Summary:
Shawn and Troy talk about AI, education, GEMs and more. Dave discusses “Lady Edison”.
Jokes:
A college student is helping me edge the garden beds, using a half-moon lawn edger.
They’ve only used power edgers in the past.
I commented to them about a specific area that looked very good.
They replied, “It took some practice, but I finally found my groove.”
My wife gave me an envelope with, “Not to be opened until 2027” on it.
- Inside was a list of reasons I cannot be trusted to follow simple instructions.
I only took this job in sales for a global prosthetics company so i could tell everyone that i was an international arms dealer
Why are people so secretive when asked, “What’s the lowest rank in the Army?”
I think the scariest part of that song, “Born To Be Wild” is when they find a head out on the highway.
Last year I joined a support group for antisocial people.
- We haven’t met yet.
What do you call a zombie who doesn’t joke around?
- Dead serious.
I know Geddy Lee’s voice is an acquired taste, but keep an open mind, Captain!
Middle School Science Minute
by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
Lady Edison
I was recently reading the July-August 2025 issue of “The Science Teacher”, a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.
In this issue, I read the section, “Right to Source” written by Jessica Fries-Gaither. She wrote an article entitled, “Exploring Everyday Inventions with “Lady Edison”.”
Beulah Louse Henry (1887-1973) was a self-taught inventor, earning 49 patents and creating over 100 inventions over a 50 year period, including a vacuum ice-cream freezer, a bobbinless sewing machine, and an umbrella with color-coordinated snap-on covers.
https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/k12science/id/38075525
Reports from the Front Lines
- First Week Back
- Teacher Support Personnel
- Apple Accessibility
- Playdough Activity
The Social Web
BOSSJOCK JR is on Sale 50% Off the Pro Unlock Thru Labor Day – Have Fun, Make Podcasts! Free to Download https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bossjoc
A gem is a custom AI agent that is trained to perform a specific task. Gems are GREAT for classroom teachers! You can use gems to develop custom lesson plans, rubrics, coloring pages and more! Learn more: https://youtu.be/bPwAB2uUtaU
Midwest vs. Everybody @midwestern_ope
Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer and the official start to soup season
Want to rock your classroom with tech? Wednesday webinars are packed with practical tips and tricks for using technology to engage students and enhance learning. Registration is open for individuals and districts: https://chrmbook.com/ww/?utm_source=xtwitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=jrsowash&utm_content=wednesdaywebinarpromo
National Park Service @NatlParkService
One day you’ll find someone obsessed with you. It’s probably going to be a squirrel.
Word of the day is ‘tamalou’: a French name for an older person who no longer greets their friends with ‘how was your holiday?, but with ‘t’as mal où ?’, ‘where does it hurt?’. There follows an enthusiastic account of aches and pains and doctor’s appointments.
Strategies:
Fact-Checking 101: A Professor Teaches Students About Misinformation
Evans had watched his students over the years show up with fewer facts and more conspiracy theories. Gone were the days when students arrived on campus with dim memories of high school civics. Now they came armed with bold, often misleading beliefs shaped by hours spent each day on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Across six hours of instruction – two hours less than the average teen spends online each day – students nearly doubled in their ability to locate quality information compared to a control group. We thought it wouldn’t be a huge leap to extend our approach to college classrooms.
These lessons took just 150 minutes in total over the semester, and instructors didn’t need to change a thing; they just listed the lessons on the course schedule.
https://cor.inquirygroup.org/curriculum/?tab=collections
Resources:
AXIS The Culture Translator
AI-Gainst AI
What it is: As research about how AI rewires our brains continues to come out, some high school and college students are deciding they’ll opt out of using AI altogether.
Why we can’t stop thinking about it: The young adults interviewed for this piece describe what it’s like to be total outliers amongst their peers—and they acknowledge that their efforts to retain their critical thinking skills might not earn them any earthly reward. A few say that their decision is based on self-respect, a love of learning, and a desire to preserve their own curiosity.
Dia: AI Web Browser
Dia is an AI-first web browser from The Browser Company (makers of Arc) that lets you chat with your tabs—using on-page context to write, learn, plan, and shop right inside the sites you already use. Its built-in assistant can summarize pages, generate and edit text inline, and even pull useful info from sites you’re logged into so you don’t have to hop to separate AI tools. Dia launched in beta in June 2025.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0m-Qnb7r7Q
https://www.diabrowser.com/download
H5P: Personality Quiz – Periodic Table of Elements
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z9COo_wypSTNawMFjt_TKpxepn3bzj98/view?usp=sharing
H5P: Dihydrogen Monoxide Project
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_AKhgciae_QgQ_sWO69aEiUsuR92N-RA/view?usp=sharing
AMLE: Survey of Middle School Interdisciplinary Team Practices
- 91%: Discussing individual students
- 84%: Establishing consistent policies and procedures
- 72%: Team culture building (planning team-wide activities, celebrations, etc.)
- 68%: Reviewing holistic student academic performance
- 59%: Making phone calls home
- 56%: Planning interdisciplinary units/discussing curricular connections
- 51%: Ensuring every student has an adult advocate
- 49%: Discussing weekly homework/assignments
- 36%: Professional learning (reading articles together, book studies, etc.)
SimulateAI
SimulateAI is an immersive educational platform designed to bring the complex world of artificial intelligence ethics to life. Our mission is to empower educators, students, researchers, and lifelong learners through open-ended, consequence-driven simulations that develop critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and systems awareness in an AI-driven world.
Web Spotlight:
I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education.
During a lesson on the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, I watched a classmate discreetly shift in their seat, prop their laptop up on a crossed leg, and highlight the entirety of the chapter under discussion. In seconds, they had pulled up ChatGPT and dropped the text into the prompt box, which spat out an AI-generated annotation of the chapter. These annotations are used for discussions; we turn them in to our teacher at the end of class, and many of them are graded as part of our class participation. What was meant to be a reflective, thought-provoking discussion on slavery and human resilience was flattened into copy-paste commentary.
In Algebra II, after homework worksheets were passed around, I witnessed a peer use their phone to take a quick snapshot, which they then uploaded to ChatGPT. The AI quickly painted my classmate’s screen with what it asserted to be a step-by-step solution and relevant graphs.
Many homework assignments are due by 11:59 p.m., to be submitted online via Google Classroom. We used to share memes about pounding away at the keyboard at 11:57, anxiously rushing to complete our work on time. These moments were not fun, exactly, but they did draw students together in a shared academic experience. Many of us were propelled by a kind of frantic productivity as we approached midnight, putting the finishing touches on our ideas and work. Now the deadline has been sapped of all meaning. AI has softened the consequences of procrastination and led many students to avoid doing any work at all. As a result, these programs have destroyed much of what tied us together as students.
The technology has also led students to focus on external results at the expense of internal growth. The dominant worldview seems to be: Why worry about actually learning anything when you can get an A for outsourcing your thinking to a machine?
Random Thoughts . . .
Think you actually own all those movies you’ve been buying digitally? Think again
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/27/movie-buying-owning-amazon-prime-lawsuit
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