Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

The wow has to be secondary to the why. Meghan Freeman spent a year letting her staff play in VR before a single student put on a headset — and what they found changed how she designs immersive learning. Meghan Freeman, M.Ed., is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IlluminateXR. Before that she founded and led Elite Academic Academy, where she bought 46 headsets for her staff and gave them an entire school year to explore, argue, and write the policy themselves. In this conversation she gets specific about what actually works: how to manage a room full of students who can't see the room, how long a first session should run, and the one question a teacher has to answer before booking the equipment. In this episode, you'll learn: What XR means and how VR, AR, and AI fit together in a classroom Why the "wow" of an immersive moment has to be secondary to the "why" The classroom-management controls that make group VR workable — spatial audio, seating, mute, and lockin...

Most principals say “data-driven” and mean test scores. Dr. Deborah Dennie means attendance, discipline, and climate too — and it changed her school. Dr. Deborah Dennie has led Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland for ten years. She’s Maryland’s Middle School Principal of the Year and one of three middle-school finalists for the 2026 NASSP National Principal of the Year. In this episode she walks Vicki through the data routine she runs every two weeks, why she spent her entire first year looking and listening instead of changing things, and how a classic car show and a 94% attendance goal did more for her building than another round of test-score analysis. In this episode, you’ll learn: • Why her first year as principal was spent looking and listening, not changing anything • The every-two-weeks data review she runs with her assistant principals and resource teacher • How she identifies teachers above the building failure average — and the questions she sends t...

AI is already in your school—the real question is how to use it on purpose. In Part 3 of the ISTE 2026 AI & EdTech Super Series, recorded live in Orlando, Vicki Davis talks with three education leaders about implementing AI across a whole school while keeping the teacher at the center. Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Owoh makes the case that reaching kids still starts with relationship. Author Tony Frontier (AI with Intention) reframes the conversation from AI detection to learning detection. And Renaissance product chief Todd Brekhus explains why his team pulled student-facing AI back and built a tool that keeps the teacher in the middle. In this episode, you'll learn: Why a strong school technology policy runs toward AI, not away from it How to shift from catching cheaters to detecting real learning—through integrity, transparency, and explainability What students actually say about how much they use AI (and how little guidance they get) Why one edtech company pulled its stud...

Travel with students changes what a school leader sees. Karen Spencer, principal of Parkview Baptist School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, treats travel as part of her school’s mission rather than an add-on — a sixth grade overnight, a seventh grade STEM and history trip to Boston, Washington D.C. in eighth grade, and international travel in high school. In this conversation she walks through how the Boston trip started, what it costs a principal in effort, and what she gets back that nothing inside the building can give her. In this episode, you’ll learn: How a single teacher’s push to “bring more STEM to the school” became an annual seventh grade trip to Boston Why the trip grew from STEM-only into STEM, history and fun — MIT, Harvard, robotics, the Freedom Trail, Lexington and Concord What a grade-by-grade travel ladder looks like when each grade builds on the last What hands-on learning looks like abroad — cooking classes, flamenco lessons, hiking and biking Karen’s honest answe...

Host Vicki Davis takes her microphone onto the floor at ISTE 2026 in Orlando for Part 2 of the ISTE AI and EdTech Supershow. Karim Meghji, President and CEO of CodeAI — the nonprofit formerly known as Code.org — argues that AI literacy belongs in every classroom, and that the goal is students who can question an answer, not just generate one. Kimmie Fink, a thirteen-year classroom veteran now senior editor at the BBC Learning Hub, walks through free resources teachers can use tomorrow. And Brandie Wright tells the story of the student from her ISTE keynote — a real child that audience members assumed was invented by AI. Cool Cat Teacher Talk episode:

ISTE 2026  Buzz + AI assessment + space education: the conversations every teacher is having this summer, with Dr. Carmalita Seitz, Steve Swanson, and Dr. Mark Wagner. This summer’s biggest ed-tech conversations in one show. Dr. Carmalita Seitz of ISTE+ASCD previews what everyone will be talking about at ISTE 2026 — AI, instructional leadership, the tech backlash, “brain rot,” and the return of project-based learning. High school engineering teacher Steve Swanson built his own AI grading tool, ClassLens — then deleted the one-button auto-grade feature because every grade should pass through a teacher’s eyes. And Dr. Mark Wagner, author of Space Education, shows why the growing space economy needs every kind of learner. In this episode, you’ll learn: - What teachers actually take home from ISTE 2026 — and why to lead with good teaching, not the tool - Why “human in the loop” matters for AI grading, and the privacy questions to ask first - How to vet an AI tool’s data handling (...