Research-grounded insights on AI literacy, teacher professional development, ethics, and school strategy - from the field, not the sidelines.
Janette Camacho, Ed.D. - Google for Education Certified Trainer & Coach • FETC 2024, 2025 & 2026 Featured Presenter • Adobe Creative Educator • Apple Teacher • EdTech Digest State of EdTech 2026 Honoree
Nevada's renewal rule runs on the calendar year, and most educators plan around the wrong one. Here is what NAC 391.065 actually requires, what counts as approved PD, and how to document every hour.
Texas classroom teachers owe 150 CPE hours every five years, and most only learn the rules in a deadline panic. Here is how renewal actually works - what counts, what it costs, and how to plan the hours so ECOS takes 15 minutes.
Michigan teachers owe 150 hours of professional learning every five years, and the SCECH system that tracks them is the least explained plumbing in state certification. Here is how hours become SCECHs, how MOECS awards them, and how to plan the cycle without a panic.
Alabama's Professional Educator Certificate runs on a five-year clock, six renewal options, and one PowerSchool account. Here is the whole system, explained in plain language.
Kentucky certificates renew on a five year cycle while instructional leaders owe 21 EILA hours every single year. Here is the current process, what the 2026 law changes, and a calendar that keeps both deadlines quiet.
Wyoming renews teaching licenses in PTSB credits, not clock hours. Here is how the five-year, five-credit cycle actually works, what counts, and how to plan it.
Teacher AI use doubled in a single year while official state guidance crawls behind. Here is why the lag is structural, and six concrete moves teachers can make now.
Summer is the easiest time to earn recertification hours. Here are the states where iTeachAI Academy is a state-approved provider, plus how license renewal actually works in each one.
ISTELive 2026 lands in the middle of the fastest year AI has ever had in classrooms. Here are the five shifts I will be watching for on the show floor and in the sessions.
More than half of states have now issued AI guidance for schools. Here is my mid-year read on who is leading, who is lagging, and what separates useful guidance from a press release.
Districts assume there is no money for AI professional development. There is. Here are the federal funding streams that already allow it, and how to position AI training as an allowable use.
Most teachers chase recertification hours in a deadline panic. Here is why summer is the smartest window, and how to earn the hours you need without spending hundreds at a university.
The end of the school year is a blur of grades, cleanup, and goodbyes. Here is how a handful of AI workflows can turn the closing weeks into real reflection instead of pure survival.
AI is supposed to give teachers their time back. For many it has done the opposite. Here is why, and how to use these tools in a way that actually protects your hours.
Spring testing season brings a wave of AI test-prep promises. Here is an honest accounting of where these tools genuinely help students, and where they quietly make things worse.
Ethical reasoning is now a literacy skill. Here are the 10 core AI ethics concepts every K-12 educator needs to teach through creative projects - and the framework I developed to make it happen.
After training 1,250+ educators across all 50 states, these are the five categories of AI tools I believe every teacher should master this year - focusing on capabilities, not brand names.
Fear without a framework produces paralysis. After years of working with schools across the country, I share the process I use to move districts from AI anxiety to AI-ready culture.
FETC 2026 confirmed what I have been telling every district: AI has crossed from the innovation stage to the infrastructure stage, and schools that have not begun building are already behind.
A single AI PD program cannot serve every state equally. After training educators across all 50 states, I explain why local alignment to standards, policies, and community values is the decisive variable.
AI is not replacing teachers. Not now. Not in a decade. Not ever. But it is fundamentally restructuring the nature of instructional labor - and that distinction matters enormously.
Most professional development does not work. Here is the model I built at iTeachAI Academy - grounded in research and refined across 1,250+ enrollments - that demonstrably changes instructional practice.
We are teaching AI skills before ethics, and in a K-12 context that is genuinely dangerous. Here is the empirical and moral case for establishing the ethical framework first.
How I built iTeachAI Academy from a problem I was living with every day into a platform serving educators in all 50 states - with unvarnished honesty about the miscalculations and pivots along the way.
If your school enters 2026 without a coherent AI strategy, you are not in a holding pattern - you are falling behind. Here is what an authentic AI strategy looks like, grounded in current research.
A year-end reflection on iTeachAI Academy's milestone growth, the maturation of AI literacy as a professional expectation in K-12 education, and the lessons learned from building a platform that now serves over a thousand educators.
When I launched iTeachAI Academy, I had a modest goal. What I did not expect was how quickly the need would outpace my plans. Here is what 1,000 enrollments taught me about what educators actually need.
New data from 2025 reveals a growing divide in AI literacy along familiar lines: income, race, geography, and school funding. If we do not intervene deliberately, AI will deepen the inequities it has the potential to close.
Nearly three years since ChatGPT launched, most districts still lack a comprehensive AI policy. Not a hastily written addendum - a real policy with clear guidelines and meaningful implementation support.
Computer science teachers face a unique AI challenge: their subject matter is being transformed by the same technology they are being asked to teach. Generic AI PD does not cut it. Here is why CS educators need specialized training - and what we are building with NVIDIA to deliver it.
A candid postmortem on building and running an intensive AI summer institute for K-12 educators - including the design decisions that paid off, the ones that backfired, and the structural lessons that can inform your own program.
AI literacy is no longer a niche conversation at education conferences - it is the conversation. And the standards community is finally catching up to what classroom teachers have known for two years.
Special education is where AI's potential to transform learning is greatest - and where its adoption is most dangerously slow. From IEP writing assistance to real-time accommodations, I examine what is possible, what is working, and what we owe our most vulnerable students.
As of spring 2025, only a handful of states have published comprehensive AI guidance for K-12 education. I analyze what the leading frameworks get right, what the lagging states are risking, and what every educator should demand from their state.
In 2023, the mood was panic. In 2024, cautious curiosity. In 2025? Purpose. Educators came to Orlando not to ask whether AI belongs in schools, but to share what is working and build sustainable systems.
After coaching over 500 teachers through AI integration over the past 18 months, I have identified the patterns that separate sustainable adoption from abandoned initiatives. Here is the coaching model that works.
The short answer is that I got tired of watching teachers struggle alone. The long answer is a story about 28 years in classrooms, a technology that changed everything, and a gap that nobody else was filling.
Reflecting on a transformative year in which AI professional development shifted from optional enrichment to essential infrastructure in K-12 education - and what that shift demands of us heading into 2025.
Two years since ChatGPT launched, the mismatch between the speed of technological change and the pace of institutional response remains the defining challenge. Here is where schools actually stand.
The EdTech market is flooded with AI assessment tools promising to revolutionize grading. After testing a dozen platforms and piloting three in live classrooms, I separate the genuine breakthroughs from the marketing noise.
Your students spent the summer getting even more comfortable with AI tools, and many of your colleagues are still unsure what to do about it. Take a breath - here is your survival guide for the AI era.
Differentiation has always been the promise and the burden of good teaching. AI is finally making true individualization possible at scale - but only if we implement it with the same rigor we bring to any instructional strategy.
Most AI use frameworks for schools read like legal disclaimers. I developed a five-principle model that teachers can actually apply in their classrooms tomorrow - tested across 15 schools and refined through real-world implementation.
If your district's summer PD lineup does not include meaningful AI training for teachers, you are wasting a critical opportunity. After 28 years of PD sessions, I know what works and what does not.
After testing dozens of AI platforms over the past year, here is my curated list of the tools that actually deliver for K-12 educators - from lesson planning to differentiation to assessment.
Lesson planning consumes 7-12 hours of a teacher's week. I have been using AI tools to cut that time in half while producing more differentiated, standards-aligned plans. Here is exactly how.
Fewer than 10% of U.S. school districts offer any structured AI professional development. After training educators across Florida and beyond, I examine why the gap exists and what it will cost us if we don't close it.
As a Featured Presenter at FETC 2024, I had a front-row seat to something remarkable: the entire tone of the AI conversation in education has shifted in twelve months - from fear to practical curiosity.
The window for treating AI as a passing fad has closed. If your school still does not have a plan for addressing artificial intelligence in classrooms, you are already behind. Here is why AI is fundamentally different.
From ChatGPT's explosion to GPT-4's launch to the ISTE AI takeover to the great assessment reckoning - 2023 was the most consequential year for education technology in a generation. Here is my account from the front lines.
After a year of searching for quality AI curriculum materials for K-12, I have concluded that what teachers need does not yet exist. So I am building it myself.
AI ethics is not an abstract philosophical exercise. It is a practical necessity for every student who will live and work alongside AI systems. After a year of experimentation, I present a classroom-tested framework for making AI ethics accessible, rigorous, and relevant across grade levels.
As students return for fall 2023, every school is grappling with the same question - what do we do when students use AI to complete assignments? The answer requires more nuance than most policies provide.
ISTE 2023 in Philadelphia made one thing abundantly clear - AI has moved from the fringe to the center of every conversation in educational technology. Here are my key takeaways.
While most people spend summer break at the beach, I spent mine systematically testing over forty AI tools for educational applications. Here is my honest field report on what is useful, what is hype, and what teachers should actually pay attention to.
The 2022-2023 school year was the most intellectually challenging of my career. Here is what I learned from spending an entire semester integrating - and wrestling with - AI in the classroom.
The quality of what you get from AI depends entirely on the quality of what you ask. Having just earned my Google for Education Certified Trainer and Coach credentials, I am convinced that prompt engineering is the most important new skill for educators in 2023.
New York City Public Schools banned ChatGPT in January. Los Angeles Unified followed. Districts across the country are scrambling to write AI policies. After 28 years in education, I have seen this pattern before, and the prohibition approach has never worked.
With Google announcing Bard and weaving AI into Workspace, the EdTech landscape is about to shift dramatically. Here is what educators should be watching - and preparing for.
After writing about ChatGPT's launch in December, I spent January and early February actually integrating AI tools into classroom instruction. The results were more nuanced than either the utopian or dystopian narratives suggest. Here is what I learned.
ChatGPT is barely six weeks old and already reshaping how I think about teaching. My resolution for 2023 is simple - learn everything I can about AI before my students know more than I do.
On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. Four weeks later, I have spent dozens of hours testing it, and I believe this is the most significant technological disruption education has faced in my 28-year career. Here are my honest first impressions.
Becoming an Adobe Creative Educator reinforced a conviction I have held for years: creative production is not an enrichment activity. It is a core literacy. Here is what the certification process revealed about the gap between how we teach and how students actually learn.
DALL-E, GPT-3, and a wave of AI tools are making mainstream headlines. As a veteran educator, I sense something seismic approaching - and I think we have a narrow window to prepare.
After 28 years in K-12 classrooms, I finally committed to the Google Certified Educator program. Here's why the certification mattered less than the pedagogical shift it forced me to confront.
A new school year means a fresh opportunity to be ruthlessly intentional about which tools earn a place in my classroom. Here is what made the cut - and what did not.
We teach students to read printed text but leave them functionally illiterate in the digital environments where they spend most of their waking hours. After 28 years in K-12 classrooms, I argue that digital literacy deserves the same curricular weight as traditional literacy.
This summer I am pursuing Google Certified Educator credentials and exploring emerging tools - not as obligations but as deliberate investments in the kind of educator I want to become.
The same technology that kept education alive during the pandemic is now contributing to record levels of teacher burnout. We need an honest conversation about sustainable innovation.
Our students spent two formative years navigating the internet without the structured guidance we normally provide. The digital citizenship conversation has fundamentally changed, and our curricula must change with it.
The pandemic forced a decade of EdTech adoption into a single semester. Two years later, I examine which changes persisted, which quietly reverted, and what that pattern reveals about how schools actually change.
Not everything from pandemic teaching deserves to be discarded. These are the hybrid and remote learning practices I am keeping - and the pedagogical reasoning behind each one.
After two years of pandemic-driven technology adoption, it is time to move beyond survival mode and set purposeful, pedagogically grounded EdTech goals for the new year.