Our Halloween decorations for this year

Got a call this week from a former student who got their dream job. A great reminder of what really matters in my line of work. Research findings fade or are rendered moot (appropriately) by new findings. But the effects we have on students, their families, and their lives are what persist.

In addition to the main paper and symposia tracks, ISLS Annual Meeting also welcomes your proposals for Interactive Tools and Demos, Workshops and Tutorials, and Doctoral/Early Career/Mid-Career/Alt-Academic Workshop. Deadline Nov 15. See more at 2026.isls.org/calls-for-pr...

Universal Design for Learning is a great way to think about supporting learners - but did you know it's also a great way to think about doing research? In this podcast episode, Dr. Samantha Daley talks about her wonderful article on using UDL to inform research. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

"Our results...highlight the importance of PA design...to use PAs as a motivational tool, it is not enough to simply include a character, but rather to think carefully about its function in the learning environment, its purpose in the learning process, and its design." #PsychSciSky #EduSky

You're Invited ✉️ Join us on October 23 from 12:30 to 3 p.m. for a celebration of our Campus-Recognized Centers: 🔸 Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA) 🔹 Center for Research and Innovation in Technology-Enhanced Learning (ITEL) RSVP by 10/15: https://bit.ly/4o04CVf

Excited to share this article co-authored with @kalanicraig.bsky.social where we describe our process of Design Based Humanities Research (DBHR), combining the tradition of DBR from Learning Sciences with Digital History and Design methods journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/notebook-...

This is a friendly reminder that research paper submissions for the ISLS 2026 Annual Meeting are due in one month - October 5. You can see the full calls on the in-progress website now: 2026.isls.org

Well, this is a big deal in my neck of the woods. If you typically applied to NSF EDU AISL, CSforAll, DRK-12, TD, or CORE, this is your new opportunity. Proposals accepted at any time. Expected awards up to $750k for up to 3 years. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Damn the landscape for educators this year is bleak. Don’t get bogged down in business as usual. Take care of your students, and yourself, and direct the brilliant energy and passion of your students towards things that matter—whatever that might be for your community.

The ISLS 2026 First Call for Papers is available on the ISLS website now! A dedicated annual meeting website is coming soon. www.isls.org/news/isls-20...

An hour of trying to get anything useful out of the XFinity AI assistant regarding my internet connection not working has confirmed all of my fears about AI in education or really anything that matters. I would have found a magic 8-ball more useful.

Thrilled to share that as of August 16, I’ll be a Professor and Department Head in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Super excited for this wonderful opportunity with a truly amazing community!!

"I don't always barf, but when I do, it's on your favorite jacket."

Let's make our work a little more inclusive 🤍 Excited to finally share "Realizations & re-mediations: Enabling expression and interaction in collective embodied activities for children with disabilities" in Learning, Culture, & Social Interaction 🙌 Shoutout to @jdanish.bsky.social for the support!

#chatchemistry #iteachchemistry #chemistry

If you are a learning scientist who happened to miss the Closing Session of #isls25, you might want to know that the submission deadline for #isls26 is expected to be October 5–significantly earlier than in years past. 📢 pass it on!

Come hang out at our ANNUAL ILSSA SOCIAL on Thursday, June 12th, 19:00-22:00 at 🍻 The Thirsty Scholar 🍻 🍕 Free pizza available & drinks available for purchase 🍕 Add us on Whova, join the Discord via bit.ly/ILSSA, and share with your travel buddies! See you soon!

Excited to share this new article co-authored with @zhoum56.bsky.social and @morganavickery.bsky.social: “Goals in Motion: How Emergent Embodied Goals Support Elementary Students’ Mechanistic Reasoning in Collaborative Modeling Activities" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Apple Watch apparently doesn’t realize it is a bit odd to just stand up in the middle of a dissertation defense. Sorry … gonna keep sitting here.

Member of my team made amazing 2-meme descriptions of the entire lab. Here is mine! I’m pretty happy with this being how I am viewed. To be clear, I am mostly sure the email one is because I send emails to protect the team, not because I email the team angry emails!!

They say that those who can & cannot use #AI will fuel the next digital divide. There's a corollary to that they're missing— Those who are able to think & problem solve WITHOUT AI vs those totally reliant on AI for their knowledge work will fuel the next intellect/knowledge/economic divide.

“A decline in research funding will result in fewer inventions, which means fewer innovations will get to market...I imagine that in 10 years, there will be fewer drugs approved than there are today because of these constraints" www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

#NetworkScience #ComputationalSociology

As someone working in / with / teaching network visualization and also who is in higher ed … this is really cool.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Just want to highlight this. The email contains important info that is especially relevant for those who have been impacted by (mostly US) grant cancellations. Hopefully the new flexibility will be helpful for folks navigating extremely challenging circumstances.

ICYMI, new book, open access, it’s a great day to share and read!

Is text data? A quick blog post, co-authored with some of our teacher collaborators about our ongoing efforts to bring network visualization and data literacy into history and ELA classrooms! digitalpromise.org/2025/04/25/i...

🧵 Here is Earth's rotation realized in an unusual way: using a camera scanning the landscape of Tivoli, Namibia, Bartosz Wojczyński focused on the sky. He created a timelapse spanning 24 h that has a focal point in the sky rather than on the ground. ➡️ apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap20070... 🔭 🧪 #galactic

I have a new op-ed out in Visible Magazine…Never thought I’d need to go into my literary dystopian bag, but here we are… visiblemagazine.com/when-opinion...

In lab today we talked about meta-reviews, authorship order, a play-based pedagogical design, and then because it is close to the end of the semester, we played games. Moose, match, mayhem, and Concept were both super fun, and helped us clear our heads and relax a bit! Was awesome.

Really appreciating the #StarterPackNoAI movement www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/...

Reading semi-final dissertations takes a lot of time, but it is sooo satisfying to see amazing work being done by the next generation of scholars. Gives me loads of hope!! Super proud of all my students!

WATCH: Elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park react to Monday's 5.2 magnitude earthquake that shook San Diego County. The elephants formed an "alert circle" meant to protect the young and the entire herd from any threats, according to the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

I have new progressive lenses, and they are weird, but also it is nice to suddenly see some things more clearly. My son didn’t believe I could now detect lies, though. Oh well …

@bahhumburg.bsky.social and I wrote a blog post about some of our thinking around how to make sure educational AI Conversation Agents are ethically developed … engageai.org/2025/04/07/t...

Let us know if you need a pdf! Thanks for sharing and reading.

Love the feeling when you’ve geared up to do X things for work, and discover you only needed X-1 and you are done!

counterpoint: human learning is relational, and teachers offer human connection in a way that AI never can

We've passed 300 followers for the new Kickstarter campaign for our game, Primacy: A Coyote & Crow Card game. Help us get to 2000 by the time we launch? You can sign up to be notified here and help keep Indigenous games coming: bit.ly/4h1plUK #NativeSky #IndigenousFuturism #boardgames #ttrpg #rpg

I’m old enough to remember when it was not commonplace for all meetings to start with… Me: How’s it going? Colleague: It’s all falling apart, but otherwise….

Planning our ELA network on allusions and the teacher is confident this is how kids will label the audience that knows of Romeo and Juliet …

Watching a classroom teacher use net.create (joshuadanish.com/projects/net...) to teach about roman history right, having kids connect elements of Roman history to modern day elements that they see as influenced / related. It’s really satisfying how they are discussing / connecting ideas!

We’re celebrating the latest drop in the affect and emotion special issue of Science Education, edited by me and @lamajaber.bsky.social — Open the thread below for the full list of contributions so far! Thanks for reading and sharing.

Spending a lot of time and energy in my research helping elementary students learn how to use evidence to support their claims about science. Then I look at the news and worry that supporting claims with evidence is no-longer a thing people want to do? Maybe it never was outside the ideal, but….

We've extended our deadline for MENTORS to Fri, Feb 28th! PhD candidates, postdocs, and junior faculty are encouraged to apply! Apply here! bit.ly/ilssa_mentor...

The collection contains some great #EMCA stuff. My MMU colleague Alison Pilnick on medicine is one highlight. @robinjsmith.bsky.social on MCA another. + Lena Jayyusu on accounts, Patrick Watson on cops & courts, Lorenza Mondada on transcription & many more. 2/2 www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...