As AI reshapes how we learn, work, and create, the most valuable skills may be the ones technology cannot replicate. Drawing on two decades of experience in technology leadership and mindfulness practice, Manpreet Singh explores how educators and leaders can thrive alongside AI by cultivating uniquely human strengths. Participants will examine the emerging world of agentic AI while exploring five essential human capabilities: vision, adaptability, lifelong learning, and mindfulness—that can help individuals navigate change with confidence and purpose. This session offers a practical and optimistic framework for remaining human-centred in an increasingly AI-driven world.

What if professional development invited teachers to investigate their own practice instead of delivering content at them? This workshop introduces the Heuta-Heuristic Framework™, a self-determined approach to educator growth that positions teachers as scholars, not recipients. Participants will explore the shift from pedagogy to heutagogy, then experience it directly through an interactive demo, walking away with a felt, not just theoretical, understanding of self-determined learning.

Stories shape our understanding of the world, but as generative AI takes over, cultural nuances often get lost—magnifying certain voices while erasing others. This interactive session for both students and educators explores how to keep the humanities critical and human-centered. We will kick off by comparing a local article with its AI-generated counterpart to expose inherent biases. Then, leaning on the research-backed MLA-CCCC and UNESCO AI Competency Frameworks, we will turn theory into practice. Students will learn to transform their AI agents into rigorous research assistants that actively hunt for diverse perspectives, while educators will design actionable classroom activities that teach intentional judgment and narrative analysis. Join us to collaborate and discover how thoughtful technology can deepen, rather than diminish, our exploration of the humanities.

Project-based learning has long promised deeper agency, collaboration, and real-world problem solving. Yet it remains difficult to sustain at scale because students may pursue topics beyond any one teacher's expertise, teachers must support many unpredictable project paths, and young learners often lack the technical means to turn ideas into working products.

AI changes all three conditions: it expands access to domain knowledge, lowers the cost of experimentation and production, and offers partial support to teachers working across projects they cannot fully pre-plan. MarsNavi's most dependable use of AI, however, is less visible: a learning-data layer built from classroom dialogue and project artifacts. We use AI to produce post-session reviews, next-session coaching support, and longitudinal learner records.

In this workshop, Rui Li will share evidence from MarsNavi's online PBL programme and demonstrate anonymized examples from this data pipeline. The workshop will close with a facilitated discussion of how responsibility should be distributed among students, teachers, and AI, including the judgments that should remain human. AI is presented not as a replacement for educators, but as a layer of knowledge, production, and reflection that may make serious PBL more feasible while keeping human judgment at the center.

In the age of artificial intelligence, young learners need opportunities to explore ethical issues created by the increasing integration of technology and AI into our world, and science fiction can be an excellent spark for these crucial conversations. During this interactive session, YA sci-fi author Nicole Marie will engage participants in choose-your-own-adventure discussion activities that invite them to consider the underlying consequences of using AI. Drawing on her After Intelligence series, her experiences as an English teacher, and her recent workshops with teens, Nicole will highlight young adults’ concerns and hopes about AI and demonstrate how creative writing can elucidate teens’ nuanced reflections on the rapid scale of innovation. The session will incorporate research from Common Sense Media and The Rithm Project and will leave participants with lesson resources, thought-provoking questions, and the opportunity to examine their own feelings about how technology is reshaping our education system, our relationships, and our humanity.

What makes a good manager in the age of AI? This interactive workshop starts from a belief that there won't be one answer for every manager. AI can now draft the feedback, summarize the one-on-one, and surface the data. Deciding when to use it, and when not to, becomes a values question, not a technical one. Participants will develop their own human-centered principles to guide that decision-making: a personal, portable set of beliefs about where AI belongs in how they lead, and where it doesn't.

We'll work through two questions: What will your principles be for yourself and how you lead? And what do you want your principles to be for those you manage? Because managers won't set just one expectation or guiding direction for their teams — there's a broad range — we'll make room for that. You'll leave with your principles drafted and a starting point for talking about AI with your team.

An interactive experience for educators and learning designers to understand the power of fictional characters as facilitators of children's creative learning experiences. A small room will be transformed into an interactive art gallery with characters on display that interact with a mobile app that asks reflection questions based on the backstories of the characters. A small art table will feature DIY character-themed activities (such as animating handmade characters with AI, creating character paper puppets), and a small installation will feature a "character petting zoo" corner where attendees can play with 3d printed character toys. Facilitator will start with a brief presentation about the design and psychology of characters, followed by walking around the room and talking to folks about their character-themed experiences.

Bring your computer and a problem you've been having as a teacher or administrator. You'll walk away from this workshop with a new workflow for using Claude and Replit to build custom tools for students, teachers, and even districts! No coding experience needed; it would be helpful to sign up for the pro version of Replit ahead of time so that you don't run out of tokens mid-workshop. I'll also share some of the apps I've built that have solved problems for our school or simply made my life simpler as an administrator. Let's create together!

Schools rigorously vet data privacy, but often miss a critical blind spot: which foundational AI model is actually interacting with their students? Most EdTech tools rely on live foundational models (like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google) that can update their behaviors and safety policies overnight, instantly bypassing a district's initial vetting. In this hands-on workshop, we turn an original study of 50 K12 AI tools into a practical procurement method. We will unpack the three layers of the K12 AI landscape—direct model access, teacher productivity, and student-facing tools—and evaluate them against a clear disclosure-tier scale. Bring a tool your school is currently evaluating to pressure-test it live! You will walk away with our Model-Layer Diligence Rubric and the single most important question missing from every school's RFP, ensuring you know exactly what intelligence is in your classroom.

AI is arriving in classrooms faster than most schools can respond — and the gap between teacher anxiety and leadership strategy is widening. This interactive workshop brings teachers and school leaders into the same room to close that gap together.

Participants will move through a structured learning arc: grounding in the real state of AI in their school, hands-on exploration of practical tools (Gemini, NotebookLM, and others), an honest conversation about ethics and equity, and a collaborative 30-day action planning session. Every activity is designed for a mixed audience — because lasting AI integration doesn't happen in silos.

Attendees leave with three things: hands-on experience with AI tools they can use immediately, a shared ethical framework for responsible use, and a concrete school-level action plan built together in the room. No jargon. No hype. Just tools, trust, and a strategy that keeps the human at the center of every decision.

In an AI-driven world, the future of education relies on developing our human comparative advantage: authentic collaboration and agency. While we can use AI to research and prototype, it is real-world accountability that builds the critical skills our students need.

Join me to discover a proven pre-apprenticeship model from Design Tech High, where teams of 10th graders partner directly with youth-serving organizations. Over one semester, these students conduct user research, test real products, and prototype solutions. When teenagers are given real trust and responsibilities that extend beyond a gradebook, they build unstoppable agency.

Attendees will walk away with:

• The Blueprint: Adaptable templates and a realistic semester timeline to launch your own program.

• Partnership Strategies: Actionable advice on securing collaborative partners and managing remote youth-org teamwork.

• Assessment Frameworks: Proven methods to evaluate durable skills like leadership, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.

Have a great idea for a classroom tool but absolutely no idea how to code it? You aren't alone. "Vibecoding" is just a very technical-sounding word for a very human process: building software simply by talking to an AI in plain English.

In this relaxed and approachable session, we will walk us through the basics of bringing our ideas to life without needing a computer science background. If you can describe what you want, you can build it. We’ll look at practical tips and tricks, focusing specifically on how we can use workflows to quickly create custom tools, both in and beyond the classroom, be it, assessments, interactive rubrics, or fresh teaching materials that actually fit our specific students' needs.

No coding experience required—just bring your ideas and a willingness to try something new!

This session delivers an inside look at my experience as a leading educator in the Creative AI media space. I will provide an overview of the core lessons I've learned from teaching generative AI to over 30,000 global learners through hands-on workshops, live events, and technical demos.

I will share how this large-scale educational framework directly led to my work with the Better Youth nonprofit, where we equip foster youth with essential tech and media skills to succeed in the workforce. Finally, I will provide an overview of the tactical approach my team and I have taken to humanize the learning process through collaborative team building exercises. Audience members can find us at our Expo table as well to experience one of these deeply human sessions where participants must work together to build, direct, and create AI media as a unified human team.