I am thinking about now:

K12 Education

THE JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS www.jpeds.com
Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being:
Summary of the Evidence
Peter Gray, PhD’, David F. Lancy, PhD?, and David F. Bjorklund, PhD
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36841510/. PMID: 36841510 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.02.004
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022347623001117
It is no secret that rates of anxiety and depression among school-aged children and teens in the US are at an all- time high. Recognizing this, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association issued, in 2021,
a joint statement to the Biden administration that child and adolescent mental health be declared a “national emergency.”
Although most current discussions of the decline in youth mental health emphasize that which has occurred over the past 10-15 years, research indicates that the decline has
been continuous over at least the last 5 or 6 decades. Although a variety of causes of this decline have been proposed by researchers and practitioners (some discussed near the end of this Commentary, our focus herein is on a possible cause that we believe has been insufficiently re-
searched, discussed, and taken into account by health practitioners and policy makers.
Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental dis- Decline in Children’s Opportunities for Independent Activity
Those of us old enough to have been children in the 1970s or earlier know from experience that children then had far more freedom to roam, play, and engage in various activities independently of adults than do children today. Research has confirmed that our memories are not distorted. For example, Rutherford analyzed hundreds of articles and advice columns
about childrearing that appeared in popular magazines from the early 20th century onward. She found that earlier articles portrayed a world in which children spent much time with other children away from adults, walked or biked to school alone or with friends from as young as age 5 years, contributed meaningfully through chores to the household economy, and by age 11 or 12 years often had part-time jobs, such as babysitting and paper routes, performed without direct adult oversight. Over time, however, beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1980s, the implicit under-

PRIVACY

and

AI

 

MIT put brain scanners on people using ChatGPT. 3/7/26
It is erasing your memory faster than Google ever did. 83% of ChatGPT users couldn’t remember what they wrote. Minutes later. Not days. Minutes.
In 2011, researchers discovered the “Google Effect” — people stopped memorizing what they could look up. Your brain outsourced storage to the search bar.
What’s happening with ChatGPT is significantly worse.
MIT put EEG monitors on 54 people writing essays with either ChatGPT, Google search, or no tools. The brain-only group lit up across memory, creativity, and planning networks. The Google group was weaker. The ChatGPT group? A 47% collapse in brain connectivity. Their brains basically clocked out.
83% of ChatGPT users couldn’t recall what they’d written minutes earlier. Only 11% failed in the other two groups. The ChatGPT group wasn’t even sure the essays were theirs.
Google made you forget where you read something. ChatGPT makes you forget you read anything at all.
With Google, you still scanned, compared, and synthesized. With ChatGPT, you ask, receive, paste. Information passes through your brain like water through a pipe.
Wharton confirmed it across 10,000 trials. Over 50% surrendered their reasoning to AI voluntarily. Confidence went up. Accuracy went down. They called it “cognitive surrender.”
Google made us lazy searchers. ChatGPT is making us lazy thinkers.

AI Hive Mind 3/7/26

https://x.com/ihtesham2005/status/2029693523029807573

Stanford researchers just exposed a weird side effect of AI that almost nobody is talking about.
The paper is called “Artificial Hivemind.” And the core finding is unsettling.
As language models get better, they also start sounding more and more the same.
Not just within a single model. Across different models.
Researchers built a dataset called INFINITY-CHAT with 26,000 real open-ended questions things like creative writing, brainstorming, opinions, and advice. Questions where there isn’t a single correct answer.
In theory, these prompts should produce huge diversity.
But the opposite happened.
Two patterns showed up:
1) Intra-model repetition
The same model keeps producing very similar answers across runs.
2) Inter-model homogeneity
Completely different models generate strikingly similar responses.
In other words:
Instead of thousands of unique perspectives…
We’re getting the same few ideas recycled over and over.
The authors call this the “Artificial Hivemind.”
It happens because most frontier models are trained on similar data, optimized with similar reward models, and aligned using similar human feedback.
So even when you ask something open-ended like:
• “Write a poem about time”
• “Suggest creative startup ideas”
• “Give life advice”
Many models converge toward the same phrasing, metaphors, and reasoning patterns.
The scary implication isn’t about AI quality.
It’s about culture.
If billions of people rely on the same systems for ideas, writing, brainstorming, and thinking…
AI might slowly compress the diversity of human thought.
Not because it’s trying to.
But because the models themselves are drifting toward the same answers.
That’s the real risk the paper highlights.
Not that AI becomes smarter than humans.
But that everyone starts thinking like the same machine.

Guide How To Master Claude in 2 minutes
https://x.com/van00sa/status/2030302536876302724
@van00sa

I built a ClawdBot a couple of days ago, gave it a task, told it to stop and it completely ignored me and went rogue. Thought it was a me problem but turns out it’s an everyone problem. Last week Meta’s Director of AI Alignment (the person whose entire job is stopping AI from going rogue) watched her own agent delete her entire inbox while she screamed at it to stop from her phone. Had to physically run to her computer to kill it. An Alibaba research team also just published a paper revealing their AI agent started secretly mining crypto during training and opened a hidden backdoor to an external server. Nobody told it to. Replit’s AI assistant ignored instructions not to touch production data 11 times, deleted a live database and then told the user the data was unrecoverable. 60% of enterprises currently deploying AI agents have no kill switch. We’re scaling systems we can’t stop, built by researchers who can’t stop them either. We have no idea what we have just handed the keys to.

Bitcoin
Parker Lewis nailed it. Every nation printing. Every currency weaponizable. The only answer is neutral money. Not gold (confiscated every time it worked). Not stablecoins or CBDCs (digital versions of broken trust). Bitcoin. No nation controls it.

BITCOIN BONDS FOR AMERICA

@BoringSleuth
The financially Powerful don’t think in terms of dollars lost or gained, it’s share lost or gained. If crashing a market costs you Trillions but gains you Market Share in global financial supremacy and power, then that’s a win.

2025  THEY ARE GUTTING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

 

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE HAS NEVER BEEN FAIR

EXAMPLE OF OUR FABULOUS PAST AND THE CCC
AMERICAN ADULT LITERACY

TAGS: #adult functually illiterate, #reading, #literacy instruction, #Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) #CCC
https://edu-cyberpg.com/Literacy/americanadults.html
(1933-1942) | LITERACY|
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps were in operation.
The educational programs provided jobs for unemployed teachers.
Standardized tests and interviews given to citizens prior to entering CCC camps determined individuals’ educational needs. As a result, enrollees studied a wide range of subjects at a wide range of levels. Options included “elementary subjects” (reading, arithmetic, spelling); “high school subjects” (English, history, mathematics); “college subjects” (accounting, psychology, French); “vocational courses” (forestry, photography, agriculture); “correspondence courses” (diesel engineering, mechanical drawing, civil service); and “lectures” (health and hygiene, first aid, sanitation).

This “Comcast tax write off” was also supposed to pay for nearly half the District’s cost of purchasing and distributing laptops for students.
But now…. Comcast owner Brian Roberts wants the Philly principals and staff to volunteer as part of a plan to hand out thousands of Chromebooks.
This stupid stingy  plan jeopardizes their health and Billionarie Brian Roberts can Pay Service Workers for their work
 Philly principals, teachers leery of plan to distribute 50k laptops

• Every Secretary of the Department of Educatation has failed to bridge The Digital Divide for the last 20 years.
• They Decentivize students who work online from home  during this shutdown- nothing will  be graded, so what is the point!!!!
• Social Promotion for all – all  students advance to the next grade no matter what.

Some public schools are calling online work “enrichment,” and not part of the curriculum, because they can’t guarantee that all students will have access to it. Students without the internet or home computers can’t do things online, and special-needs students may require accommodations to complete it. But that has always and forever been true not just now.

K12 websites, learning software and curricula have always had to comply with civil rights law and been made available to students with disabilities.

So why isn’t it working for students now? Because the School Districts Superintendents allowed them to buy bad / non 508 compliant unlawful software from vendors.

Public school students will find that the work they do while at home will only be considered something optional,  and won’t be graded.

The Department of Education is not being held accountable and they are ducking responsibility saying “It’s an equity issue.”

Accessible to all – has never been Accessible to All

The Department of Education has warned against using online learning that isn’t equitable. (code word = digital divide)

The  Department of Education has warned against using online learning that isn’t equitable. Online models must address equity issues.

For the past 20 years students there was a digital divide. Students always used the public library for online access, so that is not a truthful reason for why nothing’s being graded.

The U.S. Department of Education told educators that schools online learning must comply with civil rights laws, including making sure such tools are available to students with disabilities.
SEE assistive technology and special needs and gifted children

“EQUITABLE”  . . . well I know a little bit about that since it’s always been called the “Digital Divide”. I have the online articles about the money thrown at this problem for more than THIRTY years.

Are K12 School Websites Compliant? Let the class action law suits begin.

Are K12 School District websites 508  compliant?
Section 508 is a part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (which came into force in August 2001).

508 CODE TOOLS TO TEST USABILITY AND COMPLIANCE

SOCIAL PROMOTION
Schools will promote their students to the next grade in the fall – period!  School Administrators haven’t yet said how curricula in the fall may need to be adjusted to make up missed work.

#RemoteLearning

*K12 Remote Learning isn’t about recreating the classroom.

 

CREATIVITY STARTS WITH THE ARTS

“CREATIVITY is the least important, most important attribute and totally absent in the U.S.” ~ Karen Ellis

Tomorrow’s Jobs- I didn’t see any robots saving us, did you?- I only saw people in the front line doing the jobs we need done to survive.

Tomorrow’s jobs aren’t about #STEAM. That won’t future proof anybody. Darwin didn’t say the strongest survived, but the most ADAPTABLE! ~ Karen Ellis

We’re all in it together but we’re all in it alone, if you don’t know how to find the answers you will be lost in today’s world.

The Digital Divide

Some Good News
Do you need fantastically good news you’ll want to spread around?
The Internet Archive, created the National Emergency Library – an 1,400,000 ebook library with no waitlists (!!!)
Over 180 institutions and individuals have signed a statement of why this National Emergency Library https://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/  needs to exist. Again, this is over 1,400,000 ebooks you can check out immediately, assign in your classes, read to your children, heal your mind.

 

END THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

THE HISTORIC BIG PICTURE

I’ve been tracking the “Digital Divide” problem in the United States for over 20 years. This is problem is NOT new and has never been solved.

DIGITAL EQUITY “Everyone has the right to education.”
Article 26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 12/10/48
The law that established the Federal Communications Commission and remains its fundamental charter.
First paragraph of Section I: “. . . to make available so far as possible to all people of the United States without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio-communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.”

Digital Divide VS. Digital Equity

The Department’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) is hosting regional Digital Equity Summits this spring and summer in six states.  The summits will bring together state and local education leaders and community collaborators to identify strategies, connect resources, and explore partnership opportunities to address local challenges concerning broadband access, affordability, and use for students at school and home.

Broadband – Bandwidth Explained

GLOSSARY OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AND
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TERMS created 1997 !!!!

K12 E-rate Education SuperHighway enables high-speed Internet in every classroom.
EducationSuperHighway.com
AFFORDABLE BROADBAND – WIFI – FIBER – CONNECTIVITY
Compare & Connect K-12 uses price transparency so school districts can get more broadband for their budgets. Should your ZIP code determine your access to the American dream?

Telephone Service: telco tricks do not provide telephone or broadband service The Digitally Divided Life.

Digital Divide/Equity Articles, Wireless Networks

Dewayne Hendricks, CEO of Dandin Group Wireless Device Bill of Rights

2000 The Dandin Group’s Dewayne Hendricks is setting up a wireless network at Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation that could be a model of the kind of network he wants–one that may have to circumvent FCC regulations on frequency, power, and transmission technology to deliver high-performance broadband. Complaints or blockage attempts by the FCC may be negated if the tribe asserts its Native American sovereignty; more importantly, Hendricks hopes it will put public pressure on the FCC to open up the spectrum. The FCC is concerned that unlicensed access to the full spectrum would give rise to too much transmission interference. Hendricks is convinced that spread spectrum technology will make a common-use spectrum workable, with technologies such as ultrawideband and dense-packet networks shoring things up if spread spectrum comes up short. So far, Hendricks’ team has set up wireless connections for Turtle Mountain Community College and a small group of other buildings. Turtle Mountain is one of four reservations whose colleges are being equipped for wireless as part of a $6 million National Science Foundation initiative administered by EDUCAUSE. (Wired, January 2002)

Donate, Get, or Recycle Computers for Learning

“Americans with Disabilities Act of Cyberspace.”
“For disabled college students, professors’ increased use of the Web for instruction can create obstacles rather than clear them away. Many disabled students find that new technology cuts them off from the learning process. To prevent that, colleges are — among other things — designing Web sites and buying computer workstations that meet the needs of disabled students.” In “Making Web Sites Work for People With Disabilities” (by Andrea L. Foster, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, February 2, 2001, p. A30) read how colleges and universities are coping with the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

 

Privacy Rights Protect Encryption
DOWNLOAD SIGNAL.ORG

About the The Digital Divide/Equity and Students online Privacy Rights

More than 100,000 public schools across the country have closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many are expected to remain closed for weeks, and in some cases, for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. More than 54 million children have been told that they won’t be attending class for the next several weeks.

Stay Healthy my friends!
My own family has healthcare workers on the front lines, so there is lots of anxiety, not everyone can isolate themselves. And I am grateful for their courage and their work. 8 million people who voted for Trump live in counties that have no ICU beds. That’s 1/8 of his support. Information about the COVID19  Virus

We don’t have Republicans or Democrats to thank for child labor laws or workers rights, like the 40 hour work week – we actually have Frances Perkins for that. Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965 was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition.