My EdTech Life
My EdTech Life is where education meets innovation with clarity, caution, and purpose. Hosted by Dr. Alfonso "Fonz" Mendoza, this podcast features real conversations with educators, founders, researchers, and thought leaders who are shaping the future of learning. From classroom-tested tools to emerging AI trends, we cut through the noise to spotlight what truly works in K–12 and higher education. As a leading voice in responsible AI adoption, Fonz challenges the hype and elevates voices that often go unheard, bringing practical, ethical, and future-forward insights to every episode. Whether you're a teacher, instructional coach, policymaker, or edtech creator, this is your space to connect, question, and grow.
Episodes
What happens to student writing when students get fewer opportunities to practice? And where should AI support end so independent thinking can begin?
In Episode 378 of My EdTech Life, I welcome back Adam Sparks, former classroom teacher and co-founder of Scriblit, formerly Short Answer. We explore what it takes to help students become stronger writers while navigating AI, assessment, and growing concerns about classroom tech...
How do you raise kids in the age of AI without losing critical thinking? FAA AI data scientist and mom Crevita Moody shares her approach.
Crevita didn't touch a computer until she was 13 and didn't own one until she was 21. About 15 years later, she became the first African American woman data scientist at the FAA, where she works on AI in mission-critical systems. In this episode of My EdTech Life, she explains why the skil...
What happens when students can finish the assignment without doing the thinking?
In Episode 376 of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza Jr. welcomes educator, education leader, and author Jeff Piontek for a candid conversation about AI in education, student ownership, and the human relationships that make learning meaningful.
Jeff shares ideas from his new book, AI, EI, O, and YOU: Preparing Educators for an AI Driven ...
AI can give students a confident answer in seconds. But who teaches them to question it, verify it, and decide whether to trust it?
In Episode 375 of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza welcomes back Dr. Karina Quilantan-Garza, also known as Dr. Q, for a conversation about school librarians, AI literacy, and protecting the thinking students need to do for themselves.
A former middle school librarian and now an assista...
In Episode 374 of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza Jr. sits down with Jacob Kantor, the Chief DODO, or District Office Door Opener, to explore what it takes to earn educators’ attention, build trust, and serve schools.
Drawing on 19 years in EdTech, Jacob explains why district doors stay closed, how sales targets can get in the way of listening, and why even well-liked vendors can lose contracts when budgets tighten...
In Episode 373 of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza sits down with Dacia Toll, co-founder of Coursemojo, to challenge how schools measure the value of educational technology.
Logins, minutes, and completed activities may show that a platform was used, but they do not prove that meaningful learning occurred. Dacia explains why districts must look beyond usage data and demand stronger evidence of student thinking, instructio...
Parent ProTech and Krystina O'Bryant join Dr. Alfonso Mendoza on My EdTech Life to challenge one of education’s biggest assumptions: being a digital native does not mean being digitally ready.
In Digital Natives Aren't Ready for This, we explore what students are actually facing online and why knowing how to use technology is very different from having the emotional maturity, critical thinking, and judgment needed to n...
"Step one, step two, step three" isn't how real learning happens. On this episode of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza sits down with Cari Orts, also known as Techie Cari, an educational technology specialist at Marble Falls ISD with over 20 years of experience in education, to discuss maker spaces, project-based learning, and why AI will never replace real teaching.
Cari shares why she believes technology should work like...
Can AI take away a student's voice or help protect it? In this episode of My EdTech Life, host Dr. Alfonso Mendoza, a top voice in the ed tech space, sits down with virtual education leaders Larisa Black and LaKeshia Brooks to dig into artificial intelligence in education, digital literacy, virtual teaching, and the growing backlash against ed tech in K-12 schools.
With a combined 34 years in education, Larisa and LaKeshia s...
"I Don't Even Like Calling It Claude" ft. Dr. Carol Fletcher | My EdTech Life 368
A college student let an AI chatbot complete his entire research project. When his professor asked him to explain it, he couldn't. That's the story that opens this episode with Dr. Carol Fletcher, Director of EPIC (Expanding Pathways in Computing) at UT Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), where she leads research and professional developme...
"I can boss my robot overlords around and go, 'I wanna try this thing.'"
That line right there? That's the whole episode.
This week Dr. Fonz sits down with Dustin Rimmey, aka Rimmey, a 19-year Kansas educator who went from "programming languages just don't stick in my brain" to building his own classroom tools with nothing but a keyboard and a stubborn refusal to quit.
No computer science degree. No dev team. Just what Rimmey call...
The Ultimate Technology Isn't AI, It's You ft. Mark Zeiler | My EdTech Life Ep. 367
In this episode of My EdTech Life, Dr. Alfonso Mendoza sits down with Dr. Mark Zeiler, a 20+ year K-12 education veteran whose career spans ELA teacher, media specialist, assistant principal, dean, and operations and curriculum leadership in Florida. The conversation centers on one core idea: as AI accelerates and humanoid robots move closer to mains...
What does it actually mean to be ready for the real world? Not finished. Not just checked out with a diploma. Ready. In this episode, I sit down with Marnie Stockman and Nick Coniglio, authors of The Business of You and Lead It Like Lasso, to talk about Blue, their app built to help middle school, high school, and college students discover who they are, learn to tell their own story, and step into the world with real confidence.
What happens when a former curriculum director becomes an AI strategist for an entire state? You get the kind of zoomed-out view most of us in education never get to see.
In this episode, I welcome back my good friend Karle Delo, AI Strategist at Michigan Virtual, for a real conversation about what's actually working in school districts, what's flopping, and what the secret AI culture in your building probably looks like rig...
What if the missing ingredient in your classroom isn't a new tool, a new curriculum, or another PD session, but curiosity itself?
In this episode, I sit down with Olivia Odileke, founder of Spark Curiosity EDU, Education Week contributor, and creator of the Spark Curiosity GPT Coach. Olivia brings an industrial engineering background into the world of education, and her perspective on how we teach, how we evaluate, and how w...
AI can write your design doc. It can build your storyboard. It can draft your script, your rubric, your assessment, your video outline, and half of your e-learning module before lunch. So what's left for the instructional designer?
According to Jonathan De La Cruz, everything that actually matters.
Jonathan is an instructional designer at a supply chain company and at a Plano, Texas startup building an AI-assisted lea...
What happens to your judgment when AI starts answering before you finish the question?
In this episode, Dr. Fonz sits down with Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, founder of Decisive, decision-sciences educator at Cornell and the University of Miami, and author of the new book The Human Edge: Smarter Decisions in the Age of AI (Cornell Publishing, May 8th). Cheryl spent over a decade as an investigative journalist at Barron's, where he...
There's no opt-out button for AI. That's the reality Valerie Brock, Curriculum Lead at Day of AI, brings to this conversation, and it changes how we think about AI literacy in K-12.
In this episode, Dr. Fonz sits down with Valerie to unpack what AI literacy actually means (hint: it's not prompt engineering), why early childhood classrooms belong in this conversation, and how Day of AI is building developmentally appropriate, tool-ag...
Episode 360: The #1 AI Governance Mistake Schools Are Making ft. Betsy Cooper
What's the biggest mistake schools are making with AI right now? According to Betsy Cooper, it's not taking it seriously from day one. In this episode, Dr.Alfonso sits down with Betsy Cooper, Founder and Executive Director of the Aspen Policy Academy, for a powerful conversation on the AI governance decisions quietly reshaping schools — and w...
What happens when you take public high school students with zero computer science background — 87% of whom are below the federal poverty line — and put them in one of only two quantum computing programs for high schoolers in the entire nation?
That's exactly what A.M. Bhatt and his nonprofit DAE are doing in Connecticut, and the results are challenging everything we think we know about education reform, student p...
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