Tom Mullaney

@tommullaney

Tom Mullaney (he/him) teaches high school Social Studies in the Philadelphia suburbs. 🌐 tommullaney.com 📰 criticalinkling.com No Bitcoin, Crypto, or AI hype.

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Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Jun 17

I'm attending a conference. What is happening here has me more hopeful about K-12 and tech than I have been in years. The people promoting technology (I used to be one) are on the defensive. The keynote speaker criticized AI slop rather than sharing AI slop. Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

A pebble painted blue, with the word hope written on it in black.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 30

My second return to Social Studies teaching ends on Friday, June 5, but I'm back again all next year. So far, like any challenge, it's not easy, but wow, it has been a joy. This is me in the classroom.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 27

I am thrilled to announce that not only am I back at the school where I taught from Oct through Feb, but I have also signed a contract to cover for a Social Studies teacher there for the whole 2026-27 school year. It feels great to be back in the classroom! Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash.

A hand holding a pen and signing a piece of paper.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 22

Can confirm.

Google Search result that reads:

"Al Overview
disregard
/ disregard/
Message received. I have disregarded that and started fresh. How can I help you
today?"

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 2

When the backlash against generativeAI is so strong that Gatorade is trying to cash in on it.

An advertisement for Lower Sugar Gatorade that says, "No Artificial flavors, sweeteners, or colors."

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Feb 26

This is my last post like this, but I'm beaming with pride, so I'm sharing. Sure, my 7th period could have shown more sensitivity to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. That said, I am so proud to have returned to the classroom and hope to do so again soon!

Dear Mr. Mullaney
Thank you so much for being such an awesome teacher. You've helped us learn so much, and in so many engaging ways. We love hearing about the past and the present, like the historic inauguration of George Washington, and the Knicks' record-breaking win over the Nets (120-66). Unlike the Triangle-Shirt Waist factory, we won't crash and burn on the AP exam thanks to your help. We wish you success at your next teaching gig (if that's what you choose) and we know from experience that those students will be lucky to have you! Once again, thanks for everything!
-Period 7APUSH

Dear Mr. Mullaney,
Thank you! Throughout this school year, I have learned so much from you and the class. It must have been really hard to jump-in in the middle of the year and teach, but honestly, you did such an amazing job and I couldn't have asked for a better teacher! I appreciate the time and effort you have put into our classes our classes and you made APUSH a fun and enjoyable class. We will miss you a lot and thank you for being our teacher!

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Feb 24

After four months, my time as a long-term sub APUSH teacher is coming to an end. My 8th-period got me a Brunson jersey as a going-away present. I will never be more honored by anything.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Nov 19

Something I noticed when I wrote about school districts promoting AI for Google for Education: These are the YouTube video thumbnails. Is this the most excited they could get the kids to look? #genAI #EdTech CC @civicsoftech.bsky.social

Two Google for Education YouTube thumbnails of students who do not appear very interested. Below the thumbnails is the text, "Examine the expressions on the students’ faces in the YouTube thumbnails. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Do the students look interested or disinterested?"

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Nov 4

Career Update: I am excited to share that for the next four months, I will be teaching AP US History and US Government & Politics at an excellent high school in my area. 🖼️ by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

A typewriter with a single sheet of paper that says "Update" in big letters.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 11

I saw someone share that they are a Gemini-certified educator on social media yesterday. What are we doing here? What happened to solidarity? #EduSky #EdTech #genAI www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

“I just want people to know that AI is being sold as this tech magic – that’s why there’s a little sparkle symbol next to an AI response,” said Sawyer. “But it’s not. It’s built on the backs of overworked, underpaid human beings.”

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 7

In my email from an #AIinEducation proponent this morning. Usually, the fear-based appeals are subtle. He just went for it today. #EduSky

A subject line from my Gmail inbox: Schools doing this make yours look outdated.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 2

Good journalism here by @bloomberg.com holding Common Sense Media accountable. CSM should be critiquing OpenAI, not taking money from it - a partnership that is especially troubling considering what we learned about Adam Raine last week. #EduSky www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Common Sense Media, the nonprofit known for its age ratings of kids movies and TV, has received funding from OpenAI—the organization wouldn’t say how much—to produce educational materials about AI for teachers and families.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 2

Thank you, @bloomberg.com, for quoting @charleswlogan.bsky.social and shouting out @civicsoftech.bsky.social. Teachers should follow both for an equity-informed vision of technology in schools. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

But none of that is inevitable. A grassroots movement is growing among those determined to resist the proliferation of AI in schools. The Civics of Technology Project, founded in 2022 by educators and researchers, wants to instead have administrators, teachers, students and parents prioritize studying “the collateral, disproportionate, and unexpected effects of technology”—including AI. One option is to imagine, and work to bring about, an alternative future in which AI doesn’t dominate. “There are ways that teachers, caregivers and students, too, can say, ‘Well, what if I don’t want to have to use this technology?’” said Charles Logan, a research fellow at Northwestern University and a board member for the Civics of Technology Project.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 2

The @bloomberg.com genAI in education article ends with two people who sell it to teachers conceding they don't use it much in their work. Do they not see that its value for students might be overstated as well? #EduSky www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I realized that, for all our conversations about how the students used MagicSchool, Fairchild and I hadn’t discussed whether he was using AI to generate lesson plans and so on, which the companies typically center in their training materials. When I asked him about this, he admitted he wasn’t. He doubted it would actually save him time, and he also had a deeper reason. “I have an artistic resistance to it,” he said. “For me that’s where the art of teaching sits—processing my students’ needs and building a lesson and then building a rubric and evaluation for it. For me that’s where the emotional and spiritual dialogue between the teachers and students is, so at this time, I’m unwilling to hand that off.”

CEI’s Roberts told me that rationale made sense to her. In fact, she said, she wasn’t using AI much herself. Having learned all she had about AI and its potential role in education, she’d arrived at a sharp critique of the technology. At one point, she texted me, “The negative impacts of tech always impact low-income Black and Brown communities first and more.”

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 2

Generative AI critics have been warning teachers about just this. For years. #GenAI #EduSky www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Otherwise I rarely observed the students checking its outputs. A couple of times, I saw errors or biases go apparently unnoticed, and in class debates some cited comments from “the AI” as evidence supporting their claims.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Sep 2

A "John Brown chatbot," which shouldn't exist, performed so predictably. A similar thing happened with an "Anne Frank chatbot" which shouldn't exist. Do not use genAI to mimic historical figures. #EduSky www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Once, when asked to pretend to be John Brown—an abolitionist who murdered five supporters of slavery—the chatbot insisted, as Brown, that violence is never the answer.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Aug 20

Based on what, @umich.edu? #EduSky #GenAI genai.umich.edu/resources/st...

From the University of Michigan's website: "Understand that your usage of GenAI-based tools can give you the means to better not just yourself, but also society as a whole, and there is an ethical responsibility towards doing so."

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Aug 12

Fantastic piece about the ChatGPT-5 dud by @bcmerchant.bsky.social. "Ethan Mollick’s breathless endorsement of GPT-5 (“GPT-5: It just does stuff”) already looks like an ad for New Coke." #EduSky #GenAI www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/gpt-5-is-a... 🖼️ by Like_the_Grand_Canyon on Flickr.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Aug 5

I just finished a great session with the Association of Independent School Librarians about the pedagogical and environmental impacts of generative AI. These were the two best slides. We need to consider the people harmed by generative AI. Link to the article in the comments.

Easter May Knox shook her head. The 74-year-old with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease lowered the KN95 mask she wore to protect herself from the pollution.
“He [Musk] may be a millionaire, a billionaire — whatever kind of ‘aire he is,” she said. “But what we need here is clean air.”

“I can’t breathe at home, it smells like gas outside,” Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys said through tears, holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines on April 25. “How come I can’t breathe at home and y’all get to breathe at home?”

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Aug 2

Thank you, @civicsoftech.bsky.social conference organizers @mariekheath.bsky.social, @jbpleasa.bsky.social, and @dankrutka.bsky.social, for two days of centering students and equity! And for having @shanavwhite.bsky.social on the panel. She rocked! #EduSky Photo by Kevin Butzon on Unsplash.

Metal sided building with Thank You painted on the side in blue paint.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Jul 25

ICYMI, Nvidia is getting $10 million of Oregon taxpayer money to promote generative AI to K-12 students and teachers. I was quoted in this article raising concerns. #EduSky #AI #AIinEDU oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/23/o...

Oregon’s governor made a deal with Nvidia to get AI education in Oregon schools. What does it mean?
Oregon is one of several states making deals with the trillion-dollar chip maker to get artificial intelligence lessons into K-12 and college classes

Tom Mullaney, a former public school history teacher and ed tech consultant who writes the Critical Inkling blog about tech applications in classrooms, said an agreement like the one Oregon is entering into with Nvidia leaves more questions than answers.

“When we talk about education and generative AI, is Nvidia an unbiased source for that? They have a lot invested in you and I thinking that generative AI is going to transform everything from education to employment. Are they an unbiased source for education for children?” he said. “I think that if this is to be brought into schools, it should be done by people who are willing to be critical, or at least hear and understand critical perspectives. It should not be done by those with a financial interest in you being enamored of generative AI.”

Mullaney pointed to startups in the AI and education space like the company School AI, that provides teachers and students with chatbots that imitate historical figures and AI-generated imagery of figures such as Anne Frank and George Washington Carver.

“For reasons of consent, of creepiness, of a white, male-dominated industry voicing people from marginalized populations, I mean there’s a lot of reasons not to use generative AI as a guest speaker,” he said.

Mullaney said what most students need is media literacy, not “AI literacy.” Students should be able to understand the quality of different source material and if an image is real or made by an AI program, he explained.

“We don’t need to be teaching students about being excited for generative AI. We need to teach students to be critical thinkers. That’s what we need, and that’s what I’m not seeing,” he said.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 9

We need to consider how frequent interaction with chatbots can affect children. #EduSky www.criticalinkling.com/p/generative...

What About The Effects of Generative AI Chatbots on Children?
What we know is concerning.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 2

Environmental Science teachers should read this @ieeespectrum.bsky.social essay about the health costs of the pollution generated by generative AI. #EduSky spectrum.ieee.org/data-centers...

But AI’s contribution to air pollution and the public health burden is often missing from conversations about responsible AI design. Why?

Because ambient air pollution is a “silent killer.” While concerns about the public health impacts of data centers, including potential links to cancer rate increases, are beginning to surface, most AI-model developers, practitioners, and users simply aren’t aware of the serious health risks tied to the energy and infrastructure powering modern AI systems.

We calculated that training a single large generative AI model in the United States, such as Meta’s Llama 3.1, can produce as much PM 2.5 as more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City.

According to our research, in 2023, air pollution attributed to U.S. data centers was responsible for an estimated $6 billion in public health damages. If the current AI growth trend continues, this number is projected to reach $10 billion to $20 billion per year by 2030, rivaling the impact of emissions from California’s 30 million vehicles.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· May 2

"AI literacy" is not enough. We need to be extremely cautious about using generative AI chatbots with children. #EduSky www.engadget.com/ai/joint-stu...

MIT's study identified several ways talking to ChatGPT — whether through text or voice — can affect a person's emotional experience, beyond the general finding that higher use led to "heightened loneliness and reduced socialization." For example, participants who already trusted the chatbot and tended to get emotionally attached in human relationships felt lonelier and more emotionally dependent on ChatGPT during the study. Those effects were less severe with ChatGPT's voice mode, though, particularly if ChatGPT spoke in a neutral tone. Discussing personal topics also tended to lead to loneliness in the short-term, and interestingly, speaking to ChatGPT about more general topics was more likely to increase emotional dependence.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Apr 4

I have some reading to do. #EduSky #GenerativeAI Cut to Rodney Dangerfield studying montage from Back to School.

A stack of four books about Artificial Intelligence and technology:

Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin
Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Broussard
More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech by Meredith Broussard
Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Mar 31

Happy Trans Visibility Day! From @glsen.bsky.social: "The day is dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of transgender and gender nonconforming people while raising awareness of the work that still needs to be done to achieve trans justice." #EduSky www.glsen.org/TDOV

A protestor holding a sign that reads, "Protect Trans Youth."

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Mar 28

Yesterday, OpenAI announced new image generation features. Sure, we can notice them. AI literacy demands we keep people in the frame* and consider their consequences for actual humans. #AILiteracy #NationalAILiteracyDay www.criticalinkling.com/p/national-a...

Being AI literate means looking beyond a ChatGPT feature update to its consequences for actual humans.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Mar 28

It's AI Literacy Day. AI literacy means understanding the harms and limits of generative AI. I curated resources to help teachers be AI literate. #AILiteracyDay #EduSky www.criticalinkling.com/p/national-a...

Happy National AI Literacy Day!

What is this day? Whatever it may be, let’s focus on literacy rather than promoting generative AI.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Mar 18

It was an honor presenting virtually to Wisconsin librarians and media specialists today about generative AI. #WIed #AIliteracy #EduSky

"Thank you" presentation slide. Links listed on the slide are in the comments.

Tom Mullaney@tommullaney· Mar 6

From a Google Maps mobile map AI-generated business summary: "Ice people say this ice cream shop serves up..." Is that what "ice people" are saying? When do we realize this technology isn't ready for prime time?