In this ChatEDU Check-In: Google's AI Training Investment, Liz explores a massive three-year partnership between Google, ISTE, and ASCD to provide AI training to six million educators across the United States. This initiative represents one of the largest private educational investments in decades, specifically targeting hands-on experience with tools like Gemini and NotebookLM.

Key Takeaways:

Google is partnering with ISTE and ASCD to provide AI professional development to all K to 12 and higher education faculty in the U.S.

This large-scale private initiative fills a void left by the closure of the federal Office of Educational Technology and a lack of national guidance.

Critics suggest these programs may serve as customer acquisition campaigns that prioritize specific vendor tools over objective, evidence-based pedagogy.

Liz’s Two Cents: While the involvement of a single vendor raises some questions about commercial influence, the practical reality is that schools need immediate support! Not to mention that so many schools already have Google’s FERPA compliant AI tools at little or no cost. With federal resources stalled, this partnership provides an essential bridge to digital literacy, ensuring that teachers are not left to navigate the complexities of AI integration without a foundational roadmap.

Link to article:

https://www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-new-google-partnership-a-sizable-investment-in-ai-for-teachers/

Sponsored by: Eduaide.ai | AI Created for Teachers. Where Good Ideas Become Great Lessons. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off at eduaid.ai (Code: CHATEDU).

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Google’s Sizable Investment in AI Training for Every U.S. Educator, Liz explores a massive three year partnership between Google and ISTE+ASCD. This initiative aims to provide AI professional development to all six million K-12 and higher education faculty across the United States.

Key Takeaways:

Google has launched its largest educational effort in twenty years to provide hands-on training with tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to the entire American teaching workforce.

The partnership seeks to fill a leadership vacuum created by the closure of the federal Office of Educational Technology, ensuring teachers are not left behind in an AI-driven landscape.

Critics remain skeptical, suggesting that industry-sponsored training may serve more as a customer acquisition campaign than objective, vendor-neutral professional development.

Liz’s Two Cents: The tension here lies in whether a private corporation’s sizable investment can truly serve as a neutral foundation for public literacy. We are seeing a fundamental shift where the architects of the technology are now the primary instructors of its use, leaving little room for independent pedagogical standards.

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In this ChatEDU Check-In: Measuring the AI Skill Gap in the Classroom (For Teachers), Matt explores the launch of the Futurenav Adapt AI assessment by ETS and the current state of teacher AI competency. The episode highlights the tension between the widespread, self-taught use of AI tools by educators and the lack of formal institutional guidance or standardized skill metrics. It examines how schools are navigating the shift from individual teacher initiative to necessary district-wide oversight and legal safety.

Key Takeaways:

A new assessment from ETS, Futurenav Adapt AI, has been launched to create a standard for evaluating how educators recognize, navigate, and ethically implement generative technology.

Despite nearly all districts utilizing some AI tools, a significant training vacuum exists, leaving the majority of teachers to teach themselves basic terminology and prompt engineering on their own.

Relying on the individual initiative of motivated teachers to vet AI tools creates operational and legal risks, especially since only two states currently require districts to have a formal AI policy.

Matt’s Two Cents: While standardized assessments could provide helpful data for custom professional development, we must avoid the "one size fits all" trap. A teacher’s required AI skill set varies wildly by discipline and grade level, and ultimately, these skills must map directly to district priorities. Whether the goal is improving seventh-grade writing or achieving broad AI literacy for a portrait of a graduate, teacher training must be targeted rather than generalized to be truly effective.

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Eduaide is an AI-powered workspace designed for real classroom planning with practical tools like grade-level evaluators and classroom-ready graphic organizers. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at https://www.eduaide.ai/.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: What AI Power Users Actually Do!, Matt explores Anthropic’s New AI Index and what sets top AI users apart from the rest. The episode examines how users interact with generative models, specifically highlighting the difference between simple iteration and true strategic steering. It underscores the growing need for critical discernment as AI outputs become more visually polished.

Key Takeaways:

Most users now treat AI as a work in progress by iterating on responses, yet only thirty percent actually steer the AI by questioning its logic or pushing back on assumptions.

Polished outputs, such as formatted documents or apps, create a discernment gap where users are less likely to identify missing content or verify facts.

High level AI fluency requires mastery of description, delegation, and discernment, with the ability to evaluate and question the machine being the most critical and rarest skill.

Matt’s Two Cents: Kudos to Anthropic as they keep cranking out these great research pieces based on the mountains of chat (and now vibe coding) data they have to analyze. Matt also shares his favorite Gemini Gem right now which is a student AI Chat Autopsy simulator designed to get at some similar takeaways.

⁠https://gemini.google.com/gem/1ju4IL2_8WWnkKfZGPGeFsWSLDhc7vhut?usp=sharing⁠

Sponsored by: ⁠Eduaide.Ai⁠ Eduaide is an AI-powered workspace designed for real classroom planning with practical tools like grade-level evaluators and classroom-ready graphic organizers. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Make Them Read!, Liz explores the systemic decline of long-form reading in classrooms and the rise of the "excerpt culture." This episode examines how the shift toward clips and samples over the last fifteen years has eroded student attention spans and basic reading skills.

Key Takeaways:

The transition from full-length novels to abbreviated samples reflects a broader cultural shift that prioritizes the "reel" and the "clip" over deep literary engagement.

Requiring students to commit to long-form texts acts as a strategic resistance to the monetization of attention, allowing them to reclaim their focus from digital distractions.

Authentic comprehension and original voice are best developed through "flash essays" and unassisted, timed tasks that remove AI bumpers and force students to confront intellectual uncertainty.

Liz’s Two Cents: There is a profound tension between "meeting students where they are" and the pedagogical necessity of waiting for them to catch up to the heights of great literature. If educators treat declining attention spans as a terminal condition rather than a challenge to be met with more rigorous engagement, they risk making the "end of reading" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Article Link:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/youth-reading-books-professors/685825/?taid=69814c1dbe49b700014af753&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

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