“AI” for the Rest of Us…
A discussion about the impact of machine learning on education and on life. This post introduces the 2026 Tutela webinar series that will be led by John Allan and myself.
2026 - Onward! But first, a look back.
Sunday, December 28, 2025
I’ve been writing and presenting about “artificial intelligence” for a few years now. In 2026, my colleague at Avenue.ca, John Allan, and I will be launching a series of webinars in Tutela.ca dedicated to providing discussion space around this topic for educators in Adult ESL across Canada.
But before I outline the project, I’d like to lay down some ground rules - er, for me, not for you. The only social media I really use is LinkedIn, and occasionally, Facebook.
Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” (at the time, he was focusing on search engines like Google) before the launch of LLMs like ChatGPT really even took root.
“…platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and TikTok start out aiming to please users, but once the companies vanquish competitors, they intentionally become less useful to reap bigger profits” (Wired 2025).
Doctorow envisioned an internet so polluted by profit-driven commercial interests that it essentially becomes useless. One giant vat of slop aimed only at generating click-bait.
Enter ChatGPT
Then along came ChatGPT in November of 2022. If Doctorow thought the internet pre-2022 was already mostly enshittified, what would follow would be no real surprise. (Note: Doctorow wasn’t necessarily looking at the OUTPUT created, whereas I am. His vision of “enshittification” centred mostly on how businesses erode, making the product shittier over time for the consumer who was initially attracted by the free or low-cost services provided. Classic bait and switch.)
The rise of Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, DeepSeek, etc. has infiltrated our inboxes and social media feeds to the point where human-created content seems almost quaint and niche.
Like many others, I experimented with it. Used it to write posts on socials. Took the mercury out of the thermometer, so to speak, and let it roll about in my palm.
To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when we know better, we do better. The discussion we have planned on Tutela.ca will spotlight what we have both learned about “AI”, and open up dialogues for educators to share what they too have discovered.
I can write. I’m not perfect, but I can string my thoughts together somewhat articulately. Being able to write well is one of the things I love most about myself - that, and how self-deprecating/humble I am.
Human-Produced Content
All of that to say, no generative AI will be used to produce any of this TEXT content. I may use it from time to time to generate images, as that’s not a thing I can do on my own and free online image databases like Pixabay don’t always have exactly what I’m looking for (try finding a lama wearing colourful rainbow socks looking soberly out to the middle distance, realistic - and well, you won’t.)
Tutela.ca Webinars
For Canadian ESL and LINC instructors, find us on Tutela.ca. Sign up for the webinars and join in the discussion. Our lens is Canadian, our audience is you: LINC-ESL Newcomer instructors. Combined, John and I have over fifty years of teaching and presenting to educators with an interest in how TECHNOLOGY intersects with our teaching practices.
Some of you will already have ideas and experiences with “AI” in your classrooms. Most of you have experienced it in some form or another (often, in your inboxes or in the writing tasks from our learners which is, alas, not the greatest introduction to “AI”).
Any many of you have already attended presentations, conference workshops and PD on “AI” in education. Sometimes, what is presented can be overly technical, overwhelming. I will outline the details (dates etc) about the Tutela.ca series in the next post.
I’m not a computer scientist. Math and science are not my wheelhouse. I can barely wrap my mind around what “algorithms” are, let alone tokens, Bayesian regression, Markov chains, weights, parameters, etc. This isn’t a webinar series for programmers and scientists, it’s for educators.
It’s “AI” for the rest of us.
-Jen
Note: I’m about to add a collection of my writing on AI. All of these were also published on LinkedIn.
Stay tuned for a more detailed post about our Tutela.ca webinar series.
Resources:
Levey, S. (2025). Can AI Avoid the Enshittification Trap? Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/can-ai-escape-enshittification-trap/