{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Margin of Thought with Priten","title":"What If Our Pedagogical Goal Was Curiosity? - Mary Shawn Newins","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1908,"description":"In this episode, Priten speaks with Mary Shawn Newins, a computer science teacher in Greensboro, North Carolina, who arrived in the classroom at sixty with decades of corporate and sales experience but no coding background. Her unusual arc gives her permission to build AI literacy alongside her students rather than ahead of them. What emerges is a classroom culture where curiosity itself—not mastery or fear—becomes the pedagogical goal. She uses practical structures like a \"quack\" incentive and peer questioning to shift how students see AI: not as a shortcut to avoid, but as a tool that works best when you know what you actually want to learn.Key Takeaways:Curiosity as a pedagogical aim changes everything about how students use AI. When learning for its own sake is the standard—not grades or compliance—AI becomes a catalyst for deeper exploration rather than a means of dodging work. A student asking AI about birds of prey out of genuine interest learns far more than one copying homework.Making AI use visible and gamified shifts students from hiding it to owning it. Mary's \"quack quack\" jar and peer accountability turn using AI into something worth discussing openly. Social transparency works where rules do not.Three non-negotiable standards replace prohibition: name the tool, share the prompt, explain the output in your own words. This mirrors citation practices students already know. It's not about policing—it's about maintaining the chain between question, resource, and understanding.Strict phones, generous computers reflects a deeper principle about attention and agency. Banning personal devices while enabling desktop computers creates a bounded space for learning. The boundary isn't about rejecting technology; it's about who controls the environment.Late-career teachers bring a rare asset: they remember how knowledge worked before AI. Mary's corporate background means she can model learning alongside students without needing to be the expert first. That...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/mIvclI2fK-fQrurJTjPiYoTWWGoNWSdbv1_-Xa6ULdc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yOTNk/OTcyZTcxOWE5MGIw/ZTY0MjU4ZGNlN2U5/NjM3My5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}