aiEDU Studios
aiEDU Studios is a podcast from the team at The AI Education Project.
Each week, a new guest joins us for a deep-dive discussion about the ever-changing world of AI, technology, K-12 education, and other topics that will impact the next generation of the American workforce and social fabric.
Learn more about aiEDU at https://www.aiEDU.org
aiEDU Studios
Peek inside an AI-enhanced classroom
What if technology made classrooms feel more human, not less?
On this episode of Raising Kids in the Age of AI, we dive into real stories from the front lines of education to show how AI can help teachers fulfill diverse learning needs, increase engagement, and bring back joy to school so it doesn't turn into a screen-filled dystopia.
Alex and Dr. Aliza sit down with New York City special ed and tech teacher Shira Moskovitz, who transformed a disengaged science class by turning a traditional unit into a choice-driven project. With AI’s help, Shira's students built their own learning ecosystems and chose formats (posters, graphic novels, podcasts, videos, etc.) that matched their strengths. As a result, engagement in the class surged, work quality rose, and one student on the autism spectrum earned recognition at a district STEM fair — that’s the power of differentiation at scale.
We also hear from Jennie Magiera, Google’s Global Head of Education Impact who also is a former teacher. Jennie explains how AI can help teachers draft lesson plans, refresh well-worn units, and spot real-time insights to free up time for more meaningful work with students, like one-on-one help and more in-depth feedback. Think of it like a coaching headset: the teacher stays in control while AI quietly amplifies reach and responsiveness.
Across our conversations, we hear pushback on the fear that AI will replace teachers or isolate students. Instead, both guests keep the focus on equity, relevance, and authentic student-teacher connection. When used with intention, AI supports teacher-led classrooms, helps students build executive function, and turns “Why do I need this?” into “This finally clicks for me.”
aiEDU: The AI Education Project
We're still a little bit stuck in this very traditional, very old school model of teacher lectures and student lessons, and that only meets the needs of certain students. This AI support allows a teacher who's still tasked with those traditional roles to flip the script a little bit and say students can learn in different ways, and I can be one person and still provide multiple supports for different students.
SPEAKER_02:Today we're headed into the classroom to see how forward-thinking educators are using AI to reach their students and also modeling a take-charge approach to learning. Welcome back to Raising Kids in the Age of AI, a podcast from AIEDU Studios and Google dedicated to helping parents understand AI and how their kids are going to encounter it. I'm Alex Katran, founder and CEO of AIEDU, a nonprofit working to ensure all students are ready to live, work, and thrive in a world where AI is everywhere.
SPEAKER_04:And I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, a developmental psychologist, author, and parent, and host of the podcast Raising Good Humans. I, for one, have been really eager to get to this episode to learn how AI fits in a traditional classroom setting. Because does it fit? I think about the workload of educators, and I think about whether or not teachers want AI or if AI tools are just adding more to their plates.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I can say my you know, my mom is in her last year of teaching before retirement. And people ask me, like, oh, does she have senioritis? And the answer is she still works until 7 p.m., even 8 p.m. some days. And that's pretty much the norm. Teachers work really, really hard and they're not really paid that well. Um, and so anytime that we're really excited about new stuff uh for teachers, their question is always gonna be, well, you know, where am I gonna have the time to figure this stuff out? Because teachers are also really protective of their classroom and they, you know, want what's best for their kids and they know that you can't just hope that this technology works. And so I think that's one of the key questions that we're gonna try to answer here is like, does it work? And if so, how should it look like?
SPEAKER_04:And my mom was also an educator for many years, though. She's retired, and I remember her working till the latest hours and being so dedicated. But if there was a way to have that high-quality work and also integrate AI to help support that work, that'd be amazing. So that's why I'm so glad we'll be hearing from two educators today who are a step or two or three ahead of the rest of us and can give us an inside look at what school with AI actually would do.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we're gonna hear from a special education and technology teacher who uses AI to reach a wide diversity of learners. And we're also gonna hear from a former math teacher and the current head of Global Education Impact at Google about how they're finding ways to amplify and augment their own best practices as educators with some new possibilities that AI tools offer.
SPEAKER_04:I think that's just the question I'm concerned with. Who is driving this bus? Is it technology, or are educators and families still in the driver's seat? What are you seeing and hearing from teachers, Alex?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Lisa, that's the million-dollar question. You know, this is really sort of new frontiers for everyone. And most teachers are still in the process of wrapping their heads around, you know, how to use the technology themselves and frankly how to keep up with their students who are also figuring out for themselves how they want to use the technology. Um, and school systems are figuring out what policies and procedures they need to have in place. And I mean, I'm curious, you know, how have you talked about technology in educational settings with the parents that you advise?
SPEAKER_04:I kind of go back to saying the same thing over and over, which is the core principles of parenting. And it would be the same in the relationships with teachers and educators. Relationship, reflection, regulation, rules, and repair are kind of the principles that we have to keep going back to. How is the relationship between myself and the student? And when we inevitably make mistakes, which we will, this is all brand new, and we make mistakes with things we're perfectly fluent in and know a lot about because we're human, we make repairs and we come back to connection and we start again.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so we've got a lot of good things to keep in mind as we hear from our first guest. She's a public school teacher in one of the largest school, actually the largest school district in the country, New York City Public Schools.
SPEAKER_05:My name is Shira Moswith, and I am a special education and technology teacher in New York City. I teach in a predominantly English language learner population. One of the things that I get to do in my school is a tech coach. So teachers can come to me and discuss challenges that they're having in the classroom, and I can find tech ways to sometimes solve what isn't always necessarily a technology problem.
SPEAKER_02:Shera isn't only working with students with different abilities and needs, she's also working closely with subject area teachers to help them make use of tech, including AI tools in the classroom. And she told us one story that really stuck out to me. It was a teacher who came up with a problem. His class was just not into the lesson.
SPEAKER_05:So this past year, the science teacher, we were working through a coaching cycle, and he had some behavior management challenges in his classroom combined with some engagement issues. Students weren't completing tasks, they weren't participating, answering questions. I said, let's take a step back and think about engagement. Let's think about how do we make this content relevant, relatable, and also appropriate for all the different types of learners in his class. So what I showed him how to do was to take his current unit, feed it into AI, and create a project-based learning curriculum, an assignment for the entire unit. And instead of taking a traditional science test at the end of the unit, they created their own ecosystem. And one of the features that we were able to design through this AI output was a choice board. So every student was able to have a selection of options for what they wanted to create. And there were options for traditional posters, mind maps, graphic novels, podcasts, videos, animations. The students were very engaged from the very beginning. So that was one shift that this teacher noticed right away. At the end of the unit, some of the students' work was selected to be presented at our district STEM fair. And what was so beautiful about this project was one of the students was a student diagnosed with autism. And he was a very brilliant student, but was often not recognized for his brilliance. He was recognized for those challenges and the barriers that he had to learning. So to say that he was able to identify his strength, demonstrate that he had mastered this science content just like his peers, and then be celebrated for it at a district fair and receive an award for his work was so beautiful. And it was something that wouldn't have necessarily been feasible for the science teacher to create all these different options and these rubrics and all these different materials on his own. So if we look back, this teacher came to me with something that was not a technical issue per se. He came with the classic behavior management challenge, and I presented him with a technology solution, but it actually addressed his challenge and more. The behavior was better, the engagement was better, his scores were actually higher. So I view AI as really a tool for equity. It really means that more students can acquire knowledge in a way that's accessible to them. And it means that every student sitting in the class can learn something. I often find that if we go back to that more traditional model of schooling, that there are certain things we're just not teaching children. We're expecting them to acquire it naturally, be it communication skills, executive functioning, organization, any of those things. And there's not really a curriculum to teach it. So two years ago, actually, I had a group of fifth graders who were all struggling with executive function. And no one prepared me to have the assignment of teaching them executive function. I said, I have these students who present with these challenges. I want a lesson and a game to go with each of these skills. And it created it for me. It's giving me both digital and analog tools to support students in these areas. And before this access to AI, I never would have been equipped to do that. And some of these skills, the students would never be equipped to practice them. There's this gut reaction that adults feel because we didn't go to school with this technology, that giving technology to students, specifically giving AI to students, is taking away their ability to acquire knowledge. Honestly, it's the same thing with spellcheck. There's still people who get very upset that students have access to spellcheck.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Shear is amazing. Um and I think what what stands out to me the most is she's describing an application or approach where AI isn't the centerpiece of her teaching. It's it's a tool that she is using to adapt her own role in the classroom, but it's ultimately a teacher-centered classroom. And I think that is absolutely critical to answering this question of like what does AI look like in the school? Really, the question we should be asking is what does good teaching look like in school? And you can sort of reverse engineer the role that AI can play. In this case, you know, help design differentiated activities or lessons for students to engage them. But at the end of the day, you know, all the most powerful examples that I've ever seen of AI being used in the classrooms are at the hands of a really capable teacher. But also she's actually uh striking a chord on this sort of like meta concept, which is technology is going to change and we can't resist it entirely. We have to also think about how do we adapt learning and also the way that we live and work uh to take advantage of uh the possibilities that the tool offers. Aliso, I'm curious if you heard anything else that I'm missing in Shira's stories.
SPEAKER_04:I mean, I'm I'm just letting it all land. I think it's so cool to be able to think about different kinds of learners and how they might benefit in ways that would never occur to me. On the other hand, when I think about what are executive function skills, and you know, a traditional way of describing executive function skills would be kind of the air traffic control system of the brain. And those skills are housed in the part of the brain that is, you know, where we manage our communication skills, our organizing, our mem working memory, our attention skills, our self-regulation, like we talked about, but also things like empathy. You know, I think to myself, like, can we use AI to teach skills that are particularly important for humans right now? Um and I think about what she said about spell check. And it's true. On the other hand, I think about how rushed it is to have spell check and how much more you learn. And that when that annoying answer of like, there's a dictionary where you can go look it up and you're gonna have to see it and you remember a little bit more. And so I think it's to your point, Alex, it's a both and because we can't just lean so far into the technology that we forget that there are there are things that we still need to do a little bit more slowly, not because we're trying to torture kids or people, but because of the all of the wildly useful skills that are developing in those moments.
SPEAKER_02:I love your example of like the process of actually going to the dictionary. It's not just about learning the spelling, but you're actually reinforcing your memory and your ability to recall that word.
SPEAKER_04:And your frustration tolerance.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it right, it is annoying to have to go through the dictionary, but you also learn how to like look up an index and go through dense information. Um, I'm curious from your perspective as a psychologist, just like advice that you provide educators in terms of, you know, how to form authentic relationships and and what's your take on the role that AI should or shouldn't play there?
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think in this case, this was a great example of cultivating an authentic relationship by saying, Hey, I think I see what you need, and it's different than what you're getting. And I think AI is gonna help us get there. That to me is when you use the technology for good. And that helps build authentic relationships instead of the thing that we're afraid of, which is that instead of an authentic relationship, lean to lean into AI.
SPEAKER_02:Totally. I think another big question that we get a lot is is it actually gonna make teachers even less important full stop? It's something that we're gonna hear more about from our next guest, Jenny McGura.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, my name is Jenny McGuar. I'm the global head of education impact at Google, and I'm also the mom of a rising second grader and a three-year-old.
SPEAKER_02:Jenny has more than a decade of experience as an educator, and this background gives her a unique perspective on how AI can free up teachers and give them more time back and really unlock that teacher advantage.
SPEAKER_03:From my first year of teaching to my 10th year of teaching, one thing that was consistent was I felt like there was never enough time. I used to do all these different things with technology before AI to try and clone myself and extend my reach, like create in-flipping, like videos of myself in the classroom that my students would watch in small groups while I met with other students at the, so to speak, kidney table. But with AI, I don't need to spend the hours and hours I would do every night filming myself and re-recording the same lesson at six different levels. I can use these AI tutors and supports to extend my reach and amplify the impact that I can have with the students in the same number of hours. There's so many ways that AI is being used in the classroom. It starts before the kids are in the classroom. So, you know, that teacher sitting in their um in their room late at night, early in the morning during their prep, if they're lucky and they have a prep, um using generative AI, getting on Gemini to build a lesson plan from scratch or to take a lesson plan that is tried and true and they've used every year and make it even better. Say, like, hey, I've taught this lesson for the past 10 years. How do I refresh it? How do I differentiate it so I can meet different students' learning needs? Then when the students are in the classroom, it's helping me understand where they're at. So as I'm walking the room, as I'm engaging with students to understand what are the common misconceptions, it's giving me that feedback. It's almost like I'm the head coach of a, you know, you know, Big Ten football team, and I've got like all the other assistant coaches in my ear telling me, like, hey, you need to go over here. Hey, this is happening. Hey, let's, you know, pause this lesson and regroup because they're they're not getting it. We need a timeout. So that's really magical. A lot of times when people talk about the future of education with technology, with AI, um, they're they're thinking a lot of different visions. But I will tell you what I really don't want it to be. I don't want AI to replace the teacher. I don't want AI or technology to become the way singular that students learn, or even the majority way that students learn. I am a huge sci-fi nerd. I am a Trekkie. Um, but there is that reboot, the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek. And in one of his films, they show the Vulcan Academy and they show um young Spock there. And it's it's essentially like a huge amphitheater with sunken holes in the ground with 360-degree screens, and all the little Vulcans are alone in these holes, surrounded by screens, learning. This is like a nightmare dystopian version of education. Technology should be ubiquitous, yes, but also invisible. It shouldn't be the focus of the classroom. It should be elevating that um impact of the teacher, that voice of the teacher, the voice of the student, allowing them all to have those deeper interactions with each other so that no matter how far into the future we go, no matter how AI evolves, humans are still the stars of the show.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so Jenny doesn't see AI replacing teachers, but she does talk about helping teachers spend more time directly helping students without overextending themselves.
SPEAKER_03:I remember being that kid who, you know, always had my hand up. I was hand up Hannah. And after a while, you do that tripod thing where like you're like propping your hand up and then you slump and you slump and your hand's falling asleep and you're losing blood circulation. And by the time someone called on me as a kid, I kind of forgot why my hand was up or what I was answering. And now with AI, it's really interesting because we can engage the students a lot more quickly. So if it's like they have a question, they don't have to wait for the one teacher to be able to call on them. They can engage with that AI, ask the question, get that real-time support. And then when they get to that higher level synthesis or more difficult or complex challenge, they could bring that to the teacher. So they're bringing a much more finished product or a much more workshopped question to the instructor, to the teacher. And it's building that resilience in the student. It's allowing them to say, like, hey, I have the tools and the agency and the ability and the power to help myself, which is good for them in life. Another thing I hear a lot from other parents is, oh no, we shouldn't use AI. It's gonna stupefy our children, they're gonna overrely on it. I definitely hear it. Um, and I wanna say we're we're always thinking about that too. And there is an entire team at Google called the pedagogy team and or pedagogy team. I know it's a big thing. Is it pedagogy? Is it pedagogy? But for those of you who don't know that word, it's like the science of teaching and learning. And they have worked with learning science experts to build these like five learning science principles. And I'm I'm not gonna read them all to you, but some of the things is like, you know, encouraging metacognition, the thinking about your thinking. So, like as you're considering something like, why am I thinking that way? How did I get to that? Another one is um managing cognitive load, which is really good. Productive struggle is so important. And I think that's where um it really addresses some of those concerns of like, oh, are we gonna like stupefy our students? Um, but it's gonna say, like, hey, let me not just give you the answer, let me prompt you to help um engage with the model, with the AI, because we want it to get you to think and use those uh neural pathways, but we don't want you to be so frustrated that you like throw your Chromebook out the window. And all those learning science principles are baked into Gemini now in a model version called learn LM. So it's not just like, you know, parking a kid in front of uh a Chromebook, turning on Gemini and being like, have at it, learn, peace out, I'm gonna go eat my sandwich in the corner. It's how am I determining when and how I introduce AI into my classroom? How do I have the students intentionally and thoughtfully interact with it? Human in the loop, parent in the loop, uh teacher in the loop. The model's trained for learning, and we have to be intentional with how we use it. And if all those things continue to be true, it's going to get them even further because they're going to be able to ask deeper and more complex questions.
SPEAKER_04:It's a big if and it's an important if that parents and educators stay in the loop and that we use these big new exciting AI tools incredibly intentionally, and that we're working specifically with the tools that really are built for learning. It's definitely not a replacement for teachers, and I think we're hearing that more and more. In fact, in the absence of teachers, it would be it, it couldn't work.
SPEAKER_02:But it's worth noting that, you know, this is not necessarily like a broadly held perspective. There's a lot of folks who are really pushing for AI, and their vision is that AI is going to totally replace teachers. Um, and we're in a bit of a battle for, you know, what does the future of sort of AI in in schools look like? I really like the example of the Vulcan Academy from Star Trek. Um, because I think this is what parents really worry about. You know, accumulating knowledge is a part of education, no doubt. But I think when you really close your eyes and imagine the future of school, um, yeah, most people are still imagining a building with people in it. I think parents also, if asked, you know, maybe separately, without AI being a part of the conversation, um, you know, how do you feel about school today? I think a lot of folks, and certainly kids, will say it doesn't feel very relevant. You'll often hear from kids like, why do I even need to learn this? And so, you know, addressing this sort of question of how do we make learning more relevant and engaging, you know, that's a really big part of the answer to like how do we need to transform schools for the future? And, you know, if AI can have a part in that, I think we really need to make sure that teachers can really harness it. But I think for me, it's um it's it's heartening that you know, we're we're we're continuing to see and hear about the importance of humanity in all of this.
SPEAKER_04:I could not agree more. From my perspective, when you marry humanity with you know forward thinking, you're gonna capture the attention of young people much more than if you just kind of make it us against them. Thank you so much for listening. Join us again next week when we take a look at AI, not as a writer, but as a writer's aid and how it may or may not change the way we think, learn, and write in the future. We'll hear from sci-fi writer and creative tech builder Amit Gupta.
SPEAKER_01:Writing is thinking, like that um at its core, that that's what you're doing. But I think having a conversation is thinking too. So when you're having conversation with someone about an idea, you're also figuring out what you really believe.
SPEAKER_02:And Google's Maureen Heymans returns to the podcast to discuss the power of AI as a collaborative tool for brainstorming and pushing your thinking.
SPEAKER_00:I think a lot of people think of AI as a way to save time and it's like a big productive boost. But most importantly, I think it can elevate the quality of your thought.
SPEAKER_02:So find out where AI is going to take us and future generations next on raising kids in the age of AI. Until then, don't forget to follow the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.
SPEAKER_04:And we want to hear from you. Take a minute to leave us a rating and review on your podcast player of choice. Your feedback is important to us. Raising kids in the age of AI is a podcast by AIEDU in collaboration with Google. It's produced by Kaleidoscope. For Kaleidoscope, the executive producers are Kate Osborne and Lizzie Jacobs. Our lead producer is Molly Sosha with production assistance from Irene Bantiguay with additional production from Louisa Tucker. Our video editor is Ilya Magazanen, and our theme song and music were composed by Kyle Murdoch, who also mixed the episode for us. See you next time.