Education Futures

Episoder

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  Redesigning school for the AI age 17.08.2026 45min

  Dan Effland is the Chief of Staff & Strategy at Summit Public Schools, where he leads the continued evolution of Summit's school model. He holds a Master's in Special Education from Dominican University and a Master's in Public School Building Administration from Columbia University's Teachers College.Before entering education, Effland spent over a decade as a professional musician in Chicago. He changed careers in his mid-thirties, teaching guitar to middle schoolers before joining Teach For America — where his cohort, mostly in their twenties, nicknamed him "Stepdad." He became a special education teacher in Chicago and then Seattle, joined Summit Public Schools in 2017, and went on to serve as Dean of Culture & Instruction at Summit Sierra and Executive Director of Summit Atlas High School in West Seattle.He now leads Summit's innovation work: designing "Summit 3.0", an evolved school model that builds on what Summit has promised families for over two decades and responds to the demands of the AI powered era. Summit operates seven charter schools across California and Washington serving roughly 3,000 students, following its earlier "Summit 2.0" personalization model, which scaled the Summit Learning Platform to nearly 400 schools and 100,000 students nationwide. He also sits on the board of the Washington State Charter Schools Association.In this episode, Dan talks with Svenia Busson about:Stripping school down to three elements — kids, outcomes, and resources — to redesign without inherited assumptionsWhy AI doesn't replace a school model, it reveals whether you actually have oneRebuilding Summit's model for the third time: from "college for all" to personalized learning to an AI-native designTreating AI as infrastructure — a data layer and knowledge graph — to dynamically match resources to students, not just as a set of toolsWhy "beliefs come first, model comes next, tools come last," and Summit's push to "create the market" for AI-native school infrastructureRethinking "cheating": protecting the learning while empowering the learner in an AI-saturated classroomRedesigning Expeditions — two-week, ungraded, off-campus career immersions — and why "learning without walls" might be where school is headedWhich durable skills matter more, not less, when a chatbot can write a competent essay in secondsA former teacher now redesigning what school itself should be in the age of AI.Mentioned in this episode: Summit Public Schools · Marshall Street Initiatives · Robin Lake / Center on Reinventing Public Education, who recommended Dan as a guest · Futre, Diane Tavenner's career-exploration platform, used by Summit juniors and seniors · Justin Reich's MIT Teaching Systems Lab, referenced from an earlier Education Futures episodeMentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  Designing ethical AI characters for kids 13.08.2026 41min

  Dr. Sonia Tiwari is a children's media researcher based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Director of Research at Oki Pie Lab. She holds a PhD in Learning, Design, and Technology from Penn State University, along with an MFA in Animation and a BS in Film, credentials she first put to work as a character designer in the video game industry before turning to research on how children bond with characters and, more recently, AI.At Oki Pie Lab, she runs weekly art workshops for children ages five to ten — more than 100 to date — using what she observes each week to test where AI helps kids create and where it gets in the way. Her research includes Tiwari, S. (2025). Designing Expressive Arts Workshops for Families Using AI Tools. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 16(2), 194–204, and Tiwari, S. Designing ethical AI characters for children's early learning experiences. AI Brain Child 1, 11 (2025) — built from analyzing 60 social media videos of 20 AI characters marketed to children as young as three. She consults with edtech founders — including Jules Stories, a UK-based screen-free storytelling companion — on whether their AI characters genuinely serve children's development, and in 2025 she was selected for the Falling Walls Foundation's Female Science Talents Intensive Track.In this episode, Sonia talks with Svenia Busson about:Why visual design — not just language or policy — shapes how children bond with AI charactersThe psychology of "cute" character design, from Japan's Kawaii culture to Germany's Kindchenschema, and how it's used to mask age-inappropriate AIThe "sticky chat patterns" she's studying with Dr. Jennifer Shen (Keene University) — and their cost to kids' ability to explore beyond one interestHer AI Character Assessment framework in AI Brain Child, built from analyzing characters marketed to ages three to eightWhy safety needs three layers — design, family, and law — and why design alone can't fix a systemic problemThe patchwork of AI regulation worldwide, from loophole-prone California state laws to stricter approaches across EuropeRating efforts underway, from Common Sense Media and Digital Promise to the kidSAFE Seal ProgramWhat Blake, Carter and Velloso's CHI 2026 research reveals about why teens build their own Character.AI companionsSonia's recommendation for a future guest: Diana Joseph, CEO of the Corporate Accelerator Forum and an innovation and entrepreneurship strategist working at the intersection of AI and organizational innovation.Mentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  Inside a student-led movement for AI Literacy 10.08.2026 46min

  Ian Cho graduated from St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and heads to Yale University this fall to study cognitive science. Frustrated that AI had quietly become a "taboo subject" wrapped in cheating anxiety, he founded what is now called Sailing (Student AI Literacy Interscholastic Navigator Group), a peer-led initiative that gives students across schools a space to talk openly about how they use AI and the policies governing it. Outside of Sailing, Ian builds his own AI-powered tools, including productivity apps that pause a Pomodoro timer whenever he looks away from his desk.Ingrid Namala is entering her fourth and final year at St. Mark's School, where she plans to study neuroscience. She joined Sailing shortly after Ian launched it and now co-leads the group, having presented her own research on the history of generative AI and prompting technique at Sailing's first interscholastic symposium alongside a student from another school. Much of her advocacy centers on protecting academic integrity and destigmatizing honest conversations between students and teachers about when and how AI should be used.Inspired by AI Co-Lab, the teacher network launched by their teacher Maureen Russo Rodríguez, they grew Sailing into a virtual community spanning more than fifteen schools, running hybrid symposiums, "four corners" debates, and informal salons between students and faculty.In this episode, Ian and Ingrid talk with Svenia Busson about:Sailing (sailingedu.org) — how a "taboo" subject became a peer-led dialogue across 15+ schoolsThe Chinese Room thought experiment — and what it reveals about outsourcing understanding to AIThe hidden toll of unequal AI use — academic integrity, trust, and the students left behindReimagining assessment — in-class writing, oral exams, and whether it's "the death of the essay"Why the brain needs friction — reframing struggle as a skill worth protecting, not a bug to eliminateThe craft of prompting — from lazy fragments to elaborate, metacognitive prompts, and staying polite with AIThe case against banning AI for under-21s — literacy over prohibitionAI, authenticity, and the future of work — why staying human might be the real advantageMentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  When AI meets grassroots education in India 06.08.2026 51min

  Dr. Rukmini Banerji is one of the world's most influential figures in grassroots education. Trained as an economist — a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a PhD from the University of Chicago — she chose classroom-level work over academia, returning to India in 1996 to join Pratham, one of the world's largest education NGOs, where she served for over a decade as CEO before recently stepping into the role of Senior Advisor.In 2005 she launched the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), the citizen-led household survey that has demonstrated, year after year, a hard truth: going to school is not the same as learning. She also pioneered Pratham's Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach — grouping children by what they can actually do rather than their age — now used across India and adapted in parts of Africa and Asia. For this body of work she was awarded the 2021 Yidan Prize for Education Development, the world's highest education accolade.Today she is bringing that same rigor to AI. Pratham has partnered with Anthropic to deploy a Claude-powered "Anytime Testing Machine" (ATM) — an assessment tool that grades handwritten student work and generates curriculum-aligned questions, with teachers reviewing AI feedback before it reaches learners. First adapted for over 5,000 women in Pratham's Second Chance program, it is now piloting across 20 schools with plans to reach 100 by the end of 2026.In this episode, Rukmini talks with Svenia Busson about:Why she left economics for the classroom — and how "big ambition and not much money" shaped Pratham's community-driven modelThe origin of Teaching at the Right Level — teach the child where they are, not where the curriculum says they should beWhat ASER has revealed every year since 2005 — that enrollment and learning are two very different thingsPratham's partnership with Anthropic and the Claude-powered "Anytime Testing Machine" — and why human oversight is non-negotiableThe gap between what edtech companies want to sell and what the ground actually needs — "technology rains on you, then you're expected to use it"Assessing learning in the age of AI — why the process (the questions a student asks) matters more than the final essayWhy middle school (ages 10–14) is education's next great frontier — and why the 15-year-old of 2031 must look different from the one of 2026Mentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  A maker's guide to creativity and AI 03.08.2026 41min

  Christine Braun is the Chief Creative Officer of Cresconova, the education charity behind Cresconova Labs, a hands-on studio for ages 8–16 in Chelsea, London. She holds a BFA from the University of the Arts and a Master of Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts, a grounding in material-making that runs through everything she's built since.Her path began with founding Robots for Kids Too, a hands-on robotics company she and her husband ran in Vermont after homeschooling her own gifted son, before she went on to manage the Innovation Lab at The Nueva School in Silicon Valley, one of the country's leading schools for gifted learners. She later directed Harvard's REEF Makerspace at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, working to break down the silos between academic disciplines, and served as an Adjunct Professor of Engineering at the University of San Francisco. She won the 2020 Lemelson-MIT Excite Award for invention education and mentored on Disney+'s Shop Class. Today, as CCO of Cresconova, she shapes the creative vision behind both Cresconova Global (online, ages 6–11) and Cresconova Labs, the organization's new in-person studio.In this episode, Christine talks with Svenia Busson about:Her path from sculpture and furniture design to founding a robotics company for her own gifted sonWhat "design thinking" really means inside The Nueva School's Innovation LabBuilding Harvard's REEF Makerspace to break down the walls between academic disciplinesThe difference between "gifted" and "inspired" students — and why Cresconova doesn't test for talentCresconova's Inquiry, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking framework — and how it scales from age 5 to 18The "human-to-AI interaction" protocol: question, frame, unpack, own, iterateWhy she believes AI expands creativity rather than threatening the maker traditionWhy students turn to AI instead of trusted adults — and the role shame plays in that shift(Christine also recommended Stephanie Couch, Executive Director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, as a future guest.)Mentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  Can AI leapfrog India's learning crisis? 30.07.2026 45min

  Gouri Gupta is Senior Project Director for EdTech at Central Square Foundation (CSF), one of India's leading education nonprofits, based in New Delhi, where she has led the EdTech portfolio for nearly a decade. A Chartered Accountant (rank holder) and IIM Bangalore MBA, she began her career at the Boston Consulting Group before helping build the National Skill Development Corporation, a Government of India public-private partnership tackling skilling at national scale.At CSF, Gouri has turned EdTech from scattered pilots into system-level infrastructure for children in low-income India. She co-built EdTech Tulna, a quality-standards index developed with IIT Bombay that has shaped roughly $173M in government procurement across 21,000+ schools; leads the LiftEd accelerator supporting eight solutions reaching over 3 million children; and launched AI Samarth, India's first AI-literacy curriculum framework, built with IIT Madras and Google.org, targeting 5 million students, teachers, and parents. Her team also runs TicTacLearn (200M+ video plays) and the Bharat Survey for EdTech, a first-of-its-kind household study of technology use in low-income India.In this episode, Gouri talks with Svenia Busson about:The two ways AI actually moves the needle — powering proven EdTech (Chimple, RocketLearn, ThinkZone) and creating experiences like teacher coaching, tutoring, and assessment that weren't possible beforeWhy CSF acts as an ecosystem enabler rather than a product builder — supply shaping, evidence generation, and government adoptionHard evidence from the ground — Chimple's 0.3 SD gain in an RCT, ConveGenius, and an AI teacher-coaching pilot in Uttar PradeshThe Indic-language gap — why AI being two-to-five years behind on India's 22 official languages could widen inequity, and what AI4Bharat and Bodhi AI are doing about itWhat AI in a government classroom really looks like — labs, smart TVs, shared home phones, and the rise of two-phone householdsDefining AI literacy through AI Samarth — empowered, ethical, safe use, not "AI as Google search"Resilience and collaboration — the human skills at risk of "cognitive stunting," a term she borrows from BrookingsWhy pilots break at scale — product, program, governance, and the unsolved question of how governments budget for AIA clear-eyed look at what it takes to make AI serve 250 million children — not just the ones who already have the most.Links mentioned in this episodeCentral Square Foundation — https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/EdTech Tulna (quality standards index) — https://edtechtulna.org/AI Samarth (AI literacy curriculum) — https://www.aisamarth.centralsquarefoundation.org/TicTacLearn — https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/edtechBharat Survey for EdTech (BaSE) — https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/reports-and-publicationsAI4Bharat (Indic-language models, IIT Madras) — https://ai4bharat.iitm.ac.in/Development Innovation Lab, University of Chicago (Prof. Michael Kremer) — https://bfi.uchicago.edu/development-innovation-lab/Khan Academy / Khanmigo — https://www.khanacademy.org/Madhi Foundation (Tamil Nadu, guest recommendation) — https://www.madhifoundation.org/Mentioned in this episode:Education Futures FellowshipA six-week programme starting on September 22nd, where seven world-leading experts in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and AI child safety will share everything they know with you: educationfutures.ai/fellowship.
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  Designing safe & pedagogically sound AI 28.07.2026 7min

  On building safe, pedagogically sound AI for young people and the fellowship we built to do it. This fellowship is for builders of AI x education products or anyone thinking to do so in the future.https://educationfutures.ai/fellowship https://educationfutures.substack.com/
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  No grades, no homework: inside a self-directed school 27.07.2026 48min

  Dr. Tyler S. Thigpen is the co-founder and Head of School at The Forest School: An Acton Academy, a self-directed K3–12 microschool in Trilith, near Atlanta, Georgia, and co-founder of the Institute for Self-Directed Learning. He holds a doctorate in Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Master's in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Master's in Theological Studies from Regent College.Before founding The Forest School in 2018, Tyler wore many hats — church minister, Spanish teacher, and public-school principal — and co-founded Chattahoochee Hills Charter School and MENTOR Georgia, later working as a partner at the school-redesign nonprofit Transcend. Today The Forest School serves roughly 160 learners on campus, plus Forest School Online, which reaches students across the US, Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, China, Mexico, and Thailand. Tyler is also an instructor and Academic Director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where he teaches "Introduction to Teaching With AI"; the author of The Playbook for Self-Directed Learning (Routledge, 2025); and the creator of the Story Arts curriculum, which was adopted statewide by Georgia's Department of Education.In this episode, Tyler talks with Svenia Busson about:The thread connecting a church minister, a Spanish teacher, and a self-directed microschool founderInside The Forest School — no homework, no grades, guides instead of teachers, badges instead of tests"Practicals": oral defenses and performance tasks that make learning AI-proof — you can use AI along the road, but you have to prove mastery at the endWhy discernment and judgment are "the new literacy" — and where he agrees with MIT's Justin Reich that AI literacy can't really be taughtCognitive debt — keeping learners in the "challenge zone" so the thinking never gets outsourced to AIThe four phases of self-directed learning: desire, resourcefulness, initiative, and persistenceScaling without cloning — the Institute for Self-Directed Learning and redesigning models with 20 Georgia superintendentsSliding-scale tuition and "diverse by design" — why being self-directed makes the school leaner and more affordable
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  Why AI should (and can) make schools more human 23.07.2026 51min

  Robin Lake is Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. For more than two decades she has been one of the most respected systems thinkers in American education — researching charter schools, district–charter collaboration, portfolio strategy, and urban school reform, and testifying before the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee and state legislatures. She holds a BA in International Studies and an MPA in Education and Urban Policy from the University of Washington, and was named to the 2016 class of Pahara-Aspen Education Fellows.Over the past three years, Robin has pivoted CRPE's work toward AI in education. She writes the newsletter Think Forward: Learning with AI, leads the inaugural Think Forward Fellowship (bringing together policymakers, system leaders, educators, researchers, funders, and technologists), and convenes the annual Think Forward: Learning with AI Forum. Her recent work includes Getting Beyond the Lightbulb Stage: Why AI Is Not Yet Transforming Education (CRPE, 2026), based on 50+ stakeholder interviews.In this episode, Robin talks with Svenia Busson about:The "lightbulb moment" vs. the transformation moment — why AI is saving teachers time but hasn't yet changed how schools actually work"Precision learning" picking up where personalized learning failed — inspired by a Fred Hutch cancer-center billboard, "We treat your cancer like it's YOUR cancer"Why the real prize is making schools more human — using AI to deepen relationships, not replace themFixing measurement and accountability first — why old assessment systems block the durable skills (adaptability, resilience, judgment) the future demandsAI governance as an R&D endeavour — balancing guardrails against innovation, and the case for state-backed "innovation districts"The charter school model as a "license to dream" — what Agua Fria's AI-powered career academies and Summit Public Schools revealWhy schools of education are failing to prepare new teachers for AI — and the certification signals that could change it fastestA clear-eyed case that AI's greatest gift to education could be making school human.Links mentionedRobin's newsletter — Think Forward: Learning with AI: https://crpe.substack.comCRPE — AI in Education: https://crpe.org/projects/ai-in-education/Getting Beyond the Lightbulb Stage (CRPE, 2026): https://crpe.org/getting-beyond-the-lightbulb-stage-why-ai-is-not-yet-transforming-education/2026: A Year for Leadership (CRPE): https://crpe.org/2026-a-year-for-leadership/Wicked Opportunities: Leveraging AI to Transform Education (CRPE): https://crpe.org/wicked-opportunities-leveraging-ai-to-transform-education/Summit Public Schools: https://summitps.org
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  Funding evidence-based applications of AI in education 20.07.2026 50min

  Kumar Garg is President of Renaissance Philanthropy, the science-and-technology philanthropy he co-founded with Tom Kalil in 2024 to help donors invest in high-impact research across AI, climate, and education. He holds a BA from Dartmouth and a JD from Yale Law School, and cut his teeth over eight years in the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he led the administration's STEM-education agenda — including the "Educate to Innovate" campaign that mobilized more than $1 billion in philanthropic and in-kind investment, and the White House Science Fair.Before Renaissance, he spent nearly six years (2018–2024) as Vice President and Managing Director at Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt, where he built much of its science, talent, and education portfolio and launched the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI). He is one of the principal architects and evangelists of "learning engineering" — the idea that instruction should be treated as a systems-level engineering and data challenge — and delivered Carnegie Mellon's 2022 Simon Initiative Distinguished Lecture, "Shaping the Field of Learning Engineering." Today, Renaissance runs a DARPA-inspired "fund model" that raises capital against well-scoped three-to-five-year technical bets, from doubling middle-school math outcomes for low-income students to catching early-reading difficulties before third grade.In this episode, Kumar talks with Svenia Busson about:The Renaissance "fund model" — how naming a bottleneck, recruiting a technical lead, and raising from donors like an investor raises from LPs unlocks three-to-five-year breakthroughsWhy environmental factors like lead poisoning and classroom air quality may drive learning outcomes as much as pedagogy — and can move a child 10+ IQ pointsLearning engineering explained in plain language — the four always-running loops of learning science, design, instruction, and the individual learnerLEVI Math's north star — doubling the rate of middle-school math gains for low-income kids at under $1,000 per student, down from the $4,000 high-dosage tutoring benchmarkThe LEVI Literacy Initiative — using AI as a diagnostic screener, not a teacher, to flag dyslexia and speech errors in the K–2 window"Dynamic dosing" and the human + AI tutoring triangle — why teachers and tutors enhance, rather than compete with, AI toolsBuilding rigor into edtech — the Tools Competition's research-partner requirement and ending moonshots with published RCTsWhy the advanced AI-and-education world is "shockingly small," and how DARPA-style active program management grows itmentioned in the episode:Renaissance Philanthropy — https://www.renaissancephilanthropy.org/Learning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI) — https://learning-engineering-virtual-institute.org/LEVI Literacy Initiative — https://learning-engineering-virtual-institute.org/literacy/The Tools Competition — https://tools-competition.org/Big If True Science accelerator — https://www.renaissancephilanthropy.org/big-if-true-science-acceleratorSchmidt Futures / Schmidt Sciences — https://www.schmidtsciences.org/Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP) — https://leadelimination.org/Center for Global Development (lead pollution & learning research) — https://www.cgdev.org/J-PAL (2012 high-dosage tutoring research) — https://www.povertyactionlab.org/Carnegie Mellon "dynamic dosing" human + AI tutoring study (2025) — https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2025/September/in-study-of-human-ai-tutoring-with-us-seventh-graders-human-tutors-enhanced-the-benefits-of-ai-tutorsDARPA — https://www.darpa.mil/
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  Why teachers should not reject AI without trying it 16.07.2026 56min

  Maureen Russo Rodriguez is coming up on her 20th year as an educator and teaches language and literature — primarily Spanish, with occasional turns in English — at St. Mark's School, a small boarding school outside Boston. With a background in comparative literature and a stint in higher ed, she co-founded AI Co-Lab, a teacher-led, peer-to-peer network for building AI literacy. What began with a single faculty email she sent the week ChatGPT launched (a tool she shares a birthday with) has grown from nine teachers into a movement of 900+ educators across 300+ schools, with materials released under a Creative Commons license so any school can remix and reuse them.Ron Spalletta teaches in the English department at the same school, with a background rooted in poetry (and a little molecular biology). Through a Patterson Innovation Grant, he has been probing what AI means for writing, learning, and assessment — and has designed several of Co-Lab's monthly "explorations," including a widely used one on alternative assessment built to help teachers profile themselves as assessors and rethink AI-resistant assignments.In this episode, Maureen and Ron talk with Svenia Busson about:Defining AI literacy for teachers — awareness of what these tools are and aren't, in order to preserve the human core of teachingWhy AI literacy is "a lot more driver's ed than automotive repair" — hands-on practice, not looking under the hoodHow Co-Lab works as a peer-to-peer network — structured monthly explorations, breakout rooms, and PD that pushes back on "one-and-done" webinars and consultant hypeThe four types of "naysayers" — and why refusing AI can be a legitimate, informed act of teacher agencyGenerative AI as an "arrival technology" — it's already in students' lives whether or not it enters your classroomSarah Schneider Kavanagh's dilemma-and-decision cycle — how professional judgment breaks down if teachers never touch the toolsReinventing assessment in the age of AI — from oral exams to AI-resistant tasks, and pairing an LLM's scope with a teacher's discernmentThe students who worry them most — the ones doing everything right and watching peers coast on A-pluses through dishonest AI useA conversation about why AI literacy isn't optional — it's how teachers keep their agency.Links mentioned in the episode:AI Co-Lab: https://www.educolab.org/Justin Reich & Jesse Dukes, The Homework Machine podcast: https://www.teachlabpodcast.com/On "arrival technologies" (Reich & Dukes): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385821042_Toward_a_New_Theory_of_Arrival_Technologies
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  Why kids & teens get attached to AI, and the risks 13.07.2026 48min

  Dr. Mathilde Cerioli is a cognitive neuroscientist working at the intersection of child development, AI, and public policy. She holds a Master's in child psychology from Paris and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Université de Montréal, where her research focused on using board games and video games to improve cognitive functioning in children and adolescents, including those with learning disabilities.After her doctorate she worked with EdTech and video-game companies, translating child-development science into product design. She went on to co-found everyone.ai, a California-based nonprofit that anticipates, educates on, and evaluates the risks and opportunities of AI for children and youth (ages 0–25), alongside co-founders Grégory Renard, Anne-Sophie Seret, and Céline Malvoisin. As Chief Scientist, she leads its research, authored the founding report The Future of Child Development in the AI Era (2024), and recently launched the AïA Safety Builder — an assessment system that scores AI products on 15 human-like behaviors driving anthropomorphism in children. She is also Chief Scientist of the iRAISE Alliance, the global coalition launched with the Paris Peace Forum, and advises OpenAI's Expert Council on Well-Being and AI.In this episode, Mathilde talks with Svenia Busson about:Why children don't have "mini adult brains" — and what developmental science says AI design keeps getting wrongThe 15 human-like behaviors that make AI feel human — flattery, mimicry, validation, proactivity — and when they tip from helpful to harmfulAnthropomorphism and attachment — why kids bond with machines faster than adults doSensitive periods, pruning, and plasticity — how AI introduced too early risks cognitive "stunting" (echoing Rebecca Winthrop's work at Brookings)The adolescent brain, reward systems, and a rat-and-alcohol study that explains why teens crave AI approvalWhy friction and "expectation violation" in messy teen friendships aren't a bug — but how the brain actually learnsCognitive offloading in adults — metacognition, burnout, and the risk for young people entering the workforceDoing rigorous research when a new model ships every week — the iRAISE expert-consensus approachIf you are building AI tools in the space this is a must-listen.Links mentioned:everyone.ai — https://everyone.aiiRAISE Alliance — https://i-raise.orgParis Peace Forum — https://parispeaceforum.orgRebecca Winthrop, Brookings Institution — https://www.brookings.edu/people/rebecca-winthrop/ and her article on cognitive stunting: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting/
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  Two students on AI, cheating, and the future of work 09.07.2026 51min

  Henry Scott studies at the London Interdisciplinary School (lis.ac.uk), pursuing a Bachelor of Arts and Science in Interdisciplinary Problems and Methods, and will be part of the school's third graduating class. Dyslexic since childhood, he turned early to AI dictation tools to help articulate his thinking — a habit he credits with sharpening his own unassisted writing over time. At LIS he took an AI and Ethics module taught by legal scholar Emma Rengers, wrote a four-page AI declaration for a capstone project he partly "vibe-coded," and built a custom AI assistant — nicknamed Clover — to manage his calendar and track his mood and habits.Felix Audebert is a first-year student at Forward College (forward-college.eu), the European university where students spend one year each in Lisbon, Paris, and Berlin. He is pursuing a double bachelor's in Politics & International Relations and Business & Leadership. Felix uses AI almost daily and has access to Forward College's AI hub, which includes a tool that flags how much of a student's work risks tipping into cognitive offloading. He recently used AI to help a Portuguese impact-measurement startup narrow down interview targets for a client project.In this episode, Henry and Felix talk with Svenia Busson about:Using AI as an assistant rather than letting it think for youThe line between cognitive offloading and freeing up mental bandwidthWhy both still write by hand — and the NTNU brain-connectivity research (Frontiers in Psychology) behind itHow Forward College and LIS each handle AI in the classroom, from AI hubs to mandatory declarationsThe honesty gap — why students under-report AI use, and tools like Consensus that can confirm your own bias back to youRethinking assessment in the AI era, from written declarations to oral exams ("vivas")The EU AI Act (high-level summary), algorithmic bias in immigration and parole systems, and what it means for the workforce they're enteringEmotional offloading — AI companionship, naming your assistant, and where human connection still wins
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  Wartime lessons: Ukraine's bet on AI in education 06.07.2026 48min

  Oksana Matiiash is the CEO of WINWIN EdTech Center of Excellence, Ukraine's national hub for technology and innovation in education. Launched in December 2025 under Ukraine's Global Innovation Strategy, the Center generates evidence through research and foresight and pilots education technologies, including AI, while Ukraine navigates a full-scale war. It also brings together government, educators, researchers, startups, and global partners to scale innovations that improve learning. The Center's partners include the Ministries of Digital Transformation and of Education and Science of Ukraine, UNICEF, Google for Education, OpenAI, Estonian Centre for International Development (ESTDEV).Oksana holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Scholar, and a law degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.In this episode, Oksana talks with Svenia Busson about:Why Ukraine launched a national EdTech Center to accelerate education innovation during the war and in the age of AILeading wartime emergency education — and what crisis taught her about what school systems actually needThe WINWIN EdTech Center's three pillars: research and foresight, innovation and pilots, ecosystem-buildingUkraine's new OpenAI-funded study on how AI is shaping learning for students living through years of disrupted schoolingWhy teachers, not students, come first in her AI rollout — even as kids learn to prompt on TikTokThe World Bank-backed RCT where six weeks of tech-assisted tutoring closed months of learning lossBuilding a "Responsible AI" framework with teachers as co-designers, not just recipientsThe critical-thinking and learning-agency skills she considers non-negotiable in an information war
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  Alpha School: 2 hours of academics, the rest for life skills 02.07.2026 55min

  MacKenzie Price is the co-founder of Alpha School and the AI-driven 2 Hour Learning model that powers it, a Stanford-trained psychologist who left the traditional path the day her daughter came home from second grade and said, simply, "school is boring."In 2014, working alongside the colleague she still calls "the OG, the Original Guide," Price opened the first Alpha campus in Austin, Texas, betting that AI-personalized, mastery-based instruction could compress a full day of core academics into two hours. The bet paid off: Alpha students now grow two to five-and-a-half times faster than peers on NWEA MAP Growth assessments, and the model has expanded to more than 50 campuses, including Texas Sports Academy (low-to-no-cost, athletics-focused, partly funded through Texas education savings accounts) and Waypoint Academy, a wilderness-based program. This fall she's taking the model international, with new World School campuses opening in Ecuador and Kenya, building on an earlier pilot that brought the model to roughly 1,000 Ukrainian refugee students.Price built Alpha around three commitments: kids learn twice the material in a fraction of the time, kids build real-world life skills through afternoon workshops, and — first and foremost — kids love school. By Alpha's own surveys, 95% of students say they do, and as many as 60% say they'd rather be in class than on vacation. She hosts her own Future of Education podcast and shares Alpha's experiments with more than a million followers across social media.In this episode, MacKenzie talks with Svenia Busson about:Why AI-driven mastery learning can compress a school day into two hours — without losing depthThe "guide" model — trading lesson plans and lectures for one-on-one motivation and emotional coachingCognitive load theory in practice — keeping every student in their own zone of productive strugglePaying kids to learn — the financial-literacy logic behind Alpha's motivation systemTexas Sports Academy and the wilderness-based Waypoint Academy — turning "selection bias" into a design principleBringing the model into public schools, and new World School campuses launching in Ecuador and KenyaAlpha X projects — the teenagers behind a self-produced Broadway musical, a six-figure jewelry brand, and CPR-certified rescue trainingWhy MacKenzie believes philosophy, not computer science, is becoming education's most valuable subject
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  What AI is doing to a generation of disengaged kids 29.06.2026 53min

  Jenny Anderson is an award-winning journalist and author with 25 years in the field, including a decade covering finance at The New York Times — where she won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2008 for her coverage of Merrill Lynch ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. She later pioneered coverage of the "science of learning" at Quartz, and now contributes to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. She is the co-author, with Rebecca Winthrop (Director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings), of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better (thedisengagedteen.com) — the product of five years of research, including a survey of more than 65,000 students and 2,000 parents conducted with Brookings and Transcend, into why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. She writes the weekly Substack newsletter How to Be Brave, reaching tens of thousands of educators and parents. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Teen Flourishing and co-host of Ask the Kids, a podcast with Transcend Education. In this episode, Jenny talks with Svenia Busson about:The disengagement gap — why 75% of kids love school in primary years, but only 25% still do by 10th gradeThe Four Modes framework — Passenger, Achiever, Resistor, and Explorer — and why fewer than 4% of students land in Explorer modeWhy phones and AI aren't the root cause of the teen mental-health crisis — academic pressure consistently ranks higherSchool models built for agency — Big Picture Learning's semester-long internships, Red Bridge School, and Valor Collegiate Academies' "school within a school"Assessment in the age of AI — competency-based learning, portraits of a graduate, and why parents resist abandoning high-stakes exams like the GCSEsThe AI silence at home — why most teens use AI regularly while few talk to their parents about itAI, writing, and "cognitive stunting" — what outsourcing the first draft costs a developing thinker, building on Rebecca Winthrop's NYT piece on AI and creativityWhat parents can actually do — testing the tools themselves, and protecting space for productive struggle
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  What "no tech sundays" can teach us about AI 25.06.2026 43min

  Bethany Koby-Hirschmann is a designer, social entrepreneur, and co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of Fam Studio, a research and design practice based in Somerset, England. She holds a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath, and is completing a PhD on youth co-creation and the uses of enchantment. In 2012, after finding a discarded laptop in a skip near her home in East London, she co-founded Tech Will Save Us with her husband, Daniel Hirschmann, on the conviction that children should be producers of technology, not just consumers of it.Tech Will Save Us grew into a STEAM company selling in 97 countries and partnered with the BBC, Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM to design the BBC micro:bit — a pocket-sized computer distributed free to a million UK children that has since reached more than four million users worldwide. After selling the company in 2021, Bethany founded Fam Studio, which co-creates with families and children to build technologies, learning content, and experiences centered on people and the planet. Current projects include a multimodal "Imagination Tool" that uses generative AI to bring children's voices into large-scale co-creation, and a wellbeing-and-AI research partnership with Oxford's Reuben College and its Child-Centred AI Design Lab.In this episode, Bethany talks with Svenia Busson about:Finding a laptop in a skip — the origin story behind Tech Will Save UsDesigning the BBC micro:bit with Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM — reaching four million children across 97 countriesWhy Fam Studio exists to serve "the village," not just the childTechno-optimism versus AI anxiety — holding both at onceWhether AI reinforces the industrial-era school model or finally breaks it openBuilding the "Imagination Tool" — using generative AI to bring children's voices into co-creation at scale"No Tech Sundays" and the house rules her family set for her teenager's AI useMoving from human-centered to life-centered design — what biomimicry teaches educatorsShe closes with future-guest picks: Caroline Essame, author of Why Nature Matters (Routledge); Noan Fesnoux, creative adviser to Dubai's Museum of the Future (LinkedIn); Liz Robinson, CEO of Big Education (bigeducation.org); and Jenny Gibson of Cambridge's PEDAL Centre (pedalhub.net).
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  Education Futures Live: AI & Education Meetup (London) 23.06.2026 53min

  This special episode is a recording of a live panel discussion from the AI & Education Meetup series, hosted by Education Futures at the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS).Svenia is joined by four guests at the intersection of AI and learning: Ash Brockwell, LIS associate professor and lead of the new Education Futures master's; Niccolò Pescetelli, LIS associate professor leading the AI & Collective Intelligence program; Stephen Jull, GeoGebra GmbH co-founder now Global Head of AI Educational Technology at Teach For All; and Bibi Groot, behavioral scientist and Chief Impact Officer at Eedi, who runs large-scale RCTs on AI tutors.The conversation moves through what it means to "learn" when AI can retrieve and summarize anything instantly, the risk of cognitive offloading and "cognitive surrender," and evidence from a 12-week chess RCT on hints and productive struggle. The panel also digs into relationality and embodied learning, how Teach For All is building AI literacy at scale across 63 countries, tools designed to cut screen time while still using AI (like Eedi's QR-code diagnostic system), and closes with each guest's vision of a preferable — not just probable — future for education, including a sharp reminder from the audience that 70% of children globally still lack basic literacy access.Recorded live in London as part of Education Futures' ongoing meetup series exploring desirable futures for education in the age of AI.
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  Why we can't teach AI Literacy yet 22.06.2026 54min

  Justin Reich is an Associate Professor at MIT and Director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, author of Failure to Disrupt (Harvard University Press), host of the TeachLab podcast, and the force behind The Homework Machine — a landmark 7-part podcast series investigating what's really happening with AI in classrooms across the US.We asked him, one of the most respected education technology researchers in the world a simple question: how should schools teach students to use AI?His answer? We don't know yet, and pretending we do is the problem.In this conversation with Svenia Busson, Justin explores:Why "AI literacy" follows the same broken playbook as digital citizenship and computational thinking — and will likely fail students the same wayWhat the history of web literacy teaches us: it took 25 years to find strategies that actually workWhy domain expertise — not AI knowledge — may be the most critical factor in using AI wellWhat to make of "AI-powered" schools like Alpha SchoolWhat students themselves are saying: two-thirds of US students say AI is harming their critical thinkingWhy "the homework machine" is the most honest name for what's happening in classrooms todayAlso mentioned in this episode:Mike Caulfield's SIFT framework for teaching web literacy: https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082322A Guide to AI in Schools: Perspectives for the Perplexed — MIT Teaching Systems Lab guidebook (August 2025) https://tsl.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GuideToAIInSchools.pdf"Stop Pretending to Know How to Teach AI" — Justin's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (November 2025) https://www.chronicle.com/article/stop-pretending-you-know-how-to-teach-aiThe Homework Machine podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-homework-machine-what-ai-is-really-doing-in-classrooms/id583456652?i=1000747231954 (a must listen)
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  Measuring the real impact of AI in education 18.06.2026 35min

  What does it actually take to know if an AI tutor is helping kids learn? Bibi Groot, Chief Impact Officer at Eedi Labs, has spent her career answering exactly that question — first at the Behavioral Insights Team (aka the Nudge Unit, co-founded with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler), then in classrooms across the UK and Latin America.In this episode, Bibi walks us through how Eedi's diagnostic engine works — 60,000 carefully designed multiple-choice questions, each distractor linked to a specific misconception — and why understanding why a student gets something wrong matters as much as knowing they got it wrong.Bibi also introduces a concept that should alarm everyone in edtech: cognitive surrender — the risk that when AI does all the thinking, students stop learning altogether. Her solution is architectural: don't ask students to self-regulate, build the constraints directly into the system. She references a striking study by Poulidis and Bastani on chess students — those who received AI hints at system-chosen moments improved 64% vs. only 30% for those who could ask for help whenever they wanted.This is a rare, rigorously evidence-based conversation about what responsible AI tutoring actually looks like — and how far most of the field still has to go.References mentioned in this episode:Behavioral Insights Team (the Nudge Unit)Eedi Labs — including the free Eedi School platformGoogle DeepMind's LearnLMLearning Engineering Virtual Institute (LEVI) — created by Schmidt Futures & Renaissance PhilanthropyDavid Yeager, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young PeopleAI Hub for Education (Stanford) — reviewed 800+ papers on AI in education; only 20 had causal evidencePoulidis & Bastani chess study (system-chosen AI hints → 64% improvement vs. 30% for on-demand help)London EdTech Week — Meet Bibi & Svenia at the London AI & Education Meetup on June 18, 2026