the Educational research greenhouse 

Cultivating Critical Dialogue and Collaborative Insight for Responsible Digital Futures in Education﻿
Integrating technology has opened new doors in education, but it is essential to engage in transparent, research-informed dialogue around its design and equitable use. The Educational Research Greenhouse focuses on exploring practices, methodologies, and studies that shape the digital futures of education. It builds on the understanding that research is not only the generation of new knowledge, but also the creative re-use of existing knowledge to produce new insights.

This initiative aims to foster increased collaboration by building a strong research culture through social impact. We actively encourage those interested in contributing to a blog or public talk to reach out—particularly Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students and Early Career Researchers (ECRs), who are strongly encouraged to get involved.

As a collective of media publications and public talks, the Greenhouse provides accessible, evidence-based insights to support K–12, TAFE, and Higher Education sectors in critically engaging with what is needed for the responsible governance of AI in education. Through collaboration with education and industry partners, we can promote robust discussions on the ethical, practical, and policy implications of digital technologies in learning environments.

seedlings

﻿Why we should worry about smart glasses in schools﻿

Smart glasses, marketed as innovative learning tools, pose serious ethical and safety risks in schools, including covert surveillance and misuse. Arantes and Welsman urge regulation, transparency, and public discourse, warning against normalising wearable tech without consent safeguards—especially as it intersects with online misogyny, AI misuse, and influencer-driven promotion.

If a student can livestream a teacher’s response without their knowledge, what happens to trust in the classroom? As surveillance becomes wearable and invisible, are we sleepwalking into a future where education serves data markets over learning—and where safety is sacrificed in the name of innovation?

﻿Cyberabuse: It’s too late – the post has gone viral already﻿

﻿Ban smart phones in schools. Not because they’re disruptive but because of this﻿

Arantes highlights the urgent threat of cyberabuse and AI-driven deepfakes targeting teachers. As legislation against doxing emerges, teachers remain vulnerable to viral attacks that devastate careers and mental health. Arantes calls for trauma-informed research, stronger protections, and systemic action to safeguard educators in the age of AI.

When a teacher’s face can be turned into viral abuse with a single click, what protections truly exist? In a world where algorithms amplify harm and deepfakes blur reality, can we afford to delay redefining teacher rights? If we don’t act now, who will be left to teach?

Arantes argues that smartphones should be banned in schools—not due to disruption, but to protect students from unchecked data collection. Drawing on ACCC, AHRC, and CSIRO reports, she warns that children cannot give informed consent and schools must act as data stewards. Restricting smartphones helps safeguard digital rights.

If schools ignore the hidden data economy behind student smartphone use, are they complicit in the exploitation of children’s privacy?

A seedling does not begin the story, it merely appears at a moment in the cycle. Like all living things, it emerges, unfurls, withers, and returns to the soil, not in linear time but in rhythm. To speak of a seedling is not to name a beginning, but to notice a becoming. In Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome, knowledge spreads horizontally, unpredictably, refusing fixed origin or hierarchy. Haraway’s sympoiesis reminds us that nothing makes itself alone—ideas, like organisms, co-evolve in entangled ways, and Freire’s pedagogy teaches us that learning is not a product but a process, an act of becoming more fully human, always incomplete, always collective. These seedlings, whether original insights or repurposed talks, articles, and media, are offered not as answers but as invitations. They are fragments, provocations, starting-again points. They ask us to think with, to think otherwise. They are gestures of social impact. 

﻿LGBTQIA+ Data and the 2026 Census: A Victory for Inclusion in the Age of Automation﻿

The Australian government’s decision to include LGBTQIA+ data in the 2026 census marks a critical win for visibility and data justice. This reversal enables more equitable educational research and automated governance systems, helping ensure LGBTQIA+ communities are no longer sidelined in national policy, education, and digital infrastructures.

If data defines who counts, then what happens to those left out? In an age of automation, invisibility isn’t just erasure—it’s exclusion from the future. Whose needs are we programming into our systems, and whose realities are we still choosing to ignore?