Tom Swift

CTO in EdTech. Building software for education, with a focus on practical AI, product decisions and engineering delivery. Opinions are my own.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

Dusting off this account after a fairly long gap.

I’ll mostly be talking about EdTech, AI and building software. There’ll also be the occasional bug, bad take and completely unrelated distraction.

Seems more honest than pretending I only think about work.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@UoPeople Let students use AI, then ask them to explain the decisions in their own work. The awkward bit for online education is scale. Short oral spot-checks on selected work might be more realistic than trying to viva every student.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

Rubber duck debugging remains one of the more reliable developer tools. No subscription required, and it's never once replied with "Great question."

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@timeshighered AI can still be useful in marking workflows, but final grades need a higher bar than average agreement. A 40-mark gap is exactly where human review matters. The opportunity is designing a better workflow, with AI doing the heavy lifting and people handling the judgement calls.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@emollick The giveaway is rarely one phrase. It is seeing twenty submissions follow the same route to the same tidy conclusion. You can sand off the obvious wording, but the thinking still has the same silhouette.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

Barnsley plans to make its new AI training curriculum free for other colleges.

Makes sense. Although at the current pace of AI, module one may need updating before the second college has finished downloading it.

https://t.co/mrF9e2Zaqv

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@SelfMadeMastery Agree. AI amplifies the habits already there. Someone who can define the problem, judge the output and keep moving gets a huge advantage. Everyone else can now produce mistakes much faster, usually with nicer formatting.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@awsdevelopers The gig economy, but for CPUs.

[Kelly @SelfMadeMastery]

AI isn’t making lazy people productive. It’s making already productive people terrifyingly efficient while everyone else falls even further behind.

AI can’t manufacture ambition where none exists.

The top 10% benefit more than anyone else with AI.

Do you agree or disagree?

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@XJTLU Assessment is where this gets concrete. If AI changes how students produce work, institutions need to be clearer about what evidence of learning they still want to see and which parts of the process matter.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@ShaiReshef Product design will decide whether AI creates more human contact or less. Another dashboard or review queue can easily take educators away from students. The test is whether the tool gives them time back.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@timeshighered Positive provenance looks more useful than treating detectors as an oracle. Keeping originals, edit history and acquisition metadata gives reviewers evidence to inspect instead of a probability score on a compressed JPEG.

[Artur @ArturSmiarowski]

The best part of programming is that feeling you have when you solve a difficult problem and think you can do anything.

14 years of coding, and that joy still fuels my passion.

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@ubereats_uk uber one customer, food meant to be here by the latest 10:20, currently watching your driver go in the opposite direction even though I paid extra for priority? Do they just pick up then go do what they want?

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@paula_shurley92 @InterfloraUK Exactly the same issue here

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@InterfloraUK now it’s updated to delivered but there has been nothing delivered :(

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@InterfloraUK externally disappointed it now gone 6pm and no delivery, I use Interflora multiple times throughout the year. Any other day it would just annoy me and I wouldn’t tweet but today. I will be thinking twice before using Interflora again. Not angry just disappointed 😔

[Business Weekly @businessweekly]

Leading assessment organisation @AQA has acquired Cambridge-based AI platform @blutickedu which supports the teaching, learning and assessment of Key Stage 3, #GCSE and A-level Maths. No figures have been released for the acquisition. https://t.co/kj0uWbLJUm

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@EE Seems to be working this morning Glen thanks 😊

[Tom Swift @TomAndTheDuck]

@EE hello I’m trying to login to my account but on both the app and the website I keep getting “SORRY, YOU CAN’T ACCESS MY EE RIGHT NOW
We're working on making My EE even better. We’ll be back online as soon as possible!” Please help 🙂