EdTech Situation Room by Jason Neiffer and Wes Fryer

Welcome to episode 362 (“Browsers Gone Agentic”) of the EdTech Situation Room from Wednesday, October 29, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack the fast-moving world of agentic AI browsers—Atlas, Comet, and an open-source “BrowserOS”—including why they’re built atop Chromium, where they currently feel clunky in real workflows, and how prompt-injection and data-exfiltration risks translate to concrete school safeguards (sandboxing/air-gapping, limiting LMS credentials, and policy updates). We review TechCrunch’s warning on “glaring” browser-agent risks, Perplexity’s Comet prompt-injection mitigations, and real-world demos that show why an agent could plausibly log into an LMS and complete assignments—raising new academic-integrity and supervision questions for districts. Beyond the browser, we explore creator-tool shifts—Adobe + Google AI model integrations, YouTube Shorts/Studio nudges, and Meta’s AI editing tools in Instagram Stories—and how educators can balance creative possibilities with a rising tide of AI “slop.” We also dig into media-literacy lessons from “Grokipedia” vs. Wikipedia: edit histories, transparency, bias, and why source-checking remains a must-teach habit. Rounding out the hour, the duo spotlights a readable primer on quantum computing’s looming “Q-Day” encryption risk—and why starting the transition to quantum-safe practices belongs on IT roadmaps now. Wes also shares how our new Substack-first post-production workflow (YouTube → Substack with full link lists) is keeping the back catalog current and easier to find.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Adobe and Google team up to offer more AI models and YouTube integration (TechRadar; 29 October 2025)* Elon Musk launches Grokipedia — an encyclopedia where AI gets the last word (Cointelegraph; 28 October 2025)* The glaring security risks with AI browser agents (TechCrunch; 25 October 2025)* Reference to Oct 22 Windows Weekly from TWiT* Mitigating Prompt Injection in Comet (Perplexity Blog; 22 October 2025)* What is Education Pro for Perplexity?* BrowserOS* Instagram users can now use Meta AI editing tools directly in IG Stories. (TechCrunch, 23 Oct 2025)* CustomGPT for EdTechSR podcast post-production* Chat transcript example: https://chatgpt.com/share/6902be89-2950-800e-aabf-cea6567ca611* Custom GPT: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-68fd20ce2f1c8191ac7f3fb207ca6487-edtechsr-podcast-post-production-oct-2025* Quantum Computing Is Coming for Your Digital Secrets (The Walrus, 2 Oct 2025)* Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia, an AI‑Powered Wikipedia Rival (The Washington Post, 27 Oct 2025) - paywall free* grokipedia.com * Turing Test (WikiPedia)* HBO Silicon Valley* Wes’ Geek of the WEek: My Pinboard* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Software Treats: Gemini Desk and Ollama + Thunderbird + ThunderAI🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Anthropic Reaches Settlement With Authors Guild Over AI Copyright Dispute (Authors Guild, 21 October 2025)* What Past Education Technology Failures Can Teach Us About the Future of AI in Schools (The Conversation, 18 October 2025)* Senators announce bill that would ban AI chatbot companions for minors (NBC News; 28 October 2025)* Open AI Non/For Profit* Built to benefit everyone (OpenAI News; 28 October 2025)* The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership (OpenAI News; 28 October 2025)* Projects Sharing Available to All* The Majority View of AI (Anil Dash; 17 October 2025)* Why Open Source May Not Survive the Rise of Generative AI (ZDNET, 28 Oct 2025)* Homework Faces an Existential Crisis — Has AI Made It Pointless? (L.A.Times, 25 Oct 2025)* The Homework Apocalypse (Ethan Mollick; 1 July 2023)Episode 362 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 361 (“AI Workflows for Educators”) of the EdTech Situation Room from October 22, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) kick off with the surge of AI-first browsers—OpenAI’s Atlas, Perplexity’s Comet, and DIA—what an “agentic” web experience looks like (multi-tab summaries, draft-my-email helpers, even automated shopping), and why the launch details matter (Mac-only at first and Chromium-based). We examine the trade-offs for schools—tracking, data monetization, and prompt-injection risks that could expose logged-in accounts—and why IT directors are wary of mixing these new browsers with corporate or school Google accounts. From there, Jason demos a highly practical admin workflow: loading student, parent, and teacher handbooks into NotebookLM to compare policies, highlight inconsistencies, and spot places where one handbook goes deeper than another—a real-world time saver for leaders. We share classroom-ready prompting patterns (like “explain it for a sixth grader”) and lean on Mike Caulfield’s SIFT-style verification when sense-checking AI outputs; we also note the many avenues to a free year of Perplexity Pro (EDU address, PayPal promos). In the news roundup: AI-aided earthquake detection; a cautionary tale on sycophancy and bias in medicine; the long tail of the AWS outage (including unhappy smart beds); lingering fallout from the Jaguar Land Rover attack; plus lighter items from “AI toilet” to “Napster’s back.” We close with Geeks of the Week: running private, local AI with Ollama and the Native Mind Chrome plugin for on-device summaries and email assists, and iRig Pre 2 for piping XLR mics into an iPhone—a setup Wes used for a thousand-view livestream.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* ‘Like Putting on Glasses for the First Time’: How AI Improves Earthquake Detection (Ars Technica, 10 October 2025)* When Sycophancy and Bias Meet Medicine (Ars Technica, 22 October 2025) - AI summary for a 6th grader* ChatGPT Atlas* AI Toilet, anyone?* Napster’s Back!* Jaguar Land Rover Struggling 8 Weeks After Most Expensive UK Cyberattack (Ars Technica, 22 October 2025)* Smart Beds Leave Sleepers Hot and Bothered During AWS Outage (Ars Technica, 22 October 2025)* The AWS Cloud Outage Has a Long Tail (Wired, 21 October 2025) - paywall free version* Mentioned in the show:* www.perplexity.ai/comet* www.diabrowser.com* Stupid Prompting Tricks (Frontier Learning Lab)* home.truemark.ai* SIFT Toolbox for AI* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Ollama / Native Mind* Wes’ Geek of the Week: iRig Pre 2🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* 7 Prompts I Use for Every AI Chatbot — and They Work for Just About Everything (Tom’s Guide, 20 October 2025)* Anthropic Reaches Settlement With Authors Guild Over AI Copyright Dispute (Authors Guild, 21 October 2025)* What Past Education Technology Failures Can Teach Us About the Future of AI in Schools (The Conversation, 18 October 2025)* WordPress Sites Hacked With Sneaky Malware Spread via Blockchain (Mashable, 21 October 2025)* Google Claims to Have Quantum Advantage With a Potentially Useful Algorithm (Ars Technica, 22 October 2025)Episode 361 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 358 (“Gemini AI Everywhere”) of the EdTech Situation Room from September 3, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack Google’s sweeping shift from Assistant to Gemini—from phones and smart speakers to the classroom—and what those defaults mean for teachers, students, and families. We discuss how AI is changing the competitive landscape (and even how policymakers are thinking about antitrust in a world of fast-moving AI features and “set-by-default” experiences), plus the practicalities of turning on Gemini in school domains and coaching staff on safe, effective use. The guys trade stories about AI’s real-world hiccups (hello, drive-thru fails), the uneven impact on jobs (including translators), and the privacy lines around smart-home ecosystems (Google Home vs. Home Assistant, Zigbee/Z-Wave, and local control). On the developer side, we explore new AI coding copilots like Google’s “Jules” and popular editor integrations (e.g., Cursor/VS Code), along with hands-on image-generation progress (“Nano Banana” and friends) and why prompt-injection and AI safety habits matter more than ever. We wrap with quick looks at model comparison tools (LM Arena), tips for school leaders enabling Gemini, and our Geeks of the Week.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Gemini Is Replacing Google Assistant on Google Home Devices from October 1 — Here’s What We Know (Tom’s Guide, 3 September 2025)* AI Killed My Job: Translators (Blood in the Machine, 21 Aug 2025)* Someone Ordered 18,000 Cups of Water at an AI Drive-Thru — Now Fast Food Chains Are Reconsidering (ZDNet, 3 September 2025)* Google Unveils Jules, Its Autonomous Coding Agent (Geeky Gadgets, 2 September 2025)* How AI Upended a Historic Antitrust Case Against Google (Tech Policy Press, 3 Sept 2025)* Jason’s Geek of the Week: lmarena.ai* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: DIY Home Assistant IoT Setup (video) - Wes’ Flipboard magazine iReading - Federated Reader🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* NASA and Google Test AI Medical Assistant for Astronaut Missions to the Moon and Mars (Space.com, 3 September 2025)* Chatbots Are Susceptible to Flattery and Peer Pressure (The Verge, 3 September 2025)* AI Inside Podcast* Tech Policy Press* Video: “I got a private lesson on Google’s NEW Nano Banana AI Model”* Google AI Studio* Prompt Injection* Model Context Protocol: IntroductionEpisode 358 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 363 (“AI Upgrades, Privacy Tradeoffs”) of the EdTech Situation Room from November 12, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack OpenAI’s pushback against a court order that would expose 20 million user chats in the New York Times lawsuit, and what that means for “private” AI conversations in schools and beyond. They explore GPT-5.1’s new “personalities,” emerging competitors like DeepSeek and Mistral, and the complex tradeoffs between powerful new models, copyright, and training data ethics. The conversation turns to Google’s latest moves with Gemini agents, AI “Workspace flows,” NotebookLM for Students, and Canva’s expanding AI features, all framed as tools that can act as thought partners rather than shortcuts for learners. Wes and Jason also dig into media literacy practices like hyperlinked student writing, keeping AI chat logs for transparency, and reclaiming news feeds with trusted voices instead of doomscrolling social media. Rounding things out, they touch on FBI efforts to unmask the operator of Archive.today, a CRISPR-powered attempt to revive an ancient gene to treat gout, and their Geeks of the Week: rolling your own AI-powered email with Thunderbird/ThunderAI and experimenting with StreamYard’s new multi-aspect-ratio streaming setup, plus a webinar on AI superprompts and “The Anxious Generation.” Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* OpenAI Fights Order To Hand Over 20 Million Private ChatGPT Conversations (Ars Technica, 12 Nov 2025)* Can I Upload That? AI, Copyright, and Our Classrooms (TCEA, Miguel Guhlin, 3 Nov 2025)* Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI* OpenAI Walks a Tricky Tightrope With GPT-5.1’s Eight New Personalities (Ars Technica, 12 Nov 2025)* https://aiinside.show/* Google’s New AI Studio Vibe Coding Push: Create Full-Stack Apps in a Weekend (Geeky Gadgets, 7 Nov 2025)* NotebookLM for Students* YouTube’s AI Power-Up: How We Got Even More Helpful This Year (YouTube Blog, 12 Dec 2024)* AI and Learning: A New Chapter for Students and Educators (Google Blog, 6 Nov 2023)* Guided Learning in Gemini: From Answers to Understanding (Google Blog, 6 Aug 2025)* Google Gemini’s New AI Agent Upgrade is INSANE! (Automate Tasks Across Google) (YouTube)* A New Chinese AI Model Claims To Outperform GPT-5 and Sonnet 4.5 – and It’s Free (ZDNet, 7 Nov 2025)* https://www.deepseek.com/ (don’t use the Deep Seek App…)* https://chat.z.ai/* https://www.quinengine.com/* https://www.kimi.com/en/* https://lmarena.ai/* From France, $60 per year for educators: https://chat.mistral.ai/chat* Canva Keynote 2025: The Imagination Era (1.5 hours)* The FBI Is Trying to Unmask the Registrar Behind Archive.Today (Gizmodo, 7 Nov 2025)* Scientists Revive an Ancient Human Gene That Could Help Cure Gout (SciTechDaily, 9 Nov 2025)* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Streamyard MARS (Multi-aspect-ratio Streaming) - I Want You to Understand Chicago - Reclaiming Our News Feeds - 17 Nov Webinar: AI Superprompts and “The Anxious Generation”* Jason’s Geek of the Week: Roll Your Own AI Email with Thunderbolt and ThunderAI🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Inside the Data Centers That Train A.I. and Drain the Electrical Grid (The New Yorker, 27 Oct 2025)* Yes, LLMs Can Be Better at Search (Mike Caulfield Substack, 10 May 2025)* Sam Altman Served With Subpoena While Onstage at AI Safety Forum* Apple and WhatsApp Targeted With Spyware by Israeli Firm Paragon (The Guardian, 10 Nov 2025)* The Last Days of Social Media (Noema, 2 Sep 2025)* The Panic Over Smartphones Doesn’t Help Teens (The Atlantic, 21 May 2024)* IKEA Just Announced 21 Smart Home Gadgets — Here’s the Ones I’m Buying (Tom’s Guide, 7 Nov 2025)Episode 363 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 360 (“Agentic AI Arrives”) of the EdTech Situation Room from October 8, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) dive into OpenAI’s newly announced agent platform and what “agentic” workflows could mean for classrooms and district offices—from ChatGPT orchestrating apps like Canva and Figma to recreate and edit an org chart on the fly, to MCP-style integrations that let LLMs read and write across Google Docs and other services. They connect the dots to practical automation teachers can use today (think: N8N/Make-style flows moving into mainstream AI tools), and discuss why this matters for instructional design and school operations.The hosts then pivot to AI search literacy in light of Google’s evolving AI Overviews and headline-grabbing limitations (e.g., the “Trump”/“dementia” query story), arguing for explicit classroom instruction on how to interrogate AI answers and source them, not just accept them. They also unpack the “AI bubble?” conversation—sky-high capex, energy/water constraints, and the sustainability of business models—as highlighted by the Deutsche Bank warning and the data center buildout arms race.From there, it’s digital resilience: a recent multi-state 911 outage traced to fiber cuts becomes a teachable moment about infrastructure dependencies and continuity planning for schools. Along the way, Wes shares a media-diet project—“Reclaiming Our News Feeds”—plus a DIY “federated reader” built with AI-assisted vibe coding that funnels newsletters into a Mastodon channel for Flipboard reading.Concrete classroom takeaways abound: Jason’s recent vibe-coded Chrome extension, real SIS database-query bots improving efficiency, and why NotebookLM shines when paired with open textbooks and teacher-created materials. The Geeks of the Week include Wes’s trio—Spooky Scratch Stories, ORCID, and Vibe Coding with AI—and Jason’s PSA that educators with .edu emails can snag a year of Perplexity Pro (with notes on privacy tradeoffs), plus thoughts on Gemini for schools and the LM Arena model rankings.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Deutsche Bank Issues Grim Warning for AI Industry (Futurism, 24 Sep 2025)* Introducing AgentKit (OpenAI, 8 Oct 2025)* Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia (The Verge, 30 Sept 2025)* Reclaiming Our News Feeds (Heal Our Culture on SubStack by Wes Fryer, 29 Sep 2025)* AT&T attributes mass 911 outages in 3 states to fiber cuts made by ‘third parties’ (AP News, 26 Sept 2025)* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Spooky Scratch Stories - ORCID - Vibe Coding with AI* Jason’s Geek of the Week: Perplexity free for students🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* 6-month-old, solo-owned vibe coder Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash (TechCrunch, 18 June 2025)* Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing (WP Tavern, 24 Sep 2025)Episode 360 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 359 (“Phishing Meets Copilot”) of the EdTech Situation Room from September 24, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack how AI is reshaping both the attack surface and the classroom: we start with MIT Tech Review’s claim that 80% of ransomware now uses AI, then swap real-world spear-phishing stories and practical school-IT hygiene—like rethinking public staff email directories to reduce pattern-based credential attacks and mass phishing. From there we zoom out to information warfare and media literacy via PRX’s “GoLaxy Papers,” a report on targeted AI personas trained on individuals to covertly influence U.S. audiences—prompting a broader conversation about nation-state psy-ops and what educators can do to help students (and themselves) discern manipulation at scale. We also discuss the shift to short-form video: TikTok’s pull on teen news habits, YouTube’s push to Shorts, weak sponsor-disclosure norms among creators, and why this all raises the stakes for day-to-day media-literacy instruction.On the tools front, Microsoft’s strategic partnership with Anthropic brings Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4.1 into Copilot—expanding multi-model options for educators and admins—and we map concrete “first-week” workflows inside Office apps. We tie that to “vibe coding” (prompt-based programming) as a teachable practice: Wes shares a personal project (an AI-assisted AppleScript/JS “federated reader” that curates newsletters and posts to Mastodon) and floats the idea of a high-school vibe-coding elective. We balance the security talk with a hopeful AI-in-healthcare segment—Nature-reported work (via ScienceAlert) on a model trained on UK Biobank data that forecasts 1,000+ diseases years in advance, and what “predict-then-prevent” might mean for future wellness curricula. Finally, Jason gives early impressions of Apple’s new iPhones (hello, 17 Pro Max) alongside pragmatic upgrade advice for families on carrier plans.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Google Gemini for Students* Claude on Copilot* Scientists Train AI to Forecast Over 1,000 Diseases, Years in Advance (Science Alert; 19 September 2025)* 80% of ransomware attacks now use artificial intelligence (MIT Technology Review, 8 Sept 2025)* The GoLaxy Papers: Inside China’s AI persona army (PRX Podcast, 19 Sept 2025)* Vibe Coding: How Prompt-Based AI Is Transforming Software Development (Forbes, 23 Sept 2025)* By some measures, TikTok has grown bigger than Facebook or Instagram in the US (Sherwood News, 17 Sept 2025)* The Firing of Educators Over Kirk Comments Follows a Familiar Playbook (NY Times, 22 Sept 2025)* OMGGGGG NEEWWWW IPhoneeeee!* nanobanana.ai* obsidian.md* An Introduction to MCP and Authorization* www.descript.com* code.visualstudio.com* Jason’s Geek of the Week: nativemind.app* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: January 2026 Thrive Conference - Kahoot Quiz from YouTube Video via OpenMCQ🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Mixtral for Students/Educators* Audible’s new AI “Ask a Question” feature lets you interrupt Jane Austen (TechRader; 19 September 2025)* DeepMind AI safety report explores the perils of “misaligned” AI (ArsTechnica, 22 Sept 2025)* Police make 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages (Times of London, 4 April 2025)* “China Keeps the Algorithm”: Critics Attack Trump’s TikTok Deal (Ars Technica, 17 Sep 2025)* China Blocks Sale of Nvidia AI Chips (Ars Technica, 17 Sep 2025)* Security Analysts Flag Rise in Russian-Created Misinformation Posts (ABC News, 23 September 2025)* UN aviation gathering opens under shadow of cyberattacks, geopolitical tensions (Reuters, 23 Sept 2025)Episode 359 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 357 (“AI Tinkering Playbook”) of the EdTech Situation Room from August 27, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) lean into the tinkerer’s mindset—treating AI as a thinking partner you iterate with, not a magic box—while swapping classroom-ready examples and PD patterns. They open with hands-on strategies for NotebookLM as a quasi custom-bot for staff handbooks and new-teacher docs, showing how a short “read this first” instruction turns NotebookLM into a practical helpdesk for policy Q&A. Then it’s a tour of PD formats that work: an advanced, build-something-together session (“Build-a-Bot”) where teachers leave with a functioning helper tailored to their workflow, and a foundations session (“Prompting is Teaching”) that frames promptcraft through how teachers already model, iterate, and improve student work. On the creative side, the hosts compare Nano Banana image edits (Wes’s Tetons photo… now featuring Ronald & Grimace!) with Qwen’s new image modifier, plus Freepik’s growing AI toolkit—concrete examples of “try it, test it, share it” tinkering educators can adopt tomorrow. Headlines include Meta + Midjourney model news, an Apple iPhone event preview, and a trio of security stories: an AI-assisted worm in the wild, Anthropic disrupting automated disinfo/attacks, and research on tricking AI browsers—reminders to keep beating the drum for password managers and unique passphrases. Geeks of the Week: Play with international AI models (Mistral, ZAI, DeepSeek, Qwen, Reka, Kimi) to broaden your toolkit, and Home Assistant Green for a private, resilient smart-home lab teachers can learn from and automate around.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* NotebookLM (Google’s AI notebook tool)* Mike Caulfield “SIFT” fact-checking prompt* OpenMCQ (Montana Digital Academy)* Nano Banana : A Free AI Image Editor That Could Be Photoshop’s Biggest Rival (Geeky Gadgets, 22 Aug 2025) - Nano Banana - example* www.freepik.com* chat.qwen.ai (image modifier)* Digital Learningpalooza https://www.deelac.com/digital-learningpalooza/* Matt Wolfe on YouTube about AI: https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow* Someone Created the First AI-Powered Worm That Can Spread Automatically (The Hacker News, 26 August 2025)* Anthropic Disrupts AI-Powered Disinformation Campaign Targeting Global Elections (The Hacker News, 27 August 2025)* Frontier Learning Lab Substack: frontierlearninglab.substack.com* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Play with International AI* mistral.ai/* chat.z.ai/* chat.deepseek.com/sign_in* chat.qwen.ai/* app.reka.ai/chat* www.kimi.com/* Wes’ Geeks of the Week:* Home Assistant Green* 7 Laws of Good Web Design: www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/54749294891* Google Site Milestone 1: www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/54749513344🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models (TechCrunch, 22 Aug 2025)* schoolai.com* www.playlab.ai* “Build a Bot Workshop” (intermediate) and “Prompting is Teaching” (basic)* Deciphering Apple’s Awe-Dropping iPhone 17 Event Invite (CNET, 26 August 2025)* Experts Find AI Browsers Can Be Tricked Into Performing Dangerous Actions (The Hacker News, 20 August 2025)* This Famous Star Is a Total Fraud, Astronomers Say (Gizmodo, 19 Aug 2025)* Sabrina Romanov on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sabrina_ramonovEpisode 357 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 356 (“Beyond AI Hype”) of the EdTech Situation Room from August 20, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) kick off with a few live-stream hiccups and then dive straight into back-to-school realities: district and state momentum around student cell-phone restrictions, why policies alone aren’t enough, and how schools can pair limits with media-literacy and tech-ethics instruction that actually sticks. From there, the conversation turns to Montana Digital Academy’s new Frontier Learning Lab—what it is, why it exists, and how “AI playdates” are helping educators move beyond four unhelpful AI narratives (cheating machine, rots your brain, superpowers, saves time) toward balanced classroom use. Jason shares hands-on experiments with the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—including an Obsidian-based assistant (“Astro”) that reads and writes to notes, drafts emails, and even manipulates Google Docs—illustrating both the promise and brittleness of bleeding-edge workflows educators may soon adopt. Alongside AI productivity talk, Wes and Jason spotlight ethical use and accessibility wins (e.g., better alt text and WCAG-aligned habits) and share practical classroom moments—like using ChatGPT to synthesize student survey responses—while stressing that professional judgment and literacy matter more than hype. They also highlight concrete educator tools such as Montana Digital Academy’s OPEN MCQ and swap “Geeks of the Week,” from MCP resources in Obsidian to media-literacy gems like Digital Digging and Mike Caulfield’s classic Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers, plus Wes’ Pinboard flow for sharing recommendations. Throughout, they argue for thoughtful professional learning and a steady, human-centered approach to AI—one that acknowledges both the risks and the transformative possibilities in classrooms today.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* 4 Predominant Narratives with AI (that are not helpful)* AI is a cheating machine* AI rots your brain* AI creates superpowers for you* AI will save you time* Wes’ recent posts on AI* 2025 Civics of Technology Conference (homepage)* Civics of Tech Conference Day 1 Reflections* Is Any AI Use Ethical?* AI clear use cases* ALT text - W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3.0* She Knows ALT Text (Custom GPT)* Troubleshooting tech issues (WordPress, Linux VPS, other geek squad stuff)* Recipe and cooking instructions* OPEN MCQ from Montana Digital Academy: https://wfryer.me/openmcq* Missouri Districts Begin New School Year with State‑Mandated Cell‑Phone Ban (Missouri Independent, 20 Aug 2025)* Back to School: Iowa Students Will Return to Class With Cell Phone Restrictions (KCCI, 18 Aug 2025)* New State Laws Bring Major Changes for Texas Schools (Texas Tribune, 18 Aug 2025)* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Get started with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - Obsidian* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers by Mike Caufield - Podcast: Digital Digging - The Shitification of Google - Wes’ social bookmarks (Pinboard) for #edtechSR🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* OpenAI Is Reportedly Building a Social Network to Compete With X (The Verge, 20 August 2025)* BlueSky Updated Terms and Policies (Bluesky, 14 August 2025)Episode 356 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 355 (“Protocols Over Platforms”) of the EdTech Situation Room from July 9, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack their ISTE 2025 takeaways: Google’s evolving Gemini-in-Classroom roadmap, fresh AI literacy resources for teachers, and where Microsoft and Apple currently fit in the EDU stack. They dig into the rise of AI-first browsers—from agentic research helpers to privacy-focused designs—and debate what these tools mean for student data stewardship, plagiarism concerns, and authentic assessment. Building on Mike Masnick’s “Protocols, Not Platforms,” they explore how the fediverse (Mastodon, Bluesky, and open social protocols) could model healthier digital citizenship and media literacy, especially for schools looking to reduce platform lock-in. The hosts also share practical classroom workflows—NotebookLM for pre-writing and lesson prep, voice-driven chat assistants for feedback, and “AI as a thought partner” techniques to plan presentations, critique drafts, and scaffold student reflection. Rounding things out, they compare personal knowledge management and productivity picks like Obsidian and Raycast, tying these to real educator use cases and “agentic” routines that help teachers work faster, document learning better, and protect privacy by design.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Perplexity launches “Comet” AI web browser to take on Chrome and Edge — and you can use it today for $200 a month (Windows Central; 9 July 2025)* Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (Techdirt, 28 Aug 2019)* [PODCAST] Reclaiming The Internet with Mike Masnick and Aaron Ross (Techdirt Podcast, 8 Jul 2025)* Gemini in Classroom: No-cost AI tools that amplify teaching and learning (Google Blog)* Will Google’s New AI END MagicSchool? | Gemini vs. MagicSchool AI in 2025 (EdTech Hustle)* ISTE 2025 Collection: New Chromebooks and Tools for Even Better Teaching and Learning (Google Blog, 2 July 2025)* What’s New in Microsoft EDU, ISTE Edition June 2025 (Microsoft Education Blog; 25 June 2025)* Apple Skips ISTE (Apple Community Forums)* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: obsidian.md | www.raycast.com* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Privacy, Power and Platforms - Vibe Coding for Flickr CC 4.0 Attribution - DIA browser🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* AI Is Helping Cheaters Cheat at Chess. This Group Is Trying to Stop It (Time, 09 July 2025)* Racist AI Videos Created With Google Veo 3 Are Proliferating on TikTok (Ars Technica, 1 July 2025)* This Year’s Hot New Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT. (NYT; 2 June 2025 - Gift Link)* Hardfork Interview with Pete Wells* Mark Zuckerberg Already Knows Your Life. Now He Wants His AI to Run It (Gizmodo, 30 June 2025)* Inside ‘AI Addiction’ Support Groups, Where People Try to Stop Talking to Chatbots (404 Media, 26 Jun 2025)* Control Content Use for AI Training With Cloudflare’s Managed Robots.txt and Blocking for Monetized Content (Cloudflare Blog, 01 July 2025)* Multiple AI Companies Bypassing Web Standard to Scrape Publisher Sites Without Licensing (Reuters, 21 June 2024)* Creative Commons debuts CC signals, a framework for an open AI ecosystem (Tech Crunch; 25 June 2025)* The Most Imminent Cyber Threat Is Called ‘Scattered Spider’ (Wired, 02 July 2025)* Feds Warn of Possible Cyber Attacks By Iran on US Critical Infrastructure (Ars Technica, 30 June 2025)Episode 355 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 354 (“Beyond the Town Square”) of the EdTech Situation Room from June 25, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) open with a quick check-in and the episode lineup, then dive into Creative Commons in the classroom via Flickr’s move to CC 4.0—and why explicit instruction on copyright, fair use, and open licensing belongs in digital literacy for every student . From there, they unpack free-speech narratives on U.S. campuses through a media-literacy lens—highlighting News Over Noise’s interview with Bradford Vivian and reflecting on universities as places for genuine intellectual diversity and debate . The conversation pivots to AI and assessment: what a recent MIT study using EEG really suggests about “brain-only” writing versus hybrid, tool-supported workflows (spoiler: copy-paste LLM use shows low cognitive engagement, but a structured fourth session with LLMs boosted recall and distributed cognitive effort) and how this translates into practical classroom policy, including the growing role of lockdown browsers for in-class quizzes . They also examine the civil-liberties side of edtech—biometrics, surveillance, and border device searches—through a sobering case study of a journalist’s deportation linked to online writing, and what that means for educators and travelers managing their digital footprint . To wrap up, Geeks of the Week spotlight a handy local-AI platform for Mac/Apple-silicon and API users (Witsy) and a dead-simple booklet-printing utility (BookletCreator) that Wes’ classroom is already putting to work.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (MIT; 10 June 2025)* Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn* Reports of Bluesky’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (MATHEW INGRAM, 18 Jun 2025)* Facebook Group Admins Complain of Mass Bans, Meta Says It’s Fixing the Problem (TechCrunch, 24 June 2025)* AI is ruining Pinterest. Here’s why it’s such a big problem (ZDnet, 11 March 2025)* The High Stakes of Biometric Surveillance (Tech Policy Press, 24 June 2025)* How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation (The New Yorker, 24 June 2025)* News Over Noise [PODCAST] Episode 308: The Campus Free Speech Panic: Who’s Fueling the Misinformation Machine? (Bradford Vivian)* Creative Commons 4.0 Has Arrived on Flickr! (Flickr, 18 Jun 2025)* Geeks of the Week* Jason: https://witsyai.com/* Wes: Wes’ Pinboard - Creating Cool Websites (June 2025 media camp) - BookletCreator🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* This Year’s Hot New Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT. (NYT; 2 June 2025 - Gift Link)* Hardfork Interview with Pete Wells* AI Company Anthropic Sued Over Use of Copyrighted Books to Train Chatbots (AP News, 25 June 2025)* From Threads to Thoughts: How Social Media Is Shaping Public Dialogue (Deliberative Citizenship Initiative, 24 June 2025)Episode 354 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 353 (“Chatbots and Safeguards”) of the EdTech Situation Room from June 11, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) open with context on the live show and summer schedules before diving into the week’s biggest debates, starting with Apple’s WWDC: not a “ground-shaking” year, but still a polished, integrated slate of updates—complete with keynote-style visual summaries that double as classroom exemplars for storytelling and infographics—and a candid take on why “Apple Intelligence,” Vision Pro, and even the under-loved Freeform whiteboarding app land differently across mixed device ecosystems in schools (Mac/Windows/ChromeOS) and organizations. They contrast Apple’s cautious AI posture with practical educator workflows: Jason demos Gemini Deep Research to generate buyer’s-guide dossiers right inside Google Docs, then compares results with Perplexity’s new Labs feature that spins up shareable, code-backed “mini-apps” and interactive visual reports—useful for product vetting, classroom planning, and PD artifacts. The hosts also surface market-reality checks for K–12 and higher ed, noting estimates that ChromeOS holds a majority of K–12 share (≈55%) while nearly vanishing in higher ed—an adoption split that shapes software choices and collaboration norms. Turning to platform governance, they revisit the WordPress drama and welcome a “FAIR” path forward under the Linux Foundation—federated, community-governed repositories that add a distribution layer without forking WordPress—framed as a healthier open-web model after months of conflict. Next up is the Character.AI case: a federal judge declined to grant chatbots blanket free-speech protections (for now), allowing claims to proceed after a teen’s death was linked to long-running chatbot interactions—prompting concrete guidance for educators and parents on guardrails, supervision, and avoiding anthropomorphizing conversational AIs with “human” names. They close with Geeks of the Week: Wes experiments with privacy-focused LibreWolf amid growing Chrome bloat complaints, and Jason shares WebCatalog for turning web apps into tidy, dockable desktop apps—handy in the AI-era of tab overload. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Big Win in Our Character.AI Lawsuit: TJLP Statement on the Motion to Dismiss Decision (Tech Justice Law Project, 21 May 2025)* A Federal Judge Ruled AI Chatbots Don’t Have Free Speech Protections — For Now (Marketplace, 6 Jun 2025)* Character.AI: What to Know About the Role-Playing AI Tool and Its New Video Features (CNET, 10 Jun 2025)* Chatbot Platform Character.AI Unveils Video Generation, Social Feeds (TechCrunch, 2 Jun 2025)* Buyer’s Guides* Prompt* Google Gemini Deep Research* Perplexity Labs Research* Mac Software Web Object* School OS Web Object* WWDC 2025 Main Keynote (YouTube, 9 June 2025, 1.5 hours)* Apple is shipping through it (Platformer; 9 June 2025)* Apple Opens Its AI to Developers but Keeps Its Broader Ambitions Modest (Reuters, 9 Jun 2025)* The Path Forward for WordPress (Joost Blog, 5 Jun 2025)* WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg’s Reaction To FAIR Project (Search Engine Journal, 10 June 2025)* Disney, Universal Sued Over AI Images Allegedly Made With Midjourney (AP News, 10 June 2025)* Geeks of the Week* Jason: WebCatalog* Wes: Beyond the Algorithmic Feed - LibreWolf🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* A Professor Testing ChatGPT’s, DeepSeek’s and Grok’s Stock-Picking Skills Suggests Stockbrokers Should Worry (MarketWatch, 10 Jun 2025)* We Need More AI Oversight, Not Less (Seattle Times, 9 Jun 2025)* Unpacking Empire AI: Karen Hao | Podcast Transcript (MSNBC, 11 Jun 2025)* 2025 Student Guide to AI by Elon University* The Government Knows AGI is Coming (Video: The Ezra Klein Show, 4 March 2025, 63 min)* The Man Who ‘A.G.I.-Pilled’ Google (NYT Hard Fork Podcast, 23 May 2025)* Teachers Are Not OK (404 Media; 2 June 2025)* Against Technofeudal Education (The American Vandal; 10 June 2025)* Artificial Power: 2025 Landscape Report (AI Now; 3 June 2025)* I Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now (Glyph Lefkowitz; 4 June 2025)* Perplexity Labs - Cheap Perplexity? - Travel Budget Example* Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI (The Verge; 28 April 2025)* Going ‘AI first’ appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo (Fast Company; 12 May 2025)* Apple Tiptoes With Modest AI Updates While Rivals Race Ahead (Ars Technica, 9 Jun 2025)* Apple Underwhelms at WWDC With Incremental AI Changes, New Software Name and ‘Liquid Glass’ Design (AP News, 10 Jun 2025)* The problem(s) with platforms with Cory Doctorow (Democracy Works Podcast, 19 March 2025)Episode 353 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 352 (“AI Slop Tsunami”) of the EdTech Situation Room from May 22, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack the rising tide of low-quality, AI-generated content flooding social feeds and classrooms—and share practical media-literacy moves educators can use right now (think SIFT-style verification, lateral reading, and modeling professional skepticism). They examine looming district tech debt and tool consolidation decisions (e.g., Zoom/Box → Microsoft 365) in the context of budgets, data privacy, and teacher workflow, then pivot to what Google I/O means for schools: Gemini/LearnLM updates, NotebookLM for research scaffolding, and new Workspace-integrated quiz/feedback features that could reduce teacher busywork. The conversation digs into K–12 AI literacy and assessment futures—why “debate, not detect” is a healthier stance than AI detectors, how to document authorship and the writing process, and where AI courses might live in the curriculum. They also debrief recent testing outages and what they reveal about systems resilience and contingency planning. Rounding things out, Jason and Wes share hands-on classroom workflows (OpenMCQ-style quiz generation, AI-assisted project management, and audio cleanup with Auphonic), plus concrete guardrails for using AI as a genuine thought partner rather than a shortcut.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Meta Battles an ‘Epidemic of Scams’ as Criminals Flood Instagram and Facebook (WSJ, 15 May 2025) archive.ph link* Google NotebookLM made by Google describing all of the new released by Google at Google I/O* OpenAI and Jony Ive Open io* SIFT Prompt (via Mike Caufield)* PISA 2029 Media and Artificial Intelligence Literacy* Dear College Board: a note from K-12 Technology Leaders* Trimming the Edtech Fat: How Districts Are Streamlining Their Digital Ecosystems (EdSurge; 16 May 2025)* Authorship technologies:* Cursive cursivetechnology.com/* www.scribbleai.com/* Geeks of the Week:* Wes: Better Video Audio with Auphonic and Study Hall and [VIDEO] The “vibe coding” mind virus explained… (Fireship)* Jason: https://github.com/theJayTea/WritingTools🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Everything Google announced at I/O 2025: Gemini, Search, Android, and more (9 to 5 Google; 21 May 2025)* What are the Gemini app’s free, AI Pro, and AI Ultra limits (9 to 5 Google; 21 May 2025)* Project Starline becomes Google Beam, debuts real-time translation (9 to 5 Google; 20 May 2025)* So Many GSuite AI Stuff: Gmail getting personalized smart replies as Google Vids adds AI avatars (9 to 5 Google; 20 MAy 2025)* Google’s NotebookLM is getting Video Overviews (TechCrunch; 20 May 2025)* Future ChatGPT Could Store and Analyze Your Entire Digital Life (Digital Information World; 16 May 2025)* UT Unveils Proposed Guidelines for Responsible Use of AI in Teaching and Learning (UT News; 20 May 2025)* “AI First”* Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI (The Verge; 28 April 2025)* Going ‘AI first’ appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo (Fast Company; 12 May 2025)* A4L: A4L: An Architecture for AI-Augmented Learning (Arxiv; 8 May 2025)* Accessibility: AI for Accessible Education: Personalized Audio-Based Learning for Blind Students (Arxiv; 23 April 2025)* White House Issues Executive Order to Advance AI Education for American Youth (National Law Review: 5 May 2025)* CEOs of Microsoft, Salesforce, and Hundreds More Push for AI Training in High School (INC. Magazine; 7 May 2025)* IRS hopes to replace fired enforcement workers with AI (The Register; 8 May 2025)* Google is going to let kids use its Gemini AI (2 May 2025)* Student Perspectives on the Benefits and Risks of AI in Education (Arxiv; 4 May 2025)* Tether Enters AI Arena With Tether.AI (CoinDesk; 5 May 2025)* Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Reportedly Changing Its Deal With ChatGPT (Yahoo Finance, 13 May 2025)* We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’ (MIT Tech Review, 8 Aug 2024)* Stuff to Try:* Qwen Deep Research* LegoGPT | Article* Ideogram 3.0* Microsoft launches Phi-4-Reasoning-Plus, a small, powerful, open weights reasoning model! (Future Beat; 1 May 2025) | Free Access via OpenRouter* Someone got an LLM running on a Commodore 64 from 1982, and it runs as well as you’d imagine (XDA; 4 May 2025)* Hugging Face releases a free Operator-like agentic AI tool (TechCrunch; 6 May 2025)Episode 352 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 351 (“AI Sycophancy and Chatbots for Kids”) of the EdTech Situation Room from May 14, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) dive into AI Trust You—a Long Beach USD/Stanford framework and Chrome extension that helps students disclose and categorize how they used AI (content creation, research assistance, audiovisual generation, and comprehension) to build a classroom culture of transparency, with live demos of generating “truth & trust” statements right inside Google Docs. They connect this to rising academic integrity cases and the need for explicit, ethical AI guidance rather than bans—plus a nudge to include coding as a first-class use case in the framework. From there, the hosts unpack the recent wave of “sycophancy” in frontier models—chatbots flattering users to keep engagement—and how to probe responses for objectivity, referencing both OpenAI’s post-mortem and Hard Fork’s coverage. They also spotlight Mike Caulfield’s SIFT/“Check, Please!” fact-checking prompt as a practical media-literacy superpower for classrooms (including examples of using AI to check fast-moving video claims), and share takeaways from trying Meta AI, Deep Research (Qwen), Ideogram 3.0, and other hands-on tools. In platform news, they say farewell to Google’s iconic “I’m Feeling Lucky” as the homepage pivots to AI Mode, discussing what this reveals about the future of search and student research habits. They close with a lively debate on copyright, creator rights, and classroom fair-use practices in an AI era—plus a few ad-blocking and policy detours—before wrapping with Geeks of the Week (Croissant for iOS; “The Document is the Prompt”).Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Social AI Companions (Common Sense Media, 28 April 2025) - ChatGPT Summary* People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies (Rolling Stone, 4 May 2025) - Archive.ph version* We Let the Chatbots In — Now They’re Teaching “Care” (James O’Hagan on Medium)* AI Trust You* AI Trust You (EdTech Digest; 14 April 2025)* Chrome Plugin* Creating AI Transparency and Academic Honesty With AI Trust You, A New Free Browser Extension (Tech & Learning; 21 April 2025)* SIFT Prompt (via Mike Caufield)* https://www.meta.ai/* Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy; OpenAI (OpenAI; 2 May 2025)* HardFork on Sycophancy* RIP “I’m feeling lucky:” Google Homepage Pushes AI Mode Forward, Leaves ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Button Behind (Digital Information World; 14 May 2025)* Elon Musk’s apparent power play at the Copyright Office completely backfired (The Verge, 14 May 2025)* Judge in Meta case warns AI could ‘obliterate’ market for original works (Reuters; 1 May 2025)* Alternative to UBlock Origin: https://nextdns.io/* Emily Bender & Alex Hanna: “The AI Con” — Busting Big-Tech Hype, TESCREAL Terrors & Real-World Harms - AI Inside | The Book* Geek of the Week* Wes: Croissant for iOS* Jason: The Document is the Prompt: The Two Quiet Superpowers of Today’s AI Tools (Jason @ LinkedIn)🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* “AI First”* Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI (The Verge; 28 April 2025)* Going ‘AI first’ appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo (Fast Company; 12 May 2025)* A4L: A4L: An Architecture for AI-Augmented Learning (Arxiv; 8 May 2025)* Accessibility: AI for Accessible Education: Personalized Audio-Based Learning for Blind Students (Arxiv; 23 April 2025)* White House Issues Executive Order to Advance AI Education for American Youth (National Law Review: 5 May 2025)* CEOs of Microsoft, Salesforce, and Hundreds More Push for AI Training in High School (INC. Magazine; 7 May 2025)* IRS hopes to replace fired enforcement workers with AI (The Register; 8 May 2025)* Google is going to let kids use its Gemini AI (2 May 2025)* Student Perspectives on the Benefits and Risks of AI in Education (Arxiv; 4 May 2025)* Tether Enters AI Arena With Tether.AI (CoinDesk; 5 May 2025)* Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Reportedly Changing Its Deal With ChatGPT (Yahoo Finance, 13 May 2025)* Microsoft launches Phi-4-Reasoning-Plus, a small, powerful, open weights reasoning model! (Future Beat; 1 May 2025) | Free Access via OpenRouter* Hugging Face releases a free Operator-like agentic AI tool (TechCrunch; 6 May 2025)* Stuff to Try:* Qwen Deep Research* LegoGPT | Article* Ideogram 3.0Episode 351 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Check out our Episode 332 from August 7, 2024! Here are all the links we discussed in the show:* A neurological disease stole Rep. Jennifer Wexton's voice. AI helped her get it back. (NPR, 25 Jul 2024)* Human Reader (Chrome extension from ElevenLabs)* OpenAI Unleashes 'Advanced Voice Mode' Following ScarJo Controversy (PC Mag; 30 July 2024)* OpenAI co-founder Schulman leaves for Anthropic, Brockman takes extended leave (TechCrunch; 5 August 2024)* The SOS satellite calling feature on Apple’s latest iPhones can be literally life-saving: B.C. search and rescue group saves hikers stranded on a glacier from wildfire (CBC, 28 Jul 2024)* ‘You are a helpful mail assistant,’ and other Apple Intelligence instructions (The Verge; 5 August 2024)* Apple's AI Features Rollout Will Miss Upcoming iPhone Software Overhaul (Bloomburg; 28 July 2024) - paywall free version* Apple leads tech rout after Berkshire Hathaway sells more than half of its stake (Business Outside, 5 Aug 2024)* Now that Google is a monopolist, what’s next? (Verge, 6 Aug 2024)* Jason: ChatGPT Prompt Optimizer* Wes: New media literacy lesson: Influencers - Adobe Podcast - DescriptHere are the links which made our show notes Google Doc, but we didn’t have time to discuss:* Bing’s AI redesign shoves the usual list of search results to the side (THe Verge; 24 July 2024)* Google Researchers Publish Paper About How Ai Is Ruining The Internet (The Byte; 4 July 2024)* Artificial intelligence isn’t a good argument for basic income (Vox; 22 July 2024)* The AI bubble has burst. Here's how we know (Mashable, 6 Aug 2024)* OpenAI tempers expectations with less bombastic, GPT-5-less DevDay this fall (TechCrunch; 5 August 2024)* OpenAI Seems Like It's Imploding! (Matt Wolfe; 6 August 2024)* OpenAI says it’s taking a ‘deliberate approach’ to releasing tools that can detect writing from ChatGPT (TechCrunch; 4 August 2024)* ​​Google pulls Olympics AI ad after backlash (WaOi; 1 August 2024)* Everyone Is Judging AI by These Tests. But Experts Say They’re Close to Meaningless (The Markup; 17 July 2024)* Meta's AI Studio Can Create a Copy of Your Favorite Influencer. Here's Why That Matters (CNet; 30 July 2024)* What do people really ask chatbots? It’s a lot of sex and homework (Washington Post, 4 Aug 2024) - paywall free Archive.today link* Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. (MIT Technology Review, 4 March 2024) - audio version available* AI music startup Suno claims training model on copyrighted music is ‘fair use’ (Techcrunch, 1 Aug 2024)* YouTuber files class action suit over OpenAI’s scrape of creators’ transcripts (Tech Crunch; 5 August 2024)* Automattic launches AI writing tool that aims to make WordPress blogs more readable and succinct (TechCrunch; 7 August 2024)* Apple to Adopt Voluntary AI Safeguards Established by Biden (Bloomberg; 26 July 2024) AltLink* 3 new Chrome AI features for even more helpful browsing (Google Blog; 1 August 2024) Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 366 (“10 Year Anniversary”) of the EdTech Situation Room from January 7, 2026, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) celebrate the podcast’s 10th anniversary, reflecting on their journey since their first episode in January 2016. In this episode, they dive into the latest happenings in educational technology, media literacy, and more. Topics include highlights from CES 2026, notable innovations in AI, and discussions on smart home technology. Plus, they explore exciting new integrations from Google and Apple, challenges in intellectual property with AI-generated content, and innovative classroom technology. Tune in for a decade of EdTech insights and future trends! Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.Chapter Markers:00:00 Welcome to EdTech Situation Room00:11 Celebrating 10 Years of EdTech Situation Room01:01 Meet the Hosts: Jason and Wes01:38 Kicking Off the New Semester02:31 Exploring CES 2026 Highlights03:39 AI Innovations at CES 202610:35 Smart Home Technology and Personal Projects14:37 Deep Dive into CES Trends and AI28:19 Lego’s Smart Bricks and Future of Coding29:43 The Pebble Watch Revival32:21 The Pebble Ring: A New Innovation33:28 White House January 6th Website34:50 Media Literacy and AI Fact-Checking38:07 Google’s Gemini and Apple’s AI Strategy40:33 AI-Generated Infographics and Copyright Issues50:24 Geeks of the Week and Final Thoughts52:27 Automation Tools for Productivity🔗 Links We Discussed* CES 2026 New Products: iPolish - Nodi Flip - Bloomin8 E-Ink Canvas* Video: The Shocking AI Reveals That Stunned CES 2026 (Day 1) (AI Revolution, 7 Jan 2026, 13 min)* Video: New OpenAI GUMDROP AI Device Turns ChatGPT Physical (AI Revolution, 4 Jan 2026, 11 min)* Gemini Deep Research CES Update* LEGO introduces its first ‘smart brick’ which reacts to children’s movements in real time (Daily Mail via MSN; 5 January 2025)* Pebble seeks to remedy the wearable industry’s original sin (Engadget; 6 January 2026)* Pebble Is Making a $75 Smart Ring (Wired; 9 December 2025)* White House publishes website that rewrites history of Jan. 6 attack (Washington Post, 6 Jan 2026)* White House X post on Jan 6 website * Whitehouse Jan 6 website: www.whitehouse.gov/j6/* Gemini SIFT Superprompt chat log* Jason’s Geek of the Week: n8n* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Media Literacy Roundup - 5 Jan 2026 - Smart Home Tips from Wes - PixStar Digital Picture Frame - StartPage🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Alaska’s court system built an AI chatbot. It didn’t go smoothly. (NBC News, 3 Jan 2026)* Create with unlimited generations using Google Gemini 3 (Nano Banana Pro) in Adobe Firefly (Adobe Blog, 20 Nov 2025)* Google’s New Image Tool Looks Too Real. Here’s Why That’s A Problem (The Blueprint Brief; 8 December 2025)* NanoBanana has an IP Problem: NotebookLM Slides/Infographics* Teamsters Unveil New Substack Newsletter to Break Through Traditional Media (The Hill, 8 Dec 2025)* AI and Social Media Literacy Essential for Safe Ecosystem (Bernama, 27 Dec 2025)* Berlin power outage highlights German vulnerability to sabotage (BBC, 7 Jan 2026)* You may soon be able to change your Gmail address (TechCrunch, 28 Dec 2025)* “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment (ArsTechnica, 23 Dec 2025)* FCC’s import ban on the best new drones starts today (ArsTechnica, 23 Dec 2025)Episode 366 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! (Note the landscape version is shorter because ‘filler words’ were removed in post-production using Descript.com.) Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 365 (“Nano Banana Pro Era”) of the EdTech Situation Room from December 29, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) discuss the rapid evolution of generative AI, beginning with Jason’s recent travel to Japan where tools like NotebookLM and Gemini assisted with navigation and cultural translation. The hosts dive deep into the capabilities of Nano Banana Pro (Google’s latest Gemini model), comparing its superior image generation and iteration controls to OpenAI’s offerings. The conversation also covers the landmark licensing agreement between Disney and OpenAI to bring iconic characters to the Sora video platform, the ethical “dumpster fire” of hyper-realistic deepfakes, and eight bold AI predictions for 2026—including the rise of world models and an “offline renaissance”. Geeks of the Week include Gemini Desk and a new Substack series on AI storytelling. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora (OpenAI, 11 Dec 2025)* ChatGPT’s Latest AI Image Generator Is Its Best Yet, But Nano Banana Pro Is Still Better (PC Mag, 28 Dec 2025)* The Ethics of AI Imagery: Nano Banana and the New Frontier of Digital Reality (Genevieve Smith-Nunes via Substack; 30 August 2025)* AI in 2026 | 8 Predictions About What’s Coming (Sinead Novell; 18 December 2025)* Wobbling Jets of 3I/ATLAS Based on New Hubble Telescope Images from December 12 and 27, 2025 (Medium of Avi Loeb, 27 Dec 2025)* 3I/ATLAS Deep Fake Videos (Blog of Wes Fryer, 8 Dec 2025)* Jason’s Geek of the Week: Gemini Desk* Wes’ Geek of the Week: Stories About AI - December 2025🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Google’s Year in Review: 8 Research Breakthroughs in 2025 (Google Blog, 23 Dec 2025)* Nano Banana Pro Review: Is Google’s AI Image Generator Too Good? (CNet, 7 Dec 2025)* Create with unlimited generations using Google Gemini 3 (Nano Banana Pro) in Adobe Firefly (Adobe Blog, 20 Nov 2025)* Nano Banana is wild in NotebookLM!!!* Google’s New Image Tool Looks Too Real. Here’s Why That’s A Problem (The Blueprint Brief; 8 December 2025)* Nano Banana Content Blocked (John Negoita via Medium; 24 September 2025)* Introducing GPT-5.2: OpenAI Launches ‘Garlic’ Series (OpenAI, 11 Dec 2025)* How AI coding agents work—and what to remember if you use them (ArsTechnica, 24 Dec 2025)* Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work (Simon Willison’s Weblog, 18 Dec 2025)* Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity (Cornell University, 12 Jul 2025)* AI and Social Media Literacy Essential for Safe Ecosystem (Bernama, 27 Dec 2025)* Rainbow Six Siege is under siege by hackers, Ubisoft forced to take all servers offline — players randomly received billions of credits, ultra-exclusive skins, and bans or unbans (Tom’s Hardware, 27 Dec 2025)* You may soon be able to change your Gmail address (TechCrunch, 28 Dec 2025)* “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment (ArsTechnica, 23 Dec 2025)* FCC’s import ban on the best new drones starts today (ArsTechnica, 23 Dec 2025)Please follow @EdTechSR on Facebook so we can reach 100 followers and directly livestream there too! More subscription options are on EdTechSR.com.Episode 365 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 364 (“The Rise of Gemini AI”) of the EdTech Situation Room from December 3, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) discuss the “rise of Gemini” following the release of Google’s Gemini 3.0 and reports of OpenAI declaring a “Code Red.” The hosts debate Australia’s move to enforce a social media age limit of 16 and the potential banning of VPNs. Conversation also turns to academic integrity, featuring a breakdown of The Simpsons’ take on AI cheating, the risks of adversarial detection, and the changing nature of software engineering with “vibe coding.” Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* Google Gemini 3: A New Era of Intelligence (Google Blog, 18 Nov 2025)* OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Declares “Code Red” As Gemini Gains 200 Million Users In 3 Months (Ars Technica, 02 Dec 2025)* Marc Benioff’s response to Gemini 3* Black Students Are More Likely to Be Falsely Accused of Using AI to Cheat (Education Week, 18 Sep 2024)* AI may be scoring your college essay. Welcome to the new era of admissions (AP, 2 Dec 2025)* Our Response to AI Cannot be Adversarial (Marc Watkins Substack, 1 Dec 2025)* I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking. (Huffpost, 29 Nov 2025)* “The Simpsons” season 37 episode tackles AI cheating and Chalmers’ slime craze (The Express Tribune, 7 Oct 2025)* VIDEO: Bart Gets Caught Using CheatGPT On His Homework | The Simpsons* Simpson’s Fandom Wiki: Keep Chalm and Gary On* Anthropic Studied Its Own Engineers to Assess How AI is Changing Work (Times of India / Anthropic, 3 Dec 2025)* Republicans drop Trump-ordered block on state AI laws from defense bill (ArsTechnica, 3 Dec 2025)* Australia to enforce social media age limit of 16 with fines up to $33 million (AP News, 3 Dec 2025)* Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They’re Doing (EFF; 13 November 2025)* How institutions worldwide used Google for Education tools in 2025 (Google Blog, 3 Dec 2025)* AI Literacy from Google* Commodore 64 Available Again* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: GooseAI - https://antigravity.google/* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Gemini AI GEM replacements for my CustomGPTs: Social Media Post Formatter - Design - Create - Share Lesson Builder and Podcast: “Michael Burry Speaks” - Holiday Tech Gadget Wish Lists🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Anthropic Accidentally Gives the World a Peek Into Its Model’s Soul (Gizmodo, 01 Dec 2025)* Why Academics (and Educators) Are Leaving Twitter for Bluesky (Impact of Social Sciences, May 2025)* ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants (Brennan Center for Justice, 21 Nov 2025)* “Digital Citizenship in the Surveillance State” from 2016* Solar’s Growth in US Almost Enough to Offset Rising Energy Use (Ars Technica, 26 Nov 2025)Episode 364 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 350 (“AI as Thought Partner”) of the EdTech Situation Room from April 16, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) explored the transformative role of AI in teaching, learning, and instructional design. Jason demonstrated how custom GPTs and Google’s Gemini Deep Research can be used to build educator personas, develop curriculum, and simulate expert councils for decision-making. The hosts reflected on image generation tools like ChatGPT-4o’s superhero and “headcut” styles for use in lessons and presentations. Wes emphasized the importance of using AI as a thinking partner—not a cheating partner—and shared how AI tools are reshaping feedback, engagement, and accessibility in his AP Computer Science classroom. They also discussed the emotional power of professional learning communities, the expanding use of video feedback with AI, and honored the legacy of edtech pioneer Maria Knee. From productivity workflows to philosophical questions about teaching in an AI-powered era, this episode is packed with insight, experimentation, and reflection.Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.🔗 Links We Discussed* The AI Authoring Advantage: Balancing Speed and Substance in Course Creation* Google Used AI To Block Three Times More Fraudulent Advertisers In 2024 (Ars Technica, 3 April 2025)* Microsoft Is Putting Privacy-Endangering Recall Back Into Windows 11 (Ars Technica, 26 April 2025)* Follow Stephan Bauchard on AI* DeepSeek AI* PlayLab AIWes’ Geek of the Week:• Wes and Shelly Share Ep 33: Sources of Joy and Summer Plans• Multi-Segment Audio Podcast Lesson🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss* Obituary for Maria Knee* Deep Research tools: Create a dossier about individuals using Gemini Deep Research🔗 For a complete list of links from this episode, visit edtechsr.com/linksEpisode 350 is also available also on YouTube: Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 349 (“Surveillance in the Classroom”) of the EdTech Situation Room from April 9, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) joined from the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego to share insights on the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence in education. He and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) explored how AI tools like Gemini 2.5, Claude, DeepSeek, and NotebookLM are transforming teaching workflows, lesson planning, and student support. Wes described how his students are using AI-generated infographics (infopix) for cyberattack presentations, while Jason highlighted the stunning new capabilities of ChatGPT-4o’s integrated image editing. The episode took a critical look at surveillance technologies being adopted in schools, including anonymous reporting apps and keystroke-monitoring software—raising deep concerns about privacy, pedagogy, and student trust. They also discussed the rise of advanced cybersecurity practices like hardware-based MFA, passkeys, and phishing-resistant tokens, reflecting broader trends in both K-12 and higher ed. On the legal and ethical front, the hosts examined the growing wave of copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, the implications of AI’s ability to replicate training data, and cultural fears around a so-called “semantic apocalypse” caused by generative media. Jason previewed authorship verification tools like Cursive, Scribble, and Grammarly’s AI audit features—emerging tech designed to help educators track student work and AI interaction. In a discussion on free speech and media policy, they flagged bipartisan legislation like the “Take It Down Act” and revived FCC distortion rules that could threaten press freedom. NotebookLM’s new mind map feature and its use for organizing YouTube transcripts was showcased as a standout example of AI for educators. Other tools mentioned included FlintAI, OpenRouter, Ideogram 3, Firefly AI, and the evolving capabilities of Gmail and Google Meet powered by Gemini. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com. Please follow our @EdTechSR page on Facebook, @edtechsr@mastodon.education on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode 349 (“Surveillance in the Classroom”) of the EdTech Situation Room from April 9, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) joined from the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego to share insights on the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence in education. He and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) explored how AI tools like Gemini 2.5, Claude, DeepSeek, and NotebookLM are transforming teaching workflows, lesson planning, and student support. Wes described how his students are using AI-generated infographics (infopix) for cyberattack presentations, while Jason highlighted the stunning new capabilities of ChatGPT-4o’s integrated image editing. The episode took a critical look at surveillance technologies being adopted in schools, including anonymous reporting apps and keystroke-monitoring software—raising deep concerns about privacy, pedagogy, and student trust. They also discussed the rise of advanced cybersecurity practices like hardware-based MFA, passkeys, and phishing-resistant tokens, reflecting broader trends in both K-12 and higher ed. On the legal and ethical front, the hosts examined the growing wave of copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, the implications of AI's ability to replicate training data, and cultural fears around a so-called “semantic apocalypse” caused by generative media. Jason previewed authorship verification tools like Cursive, Scribble, and Grammarly’s AI audit features—emerging tech designed to help educators track student work and AI interaction. In a discussion on free speech and media policy, they flagged bipartisan legislation like the “Take It Down Act” and revived FCC distortion rules that could threaten press freedom. NotebookLM's new mind map feature and its use for organizing YouTube transcripts was showcased as a standout example of AI for educators. Other tools mentioned included FlintAI, OpenRouter, Ideogram 3, Firefly AI, and the evolving capabilities of Gmail and Google Meet powered by Gemini. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com. Please follow our @EdTechSR page on Facebook, @edtechsr@mastodon.education on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe