Hello! I have siblings and their young children visiting from out of town next weekend (Oct. 10 weekend). Looking for ideas of fall-related activities that are kid friendly!
Definitely thinking about a nice walk in the state park and maybe going to Little Monsters Day at Double M Haunted Hayrides. But would love any other ideas to give them a taste of fall in Upstate NY!!!
Hi, I’m getting married in Lake George and want to fill my bridesmaid proposal boxes with Lake George/ADK goodies. Definitely will include a Lake George baseball cap, but looking for other recommendations for local products some gals would appreciate!
Also, would love reccs for any gift stores/cute shops I might be able to find stuff!
WHEN IN-PERSON SCHOOLING resumed after the Covid pandemic, Ned Campbell went “all in” on educational technology. He had his high schoolers use their Chromebooks every day to fill out interactive worksheets, visit informational websites, and watch videos about history and politics. He thought the screens would help them learn more and stay engaged.
But Campbell, who teaches US history at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, quickly grew suspicious of how his students were using their devices. They’d look up the answers to assignments, charge their phones, and email friends, he noticed. They would submit essays a few minutes apart that were nearly identical. The day after online homework quizzes, Campbell asked students to answer the same questions on paper, and watched as As turned into Fs.
Campbell began spending more time monitoring the use of technology than he spent teaching, he said. When he asked one student how they had gotten every question right the night before but failed the next day, he said the teenager responded, “ChatGPT.”
“I just had to admit that it wasn’t working,” Campbell said. “The kids didn’t learn. They didn’t retain anything.”
Last school year, Campbell eliminated technology from his classroom. The Chromebook cart remains untouched during class time. Instead, students pick up a hard copy of a worksheet and a dictionary, and spend the first 15 minutes reading, writing, or completing a vocabulary activity. Homework is completed by hand and turned in the following day.
“I have pretty much gone back to the way I was teaching when I first started,” said Campbell, who has been a teacher for 25 years.
In recent years, the use of ed tech has exploded. About nine in 10 public schools nationwide had a 1-1 device program providing every student with a laptop or tablet during the 2024–25 school year, according to federal data. But as schools pour millions into ed tech and artificial learning programs, parents are increasingly questioning whether those investments improve learning — and a growing number of teachers are ditching tech for traditional analog instruction.
Policymakers are beginning to respond, too. On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI and caps on screen time through middle school. A new state bill would go further: the FOCUS Act, introduced by state Senator Andrew Gounardes last month, aims to sharply limit reliance on screens and to “create a right to analog learning.”
If the bill passes, it would be the most comprehensive restriction on ed tech in the country.
MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, Queens teacher Nicole Radosti Pipia’s fifth- and sixth-grade students seemed to love reading novels in school.
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry was prized for its mystery. “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio taught them about kindness and acceptance. “Freak the Mighty” by Rodman Philbrick showed them the power of friendship.
Now, she said, they don’t read any. Instead, students often spend class time reading excerpts and short stories to better prepare them for the sorts of questions they’d encounter on standardized exams.
The demands of her school’s reading program leave no room to study novels, the English teacher said.
“We’re told that we cannot deviate from the program, and if you have to do the program, there’s literally no time,” Pipia said.
Another New York City middle school teacher, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said her school taught novels before the pandemic. Now, “it can be done, but not with the constraints placed on us as teachers,” she said.
For the past few years, her school has required her to have her students — most of whom are English language learners and struggling readers — spend half of each 40-minute class period, four days a week, completing an online targeted reading intervention program, she said. They often end up clicking through the program and visiting Spotify and YouTube instead. The remainder of the period is devoted to the school’s core curriculum, which does not require novel studies.
The classroom library she spent a decade building has become “purely decorative,” she said. With teachers no longer using books, she said, her school is “literally throwing them away.” Even if she had the time to teach a book, the veteran teacher said, her students either have no interest in reading or barely know how.
“Half of them have never read a book,” she said. “In 10 years, we went from kids reading multiple novels in class to them having never opened a book.”
https://nysfocus.com/2026/08/26/new-york-students-reading-fewer-books
Starting this fall, Salamanca High School will deploy a humanoid robot and avatar teaching assistant. The female robot, named Sally, will have a “lifelike appearance” with silicone skin and long brown hair, Kiguel said in an interview with New York Focus. It will be stationary in a seated position but have a wide range of upper-body movements and facial expressions.
Students will use a unique identification code when interacting with the robot during class, allowing it to access their learning data and provide personalized support based on their past communication with the avatar, Kiguel said. “They’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m student number 1234,’ and then the robot will be like, ‘Hey, we were talking about this yesterday, do you want to continue that conversation?”
“This deployment in a working school district represents a landmark moment for both ai and humanoid robotics,” said Andrew Kiguel, ceo of Realbotix, which is currently building the robot. “Salamanca marks the beginning of a new era where humanoid robots and intelligent ai assistants become standard tools in stem education.”
https://nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/new-york-humanoid-robot-teacher-salamanca-school-district