ChatEDU: AI in Education

You cannot raise a kid in 2026 on 1926 parameters and expect it to work. Jonathan Costa on the screen-time backlash in schools.

First Up
OpenAI would like folks to call data centers compute campuses. The rebrand landed the same week voters rejected data center proposals in 40 of 41 local ballot measures, which makes it a ready civics lesson for any classroom covering AI and energy.
OpenAI Wants Everyone to Call AI Data Centers 'Compute Campuses': https://tinyurl.com/4tkuwr86 

The Rundown
Textbooks in Gemini Notebook
Google Just Gave Students Access to Hundreds of Textbooks in Gemini Notebook: https://tinyurl.com/yauvfpyp 
Google, Search and Schools
ChatGPT's Search Volume Is Now Roughly 20 Percent of Google's: https://tinyurl.com/58cbvk79 
Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject AI: https://tinyurl.com/2cfdumty 
Tell Google: Don't Make Educators Decide Between Safety and Education: https://tinyurl.com/4syejrd2   
Brisk's AI search blocker (YouTube): https://tinyurl.com/3yuy3xhy 
New York's Kids' AI Law
Governor Hochul Signs Strongest Kids' AI Safety Law in the Nation: https://tinyurl.com/msd5fyu2  
Chromebook Lawsuit
Parents Sue Google Over AI Safety Risks on School Chromebooks: https://tinyurl.com/bdcucw67  
Tech Sovereignty
Could Tech Sovereignty Free Higher Ed From Big Tech?: https://tinyurl.com/c5e2jtyc 
Journals Hit Pause
Six Probability and Statistics Journals Pause Submissions to Rethink AI Policy: https://tinyurl.com/mr3jxyyx 
How to Deslopify Your AI: https://tinyurl.com/bddj3erv 
Phones and Screens
NEASC Leadership Pulse #3: Cell Phone Policies (LinkedIn): https://tinyurl.com/yhp6pb78 
LBUSD Is Evaluating AI Use in the Classroom: https://tinyurl.com/4wz68bje 
Paolina Cummings at the Long Beach school board (Instagram): https://tinyurl.com/mvdk27pm 
Eastern Illinois University Student Senate Resolution 26-27-01 on AI in the classroom (LinkedIn): https://tinyurl.com/32ewej6d  

Beneath the Surface
Jonathan Costa, executive director of EdAdvance, on the screen-time backlash in schools. He grants that screens for their own sake are indefensible, then takes apart the claim that students are getting cognitively worse, pointing to PISA scores in Singapore and Estonia and to Peter Gray's Restoring Childhood as a rival reading of the same data.
Restoring Childhood by Peter Gray (book): https://tinyurl.com/2znavwev 

Bright Byte
Google put a small data center in orbit and asked the onboard Gemma 4 model for a haiku about space. It is a concrete way into a question students can actually chew on, which is where the energy behind AI comes from and what it costs.
Google's First Data Center Satellite Is Online and Writing Poetry: https://tinyurl.com/yy6h8zhk 

Announcements
Register for our Winter Microcredential and upcoming AI events: https://tinyurl.com/43jwkwyp
Purchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Check out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course: www.skills21.org/ai/learnai
Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum: https://www.skills21.org/social
Address Screen Time concerns: skills21.org/ai/screenshift
Read From Panic to Proof: A Data-Driven Approach to Screen Time (ASCD Educational Leadership): https://tinyurl.com/4pwdu68

Sponsor
The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing: Bridging Education and Industry to Build Tomorrow’s Technical Workforce - https://www.nextgenmfg.org
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/LeVh9FubGVY6BNuJ6. To learn more about the NCNGM, visit www.nextgenmfg.org

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Finland Halts Google Data Center, Liz explores criminal investigations into Google after the company cleared protected forest land for a new data facility. Regulators ordered early development halted across two properties due to bypassed environmental risk assessments and water management concerns. This episode highlights the mounting tension between aggressive artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion and regional environmental protection.

Key Takeaways:
Finnish authorities initiated a criminal inquiry into whether Google bypassed mandatory environmental reviews before beginning land clearance for a data facility.

The clearing of hundreds of thousands of trees mobilized civic protests and petition drives, eroding public goodwill toward foreign technology investments.

Expanding data infrastructure has intensified debate over whether high energy and land consumption offers meaningful domestic payoff to local communities.

Liz’s Two Cents: As school districts rapidly expand their adoption of cloud-based digital platforms and artificial intelligence tools, leadership teams must look beyond vendor capability to consider the real-world ecological costs of data infrastructure. District leaders should use this moment to evaluate enterprise vendor sustainability commitments and help students understand the physical footprint behind the digital tools they use every day.

Article:
Finland launches criminal investigation into Google’s clearing of forest for datacentre site
https://tinyurl.com/54za3hvj

In this ChatEDU Check-In: CDs Are So Back!, Liz explores why music fans are leaving streaming platforms to buy CDs. As algorithmic curation and digital fatigue grow, listeners are increasingly turning toward physical media for deliberate and meaningful engagement. This episode highlights how the resurgence of compact discs reflects a wider desire to escape automated feeds and reclaim intentional ownership.

Key Takeaways:
Listeners are turning to physical albums to escape the endless decision paralysis and automated curation of digital platforms.
Direct media purchases provide vital financial backing to creators and safeguard collections against disappearing digital licenses.
Physical compact discs give listeners permanent ownership and a durable, affordable alternative to the high cost and delicate footprint of vinyl.

Liz’s Two Cents: The growing pushback against algorithm-driven streaming offers a compelling lesson for school district leaders navigating digital learning environments. While infinite digital access provides undeniable convenience, it frequently creates cognitive overload and passive scrolling habits among students. School systems must strike a thoughtful balance by pairing digital literacy with intentional, focused offline experiences, helping students move past digital fatigue to build deep, sustained engagement.

Article:
‘Algorithms make everything predictable’: why the CD is making a comeback
https://tinyurl.com/864u84wf

ChatGPT can write a solid essay in seconds, so the finished draft doesn’t prove much anymore. The founder of Revision History and two amazing educators argue that what counts now is watching the work happen and making thinking visible. 

First Up
Matt tries to gift Liz a $499 Dyson CameraJet, a Wi-Fi toothbrush whose camera reads 28 images a second, finds the gaps and blasts them with mouthrinse. You can livestream it. She declines.
Dyson puts AI in a $499 toothbrush: https://tinyurl.com/m7sm4hdm 

The Rundown
Canva and Common Sense
Canva adds 60 free AI and digital literacy lessons: https://tinyurl.com/4stseefb 
Santiago Schnell resigns as provost of Dartmouth: https://tinyurl.com/4cfbyfa9 
Teachers Pay Teachers
Teachers Pay Teachers curriculum marketplace to ban AI-generated curriculum resources (credit Jacob Kantor): https://tinyurl.com/y2bjxcz3 
Mixed Messages
Washington's message to AI execs: Please shut up: https://tinyurl.com/4vnekrs4 
Anthropic's S-1 devotes 90 of its 300 pages to AI safety risks: https://tinyurl.com/yfn6tsdc 
Not So Opaque
Did the Hardest Problem in A.I. Just Get Much Easier?: https://tinyurl.com/3pab8t4b 
Hiring Philosophers
Universities Have Gone on an AI Philosopher Hiring Spree: https://tinyurl.com/37y58ty8 
Microsoft AI head calls out Anthropic for acting like Claude is conscious https://tinyurl.com/skdz3xr4 
AI in Education Newsletter (Sid's Research Community): https://tinyurl.com/4m267jbk 
Safety Standards
How we're building standards for AI with child-safety experts: https://tinyurl.com/y474v9xw 
Day of AI on Tour
Day of AI Hits the Road: https://tinyurl.com/2p4pnyvs 

Beneath the Surface
Buzz Rubenstein, whose Revision History extension now reaches 250,000 teachers, with Holly Anza of Framingham High School and Erik Hanson of the Appleton eSchool. Why AI detectors broke trust, what the writing history actually shows, and how Byline turns it student facing with no chatbot by design.
Revision History: https://tinyurl.com/ye2yrdue 
Byline, the student-facing companion to Revision History: https://tinyurl.com/2xfbekjz 
Appleton eSchool pilot: https://tinyurl.com/26b7v5re  

Bright Byte
Microsoft Research built Probabilistic Bias Correction, which learns a weather model's past mistakes and corrects them, closing the stubborn two to six week gap. It improved the leading ECMWF subseasonal model on nearly all precipitation, temperature and pressure targets.
New AI framework bridges a critical gap in mid-range weather forecasts: https://tinyurl.com/zfwuxuy9 

Announcements
Register for our Winter Microcredential and upcoming AI events: https://tinyurl.com/43jwkwyp
Purchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Check out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course: www.skills21.org/ai/learnai
Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum: https://www.skills21.org/social
Address Screen Time concerns: skills21.org/ai/screenshift
Read From Panic to Proof: A Data-Driven Approach to Screen Time (ASCD Educational Leadership): https://tinyurl.com/4pwdu68

Sponsor
The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing: Bridging Education and Industry to Build Tomorrow’s Technical Workforce - https://www.nextgenmfg.org
Registration Link: https://forms.gle/LeVh9FubGVY6BNuJ6. To learn more about the NCNGM, visit www.nextgenmfg.org

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Meta Went After the Messenger, Matt explores unsealed court documents revealing Meta's internal discussions to launch a quiet campaign discrediting social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. The disclosures, emerging from ongoing litigation filed by school districts, detail how tech executives considered covert strategies to blunt criticism regarding youth mental health and social media. The episode highlights how grassroots academic critiques can rapidly escalate into nationwide policy shifts and intense corporate pushback.

Key Takeaways:
Court records show Meta staff debated a below-the-line whisper strategy to convince the academic community to disavow Jonathan Haidt rather than mounting a public debate.

The discussions specifically explored enraging fellow researchers and commissioning takedown articles to weaken the credibility of Haidt's findings on teen screen usage.

Columbia University professor Andrew Gelman was named in the internal notes as a potential author, though Gelman confirmed he was never approached or hired by Meta for such an effort.

Matt’s Two Cents: District leaders must pay close attention to the mechanics of how digital wellness debates evolve from fringe research into mainstream institutional policy. As seen with Haidt and emerging voices like Jared Cooney Horvath, credible connectors can swiftly disrupt long-standing tech assumptions and drive sweeping mandates such as school cell phone bans. When major platforms feel threatened enough to target individual messengers, school leaders should critically evaluate outside corporate narratives and independently prioritize student well-being and intentional device management.

Article:
Meta discussed ‘whisper strategy’ against social media critic Jonathan Haidt, files show
⁠https://tinyurl.com/3x6ycrpz⁠

Sponsored by: Playground IEP AI for special education. Take advantage of our special offer: Free Account at ⁠app.playgroundiep.com/podcast⁠.