In Open Source AI is Going Mainstream, Leon Furze explores the growing significance of open source artificial intelligence beyond the GPT-5 hype cycle. He begins by clarifying what "open source AI" actually means, noting that the term has become contentious—many so-called "open source" models from companies like Meta are more accurately described as "open weights," since their underlying architecture, training processes, and datasets remain proprietary. True open source projects expose their entire codebase to public examination and adaptation. The post Open Source AI is Going Mainstream appeared first on Leon Furze.

He explores how learning management systems already constrain pedagogy by forcing educators to systematize learning into predetermined formats, and questions what happens when OpenAI's chatbot takes control of content production across these platforms. Furze is particularly concerned about OpenAI's study mode—which he found pedagogically flawed despite claims of expert input—and sees it as part of a larger strategy to position the company as the solution to problems it helped create. The post OpenAI Has Come for Education appeared first on Leon Furze.

In Stuck Thinking and End-of-School Exams, Leon Furze examines the assumptions that anchor our current model of exam-based assessment—and argues that many of them are “stuck thinking.” He questions why we let the high-stakes end exam dictate upstream assessments, curriculum priorities, and even our trust in students. He suggests we treat exams differently: as one piece of evidence rather than the organising point. He also links this critique to the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI in assessment. The piece invites educators to reconsider what exams should do (and when), rather than automatically preserving the status quo. The post Stuck Thinking and End-of-School Exams appeared first on Leon Furze.

SynopsisLeon Furze lays out his practical workflow for POSSE—Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere—so your website remains the hub and platforms are just spokes. He explains how he posts first on WordPress, lets Jetpack push to Bluesky (and occasionally LinkedIn), uses the ActivityPub plugin to make his site part of the fediverse (with comments […] The post Publish (on your) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere appeared first on Leon Furze.

Leon Furze argues that the real tension with AI and writing isn’t “death of writing” but purpose. When schools prize the product over the process, generative AI flattens the whole writing cycle, letting students jump from “I need a piece” straight to publication. That shortcut may be fine for functional emails or content farms, but in education the process is the learning; flatten it, and you flatten learning too. The post AI in the Writing Process: A Problem of Purpose appeared first on Leon Furze.

Leon Furze contrasts Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 vision of an open, decentralised World Wide Web with the “Narrow Web” of 2025—an internet funnelled through half-a-dozen corporate platforms that monetise surveillance, lock users into walled gardens and invert the original principles of universality and non-discrimination. The post The Narrow Web appeared first on Leon Furze.

Leon Furze argues that “lesson planning” is a dynamic act of design and reflection, yet AI platforms from Google, Microsoft and start‑ups like Magic School keep packaging it as a downloadable product: click a button, get a plan. That noun‑based mindset, he says, feeds compliance paperwork and short‑cuts the messy thinking, collegial dialogue and classroom experimentation that turn curriculum into learning. The post Lesson planning is a verb: why does tech keep treating it as a noun? appeared first on Leon Furze.

Leon Furze dismantles recent headlines claiming AI can “save teachers six weeks a year.” He shows how time‑saved tallies in the Walton Foundation/Gallup survey and Microsoft’s Copilot pilot gloss over what tasks are being sped up—and why they exist in the first place. Measuring efficiency, he argues, ignores the deeper causes of burnout: relentless compliance work, eroded autonomy and a culture that treats teaching as piece‑work. The post “Time Saved” is the Wrong Measurement for Teacher Workload and AI appeared first on Leon Furze.

Leon Furze sets aside the chatbot hype to show how the underlying components of AI—image recognition, speech-to-text, text-to-speech and transformer language models—already power a growing suite of assistive technologies. He argues that genuine progress depends on lived-experience design, open standards and a focus on specific user needs, not generic “GPT in everything” solutions. By mapping near-future advances—offline multimodal models, speech-to-sign avatars, adaptive reading platforms and low-cost robotics—Furze invites educators and developers to steer AI toward accessibility rather than spectacle. The post Artificial Intelligence and Assistive Technologies: A Practical Guide appeared first on Leon Furze.

Responding to newspaper calls for tighter controls on generative-AI in senior-school “take-home” tasks, Leon Furze argues that the real culprit is the assessment format itself, not ChatGPT. The article shows that home-based essays and projects have long privileged students with money, tutors or stable study spaces, while disadvantaging those with caring duties, disruptive households or limited technology access—long before large-language models entered classrooms. The post Take-home assessments: AI is not the problem appeared first on Leon Furze.