Future Fluent

How can learning to use AI be more like, well, what happens at a skate park? This week on Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle explore how to build "human agency" with Yusuf Ahmad, the cofounder and CEO of Playlab.ai. At a skate park, individuals practice their own skills and learn from one another. That's just what's happening at Playlab.ai, a nonprofit where educators build AI tools to support their unique approach to teaching. By playing and iterating with AI, both individually and in community, educators change their relationship with technology and strengthen their sense of agency. AI is a different kind of technology than educators have experienced before, he argues. But the way to harness it begins with encouraging diverse people and communities to play.

Want more? Take a look at futurefluent.net and these sources! 

• Playlab.ai is a nonprofit organization building tools that help educators and students play with AI and build tools that work for them. 
• Tinkering Toward Utopia, by David Tyack and Larry Cuban – and the commentary, “Why School Reform Is Impossible,” by Seymour Papert 
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by Tim Wu
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, by bell hooks 
• Twenty Things to do with a Computer, by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon, 1971. (PDF of original paper.)  
• 20 Things to do with a Computer Forward 50 (on the work of Seymour Papert & Cynthia Solomon) by Gary S. Stager, 2021. 

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Whoooooosh. Okay, so that isn't really the sound of the news about AI rushing past--but It's easy to feel like it is. And as we scramble to keep up with trends, how do we stay focused on what really matters? This week on Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran talk with Claire Zau, a partner at GSV Ventures who publishes a widely read newsletter on the latest in AI. Just a few themes? Metacognition laziness, AI programs that share scents, and Jeremy's favorite book of all time.

Want more? Check out futurefluent.net and these references:

• ⁠Claire’s AI and Education newsletter⁠ by Claire Zau 
• ⁠ASU+GSV Summit⁠ and ⁠AI Show⁠ April 5-7, San Diego (free registration here) 
• ⁠EdTech Insiders⁠ - a newsletter, podcast and events 
• ⁠AI for Education Resource Hub⁠
• ⁠Y Combinator YouTube Channel⁠
• ⁠BG2 Pod⁠
• ⁠Hard Fork Podcast⁠
• ⁠Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance⁠, by Robert Pirsig 
• ⁠GTC Keynote With NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang⁠ 
• ⁠Beware of Metacognitive Laziness⁠: arXiv 

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For generations, "reading, writing and 'rithmatic" have formed the boundaries of early childhood education. Now research shows there's a catalytic fourth "R": Relationships. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle speak with author Isabelle Hau who shares her findings on why relationship-focused learning should be at the core of curriculum and education. Her findings have deep implications for the role of AI-based tutors and companions. And Hau warns us about the dangers of "junk" technology.

Want more? Check out futurefluent.net and these references:

• Love to Learn by Isabelle Hau. And her substack, Small Talks 
• Artificial Intelligence and the Early Childhood Field: Exploring Potential to Enhance Education, Communication and Inclusivity Zero to Three
• How is artificial intelligence reshaping early childhood development? UNICEF
• Why These Friendly Robots Can't Be Good Friends by Sherry Turkle
• Designing Socialable Robots by Cynthia Brazeal 
• Is Early Childhood Ready for AI? by Ariel Gilreath, Hechinger Report
• Common Sense Media: Educational tools  
• Digital Promise: How technology can support learning  
• Hikikomori: Post modern hermits?

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What does it mean for a technology to be “generous”? More than 25 years ago, researcher David Wiley was electrified by the idea that the Internet made it possible to create an educational material once, then share it with millions. That was the beginning of Wiley’s deep support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In this episode of Future Fluent, Wiley shares with Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran the radical changes he foresees for OER driven by generative AI.

Want more? Check out these great resources on artificial intelligence and Open Educational Resources. 

• Reviewing Research in AI, a substack by David Wiley  
• A list of Open Educational Resources and Archives currently available 
• Creative Commons Licenses - a definition  
• Improving Learning blog: An eclectic, pragmatic and enthusiastic perspective by David Wiley
• Bloom’s 1984 paper: The Two Sigma problem (and Wikipedia’s explanation of Bloom’s Two Sigma problem)   
• Instructors as Innovators: a Future-focused Approach to New AI Learning Opportunities, With Prompts, a paper by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick 
• The Best Available Human Standard by Ethan Mollick
• Andrej Karpathy’s YouTube channel: Explaining Large Language Models 
• Quarterly Report 09/24: What are the most influential current AI Papers? By Christoph Leiter et al.

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Among the most controversial topics in AI is just this: What role do we want AI to have in teaching and learning math? In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle talk with Dan Meyer, one of the most outspoken and thoughtful critics of math education and how we're using technology. Learning isn't just "knowledge work," or pouring facts into students heads, Dan says. It's social work. And can --or should-- AI help with that? 

Ready to dive in? Check out these great resources on teaching math and artificial intelligence.

• Mathworlds, a substack by Dan Meyer 
• “Teachers Told Us They’ve Used AI in the Classroom. Here’s Why.” EducationWeek
• “Using Artificial Intelligence Tools in K-12 Classrooms,” RAND 
• “Is there a problem with Mathbots?” EdSurge 
• Hack Education, blog by Audrey Watters 
• GSV’s AI News & Updates (substack), by Claire Zao

What’s Your Ed At, blog by Edward Zitron

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What exactly does “innovation” in education mean? Does it begin in Silicon Valley, or somewhere else? In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran explore the who, how, and where of innovation with long-time educator and policy leader, Kristina Ishmael. Join us as Kristina shares insights from her journey from Omaha to Washington, DC.

Want more? Check out FutureFluent.net or these references!

• The most recent National Education Technology Plan on artificial intelligence is no longer available from the website of the Department of Education. Pat Yongpradit of Code.org downloaded the reports from 2023 through 2025. You can ⁠get the collection of reports here from his LinkedIn post⁠.  
• ⁠Indigenous Rights and Tribal Sovereignty in Washington⁠
• ⁠SAMR model (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition) ⁠ 
• ⁠Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning ⁠(2023), Office of Educational Technology  
• ⁠CAST⁠ and the ⁠Universal Design for Learning: Principles, Framework and Practice⁠ 

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How do you use cutting edge technologies without losing your grip on humanity? Mike Yates, an educator for over a decade, is managing that balance. He's fearless about using technology in innovative ways, like hosting AI-inflected poetry slams in his classroom, but remains focused on building the human relationships that are core to great teaching. In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran explore Mike's provocative idea: How something he calls "digital dexterity" could shape the future of AI-infused teaching.

Oh, the places you can explore! Check thse out:

• Schoolish (Spotify) (or Schoolish on Apple podcasts.)  
• Schoolish newsletter  
• Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin (Here’s the description of her MacArthur Foundation award)
• AI & the Future of Us: An Oprah WInfrey Special (with Bill Gates and Sam Altman) 
• HipHopEd 
• Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education by Sam Seidel 
• Playlab 
• “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” by Claude Shannon
• “Her” (2013)

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Great writers plunge themselves and their lived experience into their writing. In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran talk with Mike Sharples, a renowned learning scientist. In the 1990s, Sharples predicted that in less than 20 years computers would write full novels. We talk about how AI has progressed as a writer—and how it may evolve in the future.

Check out some of the work we discussed with Mike Sharples: 

* Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers by Mike Sharples and Rafael Pérez y Pérez 

• On Writing, by Stephen King 
• Innovating Pedagogies 2024
• On Process with Laurie Anderson (from the Smithsonian) 
• Just This Once, by Scott French and Hal
• The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson 
• Principles for the Ethical Use of AI in the UN System
• An Intro to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society by Dan Hendrycks 
• Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity by Mitchel Resnick

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