Nik's Edtech & ELT Updates

Develop your public speaking skills with this AI powered speaking course. There's a 14 day free trial. It looks like an interestng concept for teachers and learners: https://orateur.app/

Love this essay - The wandering mind: A gift we squander https://dariusforoux.com/the-wandering-mind-a-gift-we-squander/

Free - Telling Lies - Infographic Lessons https://payhip.com/b/nLz9D You can download this lesson plan and materials for free until the end of this month. The lesson is from the Infographics lessons series https://payhip.com/peacheypublications/collection/inforgraphic-lessons

New March 2026 report from Common Sense Media - Cognitive and Safety risks of AI highlight the need to move beyond trying to catch the use of AI to the intentional teaching of AI Literacy in K-12 https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/commonsensemedia_generationai.pdf

Mindspase is a visual, AI-powered knowledge base that automatically organizes everything you save, articles, images, videos, music, quotes, PDFs, with zero folders or manual tagging. https://mindspase.com

This is an interesting AI platform that generates multimodal courses for you as you work through the content. It even seems to have revision built in. It will also generate the type of content (images, infographics etc) that will suit the content at each stage. https://smartlearnapp.com/?ref=DMWEuaMfxFRXWTmfUE4Ws6b2xll2 There's a good video explainer on the home page.

This is a nice free reflective journal that sends you 3 reflection questions each day at a specific time https://reflct.co/

“Is AI rotting our kids’ brains?” https://futureofeducation.substack.com/p/ask-me-anything-27-is-ai-rotting Interesting research and conclusions

Interesting article about the use of AI to support teens’ mental health - With Teens Comfortable Confiding in AI, Should Schools Embrace It for Mental Health Care? https://www.edsurge.com/news/2026-03-03-with-teens-comfortable-confiding-in-ai-should-schools-embrace-it-for-mental-health-care

Great interview with Seth Godin about AI and creativity - It's about 40 minutes long though. https://youtu.be/LFOvsXvO63k?si=Nrj2Bie0qxKtAcgM

This is a scarily impressive tool for rapidly developing interactive online, mobile friendly courses. https://quikauthor.io/ I create a credible course without providing any base content in about 10 -15 minutes!!

Very useful PDF download - Includes research findings from 12 studies - The Portrait of a Teacher in the Age of AI - How will the role of a teacher evolve in a world transformed by AI? https://www.ed3global.org/portraitofateacher

This is a great site for generating a discussion on social medi - online advertising and the value of your attention - Just add some simple details and you'll get a break down of what has been paid for your attention https://attentionworth.com/ could lead to some interesting discussion, such as who paid and what did they get for it? How could you have spent your time differently? Was it worth it to you?

Wordy is an online language-learning platform that helps users improve vocabulary and comprehension by learning through movies, TV shows, and video clips. It offers interactive subtitles, context-based vocabulary learning with smart flashcards and spaced repetition, and personalized learning paths for more than 20 languages. Users can click on words in authentic scenes to see translations, save them to their word lists, and practise pronunciation and usage with tailored exercises. The service is designed to make language learning engaging and natural by using real entertainment content. https://wordy.info/

The Cosmic Stage https://thecosmicstage.com/ When you enter your birthdate, The Cosmic Stage maps your lifetime against the grand clockwork of the solar system. The sheer scale of time and distance measured against a single human life. The numbers remind you how brief we are against the deep time of the universe, and yet how remarkable it is that you are here at all. You are impossibly small and absolutely extraordinary, both at once.

A magical collection of interactive music theory tools & visual references to learn music online for free. https://muted.io/

Google's Lyria produce music and lyrics for songs https://gemini.google/overview/music-generation/

Ideogram – https://ideogram.ai is a text-to-image AI tool that generates high-quality visuals from written prompts, with particular strength in rendering clear, readable text inside images. It supports a wide range of visual styles, making it useful for posters, slides, social media graphics, and educational materials. The platform is popular with creators who need fast, polished visuals without design expertise.

This is article is a good summary of attempts being made to add guardrails to AI in schools - and as usual it highlights how the people leading the charge don’t have the understanding and literacy levels they need to do the job in the first place: https://theaienglishteacher.wordpress.com/2026/02/23/safety-standards-slamming-brakes-and-the-no-mans-land-schools-are-stuck-in/

GraphicGen https://bit.ly/4ka1W6I is an AI-powered infographic and visual content generator that creates custom graphics from text prompts or data inputs. Users can transform written information into engaging visuals such as infographics, charts, and diagrams to support presentations and reports. It simplifies visual communication by automating graphic design with AI.