GETUP-UAW organizers met today with Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su as part of a group of Philadelphia higher ed and hospital workers organizing in unions at our workplaces. Philly is a city of education and healthcare workers, and the Department of Labor has our backs!

thrilled to see AI skepticism taken up in a sci-ed journal! beautifully written, will be thinking about this quote for a long time: "unexpected and unique ideas may be the most useful for deepening student thinking... recognizing these ideas is crucial to promoting equity"

“Microsoft increased worldwide water consumption by a whopping 34%—up to almost 1.7 billion gallons annually—last year, which … is most likely due to increased AI training. That's dwarfed by Google, which used 5.6 billion gallons last year, a 20% jump.” futurism.com/critics-micros…

BREAKING: 4,500 graduate workers at the University of Pennsylvania are forming a union as GETUP-UAW and are joining UAW.

1. Kids must be able to play & learn online without being endlessly tracked by companies looking to hoard and monetize their data. Today FTC proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule to further protect kids' data. ftc.gov/news-events/ne…

stepping out of the shadows to say I am out here sharing ideas at NARST and would love others to engage w/ me—At 4:45 I'm presenting a lit review that uncovers how infrequently we have researched students' interactions with one another in computer-mediated sci classrooms #narst24

We're having an election! On April 16 & 17, graduate student workers have the opportunity to tell that Penn administration that we want a say in our working conditions. Pledge to vote YES today: tinyurl.com/GETUPvoteYES pic.x.com/rXJqMLG4mm

We are graduate student workers from over 100 departments and programs across Penn. On April 16 & 17, we vote YES to form a union in order to negotiate improvements to our working conditions and have a stronger voice for graduate workers at Penn. Join us! tinyurl.com/GETUPvoteYES

.Center for Democracy & Technology's Kristin Woelfel said she's started to think of school's web filters as a “digital book ban." “You can see whether a book is on a shelf,” she said. By contrast, decisions about which websites or categories to block happen under the radar. themarkup.org/digital-book-b…

"AI’s voracious need for computing power is threatening to overwhelm energy sources... by 2030, the world’s data centers are on course to use more electricity than India" bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

WE WON! This week, over 2000 Penn grad workers cast ballots. After eligible votes were tallied, the final count was 1807 to 97. It's official. The majority of eligible voters turned out to the polls. Penn graduate workers have resoundingly declared: WE WANT A UNION AT PENN!

Graduate student worker-organizer at UPenn: “Building a union changes the way that we relate to each other fundamentally, and building collective power broadens the horizon for what's possible.” jacobin.com/2024/05/gradua…

Breaking the news that I've been selected as a 2024 NAEd/Spencer Dissertation fellow! The fellowship will support my project examining how teachers' work life and instructional practice are shaped by the data demands of edtech platforms. Read more here: naeducation.org/awardee/tess-b…

LA schools invested millions in an AI chatbot for students, overlooking the volatility of edtech startups reselling generative AI. Now the company's collapse raises questions about giving children access to chatbots in edu. NYT👇 Alt text.

#PubDay for my first book, Access Is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality, where I argue the push to ameliorate racial inequality via data-intensive #edtech extracts resources from working-class communities of color here in California. ucpress.edu/books/access-i…

I've long been enjoying reading and lurking on bluesky, and am going to transition to sharing my research and thinking there instead of here. I'm tessbern.bsky.social over there. I hope more educators and ed researchers consider making the same move :)