A father reflects on how AI may be changing our children's attitudes toward uncertainty, and what that means for their lives and relationships.

Welcome to the July 2026 edition of the Edtech & ELT Newsletter.

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape teaching and learning, educator preparation programs have an important role to play in ensuring future educators are prepared to use AI thoughtfully, ethically, and effectively.

The findings reinforce a need we hear from educators globally: technology must be paired with strategy, responsible practices, and professional learning. Lenovo helps schools build that foundation by bringing together the right technology, implementation support, and partnerships that advance AI literacy for educators and learners.

AI as Collaborator: Human-Written Lyrics, AI-Sung Music, and Critical Reflection

Most teachers recognize the scene: a room full of students copying down slides word-for-word or neatly filing away handouts under the assumption that having the record means having the knowledge.

Aka, the current state of AI's instructional design ability & what it means for L&D

Why higher education needs trust, critical thinking, and authentic assessment, not surveillance alone.

The edtech world loves a disruption narrative, and it is easy to assume that artificial intelligence in the classroom was born alongside ChatGPT in late 2022. Far from being a sudden arrival, AI has a historically layered presence in educational research. It actually experienced a massive wave of growth between 1976 and 1989, driven by expert systems and intelligent tutoring. As we navigate the current flood of generative tools, this half-century archive offers a sobering, critical reminder for educators: the recent, staggering spike in AI publications represents a surge in research attention, not necessarily demonstrated educational effectiveness.

As with other complex technologies such as smartphones, the internet or even writing itself, it will take more time for researchers to fully understand the true range of AI’s effects on cognition and learning. In the end, the picture will likely be a nuanced one that depends heavily on context and use case.
But what we know about learning tells us that deep knowledge and mastery of a skill will always require a genuine cognitive workout – with or without AI.

Through five intense months of meetings, research, and outreach across the MIT community, the Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training sought to understand the role of generative AI in the life and educational mission of the Institute and recommend how to navigate its challenges and opportunities.

The latest AI tutoring research points to a stubbornly human problem — getting students to engage. “Access was nearly universal but engagement was thin,” a new study found.

A short exploration of how AI is changing the signals of value in work and culture.

Three new studies shed light on when offloading to AI harms learning, when it helps — and how to design for the difference

As universities consider how best to integrate artificial intelligence into higher education, one message is becoming increasingly clear: the challenge extends far beyond adopting new technologies. The more important question is how institutions, teachers and students can make sense of AI and use it in ways that support meaningful learning, critical thinking and responsible knowledge production.

Are frontier AI models beginning to write papers better than humans? I ran a comparison, and it's left me more uncertain than ever.