Alfonso Gonzalez

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » “Screens are hurting learning.” But what is worth learning?
"The real danger isn’t that students will use tools. The real danger is that schools will keep teaching as if tools don’t exist."
zhaolearning.com/202...

The Hidden Technology Ecosystem Behind Online Child Exploitation Parents often imagine online danger in very human terms. A stranger on the street.

The Hidden Technology Ecosystem Behind Online Child Exploitation
“The same infrastructure that allows children & teenagers to share photos, play games, & talk to friends across the world also allows offenders to locate, contact, manipulate, & exploit”

The Effort to Rebuild Education Research After DOGE Cuts | KQED DOGE tore down the Education Department’s research and statistical agency. Now some in the Trump administration are pushing to rebuild it.

The Effort to Rebuild Education Research After DOGE Cuts | KQED
"Congress is pushing to rebuild. A committee report accompanying the 2026 appropriations bill directs the Education Department to rehire staff at IES. Even so, staffing remains far below the previous level"

Education Pundits Reading Finland Wrong Again: It's the Poverty Redux "Progressivism happened to Finland." Katharine Birbalsingh (posted on Twitter)

Education Pundits Reading Finland Wrong Again: It's the Poverty Redux
"systemic factors far outweigh teacher quality, instructional practices, standards or test quality, and all in-school factors that conservatives and progressives waste so much energy fighting over"

7 danger moments that show AI's darker side Some of AI's darker behavior has emerged in recent weeks.

7 danger moments that show AI's darker side
“AI's darker behaviors continue to raise questions about safety and guardrails.”

Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence \ Anthropic
“The rapid diffusion of AI is generating a wave of research measuring and forecasting its impacts on labor markets. But the track record of past approaches gives reason for humility.”

Teaching Evolution: The Case of the Fanged Frog Helping students understand evolution, gene flow, and speciation can be challenging because these processes often occur over long periods of time and involve complex genetic evidence. One effective way to make these concepts more engaging is to use real scientific research simplified for classroom use. The Fanged Frog Genomics Study activity introduces students to modern

Teaching Evolution: The Case of the Fanged Frog
“This classroom resource is based on a recent genomics study examining a group of Southeast Asian frogs known as fanged frogs”

AI and Showing Our Work A little over three years after the launch of ChatGPT, I think we have to admit that the introduction of AI into schools isn't going so well. Every administrator I have talked to about this says that they are seeing a clear rise in AI cheating -- and that aligns with what we're seeing at SLA as well. And while yes, the promise of AI is great, so is its threat.

Three years into the Generative AI era, cheating is rising in schools and we have to be honest about it. Neither techno-utopians nor blue-book nostalgists have useful answers. Here's what we're actually trying at SLA — and why it feels so fragile right now.

Astronomers are capturing video of a black hole for the first time | CBC Radio Astronomers are working to capture the first-ever video of a black hole — a groundbreaking effort that could shed light on how these enigmatic cosmic objects behave and offer clues about the origins o...

Contrary to science fiction, black holes are not portals to other dimensions or cosmic vacuum cleaners that swallow up everything around them. cbc.ca/radio/quirks... #astronomy #astrophysics #science #SciChat

SearchResearch (3/6/26): Why you STILL need to know how to search... perhaps more than ever.  It's been an interesting few weeks.    Surprise! I found my stone twin hiding in an architectural sculpture at Yale.  I was there in Februa...

Why you STILL need to know how to search... perhaps more than ever.
“we can now summarize 500 papers in 5 minutes. This doesn't make research easier; it makes it harder. It moves the bottleneck from information gathering to critical evaluation.”

College Students, Professors are Making Their Own AI Rules. They Don't Always Agree | KQED More than three years after ChatGPT debuted, AI has become a part of everyday life — and professors and students are still figuring out how or if they should use it.

College Students, Professors are Making Their Own AI Rules. They Don't Always Agree | KQED
“More than half of students who used AI for coursework had mixed feelings about it, reporting that it helps them sometimes but can also make them think less deeply.”

The Myth of Digital Natives: Why Growing Up With Screens Does Not Equal Digital Literacy2 Search for “digital natives” and you will still find the same idea repeated: today’s children are naturally fluent in technology. They were born into it.

The Myth of Digital Natives: Why Growing Up With Screens Does Not Equal Digital Literacy2
“ Students may move confidently through a simulation without fully grasping the mechanisms behind it.”

Recent Reports about AI in Schools: What’s Happening and What Should Be Happening?
“AI isn’t automatically improving learning—because schools are mostly using it to do traditional schooling more efficiently.”
zhaolearning.com/202...

Rethinking the Screen: A Case for Intention Over Elimination What I want from schools before my kids ever open a Chromebook

Rethinking the Screen: A Case for Intention Over Elimination
"There’s a significant distance between “screens are being misused in schools” — which is true — and “remove them forever” — which doesn’t hold up"

I Don’t Believe This Finding That AI Is Saving Teachers Six Weeks per Year It's hard to figure out what's going on right now but this is not what's going on right now.

I Don’t Believe This Finding That AI Is Saving Teachers Six Weeks per Year
"The AI-using engineers believed their tasks had taken them 20% less time than the non AI-using engineers when in reality it had cost them 19% more time."

AI isn’t Killing Search. What the State of Search Q4 2025 Report Reveals  Headlines say AI is replacing Google search. But real usage data from Q4 2025 tells a calmer story about how search is actually evolving.

AI isn’t Killing Search. What the State of Search Q4 2025 Report Reveals
"Search is not collapsing. It is not being wiped out. It is evolving slowly and in ways that are far more predictable than the headlines suggest. "

This was fun…
From dial-up days to now, travel through Wikipedia's history.
wikipedia25.org/en/w...

Beyond “Screens Are Harmful”: A Harder Conversation for Schools Search for “screens harm children” and you’ll find no shortage of confident headlines. Strong language.

Beyond “Screens Are Harmful”: A Harder Conversation for Schools | LinkedIn
"A screen can mean a video call with a teacher. It can mean scrolling social media for hours. It can mean collaborative writing. It can mean watching a short explanation before a discussion."

Could the Future of AI Reconnect Us to What Mattered Most? A blog to share ideas about innovative, real, and relevant learning.

Lisa Nielsen: The Innovative Educator: Could the Future of AI Reconnect Us to What Mattered Most
“Instead of asking how we preserve jobs as they exist today, what if we ask whether working less might actually be progress?”

US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the ​issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning ‌away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.

US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material
"The Copyright Office has separately rejected bids by artists for copyrights on images generated by the AI system Midjourney."

A.J. Juliani | The Halftime Adjustment: How to Read a Room Mid-Lesson and Change Course Every teacher has had the moment. You're twelve minutes into a lesson you spent two hours planning, and you can feel the room slipping. Eyes glazing. The same three hands going up. Bodies turning sideways. You have two choices. You can push through and hope it clicks, or read what's happening and adjust. I spent so many years just pushing through. Mostly because no one taught me what adjusting actually looks like in the moment. As coaches, we never have that problem. Every coach at every level has a halftime. A built-in pause to look at what's actually happening versus what they planned, and recalibrate. Teachers don't get a halftime, but we can build one. And the research says it might be the most important skill we’re not developing.

The Halftime Adjustment: How to Read a Room Mid-Lesson and Change Course
"the greatest impact on learning doesn't come from six-week assessment cycles. It comes from what teachers do every six to ten minutes inside a lesson."

Four Habits to Help Teens Build Better Habits | KQED The book "Atomic Habits" has tips for how teens can make small changes to build better habits, and take bad habits out of their routines.

Four Habits to Help Teens Build Better Habits | KQED
There are four essential ways to build the habits you want: “make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.”

The Case for Warm Demanders in Today’s Schools | Cult of Pedagogy When our students face challenges, some teachers get more rigid, while others become more lenient. What if the answer isn’t either/or?

The Case for Warm Demanders in Today’s Schools | Cult of Pedagogy
"Educators need concrete, research-backed tools that drive meaningful classroom transformation. One of the most powerful — and often overlooked — frameworks for doing this is Warm Demander pedagogy."

OpenAI announces Pentagon deal after Trump bans Anthropic
"over whether the company could prohibit its tools from being used in mass surveillance of American citizens or to power autonomous weapon systems"
www.npr.org/2026/02/...

You're So Amazing You Probably Think The AI Is In Awe Of You: The Curious Case of AI Sycophancy I know it feels great, but...

You're So Amazing You Probably Think The AI Is In Awe Of You: The Curious Case of AI Sycophancy
“AI didn’t just confirm my success… it celebrated it! It told me, “For now, savor this win. You earned it.” And then it truly shocked me…”

AI Belongs in the Teacher’s Workflow Before It Belongs in the Student’s Hands For over a decade, education has equated technology with progress. Districts invested billions in devices.

AI Belongs in the Teacher’s Workflow Before It Belongs in the Student’s Hands
“many districts are reconsidering cell phone policies and screen exposure. This moment requires nuance. Technology is not inherently harmful. But unexamined implementation is.”

15 incredibly useful things you didn’t know NotebookLM could do - Fast Company
“Since each notebook is limited only to whatever source materials you supply, the prevalence of those pesky hallucinations seems to be less of an issue.”
www.fastcompany.com/...

Scientists turn methane into medicine in stunning breakthrough Scientists have unveiled a breakthrough way to turn natural gas—long burned as fuel—into valuable chemical building blocks for medicines and other high-demand products. By designing a clever iron-based catalyst powered by LED light, researchers managed to activate stubborn molecules like methane and transform them into complex compounds, even creating the hormone therapy drug dimestrol directly from methane for the first time.

Scientists turn methane into medicine in stunning breakthrough | ScienceDaily
“Researchers have found a way to turn simple natural gas into high-value medicines and chemicals using light and an iron-based catalyst.”

Team of scientists engineer bacteria that could eat cancer from inside out Scientists have engineered bacteria that thrive inside tumors, using oxygen sensing to destroy cancer from within.

Cancer: Hungry Bacteria Could Eat Tumors From Inside Out - Newsweek
“The method is designed to exploit a key weakness in solid cancers—the oxygen-free core that forms as tumor cells die and outgrow their blood supply.”

Sunday thought: Trump’s Real Reason for War Friends,

Trump’s Real Reason for War
“War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else.”