Future Fluent

We know how to teach people to improve their writing--but it takes a lot of work. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle talk with Peter Gault, the founder of nonprofit Quill, which gives students feedback on 500 million sentences a year. Quill's been using AI for years and is now sharing its "playbook" on how to build ethically -- and effectively -- with AI.Here are hefty but important resources around AI and writing.  Let’s start with the newest one: In our interview, Peter Gault describes a playbook that ⁠Quill.org⁠ has just created describing its approach to the ethical development of AI. ⁠You can check it out here⁠. We also discussed the National Reading Panel's 449-page report on what works and doesn't work in literacy. ⁠It’s a 25-year old classic and you can get it here⁠. There are a ton of great ideas in this report about how to apply AI to advance student learning.Journalist Peg Tyre, a long-time collaborator of Quill, wrote a powerful piece about how to teach writing, “The Writing Revolution,” for The Atlantic in 2012. ⁠Check it out here⁠. 

This year Jeremy and Betsy travelled to San Diego to record our podcast live at ASU-GSV Summit--the industry gathering that spotlights emerging technologies for education. In the conference's "podcast zone," they talked with Jason Green, cofounder of YourWay Learning. The conversation focused on the hardest aspect of emerging technology--changing the culture of teaching and learning. How can educators feel "safe" to try new practices? And could a simple paper sign, posted on class door, change school culture? Join us to learn what the paper sign said and how it helped educators to become better innovators.If you’d like to go deeper, check out futurefluent.net and these resources! Blended Learning in Action: A practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change by Catlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff and Jason T. Green. Ideas, examples and tips for how to use technology to reach students. Machines of Loving Grace, an essay by Dario Amodie, cofounder of Anthropic. Unfortunately, it seems to have vanished from the web. Here is Fast Company’s assessment of the essay. One Useful Thing, a substack by Ethan Mollick  Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, by Ethan MollickKing: A Life by Jonathan Eig. A riveting account of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. This won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

Many companies are building tutors. To build a good tutor requires figuring out students already know and what they are learning. Is AI up to this task? On this episode, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran plunge into the murky issues around using AI for assessment with Kristen DiCerbo, the chief learning officer at Khan Academy. Kristen shares why game-based assessments haven’t yet become the best way to measure students’ learning. And we ask: How optimistic should we be that AI can improve assessment over the next 10 years? Tune in for an expert perspective on the hope and hype of using technology to measure learning.If you’d like to go deeper and explore issues around assessment, check out these resources! Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing), by Salman Khan Psychometric Considerations in Game-Based Learning by Robert J. Mislevy, et.al., 2016.   Focus on Formative Feedback by Valerie J. Shute, March 2008The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing–But You Don’t Have to Be by Anya Kamenetz, 2016.  The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy by Nicholas Lemann, 1999 Playful Testing: Designing a Formative Assessment Game for Data Science by an interdisciplinary team including Jeremy Roschelle, 2022  

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 WuTeaching 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. 

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 Hub⁠⁠Y Combinator YouTube Channel⁠⁠BG2 Pod⁠⁠Hard Fork Podcast⁠⁠Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance⁠, by Robert Pirsig ⁠GTC Keynote With NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang⁠ ⁠Beware of Metacognitive Laziness⁠: arXiv 

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 ThreeHow is artificial intelligence reshaping early childhood development? UNICEFWhy These Friendly Robots Can't Be Good Friends by Sherry TurkleDesigning Socialable Robots by Cynthia Brazeal Is Early Childhood Ready for AI? by Ariel Gilreath, Hechinger ReportCommon Sense Media: Educational tools  Digital Promise: How technology can support learning  Hikikomori: Post modern hermits?

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 WileyBloom’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 MollickAndrej 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.

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 ZaoWhat’s Your Ed At, blog by Edward Zitron

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 Washington⁠⁠SAMR 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