In this episode, Priten speaks with Lorin Koch, an educator who has taught across high school, online, and college settings after starting his career in journalism. Koch brings perspective from multiple vantage points—as a classroom teacher navigating AI integration, an online instructor confronting assessment challenges, and a parent of soon-to-be teenagers. Together they explore what happens when students understand the difference between learning and shortcutting but choose the shortcut anyway, and whether responsibility can be taught when the incentive to take a quick way out has never been lower.Key Takeaways:Understanding responsibility is not the same as practicing it. Students conceptually grasp that using AI to do their work for them is wrong, but when faced with pressure to get things done, they often choose the shortcut anyway—suggesting that knowing what you should do doesn't guarantee you'll do it.Self-paced, online environments create new accountability problems that have nothing to do with AI. The absence of in-person interaction makes it harder to detect cheating and easier to rationalize it, which means AI hasn't created the problem of student disengagement—it's simply made it more visible and more scalable.Your teaching intuition about whether something is AI-generated will become less reliable. As students grow up reading AI-generated text, their own writing will be shaped by those patterns, making it harder for teachers to distinguish between authentic voice and AI assistance based on stylistic markers alone.Presenting work through dialogue forces different stakes than submitting text alone. Requiring students to explain their thinking through presentations or discussion boards creates accountability that's harder to fake, even if the source material was AI-generated.The gap between high-achieving and struggling students will likely widen because of how students think about time. Students with short-term vision—those thinking about the next 24 hours rather than long-term consequences—are the most vulnerable to AI shortcuts, and they're also the ones who need human attention most.Lorin Koch is an educator with 21 years experience teaching high school and 3 years as a college instructor of education. He holds an Ed.D. degree from the University of South Carolina. Lorin currently teaches online and in person from Washington state, where he works at Walla Walla University. He also writes and presents on Artificial Intelligence in education, focusing on integrating generative AI into the classroom.

Most schools say they “collaborate.” They hold team meetings. They talk about students. They review data.But without clear infrastructure, those meetings become updates instead of decision-making engines, and multi-tiered systems of support become an extra burden for educators. In this episode, I interview Kurtis Hewson from Jigsaw Learning to break down their Collaborative Response Team meeting format and explain why effective collaboration requires structure and not just good intentions. From who is in the room to how documents are used before, during, and after the meeting, they share the operational backbone that makes collaboration actually move student outcomes.Kurtis Hewson is an award-winning former administrator and teacher, as well as post-secondary teaching faculty. He is the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning and co-author of Collaborative Response: Three Foundational Components That Transform How We Respond to the Needs of Learners (Corwin, 2022). Kurtis works with districts and schools nationally and internationally to establish Collaborative Response frameworks and interacts with thousands of educators each year.If you care about MTSS, intervention systems, or building-level leadership, this episode will shift how you think about team meetings and collaboration. In this interview, we discuss: ✅ Why the Collaborative Team Meeting framework helps educators move from between “talking about students” to making strategic, forward progress that changes school-wide practice✅ How structured documents before, during, and after meetings create clarity and accountability and psychological safety✅ How to capture action items in real time and encourage innovative thinking✅ Why the Collaborative Team Meeting requires specific roles, and how these roles  determine whether a meeting moves forward or feels like busyworkIf you’re leading multi-tiered supports in K–12 education or trying to strengthen how your teams collaborate, this episode offers practical insight into building the infrastructure that makes collaboration sustainable, focused, and impactful.You can learn more about the Collaborative Response Framework free resources here: https://www.jigsawlearning.ca/freeRead about the Overview of Collaborative Response here: https://bit.ly/CR-overview Read the Introductory Chapter of the text Collaborative Response – https://bit.ly/CR-introGet the Collaborative Team Meeting Starter Kit here: https://www.jigsawlearningonline.com/ctm-starter-kit-podcastLearn about the Layers of Collaborative Teams Here: https://www.jigsawlearning.ca/publications/blog-posts/scaffolding-our-collaborative-response-purposeful-layering-tLearn the Five Considerations to Transform Your Team Meetings here:  https://www.jigsawlearningonline.com/five-planning-considerations-to-transform-your-team-meetingsIn this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a scalable framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapyI also mentioned the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design an executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

In this episode, Bob shares his professional journey—from his early years in Fresno Unified School District, one of the largest districts in California, to leading a small rural district, and ultimately returning to Fresno Unified as superintendent. Along the way, he reflects on the lessons he’s learned in leadership—what works, what doesn’t, and what he would do differently.Dr. Bob Nelson is an Assistant Professor in the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at Fresno State, where he teaches in the Department of Educational Leadership. He is also the Founder and CEO of #MilitantPositivity, LLC, an organization focused on speaking, consulting, and podcasting in education.LinkedIn: Bob Nelson | LinkedInFacebook: (2) Facebook

If you're in Learning & Development, there’s one question you can’t ignore: what happens when you don’t need your tools anymore?This week on The Fabulous Learning Nerds, Scott and Dan explore a bold shift in how learning gets built—moving from traditional authoring tools to AI-driven, prompt-based creation. From building fully functional SCORM courses in minutes to generating executive-ready presentations with nothing but notes and curiosity, they unpack what it really means to “build without tools.”Whether you’re an instructional designer, learning leader, or just starting to experiment with AI, this episode challenges you to rethink where your value truly lies—and how to stay ahead when speed, iteration, and curiosity become your biggest differentiators.3 Key Takeaways:Tools are no longer the barrier—your thinking is. The ability to design, prompt, and refine matters more than mastering any single platform. Curiosity is your competitive advantage. Those willing to experiment, fail, and iterate will outpace those waiting for certainty. AI accelerates the build—but you own the impact. Your value is in context, storytelling, and driving behavior change—not just creating content. The Nerds You Know:Scott Schuette: Training strategist, creativity engine, and host of the Fabulous Learning Nerds, Scott is always looking for smarter, faster ways to drive impact—while keeping learning human. Daniel Coonrod: Resident storyteller and facilitation expert, Daniel brings curiosity and experimentation to the forefront, constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI in L&D. Connect with the NERDS:Email: nerds@thelearningnerds.comFacebook: Learning Nerds Instagram: @FabLearningNerds Website: www.thelearningnerds.comDon’t Miss Out!🎧 Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts Catch the episode now on your favorite podcast platform and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review!

In this episode, Priten speaks with Mary Shawn Newins, a computer science teacher in Greensboro, North Carolina, who arrived in the classroom at sixty with decades of corporate and sales experience but no coding background. Her unusual arc gives her permission to build AI literacy alongside her students rather than ahead of them. What emerges is a classroom culture where curiosity itself—not mastery or fear—becomes the pedagogical goal. She uses practical structures like a "quack" incentive and peer questioning to shift how students see AI: not as a shortcut to avoid, but as a tool that works best when you know what you actually want to learn.Key Takeaways:Curiosity as a pedagogical aim changes everything about how students use AI. When learning for its own sake is the standard—not grades or compliance—AI becomes a catalyst for deeper exploration rather than a means of dodging work. A student asking AI about birds of prey out of genuine interest learns far more than one copying homework.Making AI use visible and gamified shifts students from hiding it to owning it. Mary's "quack quack" jar and peer accountability turn using AI into something worth discussing openly. Social transparency works where rules do not.Three non-negotiable standards replace prohibition: name the tool, share the prompt, explain the output in your own words. This mirrors citation practices students already know. It's not about policing—it's about maintaining the chain between question, resource, and understanding.Strict phones, generous computers reflects a deeper principle about attention and agency. Banning personal devices while enabling desktop computers creates a bounded space for learning. The boundary isn't about rejecting technology; it's about who controls the environment.Late-career teachers bring a rare asset: they remember how knowledge worked before AI. Mary's corporate background means she can model learning alongside students without needing to be the expert first. That permission ripples through the classroom.Mary Shawn M. Newins is a Marketing and Computer Science educator at Southern Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. She has been a full-time faculty member since Spring 2023 and proudly serves as the school’s AI Champion, supporting innovative and responsible technology integration in the classroom. Mary holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Bowling Green State University and is an Ambassador for the CodeMonkey High School curriculum, advocating for accessible and engaging computer science education for all students. Before transitioning into education, Mary spent 30 years in the business sector, working across business-to-business sales, retail, direct sales, and operations management. Outside the classroom, Mary is a wardrobe stylist at Chico’s Friendly Center, a denim upcycler, and a creative at heart who enjoys painting.