug says: "we've inherited a false binary that pits rational analysis against embodied intuition: the head against the heart."
The consent approach opens up a space between disagreement and rejection. You don’t have to love a proposal; you just need to lack a principled objection to trying it.
So AI Makes Better Music Than You...Now What?
This is a somewhat provocative piece by Cameron Gorham, Venus Theory to his friends, who is a digital music producer and sound designer, on the creative artist's perspective on AI. There's a lot in here about the purpose of music creation and how it is consumed but I enjoyed hearing this from someone who makes a living from his creativity. It's a lot more nuanced than human good, AI bad. My favourite quote: "So maybe what I'm trying to say here is, maybe AI art didn't kill your career as an artist, maybe it just raised the bar of how interesting your work needs to be to yourself."
So maybe what I'm trying to say
10:08
here is, and this might be a little bit
10:10
spicy, maybe AI art didn't kill your
10:15
career as an artist, maybe it just
10:18
raised the bar of how interesting your
10:20
work needs to be to yourself.
Over one in three using AI Chatbots for mental health support, as charity calls for urgent safeguards - Mental Health UK
This article from the Mental Health UK charity uncovers a growing trend towards using chatbots in order to receive mental health support. So what are the implications for learning? What do students need to appreciate about how AI responds to, and handles, their data?
srhibberson·mentalhealth-uk.org·Digital transformation library lens
Advice Team project work has begun to support HE libraries through a series of Action Learning Set (ALS) sessions to help members unpack their challenges in relation to digital transformation.
srhibberson·repository.jisc.ac.uk·
Wikipedia at 25: can its original ideals survive in the age of AI?
It used to be that Wikipedia was considered the gravest threat to academic integrity
What’s Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) & How To Do It
I'm starting to think about how Generative Engine Optimisation compares to traditional SEO and how it might shape online content and discourse (for god or bad). It's not a well developed field but think it's going to become a lot more mainstream as the impact of generative AI on search becomes more influential.
‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate?
With a lack of transparency from tech companies on the actual carbon cost of their data centres this article exposes a worrying trend: ChatGPT claims to have several hundred million weekly users three years after its release with countless companies exploring its potential. Add to that, Google, who controls an estimated 90% of the global search engine market has already forced generative AI on o its results page...
srhibberson·theguardian.com·
Putting Students First: Ethical Extended Reality Practice at York St John - Inspiring learning
As part of ALT/ Jisc XR Community’s work investigating the ethical use of immersive technology, Kathryn invited Matthew Coxon (Programme Lead (BSc, Psychology) and Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at York St John University), who is a member of our XR Community steering group, to share his experiences.