Getting (and Keeping) Early Learners’ Attention — from edutopia.org by Heather Sanderell These ideas for lesson hooks—like using songs, video clips, and picture walks—can motivate young students to focus on learning.
How do you grasp and maintain the attention of a room full of wide-eyed students with varying interests and abilities? Do you use visuals and games or interactive activities? Do you use art and sports and music or sounds? The answer is yes, to all!
When trying to keep the attention of your learners, it’s important to stimulate their senses and pique their diverse interests. Educational theorist and researcher Robert Gagné devised his nine events of instructional design, which include grabbing learners’ attention with a lesson hook. This is done first to set the tone for the remainder of the lesson.
3 Ways to Help Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve — from edutopia.org by Cathleen Beachboard Our brains are wired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. Here’s how you can help students hold on to what they learn.
You teach a lesson that lights up the room. Students are nodding and hands are flying up, and afterward you walk out thinking, “They got it. They really got it.”
And then, the next week, you ask a simple review question—and the room falls silent.
If that situation has ever made you question your ability to teach, take heart: You’re not failing, you’re simply facing the forgetting curve. Understanding why students forget—and how we can help them remember—can transform not just our lessons but our students’ futures.
The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your curriculum to beat the forgetting curve. You just need three small, powerful shifts in how you teach.
7 Nature Experiments to Spark Student Curiosity — from edutopia.org by Donna Phillips Encourage your students to ask questions about and explore the world around them with these hands-on lessons.
Children are natural scientists—they ask big questions, notice tiny details, and learn best through hands-on exploration. That’s why nature experiments are a classroom staple for me. From growing seeds to using the sun’s energy, students don’t just learn science, they experience it. Here are my favorite go-to nature experiments that spark curiosity.
Rick: What kinds of strategies do you think would help?
Richard: In education, we should expand the use of male-friendly teaching methods, such as more hands-on and active learning approaches. We should also consider redshirting boys—starting them in school a year later—to account for developmental differences between boys and girls. We should also introduce more male mentors and role models in schools, particularly in elementary education, where male teachers are scarce. In the workforce, apprenticeship and vocational training programs need to be expanded to create pathways into stable employment for young men who may not pursue a four-year degree. Career counseling should also emphasize diverse pathways to ensure that boys who may not thrive in a traditional academic setting still have opportunities for success. Additionally, fatherhood policies should recognize the importance of male engagement in family life, supporting fathers in their role as caregivers and providers.
While on the topic of K12 education, also see:
How Electives Help All Students Succeed — from edutopia.org by Miriam Plotinsky Giving students a choice of electives increases engagement and allows them to develop skills outside of core academic subjects.
I recently conducted a student focus group on the topic of school attendance. One of the participants, a high school junior who admitted to being frequently late or absent, explained why she still came to school: “I never want to miss Drama. My teacher is awesome. Her class is the reason I show up every day.” As the rest of the focus group chimed in with similar thoughts, I reflected on the power that elective courses hold for students of all ages.
These courses, from jazz band to yoga, cement students’ sense of self not just in their primary and secondary years, but also in their journey toward adulthood. In these tight economic times, schools or districts often slash electives to save money on staffing, which is highly detrimental to student success. Instead, not only should budget cuts be made elsewhere, but also elective offerings should increase to heighten student choice and well-being.
powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered nostalgic for a world that moved on without us after decades of paying our dues for a payday that never came …so yeah not exactly fine.
The Gen X Career Meltdown — from nytimes.com by Steeven Kurutz (DSC: This is a gifted article for you) Just when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find that their skills are all but obsolete.
If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.
“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.
Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.
In the wake of the influencers comes another threat, artificial intelligence, which seems likely to replace many of the remaining Gen X copywriters, photographers and designers. By 2030, ad agencies in the United States will lose 32,000 jobs, or 7.5 percent of the industry’s work force, to the technology, according to the research firm Forrester.
From DSC: This article reminds me of how tough it is to navigate change in our lives. For me, it was often due to the fact that I was working with technologies. Being a technologist can be difficult, especially as one gets older and faces age discrimination in a variety of industries. You need to pick the right technologies and the directions that will last (for me it was email, videoconferencing, the Internet, online-based education/training, discovering/implementing instructional technologies, and becoming a futurist).
For you younger folks out there — especially students within K-16 — aim to develop a perspective and a skillset that is all about adapting to change. You will likely need to reinvent yourself and/or pick up new skills over your working years. You are most assuredly required to be a lifelong learner now. That’s why I have been pushing for school systems to be more concerned with providing more choice and control to students — so that students actually like school and enjoy learning about new things.
Introducing the 2025 Wonder Media Calendar for tweens, teens, and their families/households.Designed by Sue Ellen Christian and her students in her Global Media Literacy class (in the fall 2024 semester at Western Michigan University), the calendar’s purpose is to help people create a new year filled with skills and smart decisions about their media use. This calendar is part of the ongoing Wonder Media Library.comproject that includes videos, lesson plans, games, songs and more. The website is funded by a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in partnership with Western Michigan University and the Library of Michigan.
Picture your enterprise as a living ecosystem,where surging market demand instantly informs staffing decisions, where a new vendor’s onboarding optimizes your emissions metrics, where rising customer engagement reveals product opportunities. Now imagine if your systems could see these connections too! This is the promise of AI agents — an intelligent network that thinks, learns, and works across your entire enterprise.
Today, organizations operate in artificial silos. Tomorrow, they could be fluid and responsive. The transformation has already begun. The question is: will your company lead it?
The journey to agent-enabled operations starts with clarity on business objectives. Leaders should begin by mapping their business’s critical processes. The most pressing opportunities often lie where cross-functional handoffs create friction or where high-value activities are slowed by system fragmentation. These pain points become the natural starting points for your agent deployment strategy.
Artificial intelligence has already proved that it can sound like a human, impersonate individuals and even produce recordings of someone speaking different languages. Now, a new feature from Microsoft will allow video meeting attendees to hear speakers “talk” in a different language with help from AI.
What Is Agentic AI? — from blogs.nvidia.com by Erik Pounds Agentic AI uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems.
The next frontier of artificial intelligence is agentic AI, which uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems. And it’s set to enhance productivity and operations across industries.
Agentic AI systems ingest vast amounts of data from multiple sources to independently analyze challenges, develop strategies and execute tasks like supply chain optimization, cybersecurity vulnerability analysis and helping doctors with time-consuming tasks.
86% of students globally are regularly using AI in their studies, with 54% of them using AI on a weekly basis, the recent Digital Education Council Global AI Student Survey found.
ChatGPT was found to be the most widely used AI tool, with 66% of students using it, and over 2 in 3 students reported using AI for information searching.
Despite their high rates of AI usage, 1 in 2 students do not feel AI ready. 58% reported that they do not feel that they had sufficient AI knowledge and skills, and 48% do not feel adequately prepared for an AI-enabled workplace.
The Post-AI Instructional Designer— from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman How the ID role is changing, and what this means for your key skills, roles & responsibilities
Specifically, the study revealed that teachers who reported most productivity gains were those who used AI not just for creating outputs (like quizzes or worksheets) but also for seeking input on their ideas, decisions and strategies.
Those who engaged with AI as a thought partner throughout their workflow, using it to generate ideas, define problems, refine approaches, develop strategies and gain confidence in their decisions gained significantly more from their collaboration with AI than those who only delegated functional tasks to AI.
Leveraging Generative AI for Inclusive Excellence in Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Lorna Gonzalez, Kristi O’Neil-Gonzalez, Megan Eberhardt-Alstot, Michael McGarry and Georgia Van Tyne Drawing from three lenses of inclusion, this article considers how to leverage generative AI as part of a constellation of mission-centered inclusive practices in higher education.
The hype and hesitation about generative artificial intelligence (AI) diffusion have led some colleges and universities to take a wait-and-see approach.Footnote1 However, AI integration does not need to be an either/or proposition where its use is either embraced or restricted or its adoption aimed at replacing or outright rejecting existing institutional functions and practices. Educators, educational leaders, and others considering academic applications for emerging technologies should consider ways in which generative AI can complement or augment mission-focused practices, such as those aimed at accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Drawing from three lenses of inclusion—accessibility, identity, and epistemology—this article offers practical suggestions and considerations that educators can deploy now. It also presents an imperative for higher education leaders to partner toward an infrastructure that enables inclusive practices in light of AI diffusion.
An example way to leverage AI:
How to Leverage AI for Identity Inclusion Educators can use the following strategies to intentionally design instructional content with identity inclusion in mind.
Provide a GPT or AI assistant with upcoming lesson content (e.g., lecture materials or assignment instructions) and ask it to provide feedback (e.g., troublesome vocabulary, difficult concepts, or complementary activities) from certain perspectives. Begin with a single perspective (e.g., first-time, first-year student), but layer in more to build complexity as you interact with the GPT output.
Gen AI’s next inflection point: From employee experimentation to organizational transformation — from mckinsey.com by Charlotte Relyea, Dana Maor, and Sandra Durth with Jan Bouly As many employees adopt generative AI at work, companies struggle to follow suit. To capture value from current momentum, businesses must transform their processes, structures, and approach to talent.
To harness employees’ enthusiasm and stay ahead, companies need a holistic approach to transforming how the whole organization works with gen AI; the technology alone won’t create value.
Our research shows that early adopters prioritize talent and the human side of gen AI more than other companies (Exhibit 3). Our survey shows that nearly two-thirds of them have a clear view of their talent gaps and a strategy to close them, compared with just 25 percent of the experimenters. Early adopters focus heavily on upskilling and reskilling as a critical part of their talent strategies, as hiring alone isn’t enough to close gaps and outsourcing can hinder strategic-skills development.Finally, 40 percent of early-adopter respondents say their organizations provide extensive support to encourage employee adoption, versus 9 percent of experimenter respondents.
Change blindness — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick 21 months later
I don’t think anyone is completely certain about where AI is going, but we do know that things have changed very quickly, as the examples in this post have hopefully demonstrated. If this rate of change continues, the world will look very different in another 21 months. The only way to know is to live through it.
Over the subsequent weeks, I’ve made other adjustments, but that first one was the one I asked myself:
What are you doing?
Why are you doing it that way?
How could you change that workflow with AI?
Applying the AI to the workflow, then asking, “Is this what I was aiming for? How can I improve the prompt to get closer?”
Documenting what worked (or didn’t). Re-doing the work with AI to see what happened, and asking again, “Did this work?”
So, something that took me WEEKS of hard work, and in some cases I found impossible, was made easy. Like, instead of weeks, it takes 10 minutes. The hard part? Building the prompt to do what I want, fine-tuning it to get the result. But that doesn’t take as long now.
An internet search for free learning resources will likely return a long list that includes some useful sites amid a sea of not-really-free and not-very-useful sites.
To help teachers more easily find the best free and freemium sites they can use in their classrooms and curricula, I’ve curated a list that describes the top free/freemium sites for learning.
In some cases, Tech & Learning has reviewed the site in detail, and those links are included so readers can find out more about how to make the best use of the online materials. In all cases, the websites below provide valuable educational tools, lessons, and ideas, and are worth exploring further.
How to Kill Student Curiosity in 5 Steps (and What to Do Instead) — from edweek.org by Olivia Odileke The unintentional missteps teachers and administrators are making
I’ve observed five major ways we’re unintentionally stifling curiosity and issue a call to action for educators, administrators, and policymakers to join the curiosity revolution:
Microsoft’s new ChatGPT competitor… — from The Rundown AI
The Rundown: Microsoft is reportedly developing a massive 500B parameter in-house LLM called MAI-1, aiming to compete with top AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Hampton runs a private community for high-growth tech founders and CEOs. We asked our community of founders and owners how AI has impacted their business and what tools they use
Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside:
The budgets they set aside for AI research and development
The most common (and obscure) tools founders are using
Measurable business impacts founders have seen through using AI
Where they are purposefully not using AI and much more
To help leaders and organizations overcome AI inertia, Microsoft and LinkedIn looked at how AI will reshape work and the labor market broadly, surveying 31,000 people across 31 countries, identifying labor and hiring trends from LinkedIn, and analyzing trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals as well as research with Fortune 500 customers. The data points to insights every leader and professional needs to know—and actions they can take—when it comes to AI’s implications for work.
AI Resources and Teaching | Kent State University offers valuable resources for educators interested in incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their teaching practices. The university recognizes that the rapid emergence of AI tools presents both challenges and opportunities in higher education.
The AI Resources and Teaching page provides educators with information and guidance on various AI tools and their responsible use within and beyond the classroom. The page covers different areas of AI application, including language generation, visuals, videos, music, information extraction, quantitative analysis, and AI syllabus language examples.
For all its jaw-dropping power, Watson the computer overlord was a weak teacher. It couldn’t engage or motivate kids, inspire them to reach new heights or even keep them focused on the material — all qualities of the best mentors.
It’s a finding with some resonance to our current moment of AI-inspired doomscrolling about the future of humanity in a world of ascendant machines. “There are some things AI is actually very good for,” Nitta said, “but it’s not great as a replacement for humans.”
His five-year journey to essentially a dead-end could also prove instructive as ChatGPT and other programs like it fuel a renewed, multimillion-dollar experiment to, in essence, prove him wrong.
…
To be sure, AI can do sophisticated things such as generating quizzes from a class reading and editing student writing. But the idea that a machine or a chatbot can actually teach as a human can, he said, represents “a profound misunderstanding of what AI is actually capable of.”
Nitta, who still holds deep respect for the Watson lab, admits, “We missed something important. At the heart of education, at the heart of any learning, is engagement. And that’s kind of the Holy Grail.”
From DSC: This is why the vision that I’ve been tracking and working on has always said that HUMAN BEINGS will be necessary — they are key to realizing this vision. Along these lines, here’s a relevant quote:
Another crucial component of a new learning theory for the age of AI would be the cultivation of “blended intelligence.” This concept recognizes that the future of learning and work will involve the seamless integration of human and machine capabilities, and that learners must develop the skills and strategies needed to effectively collaborate with AI systems. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human intelligence, a blended intelligence approach seeks to harness the complementary strengths of humans and machines, creating a symbiotic relationship that enhances the potential of both.
Per Alexander “Sasha” Sidorkin, Head of the National Institute on AI in Society at California State University Sacramento.
The Edtech Insiders Rundown of SXSW EDU 2024 — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Ben Kornell, Alex Sarlin, and Sarah Morin And more on our ASU + GSV Happy Hour, GenAI in edtech market valuations, and interviews from The Common Sense Summit.
Theme 1: The Kids Are Not Alright This year’s SXSW EDU had something for everyone, with over a dozen “Program Tracks.” However, the one theme that truly connected the entire conference was mental health.
36 sessions were specifically tagged with mental health and wellness, but in sessions on topics ranging from literacy to edtech to civic engagement, presenters continued to come back again and again to the mental health crisis amongst teens and young adults.
… Theme 2: Aye AI, Captain Consistent with past conferences, this year leaned in on the K12 education world. As expected, one of the hottest topics for K12 was the role of AI (or lack thereof) in schools. Key takeaways included…
There is still time to ensure that all of your students graduate with an understanding of how AI works, why it is important and how to best use it.
What would it look like to make a commitment that come graduation every senior will have at least basic AI literacy? This includes an appreciation of AI as a creation engine and learning partner but also an understanding of the risks of deepfakes and biased curation. We’re entering a time where to quote Ethan Mollick “You can’t trust anything you read or see ever again.” Whether formal or informal, it’s time to start building AI literacy.
More than 50 years later, across the street from the church and concerned with declining education and the pace of social change, brothers Anthony and Fred Brock founded Valiant Cross Academy, an all-male academy aimed at “helping boys of color become men of valor.”
Valiant Cross embodies King’s hopes, pursuing the dream that its students will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, and working to ensure that they are well prepared for productive lives filled with accomplishment and purpose.
“We’re out to prove that it’s an opportunity gap, not an achievement gap” says head of school Anthony Brock. And they have. In 2022, 100 percent of Valiant seniors graduated from the academy, pursuing post-graduate options, enrolling in either four- or two-year college, or established career-training programs.
Below are some items for those creatives who might be interested in telling stories, designing games, crafting audio-based experiences, composing music, developing new worlds using 3D graphics, and more.
The sounds of any game can make or break the experience for its players. Many of our favorite adventures come roaring back into our minds when we hear a familiar melody, or maybe it’s a special sound effect that reminds us of our time performing a particularly heroic feat… or the time we just caused some havoc with friends. With Lightfall sending Guardians to explore the new destination of Neomuna, there’s an entire universe hidden away within the sounds—both orchestral and diegetic—for Guardians to uncover and immerse themselves in. We recently assembled some of Destiny’s finest sound designers and composers to dive a little bit deeper into the stunning depths of Neomuna’s auditory experience.
Before diving into the interview with our incredible team, we wanted to make sure you have seen the Lightfall music documentary that went out shortly after the expansion’s release. This short video is a great introduction to how our team worked to create the music of Lightfall and is a must-see for audiophiles and Destiny fans alike.
Every game has a story to tell, a journey to take players through that — if done well — can inspire wonderful memories that last a lifetime. Unlike other storytelling mediums, the art of video games is an intricate interweaving of experiences, including psychological cues that are designed to entrance players and make them feel like they’re a part of the story. One way this is achieved is through the art of audio. And no, we aren’t just talking about the many incredible soundtracks out there, we’re talking about the oftentimes overlooked universe of audio design.
… What does an audio designer do?
“Number one? We don’t work on music. That’s a thing almost everyone thinks every audio designer does,” jokes Nyte when opening up about beginning her quest into the audio world. “That, or for a game like Destiny, people just assume we only work on weapon sounds and nothing else. Which, [Juan] Uribe does, but a lot of us don’t. There is this entire gamut of other sounds that are in-game that people don’t really notice. Some do, and that’s always cool, but audio is about all sounds coming together for a ‘whole’ audio experience.”
On the Transformation of Entertainment
What company will be the Pixar of the AI era? What talent agency will be the CAA of the AI era? How fast can the entertainment industry evolve to natively leverage AI, and what parts will be disrupted by the industry’s own ambivalence? Or are all of these questions myopic…and should we anticipate a wave of entirely new categories of entertainment?
We are starting to see material adoption of AI tools across many industries, including media and entertainment. No doubt, these tools will transform the processes behind generating content. But what entirely new genres of content might emerge? The platform shift to AI-based workflows might give rise to entirely new types of companies that transform entertainment as we know it – from actor representation, Hollywood economics, consumption devices and experiences, to the actual mediums of entertainment themselves. Let’s explore just a few of the more edgy implications:
Students who first generate ideas about a topic—access what they know about it—more easily write their outlines and drafts for the bigger-picture assignment. For Sally, brainstorming was too overwhelming as an initial step, so we started off by naming examples. I gave Sally a topic—name ways characters in Charlotte’s Web helped one another—she named examples of things (characters), and we generated a list of ways those characters helped one another.
IMPLEMENTING BRAINSTORMING AS SKILL BUILDING
This “naming” strategy is easy to implement with individual students or in groups. These are steps to get you started.
Step 1. Introduce the student to the exercise.
Step 2. Select a topic for practice.
…
When we’re young, playing and learning are inseparable.
Simple games like peekaboo and hide-and-seek help us learn crucial lessons about time, anticipation and cause and effect. We discover words, numbers, colors and sounds through toys, puzzles, storybooks and cartoons. Everywhere we turn, there’s something fun to do and something new to learn.
Then, somewhere around early elementary school, learning and play officially become separated for life.
Suddenly, learning becomes a task that only takes place in proper classrooms with the help of textbooks, homework and tests. Meanwhile, play becomes a distraction that we’re only allowed to indulge in during our free time, often by earning it as a reward for studying. As a result, students tend to grow up feeling as if learning is a stressful chore while playing is a reward.
Similar interactive learning experiences are popping up in urban areas from California to the East Coast, with equally promising results: art, games and music are being incorporated into green spaces, public parks, transportation stations, laundromats and more.
And on a somewhat related note, also see:
Though meant for higher ed, this is also applicable to the area of pedagogy within K12:
Space to fail. And learn — from educationalist.substack.com by Alexandra Mihai I want to use today’s newsletter to talk about how we can help students to own their mistakes and really learn from them, so I’m sharing some thoughts, some learning design ideas and some resources…
