Education Futures

49:05

Does it really work? Evidence over hype in EdTech

Education Futures ·

2026/10/05

Dr. Ola Ozernov-Palchik is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies how the brain learns to read and, more and more, how AI should (and shouldn't) be used to help it. She is a Research Scientist at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a Research Assistant Professor at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, and Associate Director of Translational Research in BU's AI & Education Initiative. She got her start in research almost by accident: as an

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55:57

Metacognition first: teaching kids to use AI well

Education Futures ·

2026/10/01

Dr. Nicholas "Nick" Zufelt is Instructor in Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts. He was recently appointed Resident Scholar in AI and Education at the school's Tang Institute. He trained as a mathematician, earning a graduate degree and completing a postdoc, then decided research wasn't his path and chose the classroom over a data-science career in tech.Nick taught himself most of his computer science and machine learning. He now teaches

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01:01:57

Beyond the AI hype: fixing literacy in India

Education Futures ·

2026/09/28

Merlia Shaukath is the Founder and CEO of Madhi Foundation, a Chennai-based nonprofit working to end the foundational learning crisis in India's public schools. She studied Economics at Stella Maris College in Chennai, then earned an MSc in Area Development Studies from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Governance and Management from the London School of Economics. Her grandfather was a social reformer who co-founded educational institutions for India's Muslim community. Her parents were

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33:45

Anti-Values: Designing AI that knows what not to do

Education Futures ·

2026/09/24

Dr Malak Sadek is Course Director and Teaching Associate at the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA) at the University of Cambridge, where she teaches the Conversational AI module of the MPhil in Human-Inspired AI. She holds a PhD in Design Engineering from Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering. Her thesis, Designing Responsible AI: Integrating Human Values into AI Design, received the school's 2026 PhD Outstanding Thesis Award.Trained as a computer

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39:55

Inside TUMO: walk-away dedagogy and an AI that asks...

Education Futures ·

2026/09/21

Pegor Papazian is Chief Development Officer at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, the innovative after-school programme for teenagers that was founded in Armenia and has now become a global phenomenon. He trained and practised as an architect before switching to computer science at MIT, where he was a member of the AI Lab.He founded a Barcelona firm doing computational GIS and urban planning, was a partner in a California software company, and went on to serve as CEO of the National

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46:40

Educating a generation of changemakers in the age of AI

Education Futures ·

2026/09/17

Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE), which she launched with Rae Sikora in 1996 after teaching environmental and animal-protection courses to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. She holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and an M.A. and B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania.Over nearly four decades, Weil built the field of comprehensive humane education — teaching across the

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35:15

Raising the floor: literacy, AI, and equity in India

Education Futures ·

2026/09/14

Dr. Dhir Jhingran is the Founder and Executive Director of the Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), one of India's leading organizations working on foundational literacy and numeracy. Before founding LLF in 2015, he spent three decades in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), India's premier civil service, including senior policy roles in the Ministry of Education, before taking voluntary retirement to dedicate himself fully to education.Under his leadership, LLF has grown to roughly 300

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42:26

Can AI build human connection instead of replacing it?

Education Futures ·

2026/09/10

Julia Freeland Fisher is Director of Education Research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, the nonpartisan think tank built on Clayton Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation, where she has spent 13 years making the case that who students know matters as much as what they know. She holds a BA from Princeton and a JD from Yale Law School — a credential she cheerfully calls "a very expensive detour," having decided along the way that she did not want to be a lawyer.She began her career in

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42:49

Teens, AI, and the conversations we are not having

Education Futures ·

2026/09/07

Laura Zimmermann, Ph.D., is the Director of Youth AI Research at Common Sense Media, where she leads research within the newly launched Youth AI Safety Institute — the first independent safety lab dedicated to testing how AI products affect children. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology at Georgetown University with a concentration in Human Development and Public Policy, and was an Institute of Education Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education.For over a decade, Laura has

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01:02:19

Inside England's digitized curriculum, built for AI

Education Futures ·

2026/09/03

John Roberts is the Chief Executive of Oak National Academy, an NGO publicly funded by England's Department for Education to build a free, fully digitised national curriculum for England's schools. A former secondary school teacher and senior leader in the North West of England, he built his first reputation outside the classroom by founding Edapt in 2011, an independent edu-legal support service for teachers and school staff, where he remains chair.In April 2020, as COVID closed schools overnight,

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47:36

What the AI debate misses about the Global South

Education Futures ·

2026/08/31

Dr. Maria Mercedes "Didith" T. Rodrigo is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Computer Science at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, where she directs the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences (ALLS) and co-heads the Ateneo Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality Laboratory. For over two decades she has studied what students actually do and feel while learning with technology — detecting boredom, confusion, frustration and engaged concentration from

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45:54

Building schools where 25 Million have none

Education Futures ·

2026/08/27

Zia Akhter Abbas is President & CEO of The Citizens Foundation (TCF), one of the world's largest privately-run networks of formal schools for low-income children and the largest private employer of women in Pakistan. He came to education sideways: an IB diploma at Lester B. Pearson United World College in Canada, an MBA from LUMS, then seventeen years in senior business and risk roles at Citi and Standard Chartered, plus a board seat at 1Link, Pakistan's leading payments switch. He left banking

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56:29

Africa's learning crisis and the AI agency divide

Education Futures ·

2026/08/24

Dr. Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili is Founder and President of Human Capital Africa, an accountability and advocacy organization devoted to Africa's foundational learning crisis — getting every child reading, writing and counting by age 10. An economic policy expert and chartered accountant by training, she was a co-founder of Transparency International and later served in the Nigerian government as Minister of Solid Minerals and then as Federal Minister of Education. She led the public procurement

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39:51

Africa's 800+ languages and the AI data gap

Education Futures ·

2026/08/20

Dr. John Mugo is the Chief Executive Officer of Mizizi Elimu Afrika, the African-led education organization based in Nairobi, Kenya, formerly known as Zizi Afrique Foundation. He holds a Doctorate and a Master's degree in Special Needs Education from the University of Hanover, Germany, and a Bachelor of Education (Music) from Kenyatta University, where he went on to chair the Department of Special Needs Education.Before founding the organization in 2018, he headed Uwezo, one of East Africa's largest

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45:12

Redesigning school for the AI age

Education Futures ·

2026/08/17

Dan Effland is Senior Director of Innovation at Summit Public Schools and Marshall Street Initiatives, where he is leading the second full redesign of Summit's school model in the network's 23-year history. 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

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41:25

Designing ethical AI characters for kids

Education Futures ·

2026/08/13

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

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46:10

Inside a student-led movement for AI Literacy

Education Futures ·

2026/08/10

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

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51:31

When AI meets grassroots education in India

Education Futures ·

2026/08/06

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

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41:27

A maker's guide to creativity and AI

Education Futures ·

2026/08/03

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,

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45:40

Can AI leapfrog India's learning crisis?

Education Futures ·

2026/07/30

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

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