by You’re busy, but still curious and interested in new ideas. That’s why I’ve assembled five articles and a podcast episode that I recommend for educators. With the help of my pal, AI – pronounced AL, by the US Secretary of Education, we’ve summarized the articles to whet your appetite and inspire reading.
In a subsequent issue, I will share some thoughts on how and why this collection of articles make sense together in my kooky brain. Make your own connections and let me know what you think!
Restoring Childhood Says It’s Not Smartphones Making Teens Miserable. It’s School.
Reason · Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Everyone blames the phone. Peter Gray’s new book, reviewed here, points at a different suspect: a school day with less recess, more homework, narrower standards and endless testing. Gray argues that kids thrive on play, autonomy and responsibility, and that all three have been draining out of childhood for seventy years. You may not buy every claim, but you will leave with a sharper question to ask the next time someone proposes a phone ban as the cure for teen unhappiness.
Explore Peter Gray’s critically important new book, Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety
The Thrill of Wanting AI to Destroy the World
The Atlantic · Ian Bogost
When a researcher announced he was quitting his AI job because the technology would “kill us all,” his post was seen more than 150 million times. Bogost asks why the end of the world is such an irresistible story, tracing the pull of apocalypse from Cold War mushroom clouds to 9/11 to today’s chatbots. It is a thoughtful, often funny antidote to AI panic, and a useful read before your students (or your school board) ask what you think.
Why Adults Are Playing with Toys
The New Yorker · Diego Lasarte
For decades the toy industry depended on children who begged their parents for pocket money and eventually grew up and left. Now it has found a new customer: the adult who never stopped wanting to play. Lasarte explores the rise of the “kid-ult,” a reminder that play is not something we outgrow, and a good conversation starter about why school so often treats it as something to be left at the classroom door.
Why Americans Stopped Throwing Dinner Parties
The Atlantic · Derek Thompson
In 1975, 42 percent of Americans hosted friends or family at home at least once a month. Today it is 12 percent. Thompson sifts the explanations, from harried schedules to intensive parenting to shrinking friendship networks, and finds that the gathering itself is vanishing rather than moving elsewhere. Read it for what it suggests about the social lives of your students and their parents, and about the community your classroom can build.
What’s the Future for Pure Math Research in the Age of AI?
Stephen Wolfram Writings · Stephen Wolfram
Headlines say AI is solving math problems, but Wolfram argues that great mathematics is defined by the questions we choose to ask, and that is a human judgment. He is no skeptic about the benefits, though. He explains where AI helps, where it stumbles, and why new ideas matter only when people can understand and share them. If you teach math, or worry about what AI means for any discipline built on understanding, this is a calm, expert voice in a noisy debate.
Learning Is Something the Learner Does: Rethinking Education with Dr. Gary Stager
Crunch Time Podcast · Joel Smith with Gary Stager
Learning grows from curiosity, hands-on experience and student agency, not from obedience to directions. In this wide-ranging conversation (podcast), Gary Stager draws on four decades of work to take on AI, screen time, testing, literacy methods and teacher autonomy. Listen during your commute and arrive at school ready to hand more of the thinking to your students.
Computational Making & Learning Workshops Coming to California!
Join me for a day of exciting learning adventures, fellowship, and great food in California this December. The maker movement reminded us that learners can make things with bits and atoms, but once again we have left the bits behind. The future is computational and learning how to create computational making opportunities from preschool through graduation is a major opportunity for educators. Learn more and register here
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.