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AI for Your Next Career Move [Caplan]

On 04/19/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, tools, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

AI for Your Next Career Move — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
Free tools to explore, research, and interview better

AI tools can serve as patient assistants when you’re looking for a job. Use them to organize your search. Or to challenge your assumptions about potential jobs. They can also help you present your strengths more persuasively. When you’re changing fields, or trying to move up, AI can help you stand out.

1. Visualize Your Career Options
Try: Google’s Career Dreamer

What it is: A free tool for exploring jobs adjacent to yours. See a map of professional fields related to your interests.

How to use it: Start by typing in a current or previous role. Or name a job that interests you. Use up to five words. You can also name a specific organization or industry, if you have one in mind.

Career Dreamer asks what work activities interest you, then maps related career paths. Pick one at a time to explore.

You can then browse actual job openings. Refine the search based on location, company size, or other factors you care about.

The “Cognitive Offloading” Paradox [Hardman]

On 04/19/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, Europe, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning theories, student-related, teaching & learning, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

The “Cognitive Offloading” Paradox — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
New research shows that offloading learning tasks to AI can improve – rather than erode – human thinking and learning

The Rise of the “Offloading Paradox”
In March 2026, the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education published a study that went beyond the question “does offloading hurt?” and asked a harder one: when students form genuine partnerships with AI — treating it as an intellectual collaborator rather than a passive tool — what actually happens to the way they think and learn? Specifically, do two cognitive responses — critical evaluation of AI outputs (what the researchers call cognitive vigilance) and strategic delegation to AI (cognitive offloading) — compete with each other, or can they coexist?

Based on previous research, Wang and Zhang hypothesised that cognitive offloading would hurt transformative learning. They expected the familiar story: delegation reduces cognitive struggle, struggle is where learning happens, therefore delegation undermines learning.

The study — 912 students across China, Europe, and the United States, using a three-wave time-lagged survey design that measured partnership orientation first, cognitive strategies two weeks later, and learning outcomes two weeks after that — found something more interesting than a simple reversal.

Make learning accessible to all in higher education — from The Times Higher Education

When accessibility is placed at the heart of teaching and learning, rather than treated as a bolt-on, every student benefits. This week’s spotlight guide offers advice on designing universally accessible learning, in-person and online. Find out how to ease the burden of disability disclosure with universal design for learning, better support neurodivergent students and students with hearing or vision issues, design more accessible assessments and ensure digital tools work for all.

“Learning ecosystems begin with people.” — Getting Smart

On 04/17/2026, in apprenticeships, collaboration, credentialing, education, education reform, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, ideas, internships, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, more voice more choice more control, society, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

“Learning ecosystems begin with people.” — Getting Smart

ASU/GSV Summit

There’s something about walking into a space like the ASU+GSV Summit that feels a little like stepping into a living, breathing idea. You hear fragments of possibility in passing conversations, see it in the way people lean in a little closer during sessions, feel it in the quiet moments when something lands and you know it’s going to stay with you. This year, what lingered wasn’t just the talk of innovation; it was a deeper pull toward something more human. A reminder that before we build better systems, we have to create better conditions for dreaming. And there’s a kind of quiet joy that emerges when educators find each other in that work, when ideas connect, and you can feel the bridges across networks and ecosystems getting stronger in real time.

And dreaming is not a given. It requires space, safety, and adults who understand the weight of what they’re holding. The most powerful moments weren’t about what we can do for learners, but how we show up with them. Adults who are still learning, still stretching, still willing to have their thinking reshaped are the ones who make room for young people to imagine beyond what they’ve seen. That kind of space doesn’t happen by accident. It’s protected. It’s intentional. It’s built by people who know their non-negotiables, who draw clear lines around dignity and belonging so learners can take risks without fear of losing themselves in the process.

Across conversations on pathways, experience, and AI, there was a steady undercurrent. Knowledge alone isn’t carrying the day anymore. Young people need chances to test, to try, to wrestle with ideas in real contexts. That’s where wisdom starts to take shape. AI showed up as a partner in that work, not the main character, but a tool that can expand thinking when used well. Still, the heartbeat of it all is human. It’s the relationships, the networks, the shared belief that we don’t have to do this alone. When adults come together to learn, to challenge each other, and to build something bigger than their own corner, they create the kind of ecosystems where young people don’t just prepare for the future, they begin to shape it.

Also from Getting Smart:

Knowledge is No Longer Enough: Why Experience and Wisdom are Education’s New Priorities — from gettingsmart.com/ by Mason Pashia and Aaron Schorn
Town Hall: Experience Matters
Jean-Claude Brizard on the Center for Learner Pathway Innovations
Key Points
* Design pathways as “unbounded” and co-created: Build systems where learners have real agency and visibility into options—without being locked into narrow tracks or regional constraints.
* Modernize credentialing to recognize all learning: Districts should capture and verify learning from internships, projects, and out-of-school experiences (e.g., via learner records/verified experiences) so students can communicate value to employers and colleges.

Which Jobs Are Most at Risk From AI? New Anthropic Data Offers Clues. — from builtin.com by Matthew Urwin
Anthropic set out in its latest study to predict how artificial intelligence could impact the labor market. Instead, its findings raise more questions than answers for tech workers as the U.S. government refuses to regulate the AI industry.

Summary:
In its latest labor market study, Anthropic found that artificial intelligence poses the greatest threat to software jobs, women and younger professionals. As the Trump administration takes a hands-off approach to AI, tech workers may be left to grapple with these findings on their own.

Matthew links to:

Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence — from anthropic.com

Key findings

We introduce a new measure of AI displacement risk, observed exposure, that combines theoretical LLM capability and real-world usage data, weighting automated (rather than augmentative) and work-related uses more heavily
AI is far from reaching its theoretical capability: actual coverage remains a fraction of what’s feasible
Occupations with higher observed exposure are projected by the BLS to grow less through 2034
Workers in the most exposed professions are more likely to be older, female, more educated, and higher-paid
We find no systematic increase in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022, though we find suggestive evidence that hiring of younger workers has slowed in exposed occupations

What’s one way your school is helping students discover that they matter? [Steven Hornyak]

On 04/15/2026, in education, education reform, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, ideas, K-12 related, student-related, teachers, United States, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Steven Hornyak’s posting on LinkedIn is here.

What the Future of Learning Looks Like in the Era of AI [U of M’s Center for Academic Innovation]

On 04/15/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, apprenticeships, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, credentialing, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, internships, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Michigan, real-world assignments, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What the Future of Learning Looks Like in the Era of AI — from the Center for Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan, by Sean Corp

AI & the Future of Learning Summit brings industry, education leaders together to discuss higher education’s opportunity to lead, what students need, and what partnerships are possible

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the nature of work and learning, speakers at the University of Michigan’s AI & the Future of Learning Summit delivered a clear message: higher education must take a leading role in defining what comes next.

One CEO of a leading educational technology company put it like this: “The only bad thing would be universities standing still.”

Universities must embrace their roles as providers of continuous, lifelong learning that evolves alongside technological change.

…
This shift is already affecting early-career pathways. Employers are placing greater emphasis on experience, while traditional entry-level roles are becoming less accessible. There is often a gap between what a credential represents and the expectations of employers.

That gap is particularly evident in access to internships. Chris Parrish, co-founder and president of Podium, noted that millions of students compete for a limited number of internships each year, making it increasingly difficult to gain the experience employers demand.

“If you miss out on an internship, you’re twice as likely to be unemployed,” Parrish said.

More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows [Marcus]

On 04/14/2026, in 21st century, business side of he, change, colleges, faculty/staff, funding / grants, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, parents/guardians, student-related, surviving, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
As one Vermont college finishes its last semester, an estimated 442 others may be in trouble

A new estimate projects that 442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, with a combined 670,000 students, are at risk of closing or having to merge within the next 10 years.

More than 120 institutions are at the very highest risk, according to the forecast, by Huron Consulting Group, which analyzed enrollment trends, tuition revenue, assets, debt, cash on hand and other measures. Many are, like Sterling, small and rural.

“We have too many seats. We have too many classrooms,” said Peter Stokes, a managing director at Huron. “So over the coming five to 10 years, this shakeout is going to take place.”

What Are The College Degree Levels? [teachthought.com]

On 04/06/2026, in colleges, community colleges, higher education, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

What Are The College Degree Levels? — from teachthought.com
Overview of associate, bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees: definitions, and typical length/credit requirements.

The quest to build a better AI tutor [Barshay]

On 04/06/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, online learning, participation, personalized/customized learning, research, student-related, teachers, technologies for your home, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

The quest to build a better AI tutor — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
Researchers make progress with an older ed tech idea: personalized practice

One promising idea has less to do with how an AI tutor explains concepts and more with what it asks students to practice next.

A team at the University of Pennsylvania, which included some AI skeptics, recently tested this approach in a study of close to 800 Taiwanese high school students learning Python programming. All the students used the same AI tutor, which was designed not to give away answers.

But there was one key difference. Half the students were randomly assigned to a fixed sequence of practice problems, progressing from easy to hard. The other half received a personalized sequence with the AI tutor continuously adjusting the difficulty of each problem based on how the student was performing and interacting with the chatbot.

The idea is based on what educators call the “zone of proximal development.” When problems are too easy, students get bored. When they’re too hard, students get frustrated. The goal is to keep students in a sweet spot: challenged, but not overwhelmed.

The researchers found that students in the personalized group did better on a final exam than students in the fixed problem group. The difference was characterized as the equivalent of 6 to 9 months of additional schooling, an eye-catching claim for an after-school online course that lasted only five months.
…
To address this, Chung’s team combined a large language model with a separate machine-learning algorithm that analyzes how students interact with the online course platform — how they answer the practice questions, how many times they revise or edit their coding, and the quality of their conversations with the chatbot — and uses that information to decide which problem to serve up next.

The Campus Crisis No One’s Talking About — from linkedin.com by Jeff Selingo

Sports Betting Is Now a Campus-Wide Habit

The headline number: About 60% of 18-to-22-year-olds are engaging in sports betting, a figure that climbs to two-thirds among college students specifically, according to an NCAA-commissioned study.

“It’s sort of a learned behavior for them at a very young age,” Clint Hangebrauck, the NCAA’s managing director of enterprise risk management, told us on the latest episode of Future U. “I do think this could be the next big public health crisis that we’re facing as a country and particularly within higher ed.”
College-age individuals are 3x more likely to develop problematic gambling behaviors than the general population. Gambling often co-exists with other behaviors now prevalent in colleges, such as sleeplessness, binge drinking, drug use, anxiety and depression.

Gambling among college students isn’t confined to athletes. Rather, it’s embedded across campus life, and with athletes often most visible in Division III, where oversight is lighter. Gambling often coexists with—and can exacerbate—other student challenges, from mental health struggles to substance use. If this is the next public health issue on campus, it’s arriving without the same level of attention.

From DSC:
I don’t mean to be self-righteous here. But shame on the older adults who are promoting gambling in any fashion — marketing, advertising, sales, and/or whatever. It’s a cancer in our society, and it’s impacting our youth in a big way (and also older folks as well). I’m not a gambler, but I’m well acquainted with weakness. And the Bible confirms that we all are acquainted with weakness:

Isaiah 53:6

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

The adults out there know it. We are well acquainted with our sins and shortcomings.

Parents want the best for their kids. They don’t want dangerous habits being formed in their children. “Coping skills” that are majorly busted, and can lead to incredibly negative events. And the parents don’t want these habits to be formed at colleges and universities across the nation.

I wish those involved with promoting gambling could be at the dinner tables, or in the bedrooms, or in the living rooms, or in the vehicles out there when a spouse finds out that the other spouse (or significant other) has gambled away a significant amount of the couple’s savings. They no longer have rainy-day funds. They can no longer pay their bills. They no longer have the college funds for their other kids. Emotions erupt, fights begin. Relationships are threatened — and divorces sometimes occur because of this issue/habit.

So if you are involved with promoting gambling, consider reading this article from Jeff Selingo…then go take a long look in the mirror.

AI and the Law: What Educators Need to Know About Responsible Use in a Rapidly Changing Landscape — from rdene915.com by Dr. Rachelle Dené Poth, JD

As both an attorney and educator who has spent more than eight years researching, teaching, presenting, and writing about AI, I have worked with schools across K–12 and higher education that are navigating these exact questions. The legal implications of AI are not barriers to innovation, but I consider them to serve as guardrails that assist schools with adopting technology responsibly. The key is protecting students, educators, and institutions and staying informed. Understanding the legal landscape and any potential legal implications as a result of the use of AI in classrooms helps schools move forward with confidence rather than hesitation.

Sections of Rachelle’s posting include:

Why AI and the Law Matter in Education
Key Laws That Shape AI Use in Schools
Data Privacy and Vendor Responsibility
Transparency Builds Trust With Students and Families
Accessibility, Equity, and Emerging Legal Considerations
Teaching Digital Citizenship With AI Literacy
Supporting Schools and Organizations Through AI and Legal Guidance
Moving Forward With Confidence

Hidden in Plain Sight: How Microschools Can Unlock the Power of Public Libraries [Blassingame & Flynn]

On 03/25/2026, in education, education reform, engagement / engaging students, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, library / librarians, parents/guardians, society, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

Hidden in Plain Sight: How Microschools Can Unlock the Power of Public Libraries — from microschoolingcenter.org by Tiffany Blassingame & Erin Flynn

The Library as a Learning Campus
Many microschool founders are wrestling with the same core challenge: how do you provide students with enriching, hands-on experiences when you’re working with a small team and a lean budget? Erin’s answer is deceptively simple — walk through the library’s front door.

Modern public libraries are far more than book repositories. Most educators walk past an entire ecosystem of free resources without realizing what’s available. Need printing, computers, or digital tools? Libraries offer them at little or no cost. Looking for hands-on science programming? Many branches host makerspaces and science stations built for exactly that kind of exploration. Need a space to hold a small class, workshop, or seminar? Bookable collaboration rooms are often just a phone call away.

Beyond the physical infrastructure, libraries frequently offer life skills programming — resume writing, financial literacy, job readiness — that can support the families surrounding a microschool, not just its students. And in some branches, social workers are embedded on site, providing the kind of wraparound support that few microschools could ever access on their own.

Libraries are also deeply invested in expanding their community reach. A microschool brings exactly the kind of engaged, mission-driven partnership that many branches are actively seeking. The relationship benefits both sides from day one.

Meta, YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction trial — from by Ian Duncan
A Los Angeles jury awarded $3 million in compensation to a young woman who alleged she had become addicted to the platforms as a child.

A Los Angeles jury found social media giant Meta and video platform YouTube negligent in a landmark trial, awarding $3 million in compensation to a young woman who alleged she had become addicted to the companies’ platforms as a child.

The verdict came at the end of a month-long trial that featured testimony by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a day after a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million in penalties for endangering children. The twin verdicts are signs that legal protections which for decades made tech companies seem almost impervious are beginning to crack, as lawyers accuse the platforms of putting addictive or otherwise harmful features into their platforms.

With the armor of Silicon Valley companies fractured, they will now have to size up their appetite for future courtroom battles. There are thousands more lawsuits waiting to be heard, with young internet users, parents, school districts and state attorneys general all seeking to hold the industry accountable.

Learning Ecosystems

What Are The College Degree Levels? [teachthought.com]

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