Technolandy

Day 76 (of 2025/26) top 3s of 2025 going into winter break!

So here it is: the Top 3s that made me stop, think, and sometimes mutter under my breath in 2025. Winter break feels like a good excuse to let these ideas marinate, let the rabbit holes grow, and maybe, just maybe, start imagining what schooling could look like if we actually listened—to kids, to each other, and to the quiet wins hiding in plain sight.

Go ahead, skim if you must… but the real fun happens when you sit, sip something warm, and let these ideas do their slow work. See you in 2026—hopefully wiser, definitely caffeinated, and still a little rebellious.

Top 3 Prompts (no links – go down your own rabbit hole with these starting prompts):

BC Education 

1. History of Math 11 now university eligible (for entry into the Arts)
2. Adult Dogwood (or is it a “neuro diverse dogwood”)
3. No Teacher Contract (Yet)

Conspiracies  (really – simple prompt that has the rabbit hole expand into a huge warren!

1. Tartaria 
2. Dream tech advertising
3. Social credit (China)

Decisions principals/superintendents were forced to make

1. Banning social media for under-16s (not opposed to it, just wish there were a place teens could gather to learn how to best use these powerful mediums)
2. Banning the most disruptive tool that creates equity and personalized education learning journeys (the fear of phones making learning more equitable and not just benefiting some with privilege over all others))
3. No more nicknames (eg Alberta pronoun/name law) without parental consent – also no name shortenings nor gender specific group call outs (eg ‘hey guys…’) 

Leadership myths that still won’t die

1. By tightening consequences, compliance will follow
2. Leaders always have clarity – sometimes we need to follow the structure and plans of (metaphorical) classical music… sometimes we need to be more like jazz and go with the feeling of the moment.
3. Consistency means treating everyone the same. As a superintendent once shared: three students come to my office because of drug use… all three exit with different consequences… 

Moments that showed we no longer share common narratives

1. Media has shifted from “one of three channels” to personalized streaming services… no watercooler shared experiences (though a lot of us are talking about last nights Seahawks Thursday Night Football Game…) so perhaps the school experience should also shift from a 1-3 channel viewing option…
2. The shift from common to individual identities is helping more students find who they are – from their names to gender identity… exploration is a good thing and pronoun/name bans focused on transgender communities in 2025 isn’t going to age well. 
3. Trust in institutions is fragmented… but not absent… but we cannot assume there is communal trust in schools, because the reality is: there never was.

AI moments educators couldn’t ignore

1. AI became ‘good enough’ at student work – we knew, but didn’t call out when students copied from encyclopedias… but the focus shifted to ‘prove you did the work’ when really, the guilty conscious is that we have been grading products instead of thinking/knowing for a long time.
2. Teachers are also using AI for efficiency – stretching the gap between most districts policy and practice.
3. AI Detection doesn’t work. The tools are unreliable, inequitable and easily gamed. Focus more on trust and relationships… AND shift thinking from “Did AI write this?” To “What learning does the task actually require” – or as I say, put the Big Ideas at the top of the grade book rather than the tasks to be complete…

Challenges facing kids that adults underestimate

1. The jobs we wish we were preparing kids for… ain’t gonna be there – especially as we see companies finding more efficiency by using AI to leverage their current workers rather than hiring more people…
2. The push to ‘return manufacturing jobs’ doesn’t actually create jobs in the same was as a hundred years ago – more money for the elite, some work for the people putting the factories together… and then comes the automation….
3. Kids are going up without a stable sense of ‘what matter’s as they are being measured constantly, but rarely understood – attention is constantly fragmented, narratives about success, morality and truth are contradictory, and they are being observed more than at any other time in history – everything, including behaviour is documented. Yet how they they feel ‘understood’ and know that their views/thoughts/wonders are understood by ‘us’?

Books that helped me think clearly in 2025

1. Pedagogies of Voice – the expansion of Shane Safir’s Street Data… stories > systemic data
2. Ducks – first a great graphic novel (aka hardcover comic book) but in part because of the work of lidsurvey.ca showing how described audio can help broaden the awareness of the beauty of comic books… sorry, graphic novels: https://lidsurvey.ca/ducks
3. Burnout From Humans – Vanessa Andreotti and Aiden Cinnamon Tea really shifted my thinking to AI, not as Artificial, but Alternative Intelligence and the true value is as a collaborator. And it’s free: https://burnoutfromhumans.net

Ideas worth sitting with (not skimming)

1. The problem isn’t school (like the report card I once tried to fix… both of those are doing what they were designed to very well – just not inclusionary nor well thought out) – it’s our insistence on schooling – Will Richardson challenges our reflex to “fix” schools (with new programs policies etc) and instead ponder the harder question: What kinds of humans are we actually trying to develop – and what environments support that>
2. Kids don’t need more engagement. They need more agency – though it is slower, messier and less measurable (using traditional tools).
3. The future can’t be prepared for – it has to be practiced… schools as artificial bubbles not resembling the world kids actually live in only create less connection, relevance, and meaning for ‘lerrning’. 

Reasons I’m still optimistic about education

1. The people closes to kids are adapting faster than the system…
2. The cracks are visible now – and that makes change possible… as I like to tease – redefine “success” in, and even “graduation” from, schooling!
3. Education is one of the few shared moral commonalities we have – education is important… learning to communicate is vital (reading… well, as I tease – maybe the 400 year old fad is coming to a close as we return to more oral/aural storytelling traditions now that storytellers can be in all places at all times…) but there’s gonna be a lot of disagreements coming up to debate!

Quiet wins that didn’t make the news

1. Assessment has shifted from ‘prove it’ to ‘show your thinking’
2. More adults started saying “I don’t know” out loud – about how to teach reading, about what the future holds for graduates… we need more modelling though – of reading, of good tech use, of good social media use…
3. Relationships keep beating systems – every reform requires a relationship – especially in education.

Looking forward to doing some thinking this winter break. Back in 2026 (after some likely WOLs – winter of learning)