EdTechSR Ep 355: Protocols Over Platforms

EdTech Situation Room by Jason Neiffer and Wes Fryer

Welcome to episode 355 (“Protocols Over Platforms”) of the EdTech Situation Room from July 9, 2025, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (aicentrist.com) and Dr. Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com) unpack their ISTE 2025 takeaways: Google’s evolving Gemini-in-Classroom roadmap, fresh AI literacy resources for teachers, and where Microsoft and Apple currently fit in the EDU stack. They dig into the rise of AI-first browsers—from agentic research helpers to privacy-focused designs—and debate what these tools mean for student data stewardship, plagiarism concerns, and authentic assessment. Building on Mike Masnick’s “Protocols, Not Platforms,” they explore how the fediverse (Mastodon, Bluesky, and open social protocols) could model healthier digital citizenship and media literacy, especially for schools looking to reduce platform lock-in. The hosts also share practical classroom workflows—NotebookLM for pre-writing and lesson prep, voice-driven chat assistants for feedback, and “AI as a thought partner” techniques to plan presentations, critique drafts, and scaffold student reflection. Rounding things out, they compare personal knowledge management and productivity picks like Obsidian and Raycast, tying these to real educator use cases and “agentic” routines that help teachers work faster, document learning better, and protect privacy by design.

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 https://www.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

* Perplexity launches “Comet” AI web browser to take on Chrome and Edge — and you can use it today for $200 a month (Windows Central; 9 July 2025)

* Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech (Techdirt, 28 Aug 2019)

* [PODCAST] Reclaiming The Internet with Mike Masnick and Aaron Ross (Techdirt Podcast, 8 Jul 2025)

* Gemini in Classroom: No-cost AI tools that amplify teaching and learning (Google Blog)

* Will Google’s New AI END MagicSchool? | Gemini vs. MagicSchool AI in 2025 (EdTech Hustle)

* ISTE 2025 Collection: New Chromebooks and Tools for Even Better Teaching and Learning (Google Blog, 2 July 2025)

* What’s New in Microsoft EDU, ISTE Edition June 2025 (Microsoft Education Blog; 25 June 2025)

* Apple Skips ISTE (Apple Community Forums)

* Jason’s Geeks of the Week: obsidian.md | www.raycast.com

* Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Privacy, Power and Platforms - Vibe Coding for Flickr CC 4.0 Attribution - DIA browser

🧭 Links We Did NOT Discuss

* AI Is Helping Cheaters Cheat at Chess. This Group Is Trying to Stop It (Time, 09 July 2025)

* Racist AI Videos Created With Google Veo 3 Are Proliferating on TikTok (Ars Technica, 1 July 2025)

* This Year’s Hot New Tool for Chefs? ChatGPT. (NYT; 2 June 2025 - Gift Link)

* Hardfork Interview with Pete Wells

* Mark Zuckerberg Already Knows Your Life. Now He Wants His AI to Run It (Gizmodo, 30 June 2025)

* Inside ‘AI Addiction’ Support Groups, Where People Try to Stop Talking to Chatbots (404 Media, 26 Jun 2025)

* Control Content Use for AI Training With Cloudflare’s Managed Robots.txt and Blocking for Monetized Content (Cloudflare Blog, 01 July 2025)

* Multiple AI Companies Bypassing Web Standard to Scrape Publisher Sites Without Licensing (Reuters, 21 June 2024)

* Creative Commons debuts CC signals, a framework for an open AI ecosystem (Tech Crunch; 25 June 2025)

* The Most Imminent Cyber Threat Is Called ‘Scattered Spider’ (Wired, 02 July 2025)

* Feds Warn of Possible Cyber Attacks By Iran on US Critical Infrastructure (Ars Technica, 30 June 2025)

Episode 355 is also available on YouTube.

Get full access to EdTech Situation Room Podcast at edtechsr.substack.com/subscribe