Alfonso Gonzalez

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.”

Fossil fuel pollution’s effect on oceans comes with huge costs » Yale Climate Connections A new study details the vast price society is paying for burning coal, oil, and gas.

Fossil fuel pollution’s effect on oceans comes with huge costs. A new study details the vast price society is paying for burning coal, oil, and gas. yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/02/foss... #environment #ClimateScience #ecology #SciChat

NCCE 2026 Photos I took at tis year’s NCCE conference! It was an amazing experience! I love going to NCCE every year. https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2026/02/16/going-back-to-ncce-2026/

My #NCCE26 recap! 😃🤩
#IamNCCE

Do you have to be polite to AI? The advice you get about talking to chatbots can be truly bizarre, and totally useless. Here's what actually works.

Do you have to be polite to AI?
“From being polite to pretending you're on Star Trek, the advice you get about talking to chatbots can be truly bizarre, and totally useless. Here's what actually works.”

Why Difficult Students Don't Need Mental Breaks Smart Classroom Management In the past five years, a new classroom management strategy has taken hold. The goal of this strategy is to calm and soothe the fragile psyches of the most difficult students. The way it works is that whenever they begin to feel overwhelmed, angry, ... Read more

Why Difficult Students Don't Need Mental Breaks
“By saying ‘You can go to this special place whenever you need to’ you’re giving them proof from an authoritative source that they can’t control themselves. This is a devastating message.”

Einstein Cheating Bot Exposed: What You Should Know %

Einstein Cheating Bot Exposed: What You Should Know
“this cheating ai bot is not something I'm happy about even though it rests in the 404 graveyard”

Nutrition Labels Transformed Food. It’s Time for Environmental Labels to Transform AI. Students and educators can helping raise awareness of the environmental impact of AI on education by creating AI environmental labels

Raising Awareness Of AI's Impact With Environmental Labels | Tech & Learning
“Opting out in schools does not reduce society’s demand for AI. It simply leaves students less prepared to participate in a world in which AI is shaping civic life, careers, and problem-solving.”

Such a powerful and emotional keynote by Thuan Nguyen for the last day of #NCCE26. Brought tears to my eyes.

Teen Phone Addiction: What Actually Works %

Teen Phone Addiction: What Actually Works
“teens pick up their phones 72 times a day & receive a median of 237 notifications? Dr. Brad Marshall helped me realize something in this episode: We're dealing with something designed to override the developing brain”

An essay about viral essays And the questions being addressed by the latest research from Burning Glass Institute and aiEDU

An essay about viral essays
“If wealthy districts teach students to direct AI while under-resourced districts drill skills AI can already do, we will have used the most powerful technology of our generation to widen the gap.” #NCCE26