AI didn’t break grading—it exposed a flaw that was already there. Static assignments only test final products. Process data tests actual human reasoning. Broke down the landmark Stanford Accelerator / ETS paper on conversational assessment in the latest post. open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

Measuring How We Reason: The New Blueprint for AI-Era Learning

Why 100 leaders at Stanford agreed single-event testing is obsolete, and how interactive simulations provide a path forward for dynamic evidence gathering.

open.substack.com

Early research indicates AI-powered simulations can generate meaningful learning gains. I broke down a handful of studies, including a note on my own biases, on my Substack. Have you run AI simulations with your learners? open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

Does Practicing on an AI Actually Work?

What the studies actually say about AI role play simulations

open.substack.com

Want to know what I'm up to? Building Friction Bots for educators! Join us for a demo where you'll participate in a custom simulation, see how transcripts reveal student thinking, and discuss with fellow faculty. 📅 Wednesday, August 19th, 1:00–2:00 PM EST Register here: lnkd.in/gXYNPGjh

Want to know what I'm up to? Building Friction Bots for educators! Join us for a demo where you'll participate in a custom simulation, see how transcripts reveal student thinking, and discuss with fellow faculty. 📅 Wednesday, August 19th, 1:00–2:00 PM EST Register here: lnkd.in/gXYNPGjh

“AI will personalize learning” mostly means it personalizes the answer. The struggle is the part worth personalizing, and it's the first thing these tools remove. #EduSky aifrictionlabs.com does the opposite. We embrace the struggle, and that's what makes it good for learning.

Removing difficulty removes the learning Most #edtech sells the same promise: we made it easier. But the research on desirable difficulties says the difficulty was doing the work. Sand off the struggle and you sand off the retention. We're optimizing away the point. #AiEdu www.aifrictionlabs.com

Cheating isn't the problem The AI panic in education keeps fixating on cheating. Cheating was always solvable. The harder problem: these tools let students stay in the fast, effortless gear the whole time, and that's the gear where nothing sticks. #EdAI #EduAI #AIEdu

Two years ago I wrote about AI and the Tower of Babel. This week Pope Leo XIV said the same thing in his first encyclical. Read below for my take on the connection - and here is Pope Leo's comments: www.wsj.com/world/pope-l... AI, and The Tower of Babel open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

ChatGPT4o, AI, and The Tower of Babel

A spiritual take on this week's AI advancements

open.substack.com

Today's post is a rumination on AI's impact on writing. I'm interested in watching the ways that AI-isms change the way we communicate. Link below: Is anyone else mourning the potential death of the rule of threes? open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

Claude and The Rule of Threes

Another writing tragedy at the hands of AI

open.substack.com

The problem isn't that AI exists. It's that it's optimized to be helpful — which means it resolves every rough edge in our thinking before it can become something real. AI Friction Labs is an attempt to solve that. Read more in my new post on "How We Frame Machines." tinyurl.com/2vuy6t33

Helpful AI is the problem, we’re the solution

AI that pushes students to think harder, not less. A platform that gives educators the power to design productive friction.

open.substack.com

in 1966, a researcher's secretary asked him to leave the room so she could talk to his program in private. she knew it was just code. she wanted privacy anyway. that's the whole problem — and the whole opportunity. new post on how we frame machines. open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

Every AI Chat Is a Simulation

The Case for Leaning In

open.substack.com

The concept of AI immersion is as dangerous as it is alluring. The personalities embedded in the text can lead us into a funhouse of mirrors. The trick is — knowing how to get out. open.substack.com/pub/mikekent...

The Commitment Paradox: To Learn from AI, You Have to Lie to Yourself

Lessons from Improv, Ray Bradbury, and the dangerous art of suspending disbelief.

open.substack.com

Students want guidance on ethical AI use - and they want it surfaced in classrooms rather than hidden. What better way than to analyze our chats together? mikekentz.substack.com/p/stop-skimm...

Stop Skimming Chats, Start Annotating Them

The next step in the development of a transcript-based pedagogy

mikekentz.substack.com

Last month I sat in on the University of Baltimore 2025 #AISummit. Four weeks later the themes still ring loud—AI’s workforce impact, classroom realities, and who’s really steering the puck. 1/3 🧵

The most successful use case I found for putting AI in front of students was to ask them to “spar” with AI — rather than brainstorm, learn, or speed up productivity. Chatting with a character bot? Be an investigative journalist. @leonfurze.com #AIEdu #EduAI mikekentz.substack.com/p/from-think...

From Thinking Partner to Sparring Partner: A Better Way to Use AI

Why AI as a 'thinking partner' is making us intellectually weaker -- and what to do instead

mikekentz.substack.com

Gotta imagine this is happening everywhere right now

Alistair@codeteacher.bsky.social · last yr.

Can't decide if this being so true makes it funny or horrifying! #CSed #TeamCompSci #EdTech #AIinEducation #caschat

Delighted to announce CBI Research Fellow (& close friend & collaborator) Prof. Gerardo Con Díaz's (Con's) stellar new book is out (got to read it early & blurb it). Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyright Made the Online World. Congrats Con! #histtech yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Everyone Breaks These Laws

Copyright’s profound impact on the online world as we know it   This book is a captivating exploration of the profound impact of American copyright law on...

yalebooks.yale.edu

Tip of the iceberg indeed. Could this require a return to an oral tradition? www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Revealed: Thousands of UK university students caught cheating using AI

Guardian investigation finds almost 7,000 proven cases of cheating – and experts says these are tip of the iceberg

theguardian.com

Friend just sent this to me. Read the first letter of every name in the Gemini contributors list.

I feel bad for all the #ASMR folks on YouTube. #AI is coming for them next. AI ASMR accounts are racking up huge numbers on #Tiktok. This one launched one week ago and already has thousands of followers: www.tiktok.com/@impossiblea...

Cutting Glass Fruits into Slice #asmr #asmrsounds #satisfying #berries #fruit #impossibleais #inpossibleais #Impossibleals

TikTok video by impossibleais

tiktok.com

New research raises red flags about long-term #LLM use (and confirms what most educators already knew)... A 206-page study out of Boston tracked student writing across three modes: 1. ChatGPT 2. Google 3. Brain-only #cognition #AIinEducation #EduAI #AIinEdu #EduSky arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed thr...

arxiv.org

"You have to force AI to force YOU to be more human." - Ken Liu This is the crux of AI's role in all creative and learning work. We need to teach young people how to do this. That is #AILiteracy. That is #AIFluency. Link in the next comment. #EduAI #AIinEducation #AIinEdu #AIforCreativity

#AI is a metacognition tool, not a fact vending machine.

Nicole Hennig@nic221.bsky.social · last yr.

X-Ray Vision Using ChatGPT and Rhetorical Prompting https://substack.com/inbox/post/165203107 #AI #healthcare

Let me clarify something for the #AIinEducation crowd: When I brought AI into my High School English classroom, it was NOT because I believed AI would further educational goals. It was because I felt a pressing need to give my students AI Literacy - in the best way that I could. 🧵 #AIinEdu

AI Boundary-Setting: An Important Tactic and Strategy to Pass on to Our Students In human relationships, we often have to set boundaries to make sure interactions and communication are healthy. AI is the same, in my opinion. 1/many mikekentz.substack.com/p/the-art-of...

The Art of AI Boundary-Setting: Shaping Your Café Companion

Part 2a of the AI Personality Series

mikekentz.substack.com

Your #AI isn't neutral. Every time ChatGPT eagerly suggests "next steps" or Claude quietly waits for your lead, you're experiencing deliberate philosophical choices about human autonomy embedded in code. Choosing your "cafe companion" is crucial. LINK: shorturl.at/rBy2R #AIinEducation #EduAI

1/ A lot of talk about "preparing students for AI," but most of it assumes the world will adapt slowly. The Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index suggests otherwise. Workplaces are already shifting toward AI agents running workflows with minimal human intervention. #AIinEducation #EduAI #EduSky

A fascinating concept WRT writing literature in the age of AI!

Luciano Floridi@floridi.bsky.social · last yr.

What does it mean to be an author when using AI to produce a text? "Distant Writing: Literary Production in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" new paper freely available at SSRN papers.ssrn.com/sol3...

We’re not in the driver’s seat—we’re the narrator, telling a story after the decisions are made. In a brilliant guest post, Michael Wagner explores how both humans and AI construct post-hoc explanations—and what that reveals about reasoning and teaching in the age of LLMs. 1/2 tinyurl.com/nh3hdcf9

We Are Not in the Driver's Seat: How Post-Hoc Storytelling Shapes Minds—Human and Machine Alike

A Guest Post from Professor Michael Wagner

open.substack.com

Just learned about a new ai grading tool that scores student essays based entirely on emoji use 🔥 = strong argument 🥺 = emotional nuance 💀 = fails the vibe check no rubric, just resonance they’re calling it “vibraGrade” and honestly i think we deserve this mikekentz.substack.com/p/new-ai-too...

New AI Tool Grades Essays Based on Emoji Use, Not Content

Because nothing says 'thesis statement' like a well-placed fire emoji.

mikekentz.substack.com