Teacher Brain Burnout? GPT-4.1 and 8 Other Headlines that Matter

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Looking for ideas to engage your students in conversation? In this week's quick news roundup, I give you stories about:

• The impact of overwork on the teacher's brain,
• An idea for an energy drink experiment for science teachers around the chemical “taurine”
• NASA and the tectonic plates of Venus
• YouTube's new “Peak Points” Advertising strategy as an AI article to discuss with students
• ChatGPT 4 going away? And how I teach students to test different models of AI and share their results
• How some people are installing local LLM's on their machines
• New AI guidance for teachers and common patterns I'm noting
• Google's AIME and the future of medical chat bots
• DuoLingo goes AI, and
• A Star-Wars themed personality test gone to the dark side?

We're all so busy. So, once a week, I work to share news articles and stories with you. These are the ones I'm using in my classroom and with other teachers who teach other subjects. I want you to have a quick idea for turning each headline into a warm-up, debate topic, or short project. I also want to feed your intellectually curious mind. Finally, since I'm doing so much with teaching about AI and ethics, I think that the headlines are the best ways to teach (what book can keep up), so I thought by sharing these with you that you would find them helpful. Either way — enjoy!

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What’s Inside

Headline	Quick Classroom Angle
Overwork vs the Teacher Brain	https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2025/05/15/overwork-changes-teacher-brain/ – staff-PD reflection on sustainable workloads.
Taurine Test-Tube Challenge	https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09018-7 – student-designed energy-drink inquiry lab.
Venus Has Tectonic Plates?	https://www.nasa.gov/missions/magellan/nasas-magellan-mission-reveals-possible-tectonic-activity-on-venus/ – Earth-vs-Venus quick-write.
YouTube “Peak Points” Ads	https://lifehacker.com/tech/youtube-ads-peak-points?utm_medium=RSS – media-literacy exercise: pick the least annoying ad spot or debate: discuss if this will improve ads or anger customers
GPT-4.1, 4-o, 4.5—Which Is Which?	https://openai.com/index/gpt-4-1/ – student model-showdown & data chart.
Run an LLM Locally	https://www.makeuseof.com/best-apps-to-run-llm-locally/ – privacy-first AI trials in IT/CS class.
New AI Guidance (SREB)	https://www.ednc.org/05-05-2025-ai-can-be-used-to-create-more-challenged-ethically-proficient-student-users-a-new-report-says/ – drop the four pillars into your next faculty meeting.
Google AMIE Medical Chatbot	https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/google-amie-ai-doctor-learns-to-see-medical-images/ – debate: should AI diagnose patients?
Duolingo Goes AI-First	https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/duolingo-shifts-to-ai-first-model-cutting-contractor-roles/ – language-class talk on AI tutors vs humans.
Darth Vader Personality Test	https://www.ebaumsworld.com/articles/darth-vader-personality-test/87695271/ –concerns with labeling people (even in fun)

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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