Designing with Friction: Protecting Durable Learning in the Age of Generative AI
Audience: educators, school leaders, and conference audiences.
Format: keynote or leadership session.
Conference Presentations Ideas in public.
An evolving argument about education, technology, and human development, shared in classrooms, conference rooms, lecture halls, and public conversations.
Explore the speaking arcMM
Conference rooms
Classrooms
Lecture halls
Leadership rooms
Aug42026
Next scheduled session
Research Tooling and Judgment in Doctoral Work
National Louis University, invited doctoral session on AI and ethicsA working account of the AI tools used across the dissertation, and where the researcher's judgment has to stay in the loop.
Most recent conference session
June 11, 2026. What AI Makes Easy Might Be What Students Need to Struggle With, DuPage Regional Office of Education. View session
Audience pathways
Choose the room you're in.
Each presentation adapts a shared inquiry to the questions, stakes, and practices of its audience.
Signature speaking topics 2026
Four research-grounded tracks for schools, conferences, and public conversations.
The public argument I am developing can be shaped as a keynote, workshop, leadership session, or scholarly conversation. These topics grow from current proposal work and public scholarship; they do not present dissertation findings.
Designing with Friction: Classroom Assessment and Assignment Redesign
Audience: teachers, instructional coaches, and curriculum leaders.
Format: practical workshop.
Beyond AI Compliance: Policy, Procurement, and Decision Rights for School Leaders
Audience: superintendents, school boards, technology leaders, and cabinet teams.
Format: leadership workshop or board conversation.
Civic Reasoning and Historical Inquiry in Synthetic Media Environments
Audience: social studies educators, curriculum leaders, and civic-learning organizations.
Format: curriculum workshop or conference session.
Interactive session tools
Do the thinking the talks invite.
These public experiences move from hearing the framework to testing it. They are activities and companion tools, not additional presentations.
Keeper of the Word
Carry one message through five media conditions and experience how each environment changes memory, authorship, and meaning.
Experience the media ecology journey →Friction Lab
Practice distinguishing productive challenge from exclusionary barriers across realistic AI-supported learning cases.
Practice the design judgment →Technoskepticism Primer
Work through the five technoskeptical questions, their Postman roots, and a pedagogical-friction overlay, with an applied stance for AI governance, curriculum, and equity.
Explore the technoskeptical stance →The speaking arc
A public archive of the work.
From productive struggle to public purpose, the ideas and their stakes evolve.
DuPage ROEConference speaker
What AI Makes Easy Might Be What Students Need to Struggle With
The polished output may conceal the learning students did not have to do.
AAACSInteractive scholarly session
Pedagogical Friction as Subversive Praxis
An interactive curriculum-studies exploration of resistance, formation, and agency.
NLU AI in EducationConference presentation
When the Output Looks Like Learning
A framework for noticing when generative fluency bypasses cognitive and noetic work.
NCSSHistorical inquiry session
When AI Does the Thinking
Preserving historical inquiry through pedagogical friction in secondary social studies classrooms.
Historical Inquiry FrictionFull interactive deck
When AI Does the Thinking
A fuller interactive version with resources, notes, and connected inquiry activities.
NLU Doctoral ColloquiumWorkshop and presentation
Pedagogical Friction and AI
A practitioner-scholar workshop for diagnosing which forms of friction learning needs.
ISTE+ASCDExpert webinar
The Pedagogical Importance of Friction in the Age of Generative AI
Instructional design strategies that preserve the struggle that develops learners.
Practitioner EditionInteractive learning experience
The Pedagogical Imperative of Friction
A practical pathway from the framework to classroom decisions.
Social StudiesDisciplinary adaptation
Teaching Social Studies in the Age of AI
What happens to civic judgment when fluent answers arrive before inquiry?
AAACSCurriculum and civic adaptation
Frictionless Citizen
What civic capacities disappear when speed and convenience become educational virtues?
The same argument, different rooms
How the argument adapts.
The central concern remains human development. The language, evidence, and invitation change with the room.
Practice and leadership
Turns the framework into choices educators and leaders can make about tasks, tools, and institutional conditions.
See a conference session →Scholarship and inquiry
Names the theory, tests the distinctions, and opens the conceptual framework to critique and further research.
See a scholarly session →Curriculum and civic life
Connects media conditions to judgment, public knowledge, democratic participation, and human formation.
See a civic adaptation →District leadership
Connects instructional questions to governance, infrastructure, policy, and the conditions systems create.
See a leadership session →