Integrate This! Ed Tech Podcast

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If a lesson could have been an email, a video, or a chatbot response, what makes it worth gathering in the same room? Brian Buffington’s answer is not anti-technology. It is a challenge to use live time for the things technology cannot replace: community, contribution, collaboration, application, and the energy of creating something together.

Brian is an independent EdTech speaker, workshop facilitator, and creator of the Buff Nuggets newsletter. In this return visit to Integrate This!, he joins Jeremy Mikla and David Berner to unpack his “Why Come to Class?” message and share practical ways educators can turn students and adult learners from spectators into participants.

You will hear how a Padlet brainstorm became an AI-assisted song, how teachers can co-create standards-aligned stories with younger students, and why a failed science demonstration may teach more about learning than a perfect performance. Brian also shares two classroom examples: a literature teacher who preserved student authorship while using AI to design book covers, and an elementary school theme song that combined music, captioning, reading, and school culture.

Key topics

• The purpose of in-person learning in an information-rich world
• Belonging, application, and experiential classroom design
• Crowdsourcing and student voice
• Responsible, human-led uses of generative AI
• Teacher vulnerability and productive failure
• Creative uses of Padlet, Gemini, Suno, Canva, and Google Classroom

Resources and Links

Brian Buffington: https://briankbuffington.com/

Buff Nuggets newsletter: https://briankbuffington.com/subscribe/

Brian Buffington on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-buffington-82292077

Padlet: https://padlet.com/

Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

Suno: https://suno.com/

Canva for Education: https://www.canva.com/education/

Google Classroom: https://edu.google.com/workspace-for-education/products/classroom/

Follow Integrate This! on your preferred podcast platform, share the episode with an educator who is rethinking student engagement, and tell us what makes a class worth showing up for.

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AL Kingsley joins the podcast from the UK with 35 years as an EdTech CEO, a background in school governance and government advisory work, and a long-running focus on AI in education. He chairs the advisory board of the Institute of AI in Education, which funds doctoral research on using AI safely in primary schools. AL explains why fear of technology keeps creeping back, why we shouldn’t confuse social media with teaching and learning, and why he argues for pedagogy-informed technology. He then gets practical: where schools go wrong when evaluating tools, how to bring technical teams and teaching staff into the same conversation, why an AI policy should fit on a post-it note, and why a one-hour training session won’t carry a new tool through the school year. He also talks about what the pandemic taught us, how AI can free up more human conversations in assessment, and what keeps him optimistic. Stick around for the lightning round, including the question every leader should ask before buying software, his walk-up song, and the new book he mentions at the end.

Check out Al's Work: Al Kingsley MBE | Education, EdTech, AI & Leadership

Connect with AL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alkingsley1?originalSubdomain=uk

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Creativity takes experimentation, revision, and a willingness to try something that might not work. How do we protect that process when AI can deliver a finished-looking product in seconds?

Jeremy Mikla and David Berner welcome artist, educator, and STEAM Power author Tim Needles to Integrate This! EdTech for a conversation about creativity, learning, and keeping students actively involved when using AI.

Tim shares how brainstorming, project mapping, and iteration can help students use AI thoughtfully while developing their own ideas. We explore what every classroom can learn from the art room, why playful experimentation has value, and how an emphasis on efficiency can squeeze out opportunities for deeper learning.

We also discuss Tim’s work with OK Go, the debate over AI-generated art, the importance of personal voice, and why foundational creative skills still matter as the tools evolve. Plus, Tim shares his favorite creative tools, current inspirations, and keynote walk-up song.

Join us for a reminder to make room for the messy parts of learning and give students opportunities to create, reflect, and try again.

RESOURCES & CONNECTIONS

• Tim Needles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timneedles/

• STEAM Power: Infusing Art Into Your STEM Curriculum: https://books.google.com/books/about/STEAM_Power.html?id=qc-CEAAAQBAJ • OK Go Sandbox lessons: https://okgosandbox.org/

• Integrate This! guest walk-up songs playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28jaPWAoVslYQC4PAjVwh3?si=uW7kSARiRNuxESOdulKE1Q&utm_source=sms&pi=aeuH3BXiQI-Fy&nd=1&dlsi=2c7410ad6f1c4f03

Follow Integrate This! EdTech for more conversations about teaching, learning, and technology with purpose.

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Jacob Kantor, known as "Chief Dodo," joins the podcast to share a rare inside view: running 100-150 district calls a month as a consultant connecting EdTech companies with school and district leaders. Jacob breaks down what's actually driving (or killing) a district's decision to adopt a new tool, from budget pressure, to why efficacy and case studies open the door but rarely close the sale on their own. He traces his own path from a recession-era curriculum rep knocking on school doors to running his own shop and talks candidly about how COVID-era ESSER funding fueled a wave of AI EdTech companies, some of which may not have survived without it. If you've ever wondered why your district adopted (or dropped) a tool or want to understand the sales conversations happening behind the scenes, this one pulls back the curtain.

Connect with Jacob:

https://thejacobkantor.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejacobkantor/

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What changes when student work doesn't end on a screen?

Jeremy Mikla and David Berner are joined by Peter Valinski of Sawgrass Technologies and Vik Patel of Craft Express for a conversation about moving student creation from the digital world into something students can actually hold, share, use, and even sell.

What begins with personalized products quickly becomes a much larger conversation about learning. Peter and Vik explore how hands-on creation can help students develop ownership, resilience, creativity, problem-solving skills, and an entrepreneurial mindset while connecting classroom learning to authentic audiences and real-world applications.

The conversation explores school-based businesses, spirit wear and student enterprises, maker spaces, career readiness, STEAM connections, customer feedback, and the many skills hiding inside the journey from an idea to a finished product.

They also tackle the changing role of creativity in an AI-powered world. If AI can make generating an idea easier, what happens to the importance of iteration, judgment, personalization, hands-on skills, and the ability to turn that idea into something real?

Along the way, Vik shares examples of schools beginning to build entrepreneurship and maker experiences around product creation, while Peter connects those classroom opportunities to evolving technologies in manufacturing, automation, robotics, and the workforce.

It's a conversation about much more than making T-shirts or mugs. It's about giving students opportunities to create for someone, solve real problems, learn from failure, and see where their ideas can take them.

Resources

Sawgrass Technologies: https://www.sawgrassink.com/education/

Craft Express: https://craftexpressus.com/

Craft Express on Instagram & Facebook: @CraftExpressUS

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What happens when the numbers we use to define success in school don’t actually measure what matters most?

Jeremy Mikla and David Berner are joined by education advocate, author, filmmaker, and former venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith for a provocative conversation about what schools prioritize—and what students actually need for life beyond the classroom.

Drawing from his book Aftermath, Ted challenges the continued emphasis on math procedures that technology can perform instantly and argues for greater attention to ideas students will actually use: probability, statistics, estimation, algorithms, data, and decision-making.

The conversation expands from math into the larger purpose of school. Ted reflects on visiting 200 schools across all 50 states and the “bright spots” he found where teachers are trusted, students have agency, and learning is connected to genuine purpose. He discusses career-based learning, his documentary Multiple Choice, alternatives to the college-for-all pathway, the pressure created by elite college admissions, and why he questions the influence of standardized test scores on education.

Along the way, Ted offers a simple but powerful reminder: when students are engaged, they learn.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Ted Dintersmith — https://www.teddintersmith.com/

Aftermath — https://www.aftermaththebook.com/

Multiple Choice — https://www.multiplechoicefilm.com/

What School Could Be — https://www.teddintersmith.com/what-school-could-be

Most Likely to Succeed — https://www.whatschoolcouldbe.org/most-likely-to-succeed

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Dr. Nadine Ebri, CEO of Ebri Education and a 2026 Presidential Leadership Scholar, joins the podcast to share how working with her daughter after an autism diagnosis led her to build an app called Free Indeed, designed to track development and give other parents tools to support their kids at home. Nadine also talks through her Presidential Leadership Scholars project, The Ripple Effect, which trains college students to bring AI literacy to older adults in their communities so no one gets left behind, and her journey from reluctant teacher to Duval County Teacher of the Year finalist, including the long division rap video with her students that went on to rack up over 20 million views. She also shares how she built and led a district-wide Minecraft Education lab focused on cybersecurity and AI.

https://ebrieducation.org/

0:00 – Intro & welcome

1:05 – Nadine's journey: from reluctant teacher to "how do you want to learn?"

6:23 – The leap from classroom to Minecraft Education and beyond

23:35 – How the Duval County Minecraft Lab got started

25:16 – Biggest takeaways from Minecraft Education

28:05 – Building "Free Indeed" with her daughter

32:42 – Becoming a Presidential Leadership Scholar

34:01 – The Ripple Effect: fighting AI scams and building literacy in older adults

45:39 – Lightning round

50:10 – This or that

51:06 – Where to find Nadine & closing thoughts

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Jeremy catches up with past Integrate This! guest Jon Laven from Snorkl at the Educators AI Summit at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

In this quick conversation, Jon shares what’s new with Snorkl and how the platform is helping students explain their thinking and receive immediate AI-powered feedback without allowing AI to do the thinking for them.

They also discuss cognitive offloading, student voice, purposeful screen time, new Snorkl features including Activity Sets and an upcoming PhET integration, and why asking students to verbally explain their learning can provide educators with a much richer picture of understanding.

Jon also shares the Snorkl activity he recommends educators try first and why a classroom full of students talking about their thinking can be a pretty powerful thing.

Learn more at snorkl.app.

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Jose Gonzalez, a 21st Century Learning Specialist at Compton Unified School District, joins the podcast to share years of hands-on, project-based learning with his students, from building aquaponics systems on trucks and ships to designing a scaled-down interstellar mission in collaboration with a school in Brazil. He talks through how normalizing failure, giving students real problems to solve, and stepping back as "sage on the stage" builds confidence, communication skills, and genuine expertise in his students, many of whom have gone on to present their work on national TV and international stages. Jose also shares stories from taking students to Hawaii and Denver, working through shipping disasters and last-minute repairs, and previews his next big idea: launching student-built can satellites. Stick around for the lightning round, including his class's team song.

Connect with Jose: Jose Gonzalez | LinkedIn

Explore the Davis MS Projects Here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1alhJOSTPOIC-ol0cdJpSNjtxfFcfHx9XiHoQJPjgeKk/edit?tab=t.0

0:00 – Intro & welcome

1:01 – Jose's path from Cuba to teaching in Compton

3:55 – What drives him to teach in Compton

5:33 – Why project-based learning works

10:02 – The Infy Makers Award and what it made possible

18:31 – Taking students to Hawaii

25:34 – The ISTE presentation and the Brazil spacecraft project

38:27 – Advice for teachers wanting to try this

43:57 – What's next: student-built can satellites

47:00 – Lightning round & this-or-that

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AI is changing quickly—but better technology doesn’t automatically mean better learning.

In this episode of Integrate This! EdTech, Jeremy Mikla and David Berner sit down with Dan Fitzpatrick, The AI Educator, fresh off the 2026 Back to School AI Summit, to talk about where AI in education is headed and what educators should be paying attention to right now.

The conversation moves beyond the basics of “What is AI?” and into the much harder question: How do we think with machines without losing our ability to think without them?

Dan shares his perspective on the growing research around AI and student learning, why AI literacy matters, and how the way students use AI may be far more important than simply whether they use it. The conversation also explores the role of student voice, the importance of giving teachers practical strategies they can use immediately, and why schools need to balance the risks of AI with the opportunities it can create.

Dan also takes us behind the scenes of the Back to School AI Summit, discusses the rapid evolution of AI agents, and shares the thinking behind The Educator’s AI Guide 2027—a practical, educator-driven field guide designed to help teachers turn ideas into action.

Plus, stay for the lightning round to hear about Dan’s personal team of AI agents, his favorite places in the United States, the word he hopes defines his work in education, and the very personal reason AC/DC is his keynote walk-up music.

In this conversation: • Moving from AI awareness to meaningful classroom practice • Using AI without outsourcing student thinking • What emerging research tells us about AI and learning • AI literacy for teachers and students • Student voice in AI policies and decisions • Why practical, teacher-led professional learning matters • Balancing AI safety with opportunity • The accelerating pace of technological change • AI agents and what may be coming next • The Educator’s AI Guide 2027 • Amplifying the voices of classroom educators

RESOURCES

🔗 The AI Educator: https://theaieducator.io/

🔗 The Educator’s AI Guide 2027: https://aieducator.tools/2027-educators-guide

🔗 Back to School AI Summit: https://summit.aieducator.tools/