Bookmarks: Week of Oct 19 - Oct 25, 2026

Back to the Past: a URL Trick/Gizmo to find any site’s first presence in the Internet Arhive – CogDogBlog

cogdogblog.com

A super, super simple URL hack that finds the oldest Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot for any URL. Including a bookmarklet to automate the lookup. Very slick. Very Cogdog.

Tags: person:Alan Levine, Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, bookmarklet

Local Wikipedia

edjefferson.com

Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you.

What an amazing, and simple, hack to show wikipedia pages that have locations set near any given location.

Tags: wikipedia, local, via:Alan Levine

Ten Years With a Chainsaw on the Roof

canvasinsider.blog

(the usual focus on providing support to instructors is to make sure they get the right documentation and instructions so they can do it themselves, because of course it can’t scale to have the central support team do things for instructors. but sometimes the numbers show that doing some of these things is way more efficient than having each instructor figure out what they need, where to look for info, who to ask, how to parse the instructions, how to navigate a part of the LMS they see once a year, etc etc.)

Selected text

I was naturally worried about opening the floodgates, so I ran some numbers. In 2016 we got about 70 emails from faculty needing help with cross-listing. Seventy times 30 seconds is about 35 minutes, spread across the two or three weeks when faculty get their courses ready for the next quarter. Now compare that against however long each of those 70 teachers would spend reading a help article, trying it, getting it wrong, and emailing me anyway. Revelation: I was saving the university hours of cumulative time by doing the work myself. As a service.

Tags: LMS, administration, support, person:Chris Powell

Men in tech #YesAllMen- media.ccc.de

media.ccc.de

This will be an uncomfortable account of what men actually said and did to one woman, over one career. Ask any woman in the room. They’ve got similar stories. This isn’t uncommon, it’s a fucking Tuesday.

I’m not going to suggest solutions. That’s on the men in the audience. I ask you to reckon with what is happening around you. Talk to your friends about it. See it, say it, fucking sort it.

The work is on you, men.

Tags: person:Jo Franchetti, video

Too Many Priorities? Why Your Team Needs One That Wins Ties

derekneighbors.com

Too many priorities leave your team settling every tie in private. Why a list of ten dodges the real decision, and how one priority lets people choose fast.

Interesting entrepreneurial take on prioritizing (or not). And I hate that everything smells like AI text. I have no idea if Derek used AI to write this. It doesn’t matter. It smells like it. Everything smells like it.

(cue Agent Smith’s line… “I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it.” Sigh.)

Tags: entrepreneurship, priorities, strategy, person:Derek Neighbors

Schulich researcher says ‘fire is at our feet’ as race to build AI data centres rages on | News | University of Calgary

ucalgary.ca

Laleh Behjat believes it’s time to reconsider the pace of our technological progress

Tags: person:Laleh Behjat, AI, UToday, UCalgary

AI Is Killing Higher Ed. Here’s How to Save It.

openquestionsblog.substack.com

What university administrators must do about rampant cheating with ChatGPT

I mean. It’s one possible approach. It definitely can’t be just dumped on instructors to solve on their own. Institutions need to handle this more systematically as an ecosystem rather than as a Policy or Platform issue.

Tags: via:Samantha Brennan, via:Erin Aspenlieder, academic integrity, AI, strategy, person:Victor Kumar

Universities are making different choices about AI. How will they fit with their public missions?

theconversation.com

A scan of publicly documented AI initiatives at research-intensive universities suggests universities may need to invest more in teaching.

Tags: person:Nadia Delanoy, person:Guy Levesque, UCalgary, AI, strategy

You know more about navigating AI than you think – Teaching for Learning @ McGill University

teachingblog.mcgill.ca

Some good, non-tech-centric guidelines from McGill for instructors re: approaching genAI.

A few gentle reminders for instructors As you think about your teaching this Fall, questions about generative AI (gen AI) are likely coming up. “What do I need to know?” “Should I be using it?” “What does it mean for my students and my assessments?” With so much changing so quickly, it can be hard […]

Tags: McGill University, AI, guidelines

University of Glasgow Assures Students No Submitted Work Will Be Used To Train AI

glasgowguardian.co.uk

The University also referenced its current data protection agreement with the platform, offering reassurance that “no Glasgow student work can be used by Turnitin to train AI, now or in the future”.

Turnitin is the University of Glasgow’s primary tool for originality checking when students submit written coursework and online exams. The software is currently used to assess the similarity of submissions in order to detect potential plagiarism.

In the wake of the platform’s proposed EULA changes, the University of Southampton took a different approach, announcing that it will not renew its contract with Turnitin after the 2026/27 academic year, and will begin phasing out its use immediately.

Tags: via:Ian Linkletter, TurnItIn, AI, plagiarism, University of Glasgow

When an 89.4 Becomes a Crisis: Rethinking Precision in College Grading - Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

facultyfocus.com

Explore how college grading systems influence student learning, motivation, and anxiety, and discover ways instructors can prioritize mastery over points.

Tags: assessment, grades, grading, Faculty Focus, person:Christopher Morales

The AI Challenge is Coming into Focus | HESA

higheredstrategy.com

There’s a LOT to disagree with in this oversimplified assessment of assessment, but I think the narrative is going to become more prevalent regardless…

Something big is going to have to give, soon.

Why soon? Because I believe very firmly that AI is putting universities and colleges in something very close to mortal danger. If universities can’t reliably confirm that their degrees are certifying some degree of actual learning (as opposed to ability to query ChatGPT), why would employers continue to trust degrees? And, if degrees aren’t trusted, why would governments and students continue to pay for universities?

Tags: EHR Trends, person:Alex Usher, AI, assessment, hype