Mr. Fred's Tech Talks

An AI assistant that can organize your plans and handle tasks sounds pretty helpful. But when it asks for access to your email, calendar, or credit card, how much permission should you give it? This week on Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , we explore AI assistants and agents in plain English. What’s the difference between suggesting something and actually doing it? How can an assistant work inside an accou...

What happens when a classroom codebreaking challenge leads to a remarkable piece of history? Mr. Fred explores Code Girls by Liza Mundy, the story of American women whose secret work helped break German and Japanese codes during World War II. Meet teacher-turned-codebreaker Dot Braden and discover Genevieve Grotjan’s contribution to solving the Japanese diplomatic cipher known as PURPLE. Along the...

How did video games go from a handful of colored blocks to worlds filled with realistic faces, reflections, shadows, and light? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , we follow the evolution of video game graphics from early Atari-era pixels to sprites, 3D polygons, textures, GPUs, and ray tracing, all without turning this into a computer science lecture. Along the way, we discover something e...

You probably scanned a QR code this week. Maybe it opened a restaurant menu, a ticket, a payment page, or a website. Point your phone at a strange collection of black-and-white squares and somehow it knows what to do. But how? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred pulls back the curtain on QR codes and explains what is actually happening when your phone scans one. You’ll discover why...

What happens when the technology on Mr. Fred's Tech Talks actually... talks? This week, I'm handing the questions over to Milo, the name I've given the AI assistant I use inside ChatGPT, for a free-flowing conversation about my first week back in the college classroom. And after nearly three decades of teaching, something happened this week that genuinely made me smile. I watched a group of first-...

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” It may be the most famous piece of tech advice ever given. It is also surprisingly effective. In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred takes a fun look at what is actually happening when a computer, router, app, or other piece of technology gets restarted. Why does a reboot clear up frozen programs? What happens to memory? Why can a device s...

Someone hands you a phone, laptop, controller, or some other piece of technology and asks, “Do you know how to make this work?” And you have absolutely no idea. Even after decades of working with technology, Mr. Fred still has those moments. And maybe that's the point. In this episode of Mr. Fred's Tech Talks , we explore why being “good with technology” isn't about knowing every app, device, codi...

Can artificial intelligence actually help get kids away from screens? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred explores a different way to think about AI and childhood. Instead of allowing AI to become the entire experience, what if we used it as the spark that gets kids creating, building, moving, imagining, and exploring? Mr. Fred shares three simple ways families can turn AI-generate...

Pencils? Check. Notebooks? Check. Four mysteriously specific black pens? Check. But as students return to classrooms with artificial intelligence at their fingertips, they need a few important supplies that cannot be purchased at a store. In this episode, Mr. Fred explores three skills students need in their digital backpacks: the confidence to solve everyday technology problems, enough healthy sk...

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. And then, just a few years later, humanity stopped going. So what happened? Did we forget how to get there? Did the technology disappear? And if we could reach the Moon using 1960s technology, why did it take more than 50 years for humans to travel there again? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred connects the story of Apollo to the ne...

The fastest thing Mr. Fred has ever watched happen had no engine, no wheels, and no wings. In fact, he never actually saw it happen. He only pressed a button. In Season 2, Episode 21 of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks, we follow the hidden journey that begins every time you send a message, open a webpage, stream a video, join a livestream, or ask an AI tool a question. What looks like one simple click sets...

The American Revolution should not have worked. The British had professional soldiers, experienced commanders, better supplies, and the most powerful navy in the world. The Americans had courage, impossible odds, and something else that helped change history: secret communication. In this special 250th Fourth of July episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks, we travel from Revolutionary War spycraft to th...

Before Wi-Fi, smartphones, and AI tools that answer in seconds, getting online meant connecting a computer to a modem, plugging into a phone line, and hoping nobody picked up the phone in the other room. In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred continues the From Atari to AI series with Part III: The Doorway Moment. This time, the story moves from the Timex Sinclair to the Christmas gif...

In Part 1 of From Atari to AI , we talked about Atari, arcades, joysticks, cartridges, and the magic of playing the game. But in Part 2, something changes. This episode is about the moment technology stopped being something we only played with and became something we could create with. Mr. Fred shares memories of learning to program on the Timex Sinclair 1000, receiving a BASIC programming book fr...

Before smartphones, apps, YouTube, and AI chatbots, there was a box connected to the family television, a joystick with one button, and a generation of kids discovering that technology was not just something you watched. It was something you controlled. In Part 1 of the From Atari to AI series, Mr. Fred goes back to the moment technology first came home. From saving quarters for Atari 2600 cartrid...

There is a funny thing we do with our phones. We back up everything. Photos. Videos. Contacts. Documents. Messages. Voice memos. The random screenshots we forgot we even took. But Memorial Day asks us to think about a different kind of memory. Not the kind stored in the cloud. The kind we carry. In this special Memorial Day episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred takes a respectful pause to re...

It was finals week. Students were trying to submit work, check grades, finish projects, and prepare for graduation. Then Canvas, the learning management system used by many schools and universities, became part of a major cybersecurity story. In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred breaks down the recent Canvas breach and uses it as a teaching moment for students, parents, educators, a...

What does it look like when someone has spent decades writing real software, then walked into a classroom to help the next generation figure it out? In this episode, Mr. Fred sits down with a longtime colleague, Dr. Hal Smith, a professor of Information Sciences and Technology, former software developer at Raytheon, and yes, a ukulele player, for one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversatio...

Today is May the Fourth, and for Mr. Fred, that means more than just Star Wars jokes, lightsabers, and fun social media posts. In this special episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred looks at Star Wars through the lens of technology, coding, artificial intelligence, Disney Imagineering, and the future of young builders. Star Wars has always been a technology story disguised as an adventure. Fr...

How do Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify seem to know exactly what you want next? It’s not random and it’s not your phone listening. Ever feel like your phone knows you better than your friends? You watch one video… and suddenly you’re two hours deep. You hear one song… and your playlist is perfect. You browse one product… and it follows you everywhere. That’s not random. It’s recommendation algorithm...

What do video games, hospitals, restaurants, airlines, and social media all have in common? Databases. In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , Mr. Fred breaks down what a database really is, why it matters, and how database thinking helps us design better systems before a single line of code is written. From saved game progress to medical records and restaurant orders, databases are one of the...

What is data, really? We hear the word everywhere. Data privacy. Data breaches. Big data. AI and data. But if someone asked you to actually explain what data is, could you? In this episode of Mr. Fred's Tech Talks, we answer that question in plain language and show you why understanding data is one of the most important things you can do in a world that runs on technology. Mr. Fred breaks down wha...

Have you ever mentioned something like an air fryer, vacation, or random gadget out loud, only to open your phone later and see ads for it everywhere? It is one of the most common questions people ask about technology: Is my phone listening to me? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , we bust the myth and explain what is really happening. Mr. Fred explores the difference between voice assista...

What happens when you try to build the same app using four different AI tools? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , I set out to explore something called vibe coding … where you don’t write traditional code, you guide AI to build something for you. The idea was simple: Build a fun web app for kids called Backyard Coding Adventures that generates outdoor coding challenges based on age. What h...

What if the apps on your phone could change after you install them… without an update? In this episode of Mr. Fred’s Tech Talks , we explore the emerging world of shape-shifting apps - applications powered by AI that can evolve, adapt, and even reveal hidden features over time. Mr. Fred breaks down this complex topic in a way parents, educators, and students can understand, including the concept o...