📺 Ditch Summit: Incorporating play and innovation in learning

Watch any of the +100 Ditch Summit sessions on the Ditch Summit Video Library page.

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🗓 Ditch Summit: 17 days down, 10 days to go
The Ditch Summit closes on Jan. 11, 2026. After that, sessions + resources are unavailable until December 2026.

🔎 SPOTLIGHT SPONSOR 🔎

Powerful, effective student AI tutors (even if the prompt is terrible)

Students are empowered now more than ever to get personalized, just-in-time help with their work.

I saw it with my own two eyes when Clay Smith typed these instructions:

“Hey i’m strugglign with Math, and it’s quadratic equations. I just don’t get it. I need some help. my teacher said I should put this in here and tell it what I like. so I like cars and playing games. but I like fast race cars. help?”

Misspellings. Unclear directions. But a couple of useful details.

He used the little icon with a pencil and a star: “Use Gemini to re-write instructions,” and it created this …

“Act as a ‘Personalized Tutor’ specializing in customizing lessons based on the user’s interests. Your current focus is helping the user understand and solve quadratic equations by relating the concepts to ‘fast race cars’ and ‘playing games’.”

… and that was just the first paragraph of that reworked prompt.

In this Spotlight Sponsor session, Clay Smith from Google for Education shared several ways that Google’s AI tools are supporting students in learning — without handing students the answers.

(Pay special attention to Guided Learning!)

🔎 WATCH: Google's Free AI-Powered Tools for the Classroom

📺 CATEGORY COLLECTIONS 📺

🤸🏻‍♂️ Watch these videos on innovation, play, and project-based learning

Traditional teaching methods can work and be helpful …

… but sometimes, you need a change. A spark. A new way of looking at things.

The speakers in our Category Collection on innovation, play, and project-based learning share strategies they’ve used — and that they’ve seen work in classrooms.

Here’s what’s in the collection …

How to Energize Your Students with Games and Play (with Dr. Lindsay Portnoy) — In this session, Dr. Lindsay Portnoy shares quick and effective strategies right out of her book, Game On? Brain On!, that can get students thinking and learning in your class.

Powerful Visual Learning Through Sketching for Students and Teachers (with Jen Giffen) — Jen Giffen is a sketchnoter … a doodler … an artist. But she uses her art to help organize her thoughts — and organize them for others. (She’s the one that creates the sketches of all of our Ditch Summit sessions!) A little visual notetaking might be just what your students need.

Memorable, Relevant Project-Based Learning (with Yaritza Villalba) — Working with students in Brooklyn, Yaritza Villalba realized that she needed something extra to motivate and inspire her students. She told them: “If you want to get through this class, you’re gonna have to build something.” In this session, she shares some of her project-based learning experiences.

Other sessions in the Innovation, Play, and Project-Based Learning category:

• The Playful Classroom and Life with Jed Dearybury and Dr. Julie Jones

• PBL with Real Life Community Projects with Omar Lopez

• Launching Student Creativity and Design Thinking with John Spencer

• Make Learning a Game with Michael Matera

• Create and Consume Immersively with AR/VR with Jaime Donally

• Using Visual Thinking to Unlock Powerful Learning with Manuel Herrera

Watch any Ditch Summit session from previous years on the Ditch Summit Video Library page any time.