EdTechSR Ep 373: Digitizing Local History

Welcome to episode 373 (”Digitizing Local History”) of the EdTech Situation Room from May 6, 2026, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) was joined by special guest Kern Kelley (www.kernkelley.com,) a K-12 technology integrator from China, Maine, who shared his students’ remarkable work digitizing 19th-century handwritten letters at the Levi Stewart Museum using AI transcription, photogrammetry, and vibe-coded tools. They also unpacked the dangers and superpowers of vibe coding — including a cautionary tale of an AI agent wiping a startup’s production database — and discussed a retracted ChatGPT education study as a lesson in AI research skepticism. The conversation also covered Google Home’s new Gemini voice assistant upgrade, Apple’s plans to let iOS 27 users choose their own AI model, an amateur’s AI-assisted solution to a 60-year-old math problem, and the growing role of media literacy in understanding AI-generated propaganda. Practical tools including CC by Google Labs, NotebookLM, ListenLater.net, and OfficeHours.global rounded out a rich hour of EdTech conversation. Our show was live-streamed and archived on YouTube Live via StreamYard.com and auto-archived to YouTube. We are now publishing from Substack too! Subscribe to us with your favorite podcast listening app, or directly on or youtube.com/@edtechSR. Follow our EdTechSR page on Facebook, mastodon.education/@edtechsr on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All show notes are available at edtechSR.com/links.

🔗 Links We Discussed

* Vibe Coding Will Break Your Company (Forbes, 23 April 2026)

* Cursor-Opus agent snuffs out startup’s production database (TheRegister, 27 Apr 2026)

* Influential study touting ChatGPT in education retracted over red flags (ArsTechnica, 4 May 2026)

* Google Home gets upgraded Gemini voice assistant and new camera controls (ArsTechnica, 5 May 2026)

* Apple plans to make iOS 27 a Choose Your Own Adventure of AI models (TechCrunch, 5 May 2026)

* An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem—by asking AI (Scientific American 4 April 2026)

* Levi Stewart Private Library Museum

* Levi Stewart Museum Artifacts

* Spin a Spooky Story by Tony Vincent

* CC, a Google Labs AI Productivity Agent (free)

* Kern’s Geeks of the Week: ListenLater.net and officehours.global

* Wes’ Geek of the Week: Memes, War and Propaganda (Slideshow and archived webinar video, Media Education Lab, 4 May 2026)

🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss

* There’s a cheaper way into Claude, and it starts with Google (MakeUseOf, 6 April 2026)

* Indian med student rakes in thousands with AI-generated MAGA hottie (ArsTechnica, 22 April 2026)

* The hidden cost of Google’s AI defaults and the illusion of choice (ArsTechnica, 30 Apr 2026)

* Google highlights links from subscribed publications in new AI Overviews update (NiemanLab, 6 April 2026)

* Dark Patterns are designed to trick you (and they’re all over the Web) (ArsTechnica, 28 Jul 2016)

* How iPhone Violates Apple’s Accessibility Guidelines (Medium, 9 Jul 2018)

* We spoke to the man making viral Lego-style AI videos for Iran. Experts say it’s powerful propaganda (BBC, 11 April 2026)

* Iran, slopaganda, and the lego-inspired creator behind it all (Top Comment BBC Podcast, 11 April 2026)

* ‘Vengeance for all’: How Iran’s Lego videos won narrative war against Trump (Al Jazeera, 17 April 2026)

* The clandestine network smuggling Starlink tech into Iran to beat internet blackout (BBC, 2 May 2026)

Episode 373 is also available on YouTube in two formats: Portrait mode optimized for mobile phones, and Landscape mode optimized for laptop / desktop computers! This Substack version (syndicated to other podcasting platforms) was edited using Descript.com to remove “filler words!”