EdTech & Innovation

Podcasts That Will Change the Way You Think About Education

Podcasts have become a powerful tool for educators. They offer insights, inspiration, and practical strategies that shape your classrooms and student experiences.

Whether diving into the evolving role of artificial intelligence in education or exploring best practices for supporting neurodiverse learners, these shows provide K-12 educators and parents with valuable perspectives.

Expert interviews, real-world case studies, and innovative teaching strategies serve as a bridge between theory and practice, helping educators navigate challenges and embrace new possibilities in education.

Microsoft Copilot generate this image.

To generate a list of podcasts about a topic of interest to you, ask ChatGPT, Claude, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot, or Perplexity to list all the podcasts on a specific topic.

For example, this prompt produced the following answer from Copilot:

Prompt: "List podcasts about personalized learning that are active."

The Future of Education, hosted by Michael B. Horn, explores innovative approaches to education, including personalized learning models. Listen here.

LiberatED Podcast – Kerry McDonald discusses alternative education models, including personalized learning strategies. Listen here.

L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders – A podcast for learning leaders focused on creating a culture of learning within organizations, with discussions on personalized learning. Listen here.

The Learning Geeks Podcast – Hosted by three learning professionals, this podcast covers new science, approaches, technologies, and ideas impacting personalized

How To Use AI For Research: A High School Student's Guide

As a high school student in 2025, you're at the perfect moment to embrace AI as a powerful research tool.

• Unlike traditional search engines, such as Google or Bing, AI research assistants such as ChatGPT, MetaAI, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini can understand complex questions and synthesize information.
• They can help you develop ideas in ways that weren't possible just a few years ago.

Canva generated this picture of a student writing a paper on his laptop.

In this article, I will share with you some of the strategies I have learned about using AI tools in my writing over the past two years.

• I will help you learn how to harness the tremendous capabilities of AI tools effectively.
• I'll also address the issue of academic integrity.
• Finally, I would ask any parents and teachers who have read this far to share this article with some young people and discuss some of my strategies with them.

Getting Started with AI Research Tools

The first thing to understand about AI research tools is that they function differently from search engines like Google and Bing, with which you're familiar.

• Instead of providing links to websites, they generate direct answers by analyzing vast amounts of information.
• As a result, you can ask questions, give commands in natural language, and receive comprehensive responses tailored to your needs.
• It's similar to

Social Emotional Learning: Education's Hidden Symphony

As a classical musician and writer, I deeply understand how emotions and social connections shape our learning experiences. Let me share my perspective on Social Emotional Learning, a framework that resonates strongly with my artistic background. To help you understand SEL, I have included quotes from authoritative sources together with links, so that you explore the subject more fully. Here's why Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is as essential to your child's development as learning their ABCs or multiplication tables.

The Daily Impact

Your child might struggle with situations like:

• Getting frustrated when homework becomes challenging
• Having difficulty making friends at school
• Feeling anxious about speaking up in class
• Managing conflicts with siblings

SEL helps children navigate these everyday challenges by teaching them to understand and manage their emotions just as they learn to read or solve math problems. Since a report indicates that too much screen time on smartphones increases children's aggressiveness, SEL is a tool that can mitigate those unhelpful emotions.

The research also suggests that teachers with better social emotional learning (SEL) skills are more likely to have good relationships with students, and those students in turn are more engaged in learning. Source: American Psychological Association

Real Benefits for Your Child

Think of SEL as giving your child an emotional toolkit. Children who participate in SEL programs show remarkable improvements:

• Higher academic scores and test results
• Better classroom behavior and focus
• Stronger friendships and

The Tech Divide

Simply put, the tech divide I am referring to deals with schools that have robust technology and those that don't.

• K-12 education in the second decade of the 21st century needs five well-developed components to be successful.
• These components are not stand-alone items.
• They are linked and complement each other.
• The entire package is essential to overcome the tech divide in many parts of America.

If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I am stating the obvious. After all, your private school has the best of everything. That's why you are sending your kids there. What I want you to do is to share that insistence on having the best possible educational outcomes for your children.

• Share it with a teacher you know.
• Introduce the local district IT director to your IT director.
• Create partnerships.
• Use your connections to overcome the technology divide.

Canva generated this picture of a private school 7th-grade classroom.

Enhanced Connectivity

Enhanced Connectivity in all our schools, private and public, is not just a luxury but a necessity.

• We expect the private school to which we are sending our children to have reliable, high-speed internet access.
• We know that facilitates seamless learning experiences.
• This connectivity is a crucial step that involves more than simply setting up a couple of routers around the school buildings and campus.
• Connectivity is also about ensuring

AI For Teachers

I'm a retired teacher. These days, I write about K-12 education and community college. However, I know how time-consuming it is to write lesson plans and rubrics and ensure compliance with the curriculum. Grading English compositions, communicating with parents, and creating quizzes take infinite time and patience. And those are just a few things we teachers are expected to do.

That's why I want to introduce you to my assistant. It's an AI app called Perplexity. Now, there are dozens of AI apps you can use. Chat-GPT is probably the most popular. Both Google and Microsoft have their versions of AI built into their search engines, as does Grammarly. It doesn't matter which AI app you choose. What's important is to learn how to tell Perplexity or Chat-GPT what you want it to do. That's called prompt engineering. So, let's start with that first. Then, I'll show you some websites with AI tools explicitly written for teachers and administrators.

Introduction to Prompt Engineering

How do you write an effective prompt?

As teachers, you and I have learned how to give clear instructions to our students. We choose our words carefully to achieve a pre-determined result. In other words, we narrow the field and limit the choices. That's precisely how prompts work—that's the essence of prompt engineering.

The art and skill of writing effective prompts is called prompt engineering. It's a burgeoning field within the