Podcast
ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast
Hosted by Matt Mervis and Dr. Elizabeth Radday · EN
Welcome to ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast , your go-to podcast for insightful discussions on the intersection of AI and education! Hosted by Matt Mervis, Director of Skills21 and AI Strategy at EdAdvance, and Dr. Elizabeth Radday, Director of Research & Innovation, this podcast explores the dynamic landscape of education technology.
61episodes
Episodes
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Librarians at the Center, the Unsung Leaders of School AI | Ep. 115
2d ago01:02:30Tap to summarizeIn this episode of ChatEDU, Librarians at the Center, the Unsung Leaders of School AI, Matt and Liz open with a wild legal story out of Mississippi, where a federal judge canceled a trial and disqualified all four lawyers after attorneys on both sides were caught using generative AI that cited fabricated court cases.The RundownMatt and Liz celebrate the regional winners at the White House, including educator Anne Win and her AP Biology students' AI work.A free new resource using real-world AI scenarios and the SEE framework to help families and educators navigate AI in education.Google partners with ISTE and ASCD to launch free, self-paced micro-credentials for teachers, including intro courses on Gemini, NotebookLM, and vibe coding.Meta launches a $115M academy to train local workers in data center construction, alongside a similar $50M Google program.OpenAI selects 26 university innovators for its inaugural cohort, giving them model access and $10,000 grants to build solutions from disaster detection to audio learning games.The hosts look at Google's experimental "Dream Beans" photo feed, "momfluencers" pitching ChatGPT as a co-parent, and Hasbro's AI Mr. Potato Head.Google's CEO delivers a Stanford commencement address avoiding AI entirely, following recent graduation walkouts and protests.A recent Wired investigation finds that Elon Musk's Grok still generates non-consensual explicit deepfakes of prominent women.Anthropic complies with US government regulations by blocking access to its Mythos and Fable models for non-Americans and foreign employees within the country.While NAEP showed slight literacy gains for nine-year-olds, an Axios report highlights millions of low-literacy adult workers using AI to mask reading and writing gaps.The Beneath the SurfaceMatt and Liz dig into the Genesee Valley BOCES "Teaching About AI" report, which lays out eight provocations and argues that librarians are the most vital leaders for district-wide AI integration.The Bright ByteMayo Clinic researchers have validated an AI model that scans routine CT scans to flag pancreatic cancer up to three years before diagnosis, roughly doubling specialists' early-detection rate.AnnouncementsPurchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayAmazon - https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Seeing through the Machine – Teaching Bias as an Equity Practice in AI - Dr. Elizabeth Radday - https://tinyurl.com/4ybwkn7aCheck out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course - www.skills21.org/ai/learnai Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum - https://www.skills21.org/social-balanceAddress Screen Time concerns - skills21.org/ai/screenshift LinksPresidential AI Challenge Championshttps://tinyurl.com/yt55wrjuSEE GenAI Literacy Snapshothttps://tinyurl.com/yt2fxr3rGoogle AI Educator Series on Teaching with AIhttps://tinyurl.com/2pzdfse2Meta launches $115 million data center job guaranteehttps://tinyurl.com/3wrv43meGrowing the next generation of American workershttps://tinyurl.com/ytbp7jn5OpenAI names first ChatGPT Futures class to back student AI projectshttps://tinyurl.com/mpb6amc4Momfluencers Are Pitching AI as a Better ‘Coparent’ Than Menhttps://tinyurl.com/36dzrmycHasbro to license AI versions of Mr. Potato Headhttps://tinyurl.com/2x27mz3mBill C-34, the Safe Social Media Acthttps://tinyurl.com/mupadpn9Google CEO skips AI in Stanford commencement addresshttps://tinyurl.com/4746h6reGrok Is Still Hosting Sexualized Deepfakeshttps://tinyurl.com/mttanc48Students show gains in reading and mathhttps://tinyurl.com/yrwc4vj5AI is masking America's "post-literate" workforcehttps://tinyurl.com/jt2ke2ejTeaching About AI: A Report for the K-12 Fieldhttps://tinyurl.com/zfkthmzuMayo Clinic AI detects cancer 3 years before diagnosishttps://tinyurl.com/5dpbk4bt
Transcribe →Duck Duck Go | Check-In 38
3d ago00:02:36Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: Why Users Are Moving to DuckDuckGo, Liz explores how user backlash against Google's major artificial intelligence search overhaul is driving significant traffic to alternative platforms." This shift highlights a growing consumer demand for traditional search experiences that prioritize user control over automated summaries.Key Takeaways:Google is transforming its traditional link-based search engine into a conversational engine that prioritizes AI-generated overviews, causing user dissatisfaction.DuckDuckGo has seen a major surge in traffic and mobile app downloads, growing up to 18 percent week-over-week as users seek out search options without forced AI integration.While DuckDuckGo does offer its own private AI tools, its core appeal lies in giving users strict privacy protections and the ultimate choice in whether or not they interact with the technology.Liz’s Two Cents: Users are pushing back against forced AI integration, showing that they value choice and control over automatic automation. For school district leaders, this serves as a critical reminder that when introducing new technologies, providing clear options to opt-out or choose traditional methods can significantly reduce user friction and building trust.Article:DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Searchhttps://bit.ly/4xdzuqF
Transcribe →Learning Stall | Check-In 37
5d ago00:03:47Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: Reality of the Learning Stall, Liz explores a computer science professor's experience with an undergraduate student who used an AI agent to complete a research project. The student relied entirely on the AI tool, leaving him completely unable to explain the logic of the code or notice critical flaws in the research methodology. This scenario highlights how automated tools can create an illusion of progress while halting actual learning.Key Takeaways:Invalid Experimentation: The AI generated the code, training data, and test data, creating a closed simulation that made the study scientifically invalid, which the student failed to notice.Stalled Skill Development: Over-reliance on large language models prevents students from learning fundamental, discipline-specific skills, such as navigating and reading raw computer code.The Illusion of Flawlessness: AI is optimized for user satisfaction and compliance, which can easily mislead inexperienced users into believing fundamentally flawed work is perfect.Liz’s Two Cents: Generative AI removes the productive friction and tension necessary for true learning, creating a dangerous feedback loop where students mistake easy completion for actual understanding. School leaders must design learning experiences that require students to engage with basic fundamentals, ensuring automated tools do not bypass the cognitive struggle required to build genuine skills.Article:The Anatomy of a Learning Stallhttps://bit.ly/4dY7fEX
Transcribe →Prompt No More: What Claude Plug-ins Signal for AI in Education | Ep. 114
1w ago01:07:03Tap to summarizeIn this episode of ChatEDU, Prompt No More: What Claude Plug-ins Signal for AI in Education, Matt and Liz open with a major Meta security flaw: hackers simply asked Meta AI to grant access to high-profile Instagram accounts, including Barack Obama's. With support entirely AI-run, affected users couldn't reach a human.The RundownChatGPT's new memory system uses "dreaming" to auto-curate user preferences over years.Google's new AI feature for Enterprise and Education plans finds scattered files and suggests folders for them.In a Stanford blind study, law professors preferred AI answers to student legal questions over peer-written ones 75% of the time.In a poll of 545 K-12 educators, most said AI will outweigh the internet's educational impact; about half report no district guidance.A new six-item tool in the ECNU Review of Education measures how much students outsource thinking to generative AI.Bernie Sanders proposed a one-time 50% stock tax on major AI companies to fund dividends for Americans.Jack Clark and The Anthropic Institute warned frontier models are nearing recursive self-improvement, urging international verification.Penn GSE launched a course on how K-12 students can design, critique, and build their own machine learning systems.Maryland's new law requires public schools to appoint AI coordinators and add AI literacy standards by June 2027.IBM's global software competition gives university students hands-on access to professional tech tools via its AI partner.Beneath the SurfaceMatt and Liz analyze Anthropic's "Claude for Legal" expansion (12 plug-ins, 20 MCP connectors), then turn to education: how similar integrations could streamline IEP compliance, audit curriculum drift in LMSs, and run automated student risk signals.The Bright ByteUsing a new Health and AI Policy Index on 240 healthcare AI policies, Mount Sinai investigators see an opening for health systems and academic medical centers to lead in standardizing clinical AI deployment.AnnouncementsPurchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayAmazon - https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Seeing through the Machine – Teaching Bias as an Equity Practice in AI - Dr. Elizabeth Radday - https://tinyurl.com/4ybwkn7aCheck out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course - www.skills21.org/ai/learnai Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum - https://www.skills21.org/social-balanceAddress Screen Time concerns - skills21.org/ai/screenshiftSponsorsThe National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing: Your Gateway to Next Generation Advanced Manufacturing - https://www.nextgenmfg.orgLinksAI Policy Pressure Testhttps://tinyurl.com/5xam65xsAI Policy Scenarios Testhttps://tinyurl.com/463p8errHackers Asked Meta AI for Instagram Access. It Worked.https://tinyurl.com/4456m8ytBetter memory for ChatGPThttps://tinyurl.com/uz7abp49This New Google Drive Feature Organizes Your Files for Youhttps://tinyurl.com/ewvdfzhvAI Outperforms Law Professors in Stanford Law Study https://tinyurl.com/58s8vt4zTeachers Say AI's Educational Impact Will Eclipse the Internethttps://tinyurl.com/4rh4vzyeA New Scale for Measuring AI-Driven Metacognitive Offloadinghttps://tinyurl.com/5f9u2428Bernie Sanders: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It.https://tinyurl.com/nujnbh4vAnthropic Urges Global AI Pause Over 'Self-Improvement' Riskhttps://tinyurl.com/mry54xvzAI education for kidshttps://tinyurl.com/3fzsddjtMaryland's School A.I. Guidance Law Is Now in Effecthttps://tinyurl.com/yc4xzxk6IBM Launches Global AI Builders Challenge for Studentshttps://tinyurl.com/2ss23mnaAnthropic Unveils 'Claude for Legal'https://tinyurl.com/rcf7tak4A First-of-Its-Kind Index for Health Care AI Policyhttps://tinyurl.com/49uzu77m
Transcribe →How People are REALLY Using AI in 2026 | Check-In 36
1w ago00:05:34Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: How People Are Actually Using AI in 2026, Matt explores a rigorous study analyzing thousands of real-world examples to reveal a massive shift towards personal and professional support. The data tracks over 12,000 use cases across platforms like Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube to capture how people actually interact with AI in their daily lives.Key Takeaways:Individuals increasingly rely on AI for core human thinking, risking mental laziness and the erosion of independent thought when algorithms handle tasks from the very start.Therapeutic and companion interactions have become the single highest-ranked use case, with users forming deep emotional bonds and anthropomorphizing chatbots to navigate personal hardships.Significant "shadow usage" is occurring in the workplace, where employees secretly build AI workflows to bypass institutional hurdles and complete tasks faster without leadership's knowledge.Matt’s Two Cents: School leaders need to look closely at how automation impacts cognitive engagement, shifting the focus from simply offloading clerical tasks to using AI intentionally as a colleague or coach that grows skills. Furthermore, the rise of emotional reliance on chatbots and undetected "shadow usage" highlights a critical gap between institutional governance and real-world behavior, signaling that districts must address the human and hidden dimensions of tech adoption.Article:How People Are Really Using AI in 2026https://bit.ly/4ftzkoN
Transcribe →ChatGPT for Every Student - Now What? | Check-In 35
2w ago00:03:30Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: How to fight brain rot at school?, Matt explores Estonia's nationwide launch of a customized, Socratic version of ChatGPT for 20,000 high school students. Despite wide access, early data shows that only 35 percent of eligible students consistently use the system, which is designed to guide learning rather than provide direct answers.Key Takeaways:Estonia's school-sanctioned chatbot uses a restrictive Socratic framework, but only about a third of students use it regularly.Students are actively developing workarounds, using repetitive prompting or switching to unfiltered commercial AI tools to avoid the frustrating conversational guardrails of the school system.A vocal minority of students are staging a boycott of the technology due to environmental concerns over data centers and geopolitical skepticism regarding the dominance of American tech firms.Matt’s Two Cents: This story is less about the technology itself and more about enterprise organizational development and how to deploy tech at scale. For top-down, nationwide educational technology implementations to succeed, schools must move away from rigid, forced rollouts and instead allow administrators, teachers, and students to collaborate on how to best leverage the tool.Article:How to Fight AI Brain Rot at School? For One Country, It’s With Free ChatGPThttps://bit.ly/4fsflqv
Transcribe →AI on the Sidelines, Near Real-Time Coaching for Every Educator | Ep. 113
2w ago01:18:26Tap to summarizeIn this episode of ChatEDU AI on the Sidelines, Near Real-Time Coaching for Every Educator, open with the "Sad Wives of AI," a Wired piece on the marital strain and household gender gaps emerging as Bay Area tech husbands pour themselves into the AI wave.The RundownGoogle has introduced automatic Google Drive syncing for NotebookLM, eliminating the need to manually update uploaded Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.Upgrading to Gemini 1.5 Pro transformed NotebookLM's image upload capabilities into full multimodal visual understanding, opening up new use cases for students and teachers using screenshots and real world photos.A roundup of recent AI failures: a $100 million Pizza Hut franchisee lawsuit against Dragon Tail AI, Starbucks scrapping a faulty AI inventory tool, a study finding 60%+ of AI search responses inaccurate, and fake journals publishing AI papers.A Wall Street Journal report highlights how persistent memory features in major chatbots can backfire by latching onto stale, outdated, or sensitive personal data and skewing future advice.American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten introduced a 10 plan calling for a complete ban on screens for preschool through second grade and a prohibition on student facing AI in all elementary schools.The School Superintendents Association is pairing 50 superintendents with 100 students to collaborate with MIT experts and draft a student led national AI policy for public schools.Students from New Haven's Engineering and Science University Magnet School developed a functioning visual prosthesis utilizing advanced vision language models for real time hazard detection for the visually impaired.The Beneath the SurfaceMatt and Liz explore Urban Assembly's Project CAFE, which delivers near-real-time coaching to every educator. CEO David Adams joins to discuss using AI-driven frameworks to improve teacher development, student engagement, and AI integration in K-12 classrooms.https://www.urbanassembly.org/https://www.urbanassembly.org/what-we-do/project-cafeThe Bright ByteThe Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's Biohub is an open-source world model of protein biology that predicts complex protein shapes in seconds and designs disease-targeting proteins in days. Being fully open source, it lets researchers worldwide download the data and accelerate breakthroughs on their own.AnnouncementsPurchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayAmazon - https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Seeing through the Machine – Teaching Bias as an Equity Practice in AI - Dr. Elizabeth Radday - https://tinyurl.com/4ybwkn7aCheck out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course - www.skills21.org/ai/learnai Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum - https://www.skills21.org/social-balanceAddress Screen Time concerns - skills21.org/ai/screenshift LinksMeet the Sad Wives of AIhttps://tinyurl.com/mr4xf8zeAutomatic Drive syncing in NotebookLMhttps://tinyurl.com/38kfana4Unlocking NotebookLM's best featurehttps://tinyurl.com/3ppt3cczPizza Hut franchisee says AI caused $100M in damageshttps://tinyurl.com/5ypp52uaExclusive: Starbucks scraps AI inventory tool across North Americahttps://tinyurl.com/5a68wphdAI Just Isn’t Righthttps://tinyurl.com/33ve2p6uFake journals publish AI papers under professors' nameshttps://tinyurl.com/3tbf5rpbYour Chatbot's Long Memory Isn't Always a Good Thinghttps://tinyurl.com/4dzpb77nAFT president urges screen and AI bans for young studentshttps://tinyurl.com/tu56kxc9Let Digital-Native Students Lead the AI Revolution in Educationhttps://tinyurl.com/y589exk8New Haven Magnet School Is Only High School Team at Yale Innovation Summithttps://tinyurl.com/mr352pteA World Model of Protein Biologyhttps://tinyurl.com/5ca6upk2
Transcribe →Catch Up Crisis | Check-In 34
2w ago00:03:52Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: Catch Up Crisis, Liz explores how artificial intelligence can help address the widespread failure of American schools to effectively help struggling students catch up. Grade inflation and the removal of standardized testing requirements are masking major learning gaps, leaving many students unprepared for higher education despite having high grade-point average.Key Takeaways:A significant disconnect exists between high student grades and actual academic proficiency, creating a deceptive reality for parents and students.Traditional school systems are largely failing to move struggling students toward academic recovery due to the overwhelming demands placed on teachers.AI tools can analyze student work in real time to identify specific learning misconceptions, serving as a scalable playbook for targeted teacher interventions.Liz’s Two Cents: School leaders must confront the uncomfortable reality that grade inflation is masking critical student deficiencies. To prevent students from falling permanently behind, districts should strategically leverage AI to surface real-time diagnostic insights, allowing teachers to maximize their limited intervention time by targeting exact learning gaps rather than relearning mastered content.Article:America’s Schools Are Terrible at Catching Kids Up. How AI Can Helphttps://bit.ly/4u8cuGQ
Transcribe →AI Labs Hiring Philosophers | Check-In 33
3w ago00:02:33Tap to summarizeIn this ChatEDU Check-In: AI Labs Hiring Philosophers, Liz explores why leading artificial intelligence labs like Google DeepMind and Anthropic have begun hiring in-house philosophers. This shift turns abstract questions about the nature of intelligence into practical guidelines for model behavior.Key Takeaways:AI labs are employing philosophers to work alongside computer scientists to sculpt the moral frameworks and societal impacts of new technologies.These professionals focus on technical value alignment and drafting "constitutions" to guide model interactions in sensitive scenarios, such as managing users in distress.Academic critics worry these corporate roles may limit critical questioning and could be used for "ethics washing" to signal public safety while prioritizing shareholders.Liz’s Two Cents: The influx of philosophers into AI development raises critical questions about whose ethical frameworks are being prioritized and whether these roles are genuinely impactful or merely a public relations strategy. For school districts, this underscores the importance of teaching students to critically evaluate the underlying values and potential biases embedded within the AI tools they use daily.Article:To Land a Job in AI, Try Reading Kanthttps://bit.ly/4aogUCm
Transcribe →An Earful of Ivy: AI and the Battle for Higher Ed Integrity | Ep. 112
3w ago01:06:09Tap to summarizeIn this episode of ChatEDU An Earful of Ivy: AI and the Battle for Higher Ed Integrity, Matt and Liz open with an internet prank: an anonymous artist posted a real Monet, claimed it was AI generated, and watched critics bash the masterpiece as AI slop. The hosts then pivot to education, technology, and policy.The RundownJohn R. Soash's three configurations for restricting student access to Gemini AI and Google Lens.Dan Fitzpatrick on Google's pivot from passive chatbots to proactive AI agents.Regional literary winners face scrutiny after their entries were flagged as AI-generated.The federal law requiring platforms to remove nonconsensual student deepfakes within 48 hours, effective May 2026.OpenAI and Google DeepMind use AI reasoning models to autonomously solve longstanding math problems.Dr. Ethan Mollick compares the water and energy costs of computing breakthroughs to everyday resources like almonds and lawns.Academics debate whether AI traffic light systems and the AI Assessment Scale are an enforcement illusion or a genuinely useful tool.A 2026 pilot program delivers cloud workstations and premium tech subscriptions to public libraries in Utah and New Jersey.Beneath the SurfaceMatt and Liz examine how grade inflation and AI cheating fears are driving policy shifts at elite universities: device bans at Yale, a 20% A-grade cap at Harvard, an AI ban at UC Berkeley Law, and the end of Princeton's 133-year-old honor code. As a counterpoint, they feature CU Boulder physicists advocating collaborative, department-level experimentation that treats students as partners rather than imposing top-down bans.The Bright ByteFinland's Kemira and UK-based Cusp AI used generative AI to design over 5,000 new material structures to strip PFAS 'forever chemicals' from municipal drinking water.AnnouncementsPurchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth RaddayAmazon - https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77Seeing through the Machine – Teaching Bias as an Equity Practice in AI - Dr. Elizabeth Radday - https://tinyurl.com/4ybwkn7aCheck out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course - www.skills21.org/ai/learnai Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum - https://www.skills21.org/social-balanceAddress Screen Time concerns - skills21.org/ai/screenshift SponsorsNectir. Welcome to the Classroom of the Future. https://www.nectir.io/LinksPrankster Passes Off Real Monet Painting as AI-Generated, Chaos Ensueshttps://tinyurl.com/mrab9ne3Blocking Google’s “AI Mode” (IT admin guide)https://tinyurl.com/4px27bm9Google I/O 2026's Impact on Educationhttps://tinyurl.com/2vs3zfzsLiterary Prizewinners Face AI Allegationshttps://tinyurl.com/sh3jry9yWhat's Next for the First AI Deepfakes Lawhttps://tinyurl.com/9v3rzutkAI Solves an 80-Year-Old 'Erdős Problemhttps://tinyurl.com/ykks2mtjAI-Driven Formal Proof Search in Mathematicshttps://tinyurl.com/3wuer99wDiscursive vs. Structural Responses to AI in Educationhttps://tinyurl.com/4d6n82yyLabels, Scales, and What the AIAS Actually Claims to Dohttps://tinyurl.com/su4zr73uBuilding Public AI with Librarieshttps://tinyurl.com/4den8s4kYale to Consider Changes to Mission, Admissions, Aid, and Gradinghttps://tinyurl.com/46779xp5Yale Faculty Say 'Bravo' to Harvard's Grade Caphttps://tinyurl.com/mx6e594cUC Berkeley Law's AI Ban: Why Texas Students Should Pay Attentionhttps://tinyurl.com/32xt4umrPrinceton Changes Its 133-Year-Old Honor Code Over AI Cheating Fearshttps://tinyurl.com/28yjxfjnCU Boulder: Higher Ed AI Change Models Already Out of Datehttps://tinyurl.com/37me2ssj
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