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Cloud-based vs self-hosted messaging: Which do you prefer?
Kathrin, OEGlobal Connect, 2026/06/18

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This is such a great question I'm going to post it here: "Do you prefer cloud-based platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat, or do you use a self-hosted alternative? like Apphitect, Rocketchat, or MirrorFly." I would imagine the vast majority of people use the cloud-based solutions, and may not have even heard of the hosted solutions. Obviously, the two modes fit different use cases. I would ideally lean toward self-hosted, but have in fact always used cloud-hosted. So I need to think a lot about what this question means to the people who are answering it.

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Writing Was Never a Test of Who Could Think.
Abi Awomosu, How Not to Use AI, 2026/06/18

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There are some nuggets of goodness in this article that is far longer than it needs to be. The first is right near the beginning: "AI is not a tool. It's actually a medium." I like that recasting; AI can be used to create, express and distribute our ideas and thoughts even if we struggle with an inflexible and linear medium like language. But what does creating in AI look like? There are some good ideas: an emphasis on both speaking and listening, the idea of 'flaw-speak', which is the deliberate degrading of one's speech to avoid being perceived as AI, 'Algo-speak', "where the reader we were writing for stopped being a person and became a system," and almost exactly half way through, a list of things people "actually do" when using AI in writing (it's more than just cut and paste). The author warns at the beginning that the article is AI-assisted; I thought it would be really funny if, near the end, the author recanted, and said it was all human after all. Alas, that never happened.

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The Fable of AI in Education
Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, 2026/06/18

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The term 'tokenomics' has already been defined to apply to blockchain, but I'm going to apply it in a new context, to describe the new and emerging science of minimizing the use of tokens while maximizing AI utility. Tokenomics will be a hot topic of discussion on university campuses because, as Marc Watkins notes in this article, there is no realistic path forward to providing all students with access to advanced AI. "That alone," he writes, "should make even the most staunch AI critic pause and ask who, aside from the already affluent and extremely resourced institutions, will have such access and what this means for opportunities for all students." (p.s. I am not on board with the new uses and meanings for the word 'jagged').

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The Easier Technology Gets, the More Challenge Matters
George Couros, 2026/06/18

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The core message here, which draws from a Jonathan Haidt TED talk, is that "In a time when technology makes many aspects of our lives much easier, helping students develop the mindset to pursue what is difficult, meaningful, and worthwhile has never been more critical." I find that a bit ironic, because in the world of easy and hard, TED talks are definitely on the side of easy. But I agree with the need to do hard things - that is, for example, why I decided to bikepack, despite being the wrong age and the wrong body shape for anything like that. But - importantly - some things (like, say, buying food, or paying rent) should be easy, and some things are better when they are hard (like say, things that are meaningful, whatever that means). The easy thing is to say "do hard things". The hard thing is to say which things should be hard to do.

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The Current State of Play: AI in Higher Education and the Road Ahead
Tanya Gamby, David Kil, Rachel Koblic, Paul LeBlanc, Mihnea Moldoveanu, George Siemens, EDUCAUSE Review, 2026/06/18

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I mostly agree with what's expressed in this article but I disagree with the tenor, which has the university still providing and the student still consuming. As in this, for example: "The convergence of learning analytics, AI advising systems, early alert platforms, and wellness monitoring has created something genuinely new... the data to support learners holistically is increasingly available. What most institutions lack is the architecture to connect it, the governance to use it responsibly, and the human capacity to act on what it reveals." I'm not seeing the university recognize its need to transform from authority to enabler, which is what it will need to do when expertise is widely distributed.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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