Side Hustles for Educators — from drlukehobson.com by Luke Hobson
Anyway, let’s say you work in education, and you want to start a side hustle. What are your options? I’ve seen folks take a few different approaches with this so, let’s go over a few options:
From DSC:
First of all, when you look at the following posting:
What Top Tech Skills Should You Learn for 2025? — from dice.com by Nick Kolakowski
…you will see that they outline which skills you should consider mastering in 2025 if you want to stay on top of the latest career opportunities. They then list more information about the skills, how you apply the skills, and WHERE to get those skills.
I assert that in the future, people will be able to see this information on a 24x7x365 basis.
And that last part (about the WHERE do I develop those skills) will pull from many different institutions, people, companies, etc.
BUT PEOPLE are the key! Oftentimes, we need to — and prefer to — learn with others!
Integrating Active Learning in Large STEM Lectures — from scholarlyteacher.com by Gabriele Pinto
Key Statement: Implementing elements of active learning into a large course may seem daunting task, but think-pair-share aided by quizzing and clickers can be done in any size classroom.
Many teachers do not realize how seamless it can be to shift their lectures towards a more active learning environment. In this article, we looked at how think-pair-share (TPS) is a simple activity that can be easily introduced and integrated within a lecture framework. We also explored how clickers and quizzing may fit into course design to provide greater tools of participation for the students and enrich their classroom experience and study patterns. These implementations, which do not involve drastic and daunting changes to lecturing, will improve student engagement and learning, and will allow the instructor to better gauge the state of the class, evaluate and adjust content pacing accordingly, and enrich his own teaching experience, as well as the students’ education.
“The Value of Doing Things: What AI Agents Mean for Teachers” — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by guest author Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Applied Media at Berkeley College in New York City
AI Agents make me nervous. Really nervous.
I wish they didn’t.
I wish I could write that the last two years have made me more confident, more self-assured that AI is here to augment workers rather than replace them.
But I can’t.
I wish I could write that I know where schools and colleges will end up. I wish I could say that AI Agents will help us get where we need to be.
But I can’t.
At this point, today, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where the rise of AI agents will take us, in terms of how we work and learn. I’m in the question-asking part of my journey. I have few answers.
So, let’s talk about where (I think) AI Agents will take education. And who knows? Maybe as I write I’ll come up with something more concrete.
It’s worth a shot, right?
From DSC:
I completely agree with Jason’s following assertion:
A good portion of AI advancement will come down to employee replacement. And AI Agents push companies towards that.
THAT’s where/what the ROI will be for corporations. They will make their investments up in the headcount area, and likely in other areas as well (product design, marketing campaigns, engineering-related items, and more). But how much time it takes to get there is a big question mark.
One last quote here…it’s too good not to include:
Behind these questions lies a more abstract, more philosophical one: what is the relationship between thinking and doing in a world of AI Agents and other kinds of automation?
How Good are Claude, ChatGPT & Gemini at Instructional Design? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A test of AI’s Instruction Design skills in theory & in practice
By examining models across three AI families—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—I’ve started to identify each model’s strengths, limitations, and typical pitfalls.
Spoiler: my findings underscore that until we have specialised, fine-tuned AI copilots for instructional design, we should be cautious about relying on general-purpose models and ensure expert oversight in all ID tasks.
From DSC — I’m going to (have Nick) say this again:
I simply asked my students to use AI to brainstorm their own learning objectives. No restrictions. No predetermined pathways. Just pure exploration. The results? Astonishing.Students began mapping out research directions I’d never considered. They created dialogue spaces with AI that looked more like intellectual partnerships than simple query-response patterns.
The Digital Literacy Quest: Become an AI Hero — from gamma.app
From DSC:
I have not gone through all of these online-based materials, but I like what they are trying to get at:
Expanding access to the Gemini app for teen students in education — from workspaceupdates.googleblog.com
Google Workspace for Education admins can now turn on the Gemini app with added data protection as an additional service for their teen users (ages 13+ or the applicable age in your country) in the following languages and countries. With added data protection, chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve AI models. The Gemini app will be a core service in the coming weeks for Education Standard and Plus users, including teens,
5 Essential Questions Educators Have About AI — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning
Recently, I spoke with several teachers regarding their primary questions and reflections on using AI in teaching and learning. Their thought-provoking responses challenge us to consider not only what AI can do but what it means for meaningful and equitable learning environments. Keeping in mind these reflections, we can better understand how we move forward toward meaningful AI integration in education.
FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AI — from epoch.ai
FrontierMath presents hundreds of unpublished, expert-level mathematics problems that specialists spend days solving. It offers an ongoing measure of AI complex mathematical reasoning progress.
We’re introducing FrontierMath, a benchmark of hundreds of original, expert-crafted mathematics problems designed to evaluate advanced reasoning capabilities in AI systems. These problems span major branches of modern mathematics—from computational number theory to abstract algebraic geometry—and typically require hours or days for expert mathematicians to solve.
Rising demand for AI courses in UK universities shows 453% growth as students adapt to an AI-driven job market — from edtechinnovationhub.com
The demand for artificial intelligence courses in UK universities has surged dramatically over the past five years, with enrollments increasing by 453%, according to a recent study by Currys, a UK tech retailer.
The study, which analyzed UK university admissions data and surveyed current students and recent graduates, reveals how the growing influence of AI is shaping students’ educational choices and career paths.
This growth reflects the broader trend of AI integration across industries, creating new opportunities while transforming traditional roles. With AI’s influence on career prospects rising, students and graduates are increasingly drawn to AI-related courses to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.
2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust — from educause.edu
Higher education has a trust problem. In the past ten years, the share of Americans who are confident in higher education has dropped from 57 percent to 36 percent.
Colleges and universities need to show that they understand and care about students, faculty, staff, and community members, AND they need to work efficiently and effectively.
Technology leaders can help. The 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 describes how higher education technology and data leaders and professionals can help to restore trust in the sector by building competent and caring institutions and, through radical collaboration, leverage the fulcrum of leadership to maintain balance between the two.
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The Uberfication of Higher Ed — from evolllution.com by Robert Ubell | Vice Dean Emeritus of Online Learning in the School of Engineering, New York University
As the world of work increasingly relies on the gig economy, higher ed is no different. Many institutions seek to drive down labor costs by hiring contingent works, thereby leaving many faculty in a precarious position and driving down the quality of education.
While some of us are aware that higher ed has been steadily moving away from employing mostly full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty, replacing them with a part-time, contingent academic workforce, the latest AAUP report issued this summer shows the trend is accelerating. Precarious college teachers have increased by nearly 300,000 over the last decade, as conventional faculty employment stays pretty much flat. It’s part of a national trend in the wider economy that replaces permanent workers with lower paid, contingent staff—members of what we now call the gig economy.
The wide disparity is among the most glaring dysfunctions—along with vast student debt, falling enrollment, rising tuition and other dangers afflicting higher education—but it’s the least acknowledged. Rarely, if ever, does it take its place among the most troubling ails of academic life. It’s a silent disease, its symptoms largely ignored for over half a century.
Do families who send their kids to college, paying increasingly stiff tuition, realize that most of the faculty at our universities are as precarious as Uber drivers?
…
Everyone at the table was taken aback, totally surprised, a sign—even if anecdotal—that this dirty secret is pretty safe. Mass participation of contingent faculty at our universities remains largely obscure, wrapped in a climate of silence, with adjunct faculty perpetuating the quiet by leaving their students mostly uninformed about their working conditions.
Helping Neurodiverse Students Learn Through New Classroom Design — from insidehighered.com by Michael Tyre
Michael Tyre offers some insights into how architects and administrators can work together to create better learning environments for everyone.
We emerged with two guiding principles. First, we had learned that certain environments—in particular, those that cause sensory distraction—can more significantly impact neurodivergent users. Therefore, our design should diminish distractions by mitigating, when possible, noise, visual contrast, reflective surfaces and crowds. Second, we understood that we needed a design that gave neurodivergent users the agency of choice.
The importance of those two factors—a dearth of distraction and an abundance of choice—was bolstered in early workshops with the classroom committee and other stakeholders, which occurred at the same time we were conducting our research. Some things didn’t come up in our research but were made quite clear in our conversations with faculty members, students from the neurodivergent community and other stakeholders. That feedback greatly influenced the design of the Young Classroom.
We ended up blending the two concepts. The main academic space utilizes traditional tables and chairs, albeit in a variety of heights and sizes, while the peripheral classroom spaces use an array of less traditional seating and table configurations, similar to the radical approach.
On a somewhat related note, also see:
Unpacking Fingerprint Culture — from marymyatt.substack.com by Mary Myatt
This post summarises a fascinating webinar I had with Rachel Higginson discussing the elements of building belonging in our settings.
We know that belonging is important and one of the ways to make this explicit in our settings is to consider what it takes to cultivate an inclusive environment where each individual feels valued and understood.
Rachel has spent several years working with young people, particularly those on the periphery of education to help them back into mainstream education and participating in class, along with their peers.
Rachel’s work helping young people to integrate back into education resulted in schools requesting support and resources to embed inclusion within their settings. As a result, Finding My Voice has evolved into a broader curriculum development framework.
10 Ways I Use LLMs like ChatGPT as a Professor — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay
ChatGPT-4o, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, custom GPTs – you name it, I use it. Here’s how…
Excerpt:
From Caution to Calcification to Creativity: Reanimating Education with AI’s Frankenstein Potential — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky
A Critical Analysis of AI-Assisted Lesson Planning: Evaluating Efficacy and Pedagogical Implications
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence in education, a troubling trend has emerged. What began as cautious skepticism has calcified into rigid opposition. The discourse surrounding AI in classrooms has shifted from empirical critique to categorical rejection, creating a chasm between the potential of AI and its practical implementation in education.
This hardening of attitudes comes at a significant cost. While educators and policymakers debate, students find themselves caught in the crossfire. They lack safe, guided access to AI tools that are increasingly ubiquitous in the world beyond school walls. In the absence of formal instruction, many are teaching themselves to use these tools, often in less than productive ways. Others live in a state of constant anxiety, fearing accusations of AI reliance in their work. These are just a few symptoms of an overarching educational culture that has become resistant to change, even as the world around it transforms at an unprecedented pace.
Yet, as this calcification sets in, I find myself in a curious position: the more I thoughtfully integrate AI into my teaching practice, the more I witness its potential to enhance and transform education
NotebookLM and Google’s Multimodal Vision for AI-Powered Learning Tools — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins
A Variety of Use Cases
Must-Have Competencies and Skills in Our New AI World: A Synthesis for Educational Reform — from er.educause.edu by Fawzi BenMessaoud
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on educational systems calls for a comprehensive reform to prepare future generations for an AI-integrated world.
The urgency to integrate AI competencies into education is about preparing students not just to adapt to inevitable changes but to lead the charge in shaping an AI-augmented world. It’s about equipping them to ask the right questions, innovate responsibly, and navigate the ethical quandaries that come with such power.
AI in education should augment and complement their aptitude and expertise, to personalize and optimize the learning experience, and to support lifelong learning and development. AI in education should be a national priority and a collaborative effort among all stakeholders, to ensure that AI is designed and deployed in an ethical, equitable, and inclusive way that respects the diversity and dignity of all learners and educators and that promotes the common good and social justice. AI in education should be about the production of AI, not just the consumption of AI, meaning that learners and educators should have the opportunity to learn about AI, to participate in its creation and evaluation, and to shape its impact and direction.
