K-12 education

Prof. Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, speaks to The 74’s Greg Toppo about the risk of students using AI teaching tools to cheat on their assignments. “There's a zillion people that are trying to come up with these guided learning environments and Socratic tutors and stuff like that,” says Reich. “And I'm just like, 'Guys, you're putting the "Carefully teach me this stuff" button directly next to the "Do everything for me" button.’”  

Jeffrey Riley, executive director of MIT RAISE’s “Day of AI” K-12 program, speaks to WBUR’s Suevon Lee about the importance of teaching school-aged children AI literacy skills. “Kids need to know about voice clones and deepfakes and plagiarism,” says Riley. “We need to teach kids so that they're healthy skeptics of this technology, that they mistrust and verify the information they're getting from it.”  

Prof. Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, speaks to Chalkbeat’s Lily Altavena about the need for policymakers to develop stronger guidelines to help teachers address the misuse of AI in their classrooms. “I think the situation teachers are in [without AI policies] feels bad, and feels like they ought to have a solution now that they don’t have,” says Reich. Existing documents on academic integrity “seem light on actual guidance and don’t include many citations, Reich said.”  

Boston.com’s Elizabeth Mehler spotlights an AI-powered flood predictor and disaster response tool built by Arush Shangari, an MIT Beaver Works Research Scholar. “Through MIT Beaver Works and MIT CSAIL, I taught myself artificial intelligence and time-series forecasting,” says Shangari. “There was a lot of that error analysis and just learning in general.” 

Roughly 100 high school students, two from each state, attended this past weekend’s “Youth AI Festival,” organized in part by MIT RAISE (Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education) to discuss the need for clear AI policies for K-12 education, writes Boston Globe reporter Marcela García. “[T]he students discussed, wrote, and approved a model AI-use policy for classrooms, ending in a simulated Senate floor debate and vote at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute,” García explains.  

Prof. Justin Reich speaks to PBS reporter Hannah Grabenstein about the dangers of children using Google’s AI overview, and AI mode. “It's deeply disturbing how poorly these widely accessible tools do,” says Reich. “These are things that technology companies have to fix. And teachers and educators, until this is fixed, probably need to turn a bunch of this off.” 

Prof. Justin Reich speaks with New York Times reporter Matthew Haag about the integration of educational technology tools, including AI, in schools. “Historically, when we try to guess the best ways of using new technologies, we’re often wrong,” explains Reich. “There are lots of people who are out there who will say, ‘This is what we need to do, this is best practice,’ and they’re making stuff up.”

MIT has launched a new effort aimed at helping high schoolers across the U.S. tackle calculus, reports Juliet Schulman-Hall for MassLive. The new program, called the MIT4America Calculus Project, pairs trained MIT undergraduates and alumni with school districts across the U.S. to tutor high school students from Montana to Texas in calculus. The program “was created last year with an in-person summer calculus camp,” Schulman-Hall notes. “Since then, it has grown to include 14 school districts.” 

Writing for The Conversation, Prof. Justin Reich offers insight into the integration of educational technology in schools. “It takes years for educators to develop new practices and norms, for students to adopt new routines, and for families to identify new support mechanisms in order for a novel invention to reliably improve learning,” writes Reich. “But as AI spreads through schools, both historical analysis and new research conducted with K-12 teachers and students offer some guidance on navigating uncertainties and minimizing harm.”

At the 18^th annual Cambridge Science Carnival, attendees were able to visit a Robot Petting Zoo, find DNA in a strawberry, explore how satellites work, and discover how to give trash a second life, reports Kyle Bray for WBZ NewsRadio. “Sometimes people think that science is very removed and abstract and hidden behind closed doors of labs. At an event like this, you can see actually the human face of science; these are people like you and me, they may well be your neighbors, and they are making discoveries that can benefit people across the world,” explains MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. 

The Cambridge Science Carnival, founded by the MIT Museum, will take place on September 21, 2025, in the Kendall/MIT Open Space, reports The Boston Globe. The event features “more than 100 booths with science and art based activities and demonstrations,” writes The Boston Globe. From a STEAM-themed playground to “live, interactive music from the MIT physics departments,” kids are welcome to play, learn and enjoy. 

New York Post reporter Marissa Matozzo cracks into a new study by MIT researchers that uncovers the best way to keep eggs from cracking. The researchers found that eggs dropped sideways are less likely to break than those dropped vertically. “It turns out the sides can take more of a beating than their pointy or rounded ends, and that could mean a lot for proper storage,” says Matozzo. 

Forbes reporter Amanda Kooser spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that has found eggs are less likely to crack when dropped on their side. “The researchers put eggs through their paces in two different tests,” explains Kooser. “One was a static compression test that applied increasing force to the eggs. The other was a drop test.” 

Researchers at MIT have discovered that eggs dropped on their side are less likely to crack than those dropped on their tips, reports Doyle Rice for USA Today. The researchers conducted both a drop and compression test on the eggs, and the findings “suggest that future research could explore the application of these findings to engineering scenarios, such as how structures respond to dynamic loads,” writes Rice. 

A study by MIT researchers has found that “dropping an egg horizontally is more likely to keep it intact than a vertical drop,” reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “People tend to have better intuition for stiffness and strength, which are important in statics,” explains Prof. Tal Cohen. “It is common that they refer intuitively to the redistribution of a load along the arch. However, when dynamics are involved, toughness is also an important quantity.”