Alfonso Gonzalez

The EPA’s Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators 2022. #epa 🤗 What an honor to be among all the recipients of this year's #PIAEE award! educatoral.com/wordpress/20... I used Nano Banana to make the photo look more professional. ☺️

5 changes you can make to keep teacher morale high "As the new school year hype winds down, districts will soon enter the 'disillusionment phase'—the mid-fall period when teacher morale starts to dip"

Chimacum Esports Streaming at: October 27, 2026 at 07:27AM Game: Minecraft Channel name: EducatorAl Channel URL: https://ift.tt/nKs1N6c

An Audit Finds Serious Flaws in Research on AI in Education "it appears that the studies synthesizing that evidence are themselves unreliable — and the peer-review process failed to catch the problems. 'This is not trustworthy evidence'"

How To Get Students To Focus Longer Than A TikTok Video Smart Classroom Management "a five-step strategy that actually trains students to concentrate for extended periods of time"

The keynote for #WSTA26 was Dr. Mary Brunkow, 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner! Her work back in 2001 paved the way for current interventions for autoimmune disease, cancer, & more! isbscience.org/news/...

Had a great time this weekend at the #WSTA26 Conference! I shared a cool combo using Snorkl AI for students to show their thinking using Page Keeley Uncovering Student Ideas probes! I'll be doing it again online in Jan via WSTA if you're a member. Here are the slides: docs.google.com/pres...

One big AI challenge schools aren't solving "The report urges teachers to stop policing misuse and instead coach students through decisions about AI. That doesn't require technical expertise. The skills that matter most are relational"

Your Brain on ChatGPT 2.0: Now With More Colourful Scans and the Same Missing Control Group "There was no group of children completing the same task without ChatGPT. Not one."

Technology Could Redefine Learning. Many Schools Settled for Substitution. "Technology’s promise is larger than moving familiar schoolwork onto a screen. It can help students connect across distance, find people who share their interests, and publish work for audiences"

Without Standardized Tests, How Would We Know Students Are Learning? "Students can document their work in authentic digital portfolios. I don’t mean a collection of grades, letters, or percentages. I mean a body of work a young person can use to show what they know & can do."

A whole new high school experience is taking shape "The strongest pathways are built collaboratively, she added. Leaders must work closely with colleges, local employers & community organizations to establish partnerships that "extend beyond one-time events or guest speakers"

Chimacum Esports Streaming at: October 22, 2026 at 07:25AM Game: Minecraft Channel name: EducatorAl Channel URL: https://ift.tt/OAQuCUa

How do I give feedback to 100+ students? In this post, you'll find FIVE ways to make student feedback more manageable: ✳️Big picture feedback for the whole class ✳️Triaged individual feedback ✳️Student self-provided feedback ✳️Peer feedback ✳️AI-generated feedback

My simple strategy for dealing with AI slop as a teacher "focus on using tools that help with productive struggle like CoPilot, SchoolAI, MagicSchool, Brisk, or Gemini Notebook - instead of just using a product like ChatGPT or Gemini that will answer any of their questions"

5 Ways the Science of Learning Changed My Practice as a Teacher "learning more about the science of learning means I've 'switched sides' in the choice versus direct instruction debate. No. I think that debate is mostly a false choice."

Here's what teachers want instead of technology bans "Teachers don't want to ban technology from the classroom. Instead, they want more input on edtech adoption."

Chimacum Esports Streaming at: October 20, 2026 at 07:32AM Game: Minecraft Channel name: EducatorAl Channel URL: https://ift.tt/SQTMuc6

The Tech Minutes We’re Getting All Wrong "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. We start with a valid goal, pick an easy measure, turn the measure into the requirement, and eventually the measure replaces the goal entirely"

We urgently need to rethink media literacy education--here’s how I did "media literacy curriculum must go beyond evaluating information: We need to teach the foundational critical thinking skills our students need to make high-quality real-world decisions"

US company announces progress toward resurrecting the extinct dodo "gene-editing to bring dodo traits into the cells of its closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon. The company said it is in the final stages of its analysis of the dodo genome"

How do you know when the AI is wrong? What then? "Applying the principles of the SIFT verification method, pay attention to your own internal reaction. Does the AI's response immediately validate your deepest held beliefs, or make you unexpectedly outraged?"

A.J. Juliani | The Kids STILL Want to Learn From HUMANS "Fewer than 20% said they would choose AI for tutoring. Eighty percent said relying on AI to finish tasks faster will likely make learning harder. And, get this, anger about AI jumped from 22% to 31% in a single year."

Lacking Options, More Teens Turn to AI Chatbots for Mental Health Support - AccuTrain "Many aren’t talking to AI chatbots because they believe it’s better than talking to a person – they feel they have no other alternative, interviews with high school students suggest."

Recorded Webinar-Your Brain on AI: Moving from Crutch to Catalyst "'Your Brain on AI: Moving from Crutch to Catalyst' all about the dangers of overreliance on AI, & what we can do to help our students use AI in a way that actually enhances their thinking"

Stop Romanticizing School Before Screens "School was often boring & passive long before students had laptops, Google, or AI. We slept, daydreamed, stared out windows, doodled, passed notes, & whispered to friends. Technology did not create disengagement."

Boston and New York City Take Opposite Approaches to AI in School "Boston is pursuing AI fluency for every student while New York City has temporarily banned AI for most grades while first studying the technology."

A.J. Juliani | Learning 3.0, Writing & Speaking "Zach calls cognitive load theory “probably the single most important thing” for teachers to know about how the mind works. Working memory is a bottleneck."

ChatGPT for Teens Has Special Safeguards. A Watchdog Group Finds Most Don't Work "A study from Common Sense Media says most safeguards in ChatGPT for Teens failed. The chatbot talks to teens like a friend & doesn't alert parents"

ChatGPTs 'Teen Mode' Is Unsafe for Students, Report Concludes "ChatGPTs new ‘Teen Mode’ makes it easy for kids to cheat on class assignments, fails to flag signs of suicidal ideation & other risky behavior, and interacts with teens as if it were a friend"

Common Sense Media is right about Google AI Search. But incomplete. "Children have struggled with online search for decades. They struggle to turn a research assignment into useful search terms. They click early results. They mistake a polished page for evidence."

Sea dragon populations decimated in ‘mind-blowing’ mass mortality event caused by South Australian algal bloom “There’s so much habitat destruction, huge loss of sponges, kelps, seagrasses, all those sorts of things that these animals need"

Stop Trying to Detect AI. Start Creating Better Assignments "Why are we giving students assignments AI can easily complete in the first place? And how might students use AI and/or other tools to support their thinking and learning?"

The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps "Consumer AI usage is wide, but not very deep…for almost everyone. While nearly half of U.S. consumers now report using AI, only 25% are engaged with it daily."

What Becomes More Human as AI Becomes More Capable? "Preparing students for an AI-shaped future cannot simply mean teaching them to use more AI or any technology. It also means helping students develop the human qualities that become even more valuable"

5 things we need to fix about screens in schools "we see parents, politicians, fellow educators, & others in our communities with agendas. they show up with cherry-picked stats & talking points that don’t always reflect the realities inside the walls"

Here’s How To Reduce Existential Risks "The fact that liability for climate change is already in the Supreme Court & that four justices seem sympathetic suggests how significant a role liability can play as an incentive for both fossil-fuel & AI giants"

I'm excited to be presenting at the Washington Science Teachers Association Fall Conference, October 24 in Bellingham. I'm looking forward to learning alongside science educators from across Washington. Registration is open at http://wsta.net/conf.... #WSTA26 #ScienceMatters

Default Off Should Be the Norm in Every School "The planning matters: teachers decide what students need to learn, where a device might help, and when its contribution ends."

Why AI's biggest impact on schools starts with teachers "Students must learn to use the technology that's reshaping school, work & daily life. AI literacy informs students about AI's limitations & biases. It can also reinforce the durable skills classrooms have taught"

Hope, Attention, and the Futures We Learn to See "The future we imagine shapes what we are able to see. In schools right now, we need to get better at stretching our attention in new directions. There is a name for that practice: futures literacy."

AI is Problematic. Why Does PAIRR Use it? "In the PAIRR | Peer & AI Review + Reflection project, we make the case for the value of engaging with AI feedback alongside human feedback and building habits of questioning AI outputs."

The Problem With Limiting Screens in Elementary Schools "Blanket restrictions take learning decisions away from the people closest to the learning: teachers & students. Teachers should have the expertise & authority to determine when a device is helping a child"

A Spotlight on School Book Bans "This year saw a record number of unique titles banned — 7,370 titles — impacting the creative works of over 4,000 authors, illustrators and translators. Over 4,500 of these were titles not previously recorded"

What If Science Led the Way in Literacy Instruction? "When science leads, students build rich knowledge that supports contextualized literacy learning and richer, deeper, and more coherent scientific understanding."

The Racist Beginnings of Book Bans | NEA "Reading and writing gave enslaved people greater opportunities to organize, communicate, and pursue freedom."

PLEASE do NOT Copy Your Class - Teacher Tech with Alice Keeler "Copying your class in Google Classroom makes a giant mess of your Google Drive. Here are 3 alternatives to copying your entire class."

Shift Happens 2026 "the first 'Did You Know?' took hours and hours to make. This one took a few minutes with AI. The question isn't whether AI can do the work. It's whether our kids can still do the thinking"

FOURTH REPORT: Former Alpha School students speak out "I’ve spoken to several student sources on background (for quotation without direct attribution), spanning from fourth grade up to high school, and across several Alpha School 'campuses.'"

Six Important Findings from the AI in Action Learning Tour "funders seemed much more eager to answer the question 'does this work when students use it?' than 'how do students use it?' or even 'do students want to use it?'"