EdTechSR Ep 357: AI Tinkering Playbook

What this episode covers

Welcome to episode 357 (“AI Tinkering Playbook”) of the EdTech Situation Room from August 27, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) lean into the tinkerer’s mindset—treating AI as a thinking partner you iterate with, not a magic box—while swapping classroom-ready examples and PD patterns. They open with hands-on strategies for NotebookLM as a quasi custom-bot for staff handbooks and new-teacher docs, showing how a short “read this first” instruction turns NotebookLM into a practical helpdesk for policy Q&A. Then it’s a tour of PD formats that work: an advanced, build-something-together session (“Build-a-Bot”) where teachers leave with a functioning helper tailored to their workflow, and a foundations session (“Prompting is Teaching”) that frames promptcraft through how teachers already model, iterate, and improve student work. On the creative side, the hosts compare Nano Banana image edits (Wes’s Tetons photo… now featuring Ronald & Grimace!) with Qwen’s new image modifier, plus Freepik’s growing AI toolkit—concrete examples of “try it, test it, share it” tinkering educators can adopt tomorrow. Headlines include Meta + Midjourney model news, an Apple iPhone event preview, and a trio of security stories: an AI-assisted worm in the wild, Anthropic disrupting automated disinfo/attacks, and research on tricking AI browsers—reminders to keep beating the drum for password managers and unique passphrases. Geeks of the Week: Play with international AI models (Mistral, ZAI, DeepSeek, Qwen, Reka, Kimi) to broaden your toolkit, and Home Assistant Green for a private, resilient smart-home lab teachers can learn from and automate around. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or https://www.youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links. 🔗 Links We Discussed * NotebookLM (Google’s AI notebook tool) * Mike Caulfield “SIFT” fact-checking prompt * OpenMCQ (Montana Digital Academy) * Nano Banana : A Free AI Image Editor That Could Be Photoshop’s Biggest Rival (Geeky Gadgets, 22 Aug 2025) - Nano Banana - example * www.freepik.com * chat.qwen.ai (image modifier) * Digital Learningpalooza https://www.deelac.com/digital-learningpalooza/ * Matt Wolfe on YouTube about AI: https://www.youtube.com/@mreflow * Someone Created the First AI-Powered Worm That Can Spread Automatically (The Hacker News, 26 August 2025) * Anthropic Disrupts AI-Powered Disinformation Campaign Targeting Global Elections (The Hacker News, 27 August 2025) * Frontier Learning Lab Substack: frontierlearninglab.substack.com * Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Play with International AI * mistral.ai/ * chat.z.ai/ * chat.deepseek.com/sign_in * chat.qwen.ai/ * app.reka.ai/chat * www.kimi.com/ * Wes’ Geeks of the Week: * Home Assistant Green * 7 Laws of Good Web Design: www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/54749294891 * Google Site Milestone 1: www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/54749513344 🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss * Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models (TechCrunch, 22 Aug 2025) * schoolai.com * www.playlab.ai * “Build a Bot Workshop” (intermediate) and “Prompting is Teaching” (basic) * Deciphering Apple’s Awe-Dropping iPhone 17 Event Invite (CNET, 26 August 2025) * Experts Find AI Browsers Can Be Tricked Into Performing Dangerous Actions (The Hacker News, 20 August 2025) * This Famous Star Is a Total Fraud, Astronomers Say (Gizmodo, 19 Aug 2025) * Sabrina Romanov on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sabrina_ramonov Episode 357 is also available on YouTube. Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe