Julia Fallon on Infrastructure, Not Programs: Redesigning Around AI
Can Your AI Guidance Actually Guide — Or Does It Just Add Cognitive Load? Thirty-five states have issued AI guidance for schools. But how many of those documents reduce workload instead of compounding it? How many build judgment muscles instead of issuing checkbox mandates? And how many actually get used in real classrooms? Julia Fallon, Executive Director of SETDA, has spent 25 years working with state education technology leaders to design systems that prioritize coherence over compliance. In this conversation, she reveals why effective guidance must anchor values in context, design for agency, and trust educators by default, or it will live on a shelf, ignored. What You'll Learn: Why AI is infrastructure, not a program, and what that means for funding and strategy The three divides from the 2024 National Ed Tech Plan: access, design, and use How No Child Left Behind's compliance trap offers lessons for AI adoption today Why reducing cognitive load is the design principle most guidance ignores What DJing on Twitch teaches about learning publicly and modeling transparency The three-word challenge: Coherence. Agency. Trust. Julia also shares her leadership signature song — "The Music Sounds Better with You" by Stardust — and why collective rhythm, not solo performance, defines systems-level change.
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