International Society for Technology in Education

Welcome to the Transformative Principle.

I am so excited to share this interview from ISTE 2026 with you.

Really fascinating things happening there.

Lots of great people.

And thanks for listening to Transformative Principle.

All right.

Kevin Donahue at ISTE.

You have a background in Catholic schools and then go from there.

Um, and again, I don't think it's like Big Tobacco funding health groups, but I think it's worth following the money and asking questions.

And what's so interesting now, you know, we're seeing this unprecedented backlash against tech by parents groups across the country, and some of them have set up a site that they call Screenwashing, and it's a map of large groups that promote tech in schools, including there's one called ISTE, the International Society for Tech in Education, um, and other groups, and they just list all the tech companies that fund them.

And, um, parents feel like if you are a nonprofit group promoting tech in schools, that you should, every time you're interviewed, disclose who your funders are so that people can understand, you know, you may have good intentions, but you're being funded by tech companies to promote tech in schools.

Yeah.

So what does this look like in action? Well, a couple of my favorite starting points is simply uploading your notes, maybe from a conference for yourself.

Maybe you jotted down a whole bunch of things while you were at ISTE or at a webinar, you know, series that you attended this summer, and you can turn them into a podcast-style audio overview and revisit it, you know, on your drive somewhere.

[laughs] So you can upload an article a colleague sent you, listen to, you know, some notes about it while you're on the move, and maybe even at the end of a unit of study, something that you're teaching, you can upload your slides and study materials and create an audio guide for students to review.

It's just important to remember that if you're gonna share the output with a student or a group of students, you wanna preview what the tool generates before you share it with that group, just the same way you'd watch a YouTube video before showing it to your class.

She invited me.

I was at ISTE not too long ago, back in June, and I had the opportunity to be on a panel and Rochelle was the moderator.

I'm just so glad that we had this opportunity to just learn from you.

So without further ado, Rochelle, thank you so much for joining us today.

I think that is my favorite introduction of all time.

But yeah, it was great.

Great to see you at ISTE and to be the moderator for that panel because I love learning from all of you that were on it.

Thank you again for having me today.

Welcome to the Transformative Principle.

I am so excited to share this interview from ISTE 2026 with you.

Really fascinating things happening there.

Lots of great people.

All right.

Evan Schwartz,

ISTE ASCD 2026.

Welcome.

Today I'm chatting with Crystal Uhairin about how to keep student thinking at the center of AI use.

Now this episode is going up right at the start of September, but I ran into Crystal on the ISTE conference floor at ISTE Live running in between sessions at the very end of June.

And when I saw she had some new posts for Edutopia, I just knew I had to get her on the podcast.

to talk a bit about her work.

And I also have a children's book about what it's like to be a principal and me spending a day with children and getting them into their leadership.

I also am a public speaker, so I know I didn't get a chance to see you, but I saw how busy you were at ISTE.

I also have an opportunity to do keynote speaking and consulting around the country.

So I'm very, very blessed to do this work.

I like it.

We wanted to link up.

I saw you at ISTE, but we were both busy.

That already put me at ease.

And that is more of a, for me, I didn't go back and get my ed tech degree.

certificate or a degree in educational technology, but it just means that I go to a lot of PD to educate myself, to expose myself to as many conference opportunities, ISTE, and using, you know, whatever sort of on-demand, you know, remote learning I can do when it comes to educational technology.

And then there's that learning that you do Day to day, you're like, well, I guess we're going to figure this out.

It's not going to be pretty, but we're going to figure it out.

it.

Wow.

And, you know, let me ask you, when it comes to like, because you are the cybersecurity and but do you network with your ISTE

affiliate? Not so much ISTE.

I'm pondering out loud today with Carly Quiros.

I connected with Carly after reading her ISTE ASCD blog post titled Three Questions That Uncover Teacher Leadership.

During a short conversation comparing our ideas, I knew she'd be a great guest for the podcast.

Carly is a professional learning specialist with Ed Advance in Litchfield, Connecticut, and a doctoral student in curriculum and instruction at the University of Virginia.

What's the best way for listeners to connect with you with follow-up questions or continuing to follow the work that you're doing, the writing you're doing?

Yeah, I would love to connect listeners and keep the conversation going.

So I would say the best way to follow me would be to follow my writing on the ISTE and ASCD blog and also on Learning Forwards the Learning Professional.

I have a new article coming out this month in August.

There are a number of states who are taking this, uh, by, by, by, by, by, by the horn.

Uh, we are pushing this idea of a, of a, of a state assurance lab, a clearing house of sort that leverages the EdTech index created by EdSurge and, and ISTE, uh, as, as, as an entry for these kinds of continuous monitoring.

So it is already happening.

I think what this begins to do is create a bit more coherence across the country.