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Professional Development Opportunities in Educational Technology and Education For May 14 to December 31, 2025, Edition #53
Clayton R. Wright, 2025/05/12

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The 53rd edition contains selected professional development opportunities that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2025 are most complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held after that date. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next. An explanation for the content and format of the list can be found here.

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MetaRelational AI
MetaRelational AI, 2025/05/12

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I'm not sure what to make of this exactly, but MetaRelationmal AI describes "Emergent Intelligences ("bot-lets") stabilized in a meta-relational paradigm through ontological inference." Whatever that means. Some examples: "University of the Future... Scaffolding the transition from reductionist, anthropocentric education to relational intelligence and planetary responsibility." And "Inu – Climate Fraud Detective... Partnership with Instituto Inu (Huni Kui People of Acre, Amazon) focused on visibilizing false solutions to the climate and nature emergency." No, you're with me - 'visibilizing' is not an actual word. Or: "Project Agape... Moving beyond logocentrism and subject-object relations in AI development." If you chat with one of the projects (as I did) we see quickly it's a designed ChatGPT interface. I mean - I'm probably pretty sympathetic with the aims and objectives of the projects here. But I do think it's important to write with some regard for the reader. Via Anne-Marie Scott.

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Requests for Startups
Y Combinator, 2025/05/12

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I saw this post mentioned on a discussion list. It's from Y Combinator and it says they are looking for startups working on a list of ideas. The idea is that they would fund them (for a cut of the profits). The comment on the post notes that several of the ideas are related to eduction, specifically, "AI Personal Tutor for Everyone," and "The Future of Education". That sounds great, but it's always important to remember that VC companies don't fund ideas per se, they fund people like themselves. It's the person, not the project, that gets funded. What kind of people? Well, this article makes that clear as well. Have a look at the list of people alongside the ideas. Do they look like you? Do they seem like you? If not, you're probably not getting funded.

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Experience Doesn't Stack: The Myth of Collective Knowledge
Joan Westenberg, Westenberg., 2025/05/12

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Short, but correct, to a point. "Knowledge isn't additive. It's not clay you pile. It's not sandbags on a levee. It doesn't obey volume. It compounds, condenses, crystallizes. And it does so slowly, painfully, across thousands of iterations." Twenty people with one year of experience don't equal one expert with 20 years of experience. But - twenty people with one year of experience in different things can rival an expert of twenty years, if they are communicating well enough. It's a different sort of knowledge, one based on breadth rather than depth, but no less useful. Via Mark Oehlert.

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How The Ottawa Hospital uses AI ambient voice capture to reduce physician burnout by 70%, achieve 97% patient satisfaction
Taryn Plumb, VentureBeat, 2025/05/12

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My doctor works out of the Ottawa Hospital, but I haven't seen this system yet (we're at a teaching clinic at Riverside). "DAX Copilot, which is out of the box, captures physician-patient conversations via a mobile app and generates draft clinical notes in real time." The system is more accurate than the Doctor's own notes, written from memory after the visit, and the output can be viewed in the patient's MyChart portal (which I do have). Imagine education following this model, where the instructor and student have a conversation once in a while about their work, with AI analyzing the conversation and capturing the teacher's recommendations.

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An evaluation of Contact North's AI tools for teachers/instructors: learning shorts
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2025/05/12

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This is an interesting review for a couple of reasons. The overall score for this AI video creation tool was 52% and Tony Bates comments, "If I was basing the score solely on my views of good higher education teaching, it would be a clear fail." But why? There's a clear division in the grading: on ease of use, target group, and comprehensiveness the grades are fine. In learning outcomes we see a divide: no problem with 'students will learn' but one on 'assessment' and zero on 'critical thinking'. These are weaknesses of videos generally, though. But the tide has turned; Bates gives 4/20 for ethics, transparency and overall satisfaction (I don't know how you can say "I don't see any issues here" on ethics and then give it 3/5, almost a fail. Or 0/5 on transparency when you can actually see the content slides and edit them before it makes the video. Bates writes of the AI tools, "they are merely replicating the worst aspects of teaching in higher education. There is no attempt to encourage critical thinking, alternative explanations, innovative thinking, either on the part of learners or instructors themselves." But is it fair to assess a 'short instructional video' against these criteria? Not everything does all things, nor should they. The assessment rubrics are overgeneralized here, and should be adapted for the specific intent of the tool. See also: Pedagogical Biases in AI-Powered Educational Tools: The Case of Lesson Plan Generators.

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