tools

“Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need” [Miller Perkins] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 08/19/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, business, career development, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, Emotion, engineering, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning spaces, liberal arts, mathematics, online learning, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need— from timeshighereducation.com by Kathy Miller Perkins
For disciplines that depend on interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership, negotiation and mediation, AI can provide elusive experiential learning, particularly in asynchronous environments

What if AI’s greatest educational value lies not in generating answers but in generating experiences?

The result surprised me. Students did not simply interact with the AI, they meaningfully engaged with it. Many reported that the experience felt valuable precisely because the simulated conversation partner pushed back. Unlike classmates who sometimes hesitate to challenge one another, the AI consistently maintained its position. Students had to work harder, listen more carefully and apply the communication strategies they had spent weeks learning. And, importantly, they practised.

Here’s how to show students what responsible AI use looks like — from timeshighereducation.com by Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton
Well-designed assessments can highlight generative AI’s limitations, where it can provide support and what responsible practice looks like. Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton offer strategies

We have been exploring ways to offer this in our Level 7 module for MSc engineering management students, many of whom come from the Global South. Assessment is built around a practical design problem: students examine how a real campus process operates, where delays occur, evidence they observe and how a feasible redesign might improve the system – in a 3,000-word essay.

They can use AI for planning and providing clarity, but not for generating the evidence on which the analysis rests. Invented observations, measurements, screenshots or unverifiable citations are prohibited. The assessment design reinforces this through a case study, diagram, fact-checking exercise and a short AI use statement.

Requiring an AI use statement encourages students to reflect on their processes. We ask which tool they used, how they used it, how they checked the output and which parts of the work depended on their own evidence and judgement. It reminds them that evidence must be theirs and that citations must be manually verified.

Slow math: Kids may learn more when AI makes them review mistakes — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay and Kristin Fasiang
A randomized experiment involved more than 6,000 Tennessee middle school students learning fractions

In an experiment involving more than 6,000 middle schoolers in Tennessee, students learned slightly more math when an AI tutor walked them through their mistakes and then required them to demonstrate the same skill correctly three times in a row before moving on.
…
The winning combination wasn’t the addition of AI tutoring alone, but AI tutoring plus repetition, with the idea that students needed to stick with the skill to demonstrate some level of mastery. The students who practiced math with this AI-enhanced “mastery learning” approach scored about 3 percentage points higher than students receiving conventional computerized instruction. The advantage was small.

I Built a Team of AI Bots That Write Feedback Better than Me. Here’s How. — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Aka, how to make learners love AI-assisted feedback, rather than loathe it.

This wasn’t hidden from the cohort. For reasons I’ll come to below, I always tell my cohorts at the very start that an AI assistant will be helping me draft their feedback. The aim wasn’t to remove me from the process, but to find out whether AI could help me to deliver feedback at a volume and quality that I simply couldn’t maintain without AI.

Spoiler: the experiment worked — but not for the reason I expected. In this post, I’ll share exactly what I built, tell you how to build a version for your course and reveal the three conditions that decide whether learners trust AI-assisted feedback or quietly stop reading it.

TL;DR: the spec for my feedback assistant is long not because the model needs persuading, but because it’s where my judgement lives. Every rule in it is a decision AI would otherwise make by itself, with limited expertise. A spec doesn’t make the model smarter — it makes expertise and judgement legible enough for the model to follow.

Of the five stages of AI grief, some managers are stuck in denial— from timeshighereducation.com by Shadi Mohamed
Acceptance is not surrender. It is about getting beyond a policing obsession and rethinking what assessment aims to measure, says Shadi Mohamed

In that moment of institutional blindness, it struck me: universities are not merely struggling with a technological adoption curve. They are grieving the demise of the modern university’s economic and institutional logic.

To understand the scale of this threat posed by AI, consider what the internet did to journalism. Newspapers thrived by bundling together classified advertising with quick news hits, sports scores and opinion columns, using that reliable revenue to fund the expensive social necessity of investigative reporting. The rise of internet advertising did not kill journalism outright but it shattered the bundle, leaving the expensive core product without its historical financial engine.

Universities operate on a similar logic, bundling content delivery, assessment, credentialling, research and professional formation. But generative AI is now commodifying the most visible parts of that package. When AI can deliver personalised explanations instantly and generate the essays and reports we use to measure student capability, the traditional degree loses its role in the labour market as a proxy for understanding. If the bundle breaks, the economic model that funds our deeper purposes is in peril.

A Writer’s Toolkit [Tenore Tarpley & Caplan]

On 08/10/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, faculty/staff, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), journalism, Open AI, research, tools, United States, vendors, writing, by Daniel Christian

A Writer’s Toolkit — from wondertools.substack.com by Mallary Tenore Tarpley and Jeremy Caplan
Useful tools for every stage

Per Jeremy Caplan: My friend and colleague Mallary Tenore Tarpley writes an excellent newsletter, Write at the Edge, with helpful writing tips and best practices. She’s a professor, journalist, and author who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets. She recently published an important debut book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.

Mallary recently interviewed me about writing tools. She wrote up a summary of our conversation, highlighting the tools I talked about. I’m turning the rest of this post over to her summary.

From DSC:
Below is an item on futures thinking. Don’t blow this off. This topic — and skill/strategy — is important not only to traditional institutions of higher education, but also to businesses and organizations of all sizes. In fact, even students can practice developing a list of potential scenarios and implement their plans of action if one of those scenarios occurs.

Chris Mayer’s posting on LinkedIn.com

The image model race just split into four lanes –> find which model fits your work [Cooper]

On 07/22/2026, in art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, creativity, design, digital video, emerging technologies, experimentation, Google, graphics, platforms, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The image model race just split into four lanes –> find which model fits your work — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather B. Cooper

In today’s edition:

Stop asking which image model is “best” – the top 4
Seedream 5.0 Pro’s layer trick
Image & Video Prompts

I underestimated this NotebookLM feature until it completely changed how I study [Sood]

On 07/15/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Google, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, by Daniel Christian

I underestimated this NotebookLM feature until it completely changed how I study — from digitaltrends.com by Shimul Sood

That’s exactly where Mind Maps changed things for me.

In a matter of seconds, NotebookLM analyzed everything I’d uploaded and turned it into a visual map of the topic. Instead of facing a wall of documents, I saw one main idea branching into the key themes, with each of those breaking down into smaller concepts. Before I’d properly read a single source, I already understood how everything connected. That completely changed the way I studied. Rather than asking, “Where do I even start?” I had a clear roadmap showing me what to tackle first, what could wait until later, and how each piece fit into the bigger picture.

Looking back, it’s funny that the feature I ignored for so long is now the one I use first. I still love NotebookLM’s summaries and Audio Overview — they’re great for quickly understanding what’s in your documents. But Mind Maps do something different. They help you understand how everything fits together before you even begin studying. That one change has made a bigger difference than I expected. Instead of diving into a stack of PDFs and hoping I eventually make sense of them, I start with the map. Within a minute, I know the main ideas, how they’re connected, and where I should begin. It makes the whole learning process feel less overwhelming and a lot more structured.

Also recently from Shimul Sood:

Claude diagnosed my washing machine problem in minutes, and it didn’t cost me a thing — from digitaltrends.com

Microsoft Discovery Platform Brings Agentic AI to Scientific Research [Paoli]

On 07/14/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, higher education, intelligent systems, Microsoft, platforms, research, science, STEAM-related, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Microsoft Discovery Platform Brings Agentic AI to Scientific Research — from campustechnology.com by Chris Paoli

Key Takeaways

Microsoft Discovery reaches general availability, bringing agentic AI to scientific research and development workflows.
AI agents support hypothesis generation, experimentation, data analysis, and knowledge management at scale.
New Discovery app preview enables researchers to explore AI-driven scientific discovery with lower adoption barriers.

“Teachers ban it. Employers demand it.”

Also relevant/see:

The Shifting Career Ladder — from nafez.substack.com by Nafez Dakkak
AI is changing how work works and quietly removing the pathways through which young people learn to become experts.

AI is reshaping how people build skills, enter professions, and move along the career ladder and through the labour market.

In this conversation, I sit down with Matt Sigelmen founder of LightCast and now the President of Burning Glass Institute. Matt has dedicated his career to understanding the labor market and helping society improve the connections within in it.

Matt and I explore why people and opportunities are often only “a few skills apart,” why entry-level work may be losing its traditional role as the first rung of expertise, and why schools, universities, and employers now need to rethink the pathways that turn potential into mastery.

Educators need to be deeply aligned with what these changes are, and they need to shift the AI discourse from “how” questions to “what” questions. What do we need to teach? What do we need to keep in the curriculum?

LEGAL FUTURISMS: Consumer Legal Tech and the Soul of US Democracy

The “Dollar Legal” Thought Experiment

What if the salvation of our democratic enthusiasm doesn’t come from a political revolution, but a technological one? Enter the thought experiment of Dollar Legal.

Imagine a ubiquitous, consumer-facing legal tech platform—accessible from any smartphone—that commoditizes basic legal defense and assertion of rights. It is AI-driven legal agency for the masses, costing no more than a cup of coffee, or perhaps literally a single dollar.

Dollar Legal wouldn’t exist to litigate complex corporate mergers; it would exist to handle the agonizing friction of everyday survival. It instantly analyzes a notice to quit, drafts a legally sound response asserting warranty of habitability defenses, and files it electronically. It forces the bureaucratic machine to pause. It translates the raw, terrifying human experience of a legal threat into the cold rules and procedures that the justice system understands.

And the price, $1.00, at sufficient scale, would support the operation and maintenance of the service.

By deploying Dollar Legal, we fundamentally shift the balance of power. The democratization of legal leverage changes the calculus for bad actors who rely on the silent default judgments of the unrepresented.

“Tech & Learning Announces Winners of Best of Show at ISTE 2026” + “Best Sites for Blended Learning”

On 07/06/2026, in blended learning, hybrid learning, platforms, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Tech & Learning Announces Winners of Best of Show at ISTE 2026 — from techlearning.com
These annual awards celebrate the groundbreaking products exhibited at ISTE that are transforming education in schools around the world.

Also from techlearning.com, see:

Best Sites for Blended Learning — by Diana Restifo
Blended learning websites help teachers combine traditional instruction with online learning.

Blended learning is a teaching approach that combines both traditional in-class instruction with digital technologies for lessons, assessments, feedback and more. In other words, face-to-face teaching is supplemented and supported by online lessons and content.

The advantages of blended learning include flexibility, student engagement, and the ability to personalize lessons.

The following blended learning sites, many of which are fully free, provide a variety of features through which educators can implement their blended learning approach.

NotebookLM’s 60-second videos turned my doomscrolling curse into something useful [Sood]

On 07/06/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, tools, by Daniel Christian

NotebookLM’s 60-second videos turned my doomscrolling curse into something useful — from digitaltrends.com by Shimul Sood

Google has announced Short Video Overviews for NotebookLM, a feature that turns dense documents and complicated sources into 60-second vertical videos that explain key ideas. Instead of staring at pages of notes, you get a quick visual walkthrough of the concept you’re trying to understand.

Doom scrolling but make it educational ?

Introducing Short Video Overviews in NotebookLM! Turn your most complex sources into 60-second, vertical videos that deep dive into any concept.

Rolling out now to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers on mobile & web (free users soon!) pic.twitter.com/vaOa4ELbw4

— NotebookLM (@NotebookLM) June 30, 2026

We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side. [Nori]

On 06/29/2026, in Access to Justice (A2J), law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

Contrapposto — from sateeshnori.substack.com by Sateesh Nori
We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side.
.

“To Public Interest Lawyers of Any Kind:

Only when you have vanquished every eviction notice that shouldn’t have been filed… Only when you have defeated every predatory landlord, every wage thief, every debt collector armed with a default judgment… Only when you have lifted the burden from every tenant who faced Housing Court alone… Only when every family has shelter and every worker has been paid what they’re owed… Only when every immigrant has had someone in their corner and every person in crisis has had a lawyer who showed up… Only when every child aging out of foster care has had counsel, and every survivor of domestic violence has had an advocate who knew the system cold…

Only then — only when you have directed your energy toward the real adversaries: the justice gap, the underfunded courts, the 92% who never get a lawyer at all — only then can you attack another public interest lawyer for the tools they chose to fight with.”

Check Your Mic Before You Wreck Your Project [Rasnake]

On 06/29/2026, in A/V -- audio/visual, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, instructional design, IT in HE, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, training / L&D, vendors, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

Check Your Mic Before You Wreck Your Project — from learningguild.com by Kendal Rasnake

While a lot of our narration may be produced by AI nowadays, there are times when you need to record audio, such as when you need someone in-house to do a voiceover, or you are recording an interview, job shadow video, demonstration video, etc. Now, the responsibility of recording high-quality audio falls on you.

Well, all you have to do is grab a mic and point, right? Wrong!

The last thing you need is to record the CEO and have him/her sound horrible or look ridiculous because they are holding a fuzzy mic on a long wire up to their mouth. Instead, just learn a little about mics and you can purchase and/or choose the right one.

All Mics Are Not Built Equally
I had someone who was having audio trouble tell me that they used a “Brand Name” mic before and it sounded good, so maybe they would go back to using a “Brand Name” mic. As you can imagine, choosing a mic for a certain purpose based on the brand name is equivalent to choosing a Chevy mini-hybrid car to tow an RV because your truck used to tow the RV well and it was a Chevy. Brands make different types of microphones and understanding how mics are built can help you to choose the right one, no matter the brand.

AI’s getting expensive for us these days

On 06/23/2026, in Adobe, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, funding / grants, game-changing environment, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, library / librarians, new business models, Open AI, platforms, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I used to be able to bring up Firefly on the web and use it “free” of charge — I didn’t have to go purchase tokens or credits. (I was actually paying for the Adobe Creative Cloud Pro suite of tools…so it wasn’t really free.)

But the other day I was trying to figure out what the latest pricing is at Adobe with that suite of tools and the use of credits for AI-based features. They say Adobe Creative Cloud Pro users get 4000 credits a month. Well, I have that suite and I’m still getting prompted to purchase credits. Firefly for individuals runs from $9.99 (2,000 credits/month) to $139.91 per month (50,000 credits per month). Not inexpensive, right? Below are other items along these lines.

The Era of Affordable AI Is Over. What Comes Next? — from builtin.com by Ameya Kanitkar
AI providers are shifting to usage-based billing for their services. AI fluency is more important now than ever to make the most of your tools to avoid unnecessary spending.

Summary: The era of cheap, flat-rate AI is ending as providers shift to usage-based billing. Every prompt now carries a direct cost, turning casual use into major budget risks, as seen when Uber depleted its 2026 AI budget in four months. Leaders must now track real-time value and token efficiency.

For a brief window, companies had access to the most transformative technology in a generation at the cost of a streaming subscription. Tools like ChatGPT put AI within reach of anyone with a browser and time for experimentation, while GitHub Copilot came in at just $10 a month, with token costs remaining relatively low. In the beginning, experimentation felt cost-effective, easy and relatively low-risk.

But that era is ending, and the bill is coming due faster than a lot of enterprise leaders anticipated.

The Fable of AI in Education — from downes.ca by Stephen Downes
Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, Jun 17, 2026

Tokenomics will be a hot topic of discussion on university campuses because, as Marc Watkins notes in this article, there is no realistic path forward to providing all students with access to advanced AI.

From this posting on LinkedIn.com from Dr. Nick Jackson:

And now there is a third layer emerging. Institutions are waking up to a systems-level question they are likely not remotely prepared for. Who pays for AI? How are budgets managed when there are unclear token consumption pricing models? How is AI procured? Who decides what tools get used and by whom and who gets access and at what level?

.

From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.

These companies were listed on an article entitled,
“Can AI be an effective career coach?”
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig

FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale

AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.

PathPilot AI

Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.

Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.

AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
Resume builder and interview preparation tools
Job matching with local and national employers
Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
Integration with existing career services systems

Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.

High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.

Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.

OpportuNext

See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.

OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.

Pinpoint, Explained | A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all [Caplan]

On 06/05/2026, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, data related items, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, faculty/staff, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, library / librarians, research, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Pinpoint, Explained — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all

.Jeremy prompted ChatGPT to generate illustrations in his post.

.

Learn about Pinpoint— from support.google.com

Pinpoint is an AI-powered research platform designed to help journalists and academics analyze large collections of documents. With Pinpoint, you can:

Analyze massive collections: Easily search, filter, transcribe and organize thousands of documents, including PDFs, images, and audio files.
Leverage generative AI: Use Gemini’s capabilities to answer research questions together with supporting evidence found in your documents.
Foster collaborative research: share your work with colleagues and tackle large scale projects as a team. You can also publicly share – supporting community-driven research.

For assistance with Pinpoint, please consult our Community Forum or you can contact our support team.

Learning Ecosystems

“Tech & Learning Announces Winners of Best of Show at ISTE 2026” + “Best Sites for Blended Learning”

We are losing the war for Access to Justice. And we keep aiming our attacks on our own side. [Nori]

Check Your Mic Before You Wreck Your Project [Rasnake]

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