{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"AI Hope","title":"Episode 9: Back to School with Gabriel Elias who Built His Own Classroom with AI","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":661,"description":"A high school history teacher explains why the best AI use in education looks nothing like ChatGPT homework.\n\nGeoff Livingston August 9, 2026\n\nGabe Elias teaches at Alexandria City High School, and has spent the four years since ChatGPT launched treating AI as a personal design tool rather than a classroom compliance problem. \n\nHe jumped in the way he jumps into any new technology, testing that first release on history essay questions before it had many guardrails. Gabe was struck by how good some of the answers were even as he started poking holes in the rest.That instinct sets him apart from most of the teachers he talks to, who tend to write off AI the moment a student uses it to skip an essay. \n\nGabe draws a sharper distinction by pointing to Teacher Pay Teachers, the marketplace where educators sell lesson plans to each other: for a decade, the best sellers weren't the most rigorous. They were made by teachers who happened to know Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, because polish sells even when the underlying content doesn't change. AI puts that same design capability into the hands of any teacher, not just the ones with a design background. \n\nNotebookLM was a real breakthrough for Gabe, since it only draws on sources he uploads, so it won't invent standards or wander off the curriculum. He used it to build short explainer videos in his ESL students' own languages, learning the Pashto and Dari scripts himself just to caption them correctly.\n\nThen he found Claude Cowork, and the scale changed again. Instead of the fragile shared Google Docs his school runs on, where one stray keystroke wipes out a student's work, he started building entire lessons as standalone HTML apps: \n\na decolonization scenario game where students make choices and earn points\nhis old study guides embedded as interactive toggles\nan export console that sends everything a student does straight back to him. \n\nAsked for his vision of AI in education, Gabe gives two answers. The hopeful one is...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/3geCJ1VW0lJp_L0iMNFeYncMeLLmjyFI3vHgwOHbnAI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lNDEy/Y2FmNGNjODJhZjk0/Njk1NzJkMjk0YmY5/YjdiMS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}