Connected Classroom · Media
Conversations on Learning in the Age of AI
Podcast interviews exploring how AI shapes student cognition, why messy learning matters, and what schools can do to protect critical thinking, creativity, and developmental privacy.
BetterThinkers Podcast
Thinking with Timothy: Reclaiming Human-Centered Learning
Can we preserve what makes learning truly human in an age of AI shortcuts? A conversation on the AI Learning Paradox, embracing messy learning, and Connected Classroom tools that connect rather than isolate.
Host: Jamie House · betterthinkers.substack.com
In This Episode
- The AI Learning Paradox: When does AI enhance thinking versus replace it? Tim unpacks why the distinction between retrieval and synthesis is the critical line schools need to draw.
- Embracing Messy Learning: Why authentic learning must be uncomfortable, and how Peter Ellerton's Critical Thinking Matrix helps educators design for productive struggle.
- Connected Classroom in Practice: Tools and frameworks that use AI to connect learners to each other and to deeper thinking — not to shortcut the cognitive work that builds capacity.
The EdTech Lens Podcast
AI and Assessment (Revisited): Writing, Jagged Edges, and AI-Proofing
Why writing still matters as a thinking process, what gets lost when AI flattens the "jagged edges" of human work, and how to redesign assessment around community, identity, and design.
Host: Alex McMillan · with Emily Thomas & Nick Soentgerath
In This Episode
- Writing as Thinking: The focus, word choice, revision, and self-argument that helps students clarify what they actually believe — and that AI can't authentically replicate.
- The "Jagged Edges" Problem: AI produces the same "academically average" response to predictable prompts, flattening the human, lived, imperfect uniqueness that makes student work meaningful.
- AI-Proofing Assessment: A practical case for redesigning tasks around community, identity, and design — prompts where students must apply content in locally grounded ways, with AI as tool rather than replacement.
The Unlatched Mind Podcast
The Architecture of Capture: Why We Must Reintroduce 'Friction' to Learning
Cognitive Prompt Injection, the "GPS Effect" on human judgment, and why AI should be used for retrieval — not synthesis.
Host: Vinny Vallarine
In This Episode
- Intent vs. Architecture: Why we cannot rely on corporate benevolence. The current infrastructure of EdTech and social media is built for behavioral profiling, creating a single point of failure for human decision-making.
- The "GPS Effect": Just as relying on GPS degrades spatial awareness, relying on AI for synthesis degrades analytic capacity — and the risks of a workforce that can no longer audit the machines they rely on.
- Cognitive Prompt Injection: How bad actors can exploit recommendation algorithms to manipulate population-level thinking — not by changing what we know, but how we process it.
On Intent vs. Architecture
"It allows for some really positive use cases and it allows for some really dystopian ones. It all depends on intent. But the architecture exists for capture to happen. Whether it does or not, we don't know — but the writing is on the wall."
On Retrieval vs. Synthesis
"If I go to a library, I am retrieving information, but I am still the one doing the synthesis. Large Language Models do that for you. You lose the act of synthesizing that information in your own brain. If everyone does that, we are all thinking the same way."
On "Friction" as a Value
"The struggle is what led to innovation and the improvement of humanity over time. If there is no friction, where is the innovation? If we offload the struggle, we lose the capacity to question."
On Cognitive Prompt Injection
"If you know how the algorithm engages… you can influence or manipulate the direction people start thinking so that they start believing their opinions are their own. The algorithm becomes the distribution mechanism for influence operations."