Future Fluent

Why is deep change so hard in public schools? We know real learning doesn’t happen in tidy 50 minute blocks. But for the past 120 years, American schools have been captive to a “bell system” that is as relentless as an atomic clock. In this episode, Jeremy and Betsy explore the implications of the “Carnegie Unit” with researcher Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizard of the Carnegie Foundation. Brooke shares...

Jeremy and Betsy discuss the recent podcast interview of Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, by New York Times columnist and podcaster, Ezra Klein. Schools want to build "agency" in students. How will that happen? And what about the CEOs of the AI giants? How much agency do they really have? More to Explore: In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy and Betsy talk about a recent interview that N...

Can AI for teachers and students be built on a foundation of what we know about how students learn, namely on the learning sciences? And, if so, how can learning sciences infuse not just one AI product, but potentially all of them? Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran kick off this third season of Future Fluent by talking with two people who are trying to change the “building blocks” of the AI prog...

What do wizards have to do with Doritos or trout? In this wrap up episode to Season 2, Jeremy & Betsy talk about the metaphors and insights their guests shared this year to make sense of AI. Guests included researchers, writers, educators, builders & influencers:  Ethan Mollick, Pat Yongpradit, Inge Molenaar, Erin Mote, Justin Reich, Melina Uncapher, Elvira Salazar, Margaret Hone...

The backlash against screens (and technology in school broadly) is growing, and with good reason. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy and Jeremy explore with Dr. Babak Mostaghimi of Learner Studio what it takes to build technology, including AI-based tutors, that bring people together rather than isolating them. The bottom-line question: Learning should help people thrive: How could AI be desi...

Do we – or don’t we? Teachers are both under pressure to press 'pause' on AI in the classroom and to prepare students for the future with AI. On this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy and Betsy connect with Mike Taubman, a veteran teacher at Uncommon School in New Jersey to explore how he's bringing decades of hard-earned pedagogical insights to bear in guiding his students into AI usage. As a long...

What’s been the most powerful learning experience that you've had? Dr. Margaret Honey has helped build remarkable learning experiences–starting with the television show, The Voyage of the Mimi, through her work at the New York Hall of Sciences and most recently with the Scratch Foundation. Through it all, she’s held fast to several principles, starting with: Never fake it. And center activity arou...

History is chock full of new technologies developed with good intentions. But if we’ve learned anything over the past few decades, it’s that doing research and designing products has layers of complexity. It isn’t enough to just build tech for others – we have to build it in close partnership and community with those who will use it. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy and Jeremy talk with Dr....

Why are the “myths” about how we learn sometimes more powerful than what research has delivered? In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy and Betsy interview Dr. Melina Uncapher, a neuroscience researcher and learning science practitioner who has spent her professional life trying to help educators and researchers work together. They plunge into one of the great myths of learning–that we have diff...

AI arrived in classrooms at the same time it arrived in businesses and homes. And while it may speed up tasks at work, teachers, students and parents are still in the early and often painful stages of figuring out how or even if it will make learning “more efficient.” In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy and Betsy talk with Dr. Justin Reich, an MIT professor and researcher, and cohost of The H...

Do you trust AI? And if you don’t, what should you do? That’s the heart of this wide-ranging conversation between leading education policy advocate, Erin Mote, and Future Fluent’s Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran. Interacting with AI, Erin says, is "like conversing with a brilliant person you cannot trust." But Erin doesn’t stop there. She’s got a treasure trove of ideas of how to build bridges...

At the National Education Lab AI (NOLAI) in the Netherlands, director Dr. Inge Molenaar sits at the epicenter of learning, research and AI. And the Netherlands has been a leader in Europe and throughout the world in the effective use of emerging technologies, Dr. Molenaar has an exceptional vantage for observing–and influencing–the emergent use of AI in learning. This week, she joins Jer...

Pat Yongpradit has been the face of Code.org for a dozen years and is a prominent, worldwide AI literacy leader. Just this month, he’s also taken on a big new leadership role at Microsoft. We we know why he's in demand: He's bracingly clear eyed about the challenges educators face in 2026 and beyond. His “6-7” predictions for 2026 suggests AI will urther distance strong performers from weaker ones...

How do you work with a "wizard"? Season two of Future Fluent kicks off with a provocative interview with Ethan Mollick, a professor, writer and deep observer of the fast evolving relationship between artificial intelligence, learning and the future of work. Agentic AI, Mollick observes, is a collection of wizards that collaborate to accomplish tasks -- even if we don't exactly understand how they...

So what will it take for people to be "fluent" in the future? In this wrap-up of season one, Betsy and Jeremy compare notes on what we've heard from the guests. One strong throughline: it's not the technology that matters -- it's what people do with the technology. It's how we purposefully building human agency as we experiment with this new tool. Betsy and Jeremy also talk about the questions the...

The Gwinnett County school district in Georgia takes computer science very seriously. Its 183,000 students in 142 schools get rolling in a rigorous computer science curriculum in Kindergarten and goes through 12th grade. Even better--students are solving hands-on, real problems, says Sallie Holloway, the county's director of AI and computer science. But that's old news. In this episode of Future F...

We've moved from the "age of Enlightenment" to the "Age of Entanglement," says John Seely Brown, a long-time leading thinker, technologist and scholar on learning. In this episode of Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran go the source: JSB has done it all, from working at a bookie in high school to managing Xerox PARC, advising technology leaders and publishing more than 100 papers an...

We know how to teach people to improve their writing--but it takes a lot of work. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle talk with Peter Gault, the founder of nonprofit Quill, which gives students feedback on 500 million sentences a year. Quill's been using AI for years and is now sharing its "playbook" on how to build ethically -- and effectively -- with AI. Here ar...

This year Jeremy and Betsy travelled to San Diego to record our podcast live at ASU-GSV Summit--the industry gathering that spotlights emerging technologies for education. In the conference's "podcast zone," they talked with Jason Green, cofounder of YourWay Learning. The conversation focused on the hardest aspect of emerging technology--changing the culture of teaching and learning...

Many companies are building tutors. To build a good tutor requires figuring out students already know and what they are learning. Is AI up to this task? On this episode, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran plunge into the murky issues around using AI for assessment with Kristen DiCerbo, the chief learning officer at Khan Academy. Kristen shares why game-based assessments haven’t yet become the bes...

How can learning to use AI be more like, well, what happens at a skate park? This week on Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle explore how to build "human agency" with Yusuf Ahmad, the cofounder and CEO of Playlab.ai. At a skate park, individuals practice their own skills and learn from one another. That's just what's happening at Playlab.ai, a nonprofit where educators build AI tool...

Whoooooosh. Okay, so that isn't really the sound of the news about AI rushing past--but It's easy to feel like it is. And as we scramble to keep up with trends, how do we stay focused on what really matters? This week on Future Fluent, Jeremy Roschelle and Betsy Corcoran talk with Claire Zau, a partner at GSV Ventures who publishes a widely read newsletter on the latest in AI. Just a few themes? M...

For generations, "reading, writing and 'rithmatic" have formed the boundaries of early childhood education. Now research shows there's a catalytic fourth "R": Relationships. In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle speak with author Isabelle Hau who shares her findings on why relationship-focused learning should be at the core of curriculum and education. Her findings...

What does it mean for a technology to be “generous”? More than 25 years ago, researcher David Wiley was electrified by the idea that the Internet made it possible to create an educational material once, then share it with millions. That was the beginning of Wiley’s deep support of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. In this episode of Future Fluent, Wiley shares with Jeremy Roschelle an...

Among the most controversial topics in AI is just this: What role do we want AI to have in teaching and learning math? In this episode of Future Fluent, Betsy Corcoran and Jeremy Roschelle talk with Dan Meyer, one of the most outspoken and thoughtful critics of math education and how we're using technology. Learning isn't just "knowledge work," or pouring facts into students heads, Dan says. It's...