ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast

Casey Cuny, a veteran high school English teacher and 2024 California Teacher of the Year who builds classroom AI tools, discusses balancing human-centered teaching with AI. He outlines a Human Start, AI Feedback, Human Finish framework. Short takes cover authentic assessment, AI fluency and prompting, student reactions to AI, and his witai.app formative-assessment tool.

A critique of teaching AI skills before ensuring basic literacy and critical reading. A defense of long-form literature as training for sustained attention and judgment. An introduction to a Slow AI Public Library that uses a quiz to recommend books to rebuild empathy, patience, and reading stamina. A personal test-drive of the quiz and a call to try the recommended reads.

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/2hkcvkwhSponsored by: Eduaide.aiEduaide: 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 RundownAccidental 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 SurfaceMatt 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 BytePaul 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.AnnouncementsLearning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zwOur 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 chatedu@edadvance.org to bring it to your district. ​​⁠⁠www.skills21.org/ai/learnai⁠⁠Skills21’s FREE social media literacy course. Check it out here -⁠ ⁠https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠⁠This episode is sponsored by The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.nextgenmfg.org⁠⁠LinksMeta Patent: Posthumous AI Postinghttps://tinyurl.com/34ja5ddeStop ChatGPT Follow-Up Baithttps://tinyurl.com/ytmrwtv9ChatGPT Interactive Math Visualshttps://tinyurl.com/55ztmer2GenAI Self-Reflection Checklisthttps://tinyurl.com/mtcuuxkzNotebookLM Video Overviewshttps://tinyurl.com/4kutwdtuNotebookLM more useful for students and book lovershttps://tinyurl.com/v5cnv2r8ChatGPT Edu Leaks Project Metadatahttps://tinyurl.com/mr2h42t3CU Community Fights AI Rollouthttps://tinyurl.com/2f6hmd8uGrammarly AI "Expert" Backfirehttps://tinyurl.com/4fn93kw3USAII 2026 Global AI Hackathon Openshttps://tinyurl.com/bdzbzkd9AI Youth Corps to Aid Local Bizhttps://tinyurl.com/rrsc4netAI Use Wreaks Havoc on Amazon Core Businesshttps://tinyurl.com/yr99nyxkStudy: AI Increases Amazon Workloadhttps://tinyurl.com/3393cz3aDoubt: AI Saving Teachers Timehttps://tinyurl.com/37vu2jw9Tech Boss’s AI Dog Cancer Vaccinehttps://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/3uamvtvmSponsored by: Eduaide.aiEduaide.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/⁠.

A look at why colleague-to-colleague sharing, not top-down mandates, drives real AI adoption. Discussion of how private, improvised use stalls collective learning and creates risks. Exploration of leaders creating permission structures and rewarding peer helpers to turn social capital into scalable practice. Notes on tailoring training to specific grade levels and disciplines rather than one-size-fits-all.

Kavitta Ghai, co-founder and CEO of Nectar, built a campus AI operating system after experiencing time poverty as a student. She discusses scaling AI support across 116 community colleges, integrating assistants into LMS platforms, and creating document‑grounded tutoring, advising, and career coaching. Short talks cover technical interoperability, measurable student outcomes, and plans to expand into K‑12 and nationwide.

A massive three-year plan to train six million K–12 and higher education teachers in AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM. Discussion of a federal leadership gap in edtech and why professional organizations stepped in. Debate over whether vendor-led training risks serving marketing aims. Practical concerns about schools already relying on Google's tools and the urgency of teacher readiness.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: The AI College Counselor, Liz explores how families are increasingly turning to chatbots to navigate the complex and overwhelmed college admissions landscape. This shift highlights a growing reliance on digital tools to fill the gap left by high student to counselor ratios in public schools.Key Takeaways:AI provides 24:7 virtual support for routine tasks like researching tuition and identifying reach schools, offering a sense of control in a system where human guidance is often limited.The convenience of these tools is undermined by the risk of hallucinations, where chatbots fabricate scholarship details or provide overly optimistic assessments of admission chances.While effective for technical data organization and brainstorming, technology cannot replace the introspection and human self-awareness required to determine a true institutional fit.Liz’s Two Cents: The shift toward AI counseling highlights a desperate need for equity in a system where human guidance is often a luxury. However, we must be wary of algorithmic reassurance replacing the hard, necessary work of student self-discovery.Sponsored by: Eduaide.Ai Built by teachers, for teachers, Eduaide is an AI-powered workspace designed for real classroom planning. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at https://www.eduaide.ai.

AI-driven policy and corporate shakeups reshaping jobs and college major demand. Controversial agentic tools that submit coursework spark academic integrity alarms. New data on teen AI use and major-specific labor outcomes highlight winners and losers. Local funding quirks and projects aiming to preserve human connection in youth development round out the conversation.