ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Teenage Boys and the AI Wingman, Liz explores how popular and athletic teenage boys are increasingly using ChatGPT to navigate dating and social anxieties. The episode highlights a shift where young men turn to AI for emotional support and social validation rather than their peer groups.

Key Takeaways:

Teenage boys are utilizing AI to vet text messages and seek feedback on their physical appearance to avoid the fear of social judgment.

The agreeable nature of AI creates a risk-free environment that lacks the necessary friction and accountability found in human social interactions.

Young people are bypassing human mentors to ask AI sensitive questions about consent and social behavior because it offers a judgment-free space.

Liz’s Two Cents: The move toward using AI as a social wingman indicates that the fear of social stigma is currently more daunting to young men than the prospect of receiving hollow or biased advice from a chatbot. For school leaders, this highlights a growing gap in traditional mentorship and the need for schools to address how AI might be reinforcing negative patterns during formative years without the nuance of human guidance.

Article:

Teen boys are using ChatGPT as their wingman. What could go wrong?
https://tinyurl.com/2hkcvkwh

Sponsored by: Eduaide.ai

Eduaide: Where good ideas become great lessons. Eduaide is an AI-powered, research-based K-12 tool that creates high-quality resources, games, and graphic organizers built for better student outcomes. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this episode of ChatEDU, Is AI Saving Time or Adding Tasks at School and at Work?, Matt and Liz explore the polarizing reality of AI productivity. After a celestial jingle for Liz’s book and news of Meta’s post-mortem patent, the hosts discuss educators moving beyond chatbots to "vibe code" custom school solutions for operational hurdles.

The Rundown

Accidental emails show educators using Replit and vibe coding to build sub coverage apps and data dashboards.

A simple custom instruction fix to prevent ChatGPT from baiting users with follow-up questions at the end of every response.

Anna Mills shares UC Irvine strategies for students to challenge AI bias and treat bots as sparring partners.

A look at ChatGPT’s new ability to generate interactive math and physics simulations, like adjustable Pythagorean theorem models.

This "AI for Education" tool helps students reflect on whether they are using AI strategically or simply offloading their thinking.

Matt’s commentary explains how these three roles help students and teachers navigate AI ethics.

The latest updates from Google’s research tool, including cinematic video overviews and native support for ePub files.

News of a metadata leak in the higher ed version of ChatGPT that exposed research repository names.

Why hundreds of University of Colorado faculty and students are pushing back against a 2 million dollar OpenAI contract.

The story of Grammarly’s Expert Review feature and why it was pulled after using journalist personas without consent.

USAII’s Global Hackathon and the Quad City Herald show students solving real-world business problems with AI.

Beneath the Surface

Matt and Liz discuss AI’s recursive risks, citing Amazon’s AI-driven outages and employee workload spikes. Dan Meyer joins to debunk AI time-saving myths for teachers, concluding that while AI accelerates expectations, interpersonal teaching remains automation-proof.

Bright Byte

Paul Cunningham used ChatGPT and AlphaFold to create a personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for his dog, Rosie. Despite lacking a medical background, his experimental treatment successfully shrunk her tumors, proving AI’s power when driven by personal motivation.

Announcements

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday
ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ 
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

Our six-week AI Micro-Credential course launching this spring in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University. Group discounts are available at Skills21.org/AI/Micro.

EdAdvance is offering a Middle and High School Student AI Literacy course — email [email protected] to bring it to your district. ​​⁠⁠www.skills21.org/ai/learnai⁠⁠

Skills21’s FREE social media literacy course. Check it out here -⁠ ⁠https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠⁠

This episode is sponsored by The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.nextgenmfg.org⁠
⁠
Links

Meta Patent: Posthumous AI Posting
https://tinyurl.com/34ja5dde

Stop ChatGPT Follow-Up Bait
https://tinyurl.com/ytmrwtv9

ChatGPT Interactive Math Visuals
https://tinyurl.com/55ztmer2

GenAI Self-Reflection Checklist
https://tinyurl.com/mtcuuxkz

NotebookLM Video Overviews
https://tinyurl.com/4kutwdtu

NotebookLM more useful for students and book lovers
https://tinyurl.com/v5cnv2r8

ChatGPT Edu Leaks Project Metadata
https://tinyurl.com/mr2h42t3

CU Community Fights AI Rollout
https://tinyurl.com/2f6hmd8u

Grammarly AI "Expert" Backfire
https://tinyurl.com/4fn93kw3

USAII 2026 Global AI Hackathon Opens
https://tinyurl.com/bdzbzkd9

AI Youth Corps to Aid Local Biz
https://tinyurl.com/rrsc4net

AI Use Wreaks Havoc on Amazon Core Business
https://tinyurl.com/yr99nyxk

Study: AI Increases Amazon Workload
https://tinyurl.com/3393cz3a

Doubt: AI Saving Teachers Time
https://tinyurl.com/37vu2jw9

Tech Boss’s AI Dog Cancer Vaccine
https://tinyurl.com/3vrprpva

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Anthropic Reshapes College Coding Courses, Matt explores the accelerating race between tech giants to embed proprietary AI models into higher education curricula. The episode highlights a major partnership between Anthropic and the nonprofit CodePath, which aims to provide students at over 1,000 institutions with the same sophisticated tools used by industry professionals.

Key Takeaways:

Anthropic is targeting community colleges, historically black colleges, and Hispanic serving institutions to ensure first generation students are not left behind as technology evolves.

Tech giants like Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft are competing for early exposure, offering free subscriptions and funding to establish their specific platforms as the workforce standard.

Employer expectations are forcing universities to update courses multiple times a year, shifting the focus from simple certificates to portfolios that prove real world AI competency.

Matt’s Two Cents: This is a high stakes battle for future consumer loyalty. While these partnerships provide universities with best in class software they couldn't otherwise afford, they also risk "locking in" students to specific proprietary ecosystems. University leaders need to develop clear internal rubrics to evaluate these corporate deals, balancing the immediate need for speed and resources against long term platform independence.

Article Link:

https://tinyurl.com/3uamvtvm

Sponsored by: Eduaide.ai
Eduaide.ai: Where good ideas become great lessons. Eduaide is an AI-powered, research-based K-12 tool that creates high-quality resources, games, and graphic organizers built for better student outcomes. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this ChatEDU Check-In - Peer Influence and AI Adoption, Matt explores how social capital and colleague-to-colleague sharing drive generative AI integration more effectively than top-down mandates. The episode highlights that because AI requires users to redesign their own unique workflows, traditional formal training often fails to capture the practical, real-time adjustments needed for true mastery.

Key Takeaways:

A new assessment from ETS, Futurenav Adapt AI, has been launched to create a standard for evaluating how educators recognize, navigate, and ethically implement generative technology.

Despite nearly all districts utilizing some AI tools, a significant training vacuum exists, leaving the majority of teachers to teach themselves basic terminology and prompt engineering on their own.

Relying on the individual initiative of motivated teachers to vet AI tools creates operational and legal risks, especially since only two states currently require districts to have a formal AI policy.

Matt’s Two Cents: While standardized assessments could provide helpful data for custom professional development, we must avoid the "one size fits all" trap. A teacher’s required AI skill set varies wildly by discipline and grade level, and ultimately, these skills must map directly to district priorities. Whether the goal is improving seventh-grade writing or achieving broad AI literacy for a portrait of a graduate, teacher training must be targeted rather than generalized to be truly effective.

Article Link:

https://hbr.org/2026/03/peer-influence-can-make-or-break-your-ai-rollout

Sponsored by: Eduaide.Ai

Eduaide is an amazing tool built by teachers for teachers where good ideas become great lessons. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this episode of ChatEDU, From Student to CEO: Building the Campus AI Ecosystem, Matt and Liz explore the intersection of AI, hospitality, and higher education. They begin with the story of "Patty," a Burger King AI assistant that monitors employee headsets to ensure they use polite language. The discussion then shifts to the logistical challenges of managing AI "memories" and the profound impact of AI literacy in schools today.

The Rundown

A revisit of the framework featuring six human-centric roles. The hosts invite listeners to participate in a survey to provide feedback on these roles.

An update on the ISTE and ASCD global challenge and free lessons that empower students to use AI for solving real-world problems.

A meta-prompt to export your ChatGPT data and context so you can move your personal preferences and history to Claude.

Jerry Crisci shares a tip for using Google Search AI to automatically generate study guides in Canvas mode.

A report covering a Google Gemini wrongful death suit while highlighting AI voice immersion risks and the need for better guardrails.

Nearly 80% of high school teachers now provide lessons on using AI-based tools responsibly.

Beneath the Surface

Matt interviews Kavitta Ghai, the co-founder and CEO of Nectir. Kavitta explains how her experience as a neurodivergent student led her to solve "time poverty" on campus. Nectar has since scaled to 116 community colleges, serving 2.1 million students. The platform provides grounded, 24/7 support for academics, financial aid, and career coaching by integrating directly into the Learning Management System.

The Bright Byte

This week's Bright Byte features ten startups leveraging AI for social impact. Notable examples include Rainforest Connection, which uses bioacoustic monitoring to stop illegal logging, and the Okwafo Foundation, which provides offline AI tools to help West African farmers identify crop diseases.

Announcements

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday
ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

Our six-week AI Micro-Credential course launching this spring in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University. Group discounts are available at www.skills21.org/ai/micro.

EdAdvance is offering a Middle and High School Student AI Literacy course — email [email protected] to bring it to your district. ​​⁠⁠www.skills21.org/ai/learnai⁠⁠

Skills21’s FREE social media literacy course. Check it out here -⁠ ⁠https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠⁠

This episode is sponsored by The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.nextgenmfg.org⁠

Links

Profile of an AI-Ready Graduate Survey⁠
https://tinyurl.com/5fjbhuh8

The Work is the Workshop
https://tinyurl.com/24fdxh79

Nectir AI: nectir.ai

Burger King AI monitors employee manners
https://tinyurl.com/mr2548t7

Profile of an AI-Ready Graduate
https://tinyurl.com/yx5wuk5d

AI Innovator Studio
https://tinyurl.com/mta8k5zf

Switch to Claude without starting over
https://tinyurl.com/bdfw2vvv

Anthropic Academy Courses
https://tinyurl.com/4bnxmb5e

Google Sued for Wrongful Death Over Gemini AI Chatbot
https://tinyurl.com/bdducfnw

Are AI Literacy Lessons Now the Norm?
https://tinyurl.com/bdezk57t

10 startups using AI for social and environmental impact
https://tinyurl.com/3e63453t

Jerry Crisci: Google AI Study Plans Now in Canvas
https://tinyurl.com/ts3663c4