ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast

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.

A new standardized assessment aims to measure educators' generative AI skills and ethical use. Most teachers are self-teaching AI tools, creating a wide training gap. Schools face operational and legal risks when individual staff vet tools without district guidance. The conversation stresses that AI training must be targeted to grade levels and district priorities rather than one-size-fits-all.

Discussion of Anthropic’s AI Index and what separates top AI users from casual iterators. Contrast between simple iteration and strategic steering of models. How polished outputs can hide errors and reduce user scrutiny. The Three D's of AI fluency: description, delegation, and the rare skill of discernment. A simulator tool for analyzing student-AI chats is highlighted.

In this episode of ChatEDU, Beyond the Tech Ban: Shielding Focus and Fluency, Matt and Liz weather a New England “snowpocalypse” to tackle a provocative question– Is edtech making Gen Z less cognitively capable than their parents? They begin with a playful (if “unscientific”) recap of the NPR David Green vs. Google NotebookLM lawsuit experiment before diving into the cognitive decline debate.The RundownGemini Music: Google’s new Lyria integration for high-quality audio and lyric generation.NotebookLM Update: The highly requested ability to edit and annotate AI-generated slide decks.Corporate Mandates & Monitoring: Amazon tracks AI adoption through its “Clarity” system; Accenture requires AI adoption for summer promotions; and Block mandates weekly “AI achievement” emails, reportedly causing some AI burnout.IBM’s Strategy: A tripling of entry-level hiring with a focus on human-centric soft skills.CS Enrollment Shifts: Students are moving away from traditional Computer Science toward AI-specific majors at MIT and UCSD.Cybersecurity Crisis: Sophisticated AI-powered phishing in schools amidst declining federal support.Alpha School Expose: 404 Media’s investigation into surveillance, scraping, and high hallucination rates.Magic School’s AI OS integrating SIS data; Liz’s finding of 10% AI grading swings; and a push to frame agents like Raina as tools, not “BFFs.”Beneath the SurfaceThe hosts critique expanding screen time bans and propose a “Quality Screen Time Index,” using SAMR to distinguish basic substitution from transformative AI use.Bright ByteMatt and Liz wrap up with a breakthrough from OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, which solved a decades-old gluon physics problem, proving the formula wasn’t zero and generating a 12-hour proof later confirmed by scientists.AnnouncementsCelebrate our 100th episode:⁠ ⁠skills21.org/chatedu100⁠⁠Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zwEdAdvance 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/learnai⁠⁠ Skills21’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.org⁠⁠LinksNPR Host Sues Google Over NotebookLM Voicehttps://tinyurl.com/muzvhcb6Gemini Can Now Create Musichttps://tinyurl.com/ytaj2jhsGoogle Fixes NotebookLM’s Most Annoying Slide Deck Flawhttps://tinyurl.com/42vxnz43Amazon Tracks AI Use; Accenture Ties Promotion to AIhttps://tinyurl.com/yc4dmey6Dorsey’s New Company Falters Amid AI Mandatehttps://tinyurl.com/mw579fajIBM to Hire Entry-Level Talent in the AI Erahttps://tinyurl.com/3xz84yd9The Computer Science Exodushttps://tinyurl.com/4rune56nWhy AI Threatens School Cybersecurityhttps://tinyurl.com/3t74zn5hStocks Slide After Launch of Claude Security Toolhttps://tinyurl.com/hpzpzwt3Inside an AI-Powered Private Schoolhttps://tinyurl.com/34rzhs49MagicSchoolMagicSchool.aiStudent Companionship and Responsible AI in Schoolshttps://tinyurl.com/4j74d6rbDepartment of Labor's Artificial Intelligence Literacy Frameworkhttps://tinyurl.com/3d6zt7wvIQ scores fall worldwidehttps://tinyurl.com/dbsetjbnIs Screen Time Hurting Literacy?https://tinyurl.com/msvbr3uf‘AI Bill of Rights’ reaches Florida’s K-12 schoolshttps://tinyurl.com/4zdwtha2Digital Learning & AI Literacy Evaluationhttps://www.edadvance.org/aiAI Solves a "Zero" Mystery in Physicshttps://tinyurl.com/5a9t7wd9

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Make Them Read!, Liz explores the systemic decline of long-form reading in classrooms and the rise of the "excerpt culture." This episode examines how the shift toward clips and samples over the last fifteen years has eroded student attention spans and basic reading skills.Key Takeaways:The transition from full-length novels to abbreviated samples reflects a broader cultural shift that prioritizes the "reel" and the "clip" over deep literary engagement.Requiring students to commit to long-form texts acts as a strategic resistance to the monetization of attention, allowing them to reclaim their focus from digital distractions.Authentic comprehension and original voice are best developed through "flash essays" and unassisted, timed tasks that remove AI bumpers and force students to confront intellectual uncertainty.Liz’s Two Cents: There is a profound tension between "meeting students where they are" and the pedagogical necessity of waiting for them to catch up to the heights of great literature. If educators treat declining attention spans as a terminal condition rather than a challenge to be met with more rigorous engagement, they risk making the "end of reading" a self-fulfilling prophecy.Article Link:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/youth-reading-books-professors/685825/?taid=69814c1dbe49b700014af753&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterSponsored by: Eduaide Eduaide.ai where good ideas become great lessons. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off at eduaide.ai.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: The Silicon Gaze: Uncovering ChatGPT’s Hidden Biases, Liz explores how researchers used forced-choice comparisons to reveal deep-seated stereotypes within AI models. By bypassing standard safety filters, the study demonstrates how millions of automated responses reflect geographic and demographic prejudices.Key Takeaways:Researchers used a forced choice method to extract millions of subjective rankings, revealing that ChatGPT consistently mirrors internet tropes regarding cleanliness, friendliness, and intelligence across different locations.The episode highlights that the model’s training data links racial and economic demographics to negative attributes, such as ranking states with higher Black populations lower on work ethic and beauty.The silicon gaze creates a facade of neutrality that can subtly influence users' perceptions of career paths and neighborhoods, making these hidden biases difficult for the average user to challenge.Liz’s Two Cents: The perpetuation of quiet biases in AI data is deeply concerning as these models become integrated into everyday tasks. For school leaders, this reinforces the urgent need for professional learning and student-facing curriculum that focuses on identifying and questioning the inherent prejudices embedded in the technology we often treat as neutral.Article Link: https://geoffreyfowler.substack.com/p/chatgpt-biasSponsored by: Eduaide Eduaide.ai where good ideas become great lessons. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off at eduaide.ai

Evan Harris, a safety expert on deepfake sexual abuse, vocal cloning, and crisis response who advises schools on policy and victim support. He breaks down real threats from deepfakes, what vulnerable communities look like, and a 48-hour response roadmap for schools. The conversation covers leadership training, handling digital evidence, prevention-focused classroom work, and practical next steps for districts.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Security Breaches and Digital Cheating on the New SAT, Matt explores the sophisticated methods students and bad actors are using to compromise the integrity of the digital SAT. The transition to a computer based format has introduced technical vulnerabilities that go beyond traditional cheating methods.Key Takeaways:Specialized hardware, such as video capture devices disguised as peripherals, and "sandbox" software allow students to bypass the security of the Bluebook testing platform.International websites are leaking authentic test questions from the College Board's active bank, facilitating large scale cheating across different time zones.The practice of allowing students to use their own laptops is a primary security vulnerability that hardware based exploits can easily target.Matt’s Two Cents: While the shift to digital was marketed as a definitive solution to paper based security flaws, the BYOD model has proven to be the Achilles' heel of the entire scheme. By allowing students to use personal devices, the College Board has moved the battlefield to a technical arena where hardware exploits are nearly impossible to fully neutralize.Article Link: https://tinyurl.com/5n6vbydcSponsored by: Eduaide.Ai Eduaide is an AI-powered workspace designed for real classroom planning with practical tools like grade-level evaluators and classroom-ready graphic organizers. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at https://www.eduaide.ai/.

A look at a major tech company tying bonuses and reviews to AI usage and performance metrics. Exploration of a new tracker that measures hundreds of AI-related data points. Discussion of pay multipliers for aggressive AI adoption and organizational reshaping as individuals replace larger teams. A warning about education lagging behind industry AI expectations.