🚨 “AI won’t replace teachers, but it will change what great teaching looks like.” 🚨
Educators are being pushed to adopt AI—but is it actually making teaching better? Too often, AI in education is used for efficiency rather than transformation, leaving teachers feeling like they’re just automating tasks instead of improving learning.
🎧 In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth Fleischauer sits down with Vriti Saraf, founder of Ed3 DAO, to tackle the real impact of AI on teaching and learning. Instead of using AI to churn out generic lesson plans, how can educators harness it to deepen student engagement, critical thinking, and global collaboration?
Key Takeaways:
✅ AI should enhance great pedagogy, not just automate bad teaching.
✅ The danger of cognitive offloading—how relying on AI too early can weaken essential teaching and learning skills.
✅ Why first-year teachers shouldn’t start with AI-generated lesson plans—and how to integrate AI thoughtfully instead.
✅ The “City of Learning” vision: What if an entire city became a classroom, powered by AI-driven learning experiences?
✅ The Portrait of a Teacher project: How AI might redefine who teaches and how we measure great teaching.
💡 PROBLEM → SOLUTION → ACTION
AI can be an incredible tool—but only if it’s used with intention. If you’re an educator wondering how to prepare students for a world where AI is everywhere, this episode is for you.
About Today’s Guest:
Vriti Saraf is the founder of Ed3 DAO and K20 Educators, pioneering the integration of AI, digital identity, and Web3 into global education. She works at the intersection of pedagogy and emerging technology, helping schools worldwide reimagine how learning happens.
Episode Links:
Host Links:
Seth Fleischauer’s
Banyan Global Learning provides meaningful global learning experiences that prepare students across the globe for success in an interconnected world.
What is Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning?
Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning is a podcast for globally minded educators who want deep, long-form conversations about how teaching and learning are changing — and what to do about it.
Hosted by former classroom teacher and Banyan Global Learning founder Seth Fleischauer, the show explores how people, cultures, technologies, cognitive processes, and school systems shape what happens in classrooms around the world. Each long-form episode looks closely at the conditions that help students and educators thrive — from executive functioning and identity development to virtual learning, multilingual education, global competence, and the rise of AI.
Seth talks with teachers, researchers, psychologists, and school leaders who look closely at how students understand themselves, build relationships, and develop the capacities that underlie deep learning — skills like perspective-taking, communication, and global competence that are essential for navigating an interconnected world. These conversations surface the kinds of cross-cultural experiences and hard-to-measure abilities that shape real achievement. Together, they consider how to integrate new technologies in ways that strengthen—not replace—the human center of learning.
The result is a set of ideas, stories, and practical strategies educators can apply to help students succeed in a complex and fast-changing world.