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

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Google's AI Training Investment, Liz explores a massive three-year partnership between Google, ISTE, and ASCD to provide AI training to six million educators across the United States. This initiative represents one of the largest private educational investments in decades, specifically targeting hands-on experience with tools like Gemini and NotebookLM.

Key Takeaways:

Google is partnering with ISTE and ASCD to provide AI professional development to all K to 12 and higher education faculty in the U.S.

This large-scale private initiative fills a void left by the closure of the federal Office of Educational Technology and a lack of national guidance.

Critics suggest these programs may serve as customer acquisition campaigns that prioritize specific vendor tools over objective, evidence-based pedagogy.

Liz’s Two Cents: While the involvement of a single vendor raises some questions about commercial influence, the practical reality is that schools need immediate support! Not to mention that so many schools already have Google’s FERPA compliant AI tools at little or no cost. With federal resources stalled, this partnership provides an essential bridge to digital literacy, ensuring that teachers are not left to navigate the complexities of AI integration without a foundational roadmap.

Link to article:

https://www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-new-google-partnership-a-sizable-investment-in-ai-for-teachers/

Sponsored by: Eduaide.ai | AI Created for Teachers. Where Good Ideas Become Great Lessons. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off at eduaid.ai (Code: CHATEDU).

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.

In this 100th episode milestone of ChatEDU, Major Shift - Durable College Majors in 2026, Matt and Liz dive into a rapidly shifting landscape where AI drives government policy, corporate restructuring, and student behavior. The hosts also discuss a surreal exit interview between Anthropic and its retiring Opus 3 model.

The Rundown

Anthropic vs. DoD: Anthropic is labeled a national security risk after refusing unrestricted military use, while OpenAI moves in to secure classified government contracts.

Block’s AI Layoffs: Jack Dorsey cuts 4,000 jobs at Block, citing AI as the primary tool allowing for smaller, flatter, and more efficient teams.

The Einstein Agent: A controversial tool that autonomously logs into Canvas to watch lectures and submit work, sparking a major crisis in academic integrity.

Edia’s Creative Funding: An AI attendance platform in Albany County is being funded by revenue from school bus safety camera fines.

The Rhithm Project: A new strategy to reach 10 million people to combat relational displacement and keep human connection at the center of youth development.

Pew Teen Study: New data shows 54% of teens use AI for school, with 59% reporting that AI cheating is now a regular occurrence in their schools.

Beneath the Surface: The Major Shift

The hosts analyze a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study on the 2026 labor market. While engineering remains a top earner, Computer Science is seeing a hiring hangover, and high touch fields like Nursing and Special Education show the most stability.

The Bright Byte

Insights from the Stanford Education AI Summit highlight how AI is bridging the digital divide through ASL translation and scalable tutoring for low connectivity environments.

Announcements

Come join us! AI in Education: Spring 2026 Conference.

https://www.skills21.org/event-details/ai-in-education-spring-2026-conference

Follow us on YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/@ChatEDUEdAdvance

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday

ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77

Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

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

Model deprecation commitments for Claude Opus 3

https://tinyurl.com/3d4wnuf8

The whole thing was a scam

https://tinyurl.com/yrt7wemj

What Jack Dorsey’s Block Layoffs Mean for the Job Market at Large

https://tinyurl.com/327mmdw7

AI reshaping JPMorgan Chase’s workforce as bank plans ‘huge redeployment’

https://tinyurl.com/7dwf95h5

Agentic AI Can Complete Whole Courses for Students. Now What?

https://tinyurl.com/5cjsp662

Edia Implementation and Reimbursement Plan

https://tinyurl.com/526nfjsk

Building Toward a Tipping Point

https://tinyurl.com/3bspztny

How Teens Use and View AI

https://tinyurl.com/2s429bdm

College majors that have the highest earning potential and lowest unemployment rates

https://tinyurl.com/yetn8wcn

Revenge of the English majors

https://tinyurl.com/58kvvjwr

2026 Stanford AI+Education Summit

https://tinyurl.com/yehj7enw

Fluttering Creations

https://www.flutteringcreations.com/

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Measuring the AI Skill Gap in the Classroom (For Teachers), Matt explores the launch of the Futurenav Adapt AI assessment by ETS and the current state of teacher AI competency. The episode highlights the tension between the widespread, self-taught use of AI tools by educators and the lack of formal institutional guidance or standardized skill metrics. It examines how schools are navigating the shift from individual teacher initiative to necessary district-wide oversight and legal safety.

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.

Sponsored 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/.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: What AI Power Users Actually Do!, Matt explores Anthropic’s New AI Index and what sets top AI users apart from the rest. The episode examines how users interact with generative models, specifically highlighting the difference between simple iteration and true strategic steering. It underscores the growing need for critical discernment as AI outputs become more visually polished.

Key Takeaways:

Most users now treat AI as a work in progress by iterating on responses, yet only thirty percent actually steer the AI by questioning its logic or pushing back on assumptions.

Polished outputs, such as formatted documents or apps, create a discernment gap where users are less likely to identify missing content or verify facts.

High level AI fluency requires mastery of description, delegation, and discernment, with the ability to evaluate and question the machine being the most critical and rarest skill.

Matt’s Two Cents: Kudos to Anthropic as they keep cranking out these great research pieces based on the mountains of chat (and now vibe coding) data they have to analyze. Matt also shares his favorite Gemini Gem right now which is a student AI Chat Autopsy simulator designed to get at some similar takeaways. 

⁠https://gemini.google.com/gem/1ju4IL2_8WWnkKfZGPGeFsWSLDhc7vhut?usp=sharing⁠ 

Sponsored 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/⁠.

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 Rundown

Gemini 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 Surface

The hosts critique expanding screen time bans and propose a “Quality Screen Time Index,” using SAMR to distinguish basic substitution from transformative AI use.

Bright Byte

Matt 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.

Announcements

Celebrate our 100th episode:⁠ ⁠skills21.org/chatedu100⁠⁠

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday

ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77

Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

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

NPR Host Sues Google Over NotebookLM Voice

https://tinyurl.com/muzvhcb6

Gemini Can Now Create Music

https://tinyurl.com/ytaj2jhs

Google Fixes NotebookLM’s Most Annoying Slide Deck Flaw

https://tinyurl.com/42vxnz43

Amazon Tracks AI Use; Accenture Ties Promotion to AI

https://tinyurl.com/yc4dmey6

Dorsey’s New Company Falters Amid AI Mandate

https://tinyurl.com/mw579faj

IBM to Hire Entry-Level Talent in the AI Era

https://tinyurl.com/3xz84yd9

The Computer Science Exodus

https://tinyurl.com/4rune56n

Why AI Threatens School Cybersecurity

https://tinyurl.com/3t74zn5h

Stocks Slide After Launch of Claude Security Tool

https://tinyurl.com/hpzpzwt3

Inside an AI-Powered Private School

https://tinyurl.com/34rzhs49

MagicSchool

MagicSchool.ai

Student Companionship and Responsible AI in Schools

https://tinyurl.com/4j74d6rb

Department of Labor's Artificial Intelligence Literacy Framework

https://tinyurl.com/3d6zt7wv

IQ scores fall worldwide

https://tinyurl.com/dbsetjbn

Is Screen Time Hurting Literacy?

https://tinyurl.com/msvbr3uf

‘AI Bill of Rights’ reaches Florida’s K-12 schools

https://tinyurl.com/4zdwtha2

Digital Learning & AI Literacy Evaluation

https://www.edadvance.org/ai

AI Solves a "Zero" Mystery in Physics

https://tinyurl.com/5a9t7wd9