๐Ÿฆƒ What 2,024 Students Said About AI, and What to Listen to This Thanksgiving

Published about 5 hours agoย โ€ขย 12 min read

Hello friends,

Keep on keeping on! Our kids need to see people who press forward and get the work done even in the busyness of the season.

Today: why to check your school freezer's firmware, 16 more AI stories, and new episodes on leadership, reading, math, and short attention spans.

As always, we work to interview amazing people and edit those down to short morning-break sized listens so you can stay updated and energized for the difficult and super-important work you do.

Yes, everyone's talking about Google's new rule: if a school opts out of AI, students lose Google Search too. But we can't pretend AI isn't in the classroom. It is. See below...

And at the end, I'll show you something I've been building for a week: my own app, made with Claude Code, that replaces some of the software I was paying for and makes our show workflow faster. I'll share the steps, so you can see how a teacher can build tools that save time and money.

In this issue

  • 17 AI news stories, starting with why your school freezer's firmware matters, plus the episode to watch right here
  • Stop Pretending, Start Learning: my new Cool Cat Teacher Talk series, and why 26% of students say they use AI while taking quizzes and tests
  • A Thanksgiving listen for the car: one hour on gratitude
  • New on Cool Cat Teacher Talk: The Missing Math
  • 13 new 10 Minute Teacher shows, grouped by who they're for: leaders, IT coaches, reading and math teachers, and all of us
  • My personal note: how I built my own app to replace some of the software I was paying for, to save money and work better (and yes, it's dyslexia friendly)

Heads up: this issue has affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The AI news you need

Every so often I air a news show because there's so much K-12 educators need to know. Here are the highlights of my news Show "AI in Schools News: Gemini Notebook, GPTs and Student Data", with what to do about each:

  1. ๐ŸงŠ Military base freezers may have been hacked, so update your school's freezer and HVAC firmware (Military Times)
  2. ๐Ÿ““ Teachers can now see how students use Gemini Notebook, so check the new insight summaries in Classroom (Google)
  3. ๐Ÿ”ฌ The research on AI in education is a mess according to a recent webinar I attended hosted by MIT, so read every vendor's claims with a skeptical eye (Education Week)
  4. ๐Ÿ“ About 1 in 4 students use AI during quizzes and tests, so rethink how and where you test (Fordham Institute)
  5. โฐ Custom GPTs retire December 11, so move any you've built before then (EdTech Innovation Hub)
  6. ๐Ÿค– Always-on AI agents arrive, so talk with students about what they share (OpenAI Dots)
  7. ๐Ÿ’ฌ Most teens use chatbots for schoolwork and emotional support, so ask your students how they use them (NPR)
  8. โค๏ธ Energy drinks are linked to cardiac arrest in young adults, so coaches, talk with your athletes (American Heart Association)
  9. ๐ŸŽ“ Dartmouth's provost resigns over undisclosed AI use, a reminder to say when you use AI (Inside Higher Ed)
  10. โœ๏ธ UNC-Chapel Hill stops using AI to rate admissions essays, worth sharing with your college-bound seniors (GovTech)
  11. โš–๏ธ A university grants a religious exemption from using AI at work, so expect AI-use questions from staff (Inside Higher Ed)
  12. ๐Ÿ›๏ธ Senators question Google about AI in classrooms, so watch for new rules (Broadband Breakfast)
  13. โš ๏ธ ChatGPT for Teens rated an "unacceptable risk," so check which chatbots your students use (Common Sense Media)
  14. ๐ŸŽฎ Why Claude Code won't recreate a game you name, a ready-made copyright lesson for coding classes (Tom's Hardware)
  15. ๐Ÿบ Wolfmasking teaches scam-spotting by playing the scammer, so try it in a digital citizenship lesson (Wolfmasking)
  16. ๐Ÿ” PHP rushed out emergency patches for two critical flaws, so ask IT to update your school's websites (PHP.net)
  17. ๐Ÿ”Ž Public Discord messages may soon show up in Google, so remind students that "public" means searchable (BleepingComputer)

Those are just the headlines. In the episode, I go deeper on every story and what it means for your school. AI in Schools News: 17 Stories Teachers Need This Week.

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Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast so you get the next news show: Apple Podcasts ยท Spotify ยท YouTubeโ€‹

We Don't Need to Pretend AI Isn't Hurting Learning Anymore

I've started a new series on Cool Cat Teacher Talk that will be aired over the next weeks. I just felt like we have to stop pretending that certain things aren't happening. We have to stop pretending kids are learning when AI is doing the work.

This week I was listening to a Tedx Talk that Amy Bruckman from Georgia Tech did titled, "Reinventing Teaching After the Introduction of AI" and she called for a "moon shot" project for the best minds to figure out how we can teach in the age of AI.

I recently talked with Dr. Brian Fitzpatrick of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute about his report, High Tech, Low Standards: High School in the Age of Distraction.

In that report, amongst many concerning statistics, he states that 26% of the 2,024 high school students and recent grads he surveyed said they use AI WHILE TAKING quizzes and tests.

We can't pretend AI isn't in the room.

And yes, many are saying, ok, no homework (except studying) and harder tests. That is where this is going. But there's more we can do than that, and that's what this series is about.

So, this series, first we talk with experts on the state of learning with AI in the room. Then, we move into the addictive algorithms including social media, gaming, how gaming has algorithms encouraging kids to gamble, gambling and betting, and even AI use. Then, we dig into discernment as we talk about the recent research and understanding that our way forward is not going to be No AI or all AI but that level heads have to figure this out and end up somewhere in between.

Listen if I had a toddler and we had a fire in the corner of my back yard and the toddler kept going for the fire. I'd put the fire out and figure out another way to do what the fire was doing for me. And that is what many schools are doing - trying to figure out how to pull AI out of the classroom and then, they'll figure out what to put back after that. And since filters are so easy to hack around, for many of us that means fewer devices or when we have them, that they can be closely monitored. These are the important conversations to be having.

If you want to tune in to this series, subscribe to Cool Cat Teacher Talk on any podcast app or on YouTube:

Cool Cat Teacher Talk: Apple Podcasts ยท Spotify ยท YouTubeโ€‹

I'll also air a version with the highlights of my interview with Brian on the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast soon. Subscribe so you don't miss it: Apple Podcasts ยท Spotify ยท YouTubeโ€‹

A Thanksgiving listen for the car

โ€‹How Gratitude Boosts Your Health (And Your Kids' Too!) โ€” A one-hour Cool Cat Teacher Talk on what gratitude does for your health and happiness, and how to grow it in your kids. Watch it on YouTube.

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New on Cool Cat Teacher Talk

โ€‹The Missing Math: What Kids Need for Money, Risk, and Real Life โ€” If a student graduates and doesn't know how to balance a checkbook, that is a problem. Ted Dintersmith, Diana Isern, and Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash talk about the math kids need to live and thrive in the world.

๐Ÿ“– Their books: Aftermath and What School Could Be by Ted Dintersmith, and Money Talks by Diana Isern.

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New on the 10 Minute Teacher

Find your role below and pick one for your next morning break. Each is about 10 minutes. ๐Ÿ˜Š

๐Ÿซ Leadership

๐Ÿ’ป IT Coaches and AI Leads

๐Ÿ“š Reading Teachers

โž— Math Teachers

๐ŸŽ All Teachers

โ˜• For You, the Teacher

  • โ€‹Teacher Burnout and Depression: When the Teacher Needs Help โ€” Teacher burnout is sometimes much, much more. Nicole Terrizzi, author of Learning in Free Fall, shares her story and what she wishes she'd done sooner. Content note: depression and child abuse. This isn't an easy episode, and I debated airing it. But it's real, and these are issues teachers face. ๐Ÿ“– Her book: Learning in Free Fall. (Episode 1023)

A personal note

I've started building my own software with Claude Code, which lets you write programs even if you don't know any code. Teachers are doing this, too: Donnie Piercey showed how he vibe coded tools for his classroom in Vibe Coding for Teachers: No Coding Skills Needed.

Here's my trick. I start by writing the brief inside Claude and asking it to scan my chats and my skills to help draft how the software would work and have it draft that in Claude Docs. Then, I edit it there and take the time to have a good creative brief and answer questions about what I want. Then we designed phases.

Then, I take that brief and go into Claude Code. Then, I pasted it in and had it guide me one step at a time. It will replace the paid app we use to manage projects, so it will save us money and time. Here's the quick overview of how I built it:

  1. Talk it out, then write the brief. I recorded my ideas on my Plaud Note Pro, a little AI voice recorder I use. I talked about my frustrations, why I need a new solution, and what I like about the current system. Claude turned those recordings into a brief in Claude Docs, and I edited it until it said exactly what I needed.
  2. Build it in phases. I pasted the brief into Claude Code, and it built the app one phase at a time. I tested each phase before we moved on.
  3. Back it up on GitHub. The code lives in a private GitHub repository, so every version is saved.
  4. Put it online with Cloudflare Pages. It runs on my own web address, and I'm using Cloudflare's free plan. I chose Cloudflare because I may build other apps later, I want room to grow, and I want it to send me text messages.
  5. Make it work for us. There's an easier-reading button that turns on a dyslexia-friendly font with bigger text and more space between letters and lines. It works on the phone with bigger buttons, and I saved it as a link on my phone so it's one tap away (a real app icon is coming later). Each of us has our own private login.
  6. Keep it learning. As I work, I log every step I take, like writing this newsletter, so Claude Code can see how I really work and keep improving the app.

I've been working on this for about a week. It takes time, but it's getting better every day.

Here's a peek at the app. I call it Master Control. Every episode is a card, and the cards move left to right through the steps a show takes to get on the air. At a glance, I can see each show's air date, who has it next (me, John, or Claude), how many places it's been posted, and the very next step. You can see the Easier reading button at the top, too. No more asking, "Where is that episode?" I've got so many features built in to help me and my son work better together.

It is fun to write software and improve workflows in a powerful way like this. We'll talk more about workflow in future episodes of my podcast.

Schools are doing this and I've got some remarkable people coming on the show talking about how they are saving money and making things more efficient. Stay tuned for that.

So many things are going on but the most important is the time with my family. I hope you take time to be with your family and that you savor the moments.

I remain joyful that you're on my newsletter list and that I get to work to improve the profession I love. Teachers are truly the most remarkable people I know as are the precious children we serve. We have to be honest about this time in history but also we have to know this is our time.

And while we can't change the world we can change the world of a child and that is their world. We can make choices to improve our home, our classroom, and our spaces where we work.

So, keep on keeping on. I'll be sharing some more things with you in the next week or so that I hope will help you in your classroom.

I hope you're remembering who you are. You are remarkable. And so are the kids you teach and serve. Living miracles full of promise and opportunity. We can make peace with our past and embrace a better future. So, let's get out there and make someone's day. Hit reply and tell me: which one are you listening to first? And watch for a reader survey in my next newsletter. It's time, and I hope you'll give me your feedback.

I remain joyfully in your service,

Vicki Davis

@coolcatteacher

Disclosure of Material Connection: This newsletter includes affiliate links, including Amazon links for the books and the Plaud recorder. If you choose to buy, I will be paid a commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I only recommend products I believe will be good for my readers. No company in this issue paid for or reviewed what I wrote. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

PS. Be nice to yourself today and be kind in a little way to one person. Find them. Go do something. Write a note. I love grabbing a post it note and writing a note like "You are loved!" or "You are amazing! โ€” Love, your secret admirer" and put it on a favorite soda or snack and leave it on their desk without anyone seeing. This is fun!

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Vicki Davis is a technology and Computer Science teacher since 2002 and has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher blog since 2005. She podcasts at the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and works to write helpful things for people passionate about teaching, technology, and personal success. She is Mom of three, wife of one, and has one cat and two dogs. She loves the outdoors, reading, and playing with tech.