ChatEDU: AI in Education

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.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Good for Thee and for Me, Matt explores whether faculty members should be required to disclose their own artificial intelligence use. The University of Illinois Chicago recently released updated guidelines requiring instructors to explicitly declare their AI usage across syllabi, course design, and grading support. This policy shift highlights the growing emphasis on mutual transparency as artificial intelligence becomes deeply integrated into higher education.
Key Takeaways:
Course syllabi must explicitly state which student AI uses are acceptable or prohibited.
Faculty are required to disclose their own use of artificial intelligence for teaching, grading, or course design.
Policies must align with academic integrity standards while providing clear templates via campus groups like CATE and LTS.
Matt’s Two Cents: Generative artificial intelligence is a general-purpose technology that impacts every aspect of our work, eroding trust between faculty and students if accountability flows in only one direction. Establishing transparency guidelines for both sides helps heal campus divisions and fosters a balanced approach to digital literacy in higher education.
Article:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use and Disclosure Statement
https://tinyurl.com/56kw6u4t

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

An AI agent can log into a student's Canvas and do the whole assignment. A writing professor on who is actually learning, and the process steps that work.

First Up
Cornell researchers found chatbots keep writing the same story, down to the names Mara, Elias and Elara in 88 percent of them. Liz ran one prompt through Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT and got three keepers of lost things, three bakeries and three villages tucked between sleepy hills.
Why Do Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Someone Named 'Elias Thorne'?: https://tinyurl.com/ydewzeav 
Elvis estate sues Anthropic over training on Elvis recordings: https://tinyurl.com/3u56sbkw 

The Rundown
Gemini Notebook
Teacher-led Gemini Notebook in Google Classroom: Insight Summaries and Trusted Domain Sharing: https://tinyurl.com/mds89n2d 
The Crackdown
The New Nanny State: https://tinyurl.com/3hcxsm2s 
'Checkmate' looms for traditional tests amid smart glasses epidemic: https://tinyurl.com/byc4ybsw 
The Hardware Bill
The Memory Shortage Comes for Schools: https://tinyurl.com/4ukmzxf5 
Agents Meet the Real World
Websites are closing their doors to AI agents: https://tinyurl.com/e5jp4y6d 
Scoop: Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts: https://tinyurl.com/2w2bpjuf 
Moving Beyond the AI Cop-Out: How I Got My Students to Write Their Own Tech Policies: https://tinyurl.com/m859uvf9 
AI in Education Newsletter (Sid's Research Community): https://tinyurl.com/4m267jbk 

Beneath the Surface
Bay Area writing instructor Anna Mills discusses AI agents completing coursework autonomously, why companies haven't blocked them, and her classroom response: student topic choice, process credit, peer and AI review, and treating AI detection as a dialogue.
MLA Statement on Educational Technologies and AI Agents: https://tinyurl.com/4sf3ptdh 
AI and College Writing: An Orientation (Anna Mills): https://tinyurl.com/3drp9hjb 
The Peer & AI Review + Reflection Project (PAIRR): https://tinyurl.com/3dajfab7 
AI Is Problematic. Why Does PAIRR Use It? An Ethics Statement: https://tinyurl.com/jne7japz 
Designing for Agency and Critical AI Literacy: The PAIRR Project (LTHEchat): https://tinyurl.com/2s36p45z 
MLA Framework for AI-Resilient Assessment and Grading: https://tinyurl.com/mvtvswdz 
Anna Mills on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/4h38utbm 

Bright Byte
Hugging Face released Carbon-X, an open model trained on DNA sequences alongside English, so researchers can ask in plain language what a genetic change might do. It reads DNA in six-letter chunks and runs locally on a laptop.
Hugging Face's New AI Model Lets You Chat With DNA: https://tinyurl.com/3e34pvnx 

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: Students take up to 88 standardized tests before high school, but more testing doesn't improve learning, Liz explores how high-volume standardized testing impacts educational outcomes and school operations. Federal mandates have driven school districts to restructure daily schedules and reallocate instructional time toward tested subjects like math and reading. However, this increased focus on assessment has not translated into improved academic performance.
Key Takeaways:
Federal testing mandates led 44 percent of school districts to cut time from non-tested subjects like the arts.
Increased testing volume fails to produce measurable achievement gains in core academic subjects.
High-stakes test pressure decreases teacher job satisfaction and contributes to educator attrition.
Liz’s Two Cents: Over-testing creates an environment where evaluation overshadows actual instruction, forcing districts to narrow their curriculum at the expense of well-rounded learning. School leaders must carefully weigh the administrative and operational burdens of excessive assessment against the lack of tangible academic gains.
Article:
Students take up to 88 standardized tests before high school, but more testing doesn't improve learning
https://tinyurl.com/4n3ab88t

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