4 Simple & Easy Ways to Use AI to Differentiate Instruction — from mindfulaiedu.substack.com (Mindful AI for Education) by Dani Kachorsky, PhD
Designing for All Learners with AI and Universal Design Learning

So this year, I’ve been exploring new ways that AI can help support students with disabilities—students on IEPs, learning plans, or 504s—and, honestly, it’s changing the way I think about differentiation in general.

As a quick note, a lot of what I’m finding applies just as well to English language learners or really to any students. One of the big ideas behind Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is that accommodations and strategies designed for students with disabilities are often just good teaching practices. When we plan instruction that’s accessible to the widest possible range of learners, everyone benefits. For example, UDL encourages explaining things in multiple modes—written, visual, auditory, kinesthetic—because people access information differently. I hear students say they’re “visual learners,” but I think everyone is a visual learner, and an auditory learner, and a kinesthetic learner. The more ways we present information, the more likely it is to stick.

So, with that in mind, here are four ways I’ve been using AI to differentiate instruction for students with disabilities (and, really, everyone else too):


The Periodic Table of AI Tools In Education To Try Today — from ictevangelist.com by Mark Anderson

What I’ve tried to do is bring together genuinely useful AI tools that I know are already making a difference.

For colleagues wanting to explore further, I’m sharing the list exactly as it appears in the table, including website links, grouped by category below. Please do check it out, as along with links to all of the resources, I’ve also written a brief summary explaining what each of the different tools do and how they can help.





Seven Hard-Won Lessons from Building AI Learning Tools — from linkedin.com by Louise Worgan

Last week, I wrapped up Dr Philippa Hardman’s intensive bootcamp on AI in learning design. Four conversations, countless iterations, and more than a few humbling moments later – here’s what I am left thinking about.


Finally Catching Up to the New Models — from michellekassorla.substack.com by Michelle Kassorla
There are some amazing things happening out there!

An aside: Google is working on a new vision for textbooks that can be easily differentiated based on the beautiful success for NotebookLM. You can get on the waiting list for that tool by going to LearnYourWay.withgoogle.com.

Nano Banana Pro
Sticking with the Google tools for now, Nano Banana Pro (which you can use for free on Google’s AI Studio), is doing something that everyone has been waiting a long time for: it adds correct text to images.


Introducing AI assistants with memory — from perplexity.ai

The simple act of remembering is the crux of how we navigate the world: it shapes our experiences, informs our decisions, and helps us anticipate what comes next. For AI agents like Comet Assistant, that continuity leads to a more powerful, personalized experience.

Today we are announcing new personalization features to remember your preferences, interests, and conversations. Perplexity now synthesizes them automatically like memory, for valuable context on relevant tasks. Answers are smarter, faster, and more personalized, no matter how you work.

From DSC :
This should be important as we look at learning-related applications for AI.


For the last three days, my Substack has been in the top “Rising in Education” list. I realize this is based on a hugely flawed metric, but it still feels good. ?

– Michael G Wagner

Read on Substack


I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse. — from nytimes.com by Carlo Rotella [this should be a gifted article]
My students’ easy access to chatbots forced me to make humanities instruction even more human.


 

 


Three Years from GPT-3 to Gemini 3 — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
From chatbots to agents

Three years ago, we were impressed that a machine could write a poem about otters. Less than 1,000 days later, I am debating statistical methodology with an agent that built its own research environment. The era of the chatbot is turning into the era of the digital coworker. To be very clear, Gemini 3 isn’t perfect, and it still needs a manager who can guide and check it. But it suggests that “human in the loop” is evolving from “human who fixes AI mistakes” to “human who directs AI work.” And that may be the biggest change since the release of ChatGPT.




Results May Vary — from aiedusimplified.substack.com by Lance Eaton, PhD
On Custom Instructions with GenAI Tools….

I’m sharing today about custom instructions and my use of them across several AI tools (paid versions of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude). I want to highlight what I’m doing, how it’s going, and solicit from readers to share in the comments some of their custom instructions that they find helpful.

I’ve been in a few conversations lately that remind me that not everyone knows about them, even some of the seasoned folks around GenAI and how you might set them up to better support your work. And, of course, they are, like all things GenAI, highly imperfect!

I’ll include and discuss each one below, but if you want to keep abreast of my custom instructions, I’ll be placing them here as I adjust and update them so folks can see the changes over time.

 

Seeing The Unseen Students: The Invisible Strength of Teachers — from teachthought.com by Tasneem Tazkiya
One afternoon, I asked a different question: “What would make school feel worth showing up for again?”

A Moment That Changed My View of Teaching
I’ll never forget a student I’ll call Jalen. He was bright and quick with answers, sharp in debate, but he had built a wall around himself after a difficult year at home. He’d stopped turning in work and began sitting silently in the back of the room, disengaged and defiant.

One afternoon, instead of lecturing him about missing assignments, I asked a different question: “What would make school feel worth showing up for again?”

That simple question opened a door. Over the following weeks, Jalen began sharing ideas for projects connected to his interests, designing sneakers and exploring how geometry applies to shoe patterns. I adapted lessons to let him create, design, and analyze. Slowly, his confidence returned. Months later, he told me, “You made me feel like my ideas mattered.”

That moment reminded me that teaching isn’t just about delivering content; it’s about restoring belief in learning, and in oneself.


Also see:

The Power of Play — from barbarabray.net by Barbara Bray

Play brings joy and happiness to learning. Infusing play in schools prepares kids as future citizens.
When you play a game with your friends, how do you feel?

When you see children playing with other children, what do you notice?

Ask a child if they remember the worksheet they filled out last week.
Did they have fun?

Do they remember what they learned?

Let’s play more and discover how learning unfolds.
Schools can invest in more play through games, interactive experiences, and just making learning fun. Providing engaging activities through play creates learners who become critical thinkers, researchers, and designers.


Also re: teaching and learning:

 

Is Your Institution Ready for the Earnings Premium Buzzsaw? — from ailearninsights.substack.com by Alfred Essa

On Wednesday [October 29th, 2025], I’m launching the Beta version of an Education Accountability Website (”EDU Accountability Lab”). It analyzes federal student aid, institutional outcomes, and accountability metrics across 6,000+ colleges and universities in the US.

Our Mission
The EDU Accountability Lab delivers independent, data-driven analysis of higher education with a focus on accountability, affordability, and outcomes. Our audience includes policymakers, researchers, and taxpayers who seek greater transparency and effectiveness in postsecondary education. We take no advocacy position on specific institutions, programs, metrics, or policies. Our goal is to provide clear and well-documented methods that support policy discussions, strengthen institutional accountability, and improve public understanding of the value of higher education.

But right now, there’s one area demanding urgent attention.

Starting July 1, 2026, every degree program at every institution receiving federal student aid must prove its graduates earn more than people without that credential—or lose Title IV eligibility.

This isn’t about institutions passing or failing. It’s about programs. Every Bachelor’s in Psychology. Every Master’s in Education. Every Associate in Nursing. Each one assessed separately. Each one facing the same pass-or-fail tests.

 

Entrepreneurship: The New Core Curriculum — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Key Points

  • Entrepreneurship education fosters resilience, creativity, and financial literacy—skills critical for success in an unpredictable, tech-driven world.
  • Programs like NFTE, Junior Achievement, and Uncharted Learning empower students by offering real-world entrepreneurial experiences and mentorship.

“Entrepreneurship is the job of the future.”

— Charles Fadel, Education for the Age of AI

This shift requires a radical re-evaluation of what we teach. Education leaders across the country are realizing that the most valuable skill we can impart is not accounting or marketing, but the entrepreneurial mindset. This mindset—built on resilience, creative problem-solving, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to pivot—is essential in startups, as an intrapreuer in big organizations, or as a citizen working for the common good.

 

Where are tomorrow’s teachers? Education degrees drop over 2 decades. — from k12dive.com by Anna Merod
Declines came in both bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded between 2003-04 and 2022-23, an AACTE analysis of federal data shows.

The number of education degrees awarded in the U.S. steadily decreased in the nearly two decades between 2003-04 and 2022-23, according to a new analysis of federal data by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Bachelor’s degrees in education dipped from 109,622 annually to 90,710 while master’s degrees declined from 162,632 to 143,669 in that time span, AACTE said in its report on data from the U.S. Department of Education.

 

Digest #182: How To Increase (Self-)Motivation — from lifehack.org by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel

No matter whether you are a student or a teacher, sometimes it can be difficult to find motivation to start or complete a task. Instead, you may spend hours procrastinating with other activities and that opens an unhelpful cycle of stress and unhappiness. Stressful environments which are common in educational settings can increase the likelihood of maladaptive procrastination (1) and hamper motivation. This digest offers four resources on ways to think about and boost (self-)motivation.

Also see:

 

From siloed tools to intelligent journeys: Reimagining learning experience in the age of ‘Experience AI’ — from linkedin.com by Lev Gonick

Experience AI: A new architecture of learning
Experience AI represents a new architecture for learning — one that prioritizes continuity, agency and deep personalization. It fuses three dimensions into a new category of co-intelligent systems:

  • Agentic AI that evolves with the learner, not just serves them
  • Persona-based AI that adapts to individual goals, identities and motivations
  • Multimodal AI that engages across text, voice, video, simulation and interaction

Experience AI brings learning into context. It powers personalized, problem-based journeys where students explore ideas, reflect on progress and co-create meaning — with both human and machine collaborators.

 

The above posting on LinkedIn then links to this document


Designing Microsoft 365 Copilot to empower educators, students, and staff — from microsoft.com by Deirdre Quarnstrom

While over 80% of respondents in the 2025 AI in Education Report have already used AI for school, we believe there are significant opportunities to design AI that can better serve each of their needs and broaden access to the latest innovation.1

That’s why today [10/15/25], we’re announcing AI-powered experiences built for teaching and learning at no additional cost, new integrations in Microsoft 365 apps and Learning Management Systems, and an academic offering for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Introducing AI-powered teaching and learning
Empowering educators with Teach

We’re introducing Teach to help streamline class prep and adapt AI to support educators’ teaching expertise with intuitive and customizable features. In one place, educators can easily access AI-powered teaching tools to create lesson plans, draft materials like quizzes and rubrics, and quickly make modifications to language, reading level, length, difficulty, alignment to relevant standards, and more.

 

 

10 Tips from Smart Teaching Stronger Learning — from Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.

Per Dr. Pooja Agarwal:

Combining two strategies—spacing and retrieval practice—is key to success in learning, says Shana Carpenter.


On a somewhat related note (i.e., for Instructional Designers, teachers, faculty members, T&L staff members), also see:

 

“A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?” [Hardman] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

From 70/20/10 to 90/10 — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?

This week I want to share a hypothesis I’m increasingly convinced of: that we are entering an age of the 90/10 model of L&D.

90/10 is a model where roughly 90% of “training” is delivered by AI coaches as daily performance support, and 10% of training is dedicated to developing complex and critical skills via high-touch, human-led learning experiences.

Proponents of 90/10 argue that the model isn’t about learning less, but about learning smarter by defining all jobs to be done as one of the following:

  • Delegate (the dead skills): Tasks that can be offloaded to AI.
  • Co-Create (the 90%): Tasks which well-defined AI agents can augment and help humans to perform optimally.
  • Facilitate (the 10%): Tasks which require high-touch, human-led learning to develop.

So if AI at work is now both real and material, the natural question for L&D is: how do we design for it? The short answer is to stop treating learning as an event and start treating it as a system.



My daughter’s generation expects to learn with AI, not pretend it doesn’t exist, because they know employers expect AI fluency and because AI will be ever-present in their adult lives.

— Jenny Maxell

The above quote was taken from this posting.


Unlocking Young Minds: How Gamified AI Learning Tools Inspire Fun, Personalized, and Powerful Education for Children in 2025 — from techgenyz.com by Sreyashi Bhattacharya

Table of Contents

Highlight

  • Gamified AI Learning Tools personalize education by adapting the difficulty and content to each child’s pace, fostering confidence and mastery.
  • Engaging & Fun: Gamified elements like quests, badges, and stories keep children motivated and enthusiastic.
  • Safe & Inclusive: Attention to equity, privacy, and cultural context ensures responsible and accessible learning.

How to test GenAI’s impact on learning — from timeshighereducation.com by Thibault Schrepel
Rather than speculate on GenAI’s promise or peril, Thibault Schrepel suggests simple teaching experiments to uncover its actual effects

Generative AI in higher education is a source of both fear and hype. Some predict the end of memory, others a revolution in personalised learning. My two-year classroom experiment points to a more modest reality: Artificial intelligence (AI) changes some skills, leaves others untouched and forces us to rethink the balance.

This indicates that the way forward is to test, not speculate. My results may not match yours, and that is precisely the point. Here are simple activities any teacher can use to see what AI really does in their own classroom.

4. Turn AI into a Socratic partner
Instead of being the sole interrogator, let AI play the role of tutor, client or judge. Have students use AI to question them, simulate cross-examination or push back on weak arguments. New “study modes” now built into several foundation models make this kind of tutoring easy to set up. Professors with more technical skills can go further, design their own GPTs or fine-tuned models trained on course content and let students interact directly with them. The point is the practice it creates. Students learn that questioning a machine is part of learning to think like a professional.


Assessment tasks that support human skills — from timeshighereducation.com by Amir Ghapanchi and Afrooz Purarjomandlangrudi
Assignments that focus on exploration, analysis and authenticity offer a road map for university assessment that incorporates AI while retaining its rigour and human elements

Rethinking traditional formats

1. From essay to exploration 
When ChatGPT can generate competent academic essays in seconds, the traditional format’s dominance looks less secure as an assessment task. The future lies in moving from essays as knowledge reproduction to assessments that emphasise exploration and curation. Instead of asking students to write about a topic, challenge them to use artificial intelligence to explore multiple perspectives, compare outputs and critically evaluate what emerges.

Example: A management student asks an AI tool to generate several risk plans, then critiques the AI’s assumptions and identifies missing risks.


What your students are thinking about artificial intelligence — from timeshighereducation.com by Florencia Moore and Agostina Arbia
GenAI has been quickly adopted by students, but the consequences of using it as a shortcut could be grave. A study into how students think about and use GenAI offers insights into how teaching might adapt

However, when asked how AI negatively impacts their academic development, 29 per cent noted a “weakening or deterioration of intellectual abilities due to AI overuse”. The main concern cited was the loss of “mental exercise” and soft skills such as writing, creativity and reasoning.

The boundary between the human and the artificial does not seem so easy to draw, but as the poet Antonio Machado once said: “Traveller, there is no path; the path is made by walking.”


Jelly Beans for Grapes: How AI Can Erode Students’ Creativity — from edsurge.com by Thomas David Moore

There is nothing new about students trying to get one over on their teachers — there are probably cuneiform tablets about it — but when students use AI to generate what Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, calls a “truth-shaped word collage,” they are not only gaslighting the people trying to teach them, they are gaslighting themselves. In the words of Tulane professor Stan Oklobdzija, asking a computer to write an essay for you is the equivalent of “going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.”


Deloitte will make Claude available to 470,000 people across its global network — from anthropic.com

As part of the collaboration, Deloitte will establish a Claude Center of Excellence with trained specialists who will develop implementation frameworks, share leading practices across deployments, and provide ongoing technical support to create the systems needed to move AI pilots to production at scale. The collaboration represents Anthropic’s largest enterprise AI deployment to date, available to more than 470,000 Deloitte people.

Deloitte and Anthropic are co-creating a formal certification program to train and certify 15,000 of its professionals on Claude. These practitioners will help support Claude implementations across Deloitte’s network and Deloitte’s internal AI transformation efforts.


How AI Agents are finally delivering on the promise of Everboarding: driving retention when it counts most — from premierconstructionnews.com

Everboarding flips this model. Rather than ending after orientation, everboarding provides ongoing, role-specific training and support throughout the employee journey. It adapts to evolving responsibilities, reinforces standards, and helps workers grow into new roles. For high-turnover, high-pressure environments like retail, it’s a practical solution to a persistent challenge.

AI agents will be instrumental in the success of everboarding initiatives; they can provide a much more tailored training and development process for each individual employee, keeping track of which training modules may need to be completed, or where staff members need or want to develop further. This personalisation helps staff to feel not only more satisfied with their current role, but also guides them on the right path to progress in their individual careers.

Digital frontline apps are also ideal for everboarding. They offer bite-sized training that staff can complete anytime, whether during quiet moments on shift or in real time on the job, all accessible from their mobile devices.


TeachLM: insights from a new LLM fine-tuned for teaching & learning — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Six key takeaways, including what the research tells us about how well AI performs as an instructional designer

As I and many others have pointed out in recent months, LLMs are great assistants but very ineffective teachers. Despite the rise of “educational LLMs” with specialised modes (e.g. Anthropic’s Learning Mode, OpenAI’s Study Mode, Google’s Guided Learning) AI typically eliminates the productive struggle, open exploration and natural dialogue that are fundamental to learning.

This week, Polygence, in collaboration with Stanford University researcher Prof Dora Demszky. published a first-of-its-kind research on a new model — TeachLM — built to address this gap.

In this week’s blog post, I deep dive what the research found and share the six key findings — including reflections on how well TeachLM performs on instructional design.


The Dangers of using AI to Grade — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins
Nobody Learns, Nobody Gains

AI as an assessment tool represents an existential threat to education because no matter how you try and establish guardrails or best practices around how it is employed, using the technology in place of an educator ultimately cedes human judgment to a machine-based process. It also devalues the entire enterprise of education and creates a situation where the only way universities can add value to education is by further eliminating costly human labor.

For me, the purpose of higher education is about human development, critical thinking, and the transformative experience of having your ideas taken seriously by another human being. That’s not something we should be in a rush to outsource to a machine.

 

Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine — from edutopia.org
By regularly working in activities that get students to recall content they’ve learned in the past and apply it, teachers can ensure deeper understanding.

Also see:

  • The Teaching Tips section out at RetrievalPractice.org
    Retrieval practice is a simple research-based teaching strategy that dramatically raises students’ grades. When students retrieve and bring information to mind, this mental challenge produces durable long-term learning. Easy learning leads to easy forgetting. Stop cramming, reviewing, and re-teaching. Instead, simply ask students what they remember. No prep, no grading, just powerful teaching. The science of learning exists. It’s time to unleash it.
 

Nutrition education programs shutter amid funding cuts — from open-campus-dispatch.beehiiv.com by Colleen Murphy
SNAP-Ed programs teach low-income families about healthy eating habits and food preparation.

University-run nutrition education programs are closing around the country following Trump administration funding cuts. That means low-income families are losing access to information about healthy eating and cooking.

“When you teach people how to eat healthier, the students do better in school, the parents do better at work, that feeds the economy,” Mark Lynch, director of advocacy, told the TV station. “Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.”

From DSC:
“Everybody lives longer and stays out of the doctor’s offices or the ERs.” DC: Yup. We can pay up front and be healthier as a society, or we can try to get people their necessary healthcare later on (probably costing us much more on the aggregate).

Making America Great Again…NOT!

 

7 Teaching Practices that Nurture Student Voice — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

In our efforts to improve school, especially in the United States, student voice has really gotten lost. We focus on test scores, top-down curriculum, and measures of success that never quite get to the humanity of our students. Not only have these efforts not succeeded in raising test scores (Schwartz, 2025), they haven’t given us much satisfaction in other ways, either: In a recent survey, nearly half of educators reported that student behavior was worse than before the pandemic, and that number had grown since teachers were surveyed just two years earlier (Stephens, 2025).

Although there are most certainly individual schools where great things are happening, too many schools are still missing the mark. Too many schools keep trying to address these problems without hearing from the very people who are impacted most: the students. 

But there is another way. Four years ago, I started talking a lot about a new book I’d read called Street Data


Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

 

The World’s Classrooms Are Short 44 Million Teachers — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo
It’s not just pay that’s a problem in retaining and recruiting educators, experts say.

K-12 education worldwide is facing a two-pronged dilemma: A global shortage of 44 million teachers by 2030 and not enough funding to train or retain them, according to a report released by UNESCO and the International Taskforce on Teachers for Education 2030 following the summit. Countries around the world risk not having enough teachers — or not enough high-caliber teachers — for the rising number of students expected to enter primary and secondary school within the next five years.

The report’s findings reflect what some school districts and states have been grappling with in the United States, where research has consistently shown that teachers face lower rates of well-being and satisfaction with pay than similarly employed workers in other fields.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian