I built a personalized study system using Claude and cognitive science principles: retrieval practice, spaced repetition, cognitive load. Here’s what happened and why it worked.
Category Archives: AI & EdTech
Build Your Own EdTech: Why the Future is Local
Think back to 2023, 2024, and 2025, the EdTech market was flooded with what we now affectionately call “AI wrappers.” These were sleek at first sight, user-friendly web apps that essentially put a nice interface over a standard API call to generate lesson plans, differentiated reading passages, worksheets, and quizzes for the classroom. They felt magical at first, but they came with subscription costs, heavy enterprise costs for districts and schools, and lingering questions about student data privacy. Fast forward to today, and the script is entirely flipping. We are entering an era where the power to build, run, and maintain these tools is shifting directly into the hands of teachers and schools, and it is all happening locally.
How to Use NotebookLM to Conduct Smarter WASC Accreditation Reviews and Visits
Over the past year, I have integrated Google’s NotebookLM into my WASC review workflow, and the results have fundamentally changed how I prepare, analyze, and report before, during, and after my visits. This is not a post about replacing professional judgment: it is about amplifying it. What follows is the process I now use, phase by phase, to conduct reviews that are more evidence-grounded, more analytically rigorous, and ultimately more useful to the schools I serve.
NotebookLM as Your School’s Brain: A Mission Control for Leaders Who Are Serious About Improvement
📬 Stay in the loop Join educators getting weekly insights on AI, co-teaching, and instructional leadership. Subscribe Most schools do not have a data problem. They have a synthesis problem of putting it all together in one location. The attendance reports live in one system. The benchmark assessments live in another. The LCAP goals areContinueContinue reading “NotebookLM as Your School’s Brain: A Mission Control for Leaders Who Are Serious About Improvement”
From the Moon to the Mind: How Space Exploration Illuminates Learning
📬 Stay in the loop Join educators getting weekly insights on AI, co-teaching, and instructional leadership. Subscribe “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” — Neil Armstrong (1969) The Mission Control Mindset Picture a professional development session where teachers design instruction the way NASA engineers design a mission. The stakes areContinueContinue reading “From the Moon to the Mind: How Space Exploration Illuminates Learning”
Autonomous AI and (the Possible Future of AI in Schools): OpenClaw and Autonomous AI Agents
Over the last week, I have played extensively with Clawdbot, now aka Moltbot. Seeing AI that is THIS autonomous, and the work it has done has been mind-blowing. I have built numerous applications and have several tasks and projects that will be delivered to me daily. From research to applications ready to be delivered on my GitHub. Wow! In my opinion, this is where AI comes alive and goes outside the box.
Holding Two Truths: Education, Evidence, and Fatherhood
As I prepare to become a father, my view of education is shifting. What will I hold onto and what will change when learning becomes personal? A reflection on time, empathy, evidence, and raising a learner in a complex system.
Creating Examples vs. Non Examples Using Nano Banana Pro on Gemini 3 to Amplify Instruction
Learning abstract concepts is difficult because our students are beginners in many cases. This means they primarily understand new ideas in the context of what they already know, which is usually concrete. To build a robust “schema” (a mental structure of organized knowledge), students need more than a definition; they need to see the concept in action through examples vs. non examples. With this said, it is now ever been easier to create examples vs. non examples using Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro image generator that is associated with Gemini 3. In this post, you’ll see how to do this to support your instruction.
From Digital Consumers to Digital Pedagogues: A Framework for Moving Teachers from Digital Consumers to Tech-Enabled Pedagogues
In my work with teachers, I’ve seen firsthand a significant challenge that has only accelerated in our tech-saturated world: the gap between how pre-service teachers use technology and their capacity to teach with it. This is the Consumer-to-Pedagogue Gap, and it is one of the most critical hurdles we must overcome in modern teacher preparation and on-going professional development and coaching as they progress forward in their careers.
This post outlines a framework to bridge this gap, moving teacher candidates from passive digital consumers to active, tech-enabled pedagogues. The central thesis is straightforward: we must replace passive observation with a system of structured, low-stakes rehearsal. This over time will improve instruction as well as the use of technology when integrated together.
This system is not built on intuition; it is grounded in established learning science, specifically the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework and Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). These are the foundational lenses I advocate for in all effective instructional design.
AI Agent Advancements: Google Lens (aka Homework Helper) and Comet Browser
As educators, we’ve navigated the shift from chalkboards to smartboards, from calculators to laptops. But the change barreling towards us now is different. It’s not just a new tool; it’s a new kind of actor in the learning process. I’m talking about AI-powered tools like Google Lens and the emerging class of AI-agent browsers, such as Perplexity’s Comet Browser. These technologies are fundamentally reshaping what it means to “do work” and forcing us to confront a critical reality: we can no longer guarantee the authenticity of any work done outside our direct supervision. As a result, what does this mean for asynchronous online learning and completing graded work outside of traditional in-person classes?