150 episodes listed below
AI news, tested by a teacher and a school director.
Wes Fryer and Jason Neiffer trade AI headlines and hands-on experiments with the ease of two people who treat the show as an excuse to hang out. The takeaways are practical: prompting habits, what an AI agent does once it has email access, and how media literacy holds up against AI-made propaganda.
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The EdTech Situation Room is built on two educators comparing notes on technology news and on their own experiments with AI. Wes Fryer teaches middle school media literacy and STEM in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jason Neiffer is executive director of the Montana Digital Academy, the state virtual school on the University of Montana campus in Missoula. Recent episodes open with a welcome to viewers around the world, introductions, and some back-and-forth about Charlotte weather versus Missoula weather. The hosts invite people to watch live, and the video stays up on YouTube. Headlines share space with hands-on trials, and the trials are what set the show apart. In one, a host reaches a headless home computer through Tailscale, working only by text in the terminal, and asks an AI to build a ninth grade geography course from checklists and guides. His usual prompt add-on, asking the model to pose questions one at a time and offer options, is a habit a teacher could borrow the next day. In another, a host gives an AI agent access to email, a test Notion account, an Obsidian vault and throwaway social accounts, asks it to write posts and answer mail, and hears back about eight minutes later: done. He sets it up with a wry what-could-possibly-go-wrong. Screen demonstrations appear too: one host edits a Great Depression text by adding a notebook of editing advice and asking the tool to pitch a plan first, while the other points out the editable canvas beside the chat. Prompting craft comes up repeatedly, down to one host's routine of writing detailed prompts in Claude and passing them to Gemini and nano banana, with base images, to make cartoons. The same exchange recalls a webinar with Lucy Gray about how searching is not everyone's reflex, then observes that turning to AI is becoming one. Media literacy supplies much of the show's edge, which fits a co-host who teaches it. When Lego-style propaganda videos seen on TikTok come up, likely made with AI tools, Neiffer admits he does not know what media literacy looks like in a post-AI world and turns the question to Fryer. Another exchange notes that different AI tools can return different results, sometimes on whether something is a fact, and proposes comparing prompts as a classroom project, an update of the old Northwest tree octopus searches. Titles such as 'EdTechSR Episode 370: AI Frontier Geopolitics', 'EdTechSR Episode 369: Dogpile and Dark Arts' and 'EdTechSR Episode 372: AI's Psychological Dangers' show a range well beyond classrooms. The mood is warm and unpretentious: Neiffer is billed as the EdTech Yoda of the North, a Nobel Prize in nerdery gets floated, and a plea for Facebook followers ends with a crack about podcast glamour. One sign-off calls the show an excuse for the two hosts to hang out, and that ease is audible. Show notes at edtechsr.com and the show's Substack posts gather the links discussed plus ones left over, and the recent episodes all close on the same advice: stay safe, stay savvy.
Made for: Suits a teacher, media literacy educator or school technology leader who wants AI news discussed by people working in schools, with the tools actually tried out rather than only described.
What sets it apart: The hosts try tools on their own setups, from an AI agent given email and note access to a course drafted over a home terminal. A co-host who teaches middle school media literacy keeps questions about propaganda and inconsistent AI answers in view.
Where technology news meets educational analysis. Join Jason and Wes as they analyze the past week's technology news through an educational lens.
An exposed password in AI-made code? Wes Fryer asks the question you'd want asked.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at likely AI-made propaganda, media literacy, and the classroom questions now coming into view.
EdTechSR Episode 372 frames likely AI-generated propaganda as an immediate classroom concern. The hosts move from Iranian propaganda videos rendered in a LEGO style on TikTok to the larger problem of tools that make persuasive synthetic media easy to produce and spread.
A live tech-news episode finds its strongest thread in the practical messiness of prompting AI to build a geography course.
The episode is at its best when its wide tech-news sweep settles into Jason's test of using Tailscale and a command-line connection to have an AI system build a ninth-grade geography course.
A grounded conversation about turning AI tools into practical habits educators can examine.
AI's practical value comes through everyday educational work here: building prompts, tracking receipts, sorting unstructured data, and using human judgment to check what the tools return. Jason Neifer and Dr.
A practical, conversational case for using AI's uneven answers as media literacy material.
EdTechSR Episode 369 frames AI literacy as something students have to test in motion, not memorize as a fixed set of rules. Wes Fryer and Jason Neiffer focus on the way different tools, accounts, and shifting guardrails can return different answers, then tie that uncertainty…
A hands-on AI agent demo turns automation into a practical discussion about access, backups, and permissions.
An AI agent is given eight minutes to move through email, a test Notion account, an Obsidian vault, and throwaway social accounts, which gives the episode a useful frame for automation's expanding reach. Jason Neifer and Dr.
Classroom practice, school change, and AI with purpose.
Media literacy, tested against real feeds.
Business stories with practical connective tissue.
Edtech talk with classroom sense and snacks.
Free classroom tech, tested by a teacher.
Classroom tech, explained teacher to teacher.
Wes Fryer and Jason Neiffer discuss the latest in education technology, focusing on Google's Gemini AI integration across platforms.
Jason and Wes discuss the week's technology news, including AI in education, school safety, and upcoming professional development events.
Jason Neiffer and Wes Fryer discuss AI hallucinations, hardware, and media literacy in education amidst a chaotic information landscape.
Jason and Wes discuss the latest technology news and its implications for education, including media literacy and coding in schools.
EdTech Situation Room episode 372, dated April 8, 2026, links quantum encryption, Verity, Gamma 4, meme warfare, and AI companion safety.
EdTech Situation Room episode 371, recorded March 25, 2026, centers on the FCC router ban, Starlink upload speeds, and two AI demos from OpenClaw and Google AI Studio.
EdTech Situation Room episode 370, recorded March 4, 2026, centers on AI geopolitics, Anthropic, and classroom AI workflows.
["EdTech Situation Room episode 369, dated February 11, 2026, centers on archive.today, the CIA World Factbook, Wikimedia UK, Google AI Overviews, and Claude Co-work.", "Wes Fryer, a middle school media literacy and STEM teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, cohosts with Jason Neiffer from Missoula, Montana, and they frame the night around current articles plus live demos.", "The opening segment tracks an Ars Technica report about archive.today, a paywall-bypassing archive site that one blogger says is running a DDoS attack through its CAPTCHA page.", "Later, the hosts connect the CIA World Factbook, Wikimedia UK's education argument, LM Arena, and Claude's folder-reorganization demo to a broader case for source checking, model comparison, and classroom media literacy."]
["Jason Neiffer describes a downloadable agent that can draft posts, check email, and act through Slack, Notion, and Bluesky.", "Wes Fryer ties Angry Planet's January 30 episode 'Online Culture is the Whole Culture' to Michael Centers of Virginia Tech, 4chan, gaming culture, and Pete Hegseth's crusader tattoo.", "Peter Vogel's January 28 BC Catholic article 'Local TV and radio at a crossroads' leads to a defense of AM/FM radio, KMAN in Manhattan, Kansas, and battery-powered weather radios when roads and schools are at risk.", "The show is episode 368 of EdTech Situation Room on February 4, 2026, hosted by Jason Neiffer of Montana Digital Academy in Missoula and Wes Fryer of Charlotte, North Carolina."]
EdTech Situation Room episode 367, dated January 21, 2026, focuses on Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM, and vibe coding for educators.
EdTech Situation Room episode 366 marks the show's 10-year anniversary, with Jason Neiffer saying the first broadcast was in the first week of January 2016.
["EdTech Situation Room Episode 365, Nano Banana Era, centers on Nano Banana Pro, Disney's Sora deal, and a deepfake Avi Loeb video about 3I Atlas that nearly fooled Jason Neiffer.", "Wes Fryer opens from Manhattan, Kansas, says this is the final show of 2025, and recounts how Google Maps, NotebookLM, ChatGPT, and Gemini helped him plan a Japan trip through Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Shinkansen.", "Neiffer argues that Nano Banana Pro inside Gemini and NotebookLM now makes detailed images far faster than earlier ChatGPT image tools, even when a Looney Tunes calendar prompt produces wrong months and labels.", "The episode keeps returning to classroom and copyright questions as Fryer and Neiffer discuss Disney, OpenAI, Sora, school-logo design DNA, and slide decks styled like Seinfeld, South Park, Beavis and Butthead, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."]
EdTech Situation Room episode 364, recorded December 3, 2025, centers on Gemini 3, social-media regulation, and classroom AI use.
EdTech Situation Room episode 363, dated November 12, 2025, opens on OpenAI's fight over a court order that could expose 20 million complete user chats to The New York Times.