Insights
Long-form writing on learning, institutions and the AI era, organised into five series. Each one is a complete reading path — an operating model, a continuous argument, or a set of essays that defend a single claim — so you can start anywhere and still finish something whole. Every article belongs to a series; nothing here is a loose end.
The five series
Four closed sets and one still being written. Open a series to read it in order, or pick a single article from the list below.
The Institutional Playbook
Strategy, AI, and the marketing of educational institutions.
A three-part operating model for the marketing of educational institutions, plus three follow-ups that extend the framework into a specific case study, a vertical deep-dive, and the operational concern that cuts across both K-12 and higher ed. Each article stands on its own; together they form a complete framework.
Explore the series →The Patronage Playbook
Fundraising, donor stewardship, and the discipline of asking well.
A three-part operating model for fundraising in educational institutions, plus five follow-ups covering specific mechanisms, fundable targets, the discipline of donor matching and due diligence, AI as augmentation, and a step-by-step implementation guide for the first year. The institutions that compound on patronage built it as discipline, not luck.
Explore the series →The Evolution of Learning
What each new tool gave us, what we quietly gave up along the way, and what is finally possible now.
Six essays drawn from Carlos Miranda Levy’s 2025 keynote, written as one continuous movement rather than six separate pieces. Every capacity-amplifying tool — writing, the calculator, the personal computer, the internet — arrived to the same warning, and each time learning was changed rather than destroyed. Read in order, the six parts trace what each arrival gave the learner, what we quietly gave up in exchange, and what deliberate practice at scale finally makes possible now.
Explore the series →Still Worth Learning
Four sourced essays on what keeps its value while the way we reach it changes.
Four essays that each start from a real artefact — a copied map, a memorised city, a line of code, an infographic that looked right and was not — and work outward under a source apparatus. They defend one claim: a thing can keep its whole value while the way we come to it changes completely. What is worth a learner’s effort was never settled by whether a machine can also produce the output.
Explore the series →The Smoother Notebook
Methodology in the open — formats, design constraints, and the reasoning behind them, published as they are worked out.
Methodology in the open. The Notebook publishes the formats, the design constraints and the reasoning behind them as they are being worked out, rather than tidied up afterwards. One entry so far — the Nano-Learning format — and it sets the pattern for the rest: what we keep from the pedagogy, what we deliberately drop, who it serves, and where it must not pretend to be enough.
Explore the series →Every article
All 26 articles, in reading order under the series each belongs to.
- Part 1 How to Build a Social Media Strategy That Actually Fills Seats: A Playbook for Schools and Universities A field-tested playbook for schools and universities. 14 min Read →
- Part 2 How to Use AI to Execute Your School's Social Media Strategy: A Practical Stack for Schools and Universities AI tools mapped section by section onto the playbook from part one — research, audience modeling, content production, multilingual adaptation, analytics. 14 min Read →
- Part 3 The Institutional Brief: The Document That Makes Strategy and AI Compound The trilogy-closing piece. The brief is the document strategy depends on for execution and AI depends on for non-generic output. Seven sections, the discipline of keeping it current, and why most institutions don't have one. 14 min Read →
- Case Study · K-12 · Follow-up A Year Inside the Funnel: An Anonymized K-12 Enrollment Campaign Walkthrough What running the framework looks like over one season — an anonymized Caribbean K-12 school, the actual decisions week by week, the surprises, the final numbers, and what we would do differently. 15 min Read →
- Higher Ed · Deep Dive · Follow-up Higher Education Marketing: The Long Cycle, the Rankings Trap, and the Recruitment Layer Most Institutions Get Wrong The dedicated higher-ed playbook. The 18-month decision cycle, international recruitment as its own operating layer, why ranking optimization is a trap, and alumni as the marketing channel most universities underuse. 16 min Read →
- Operations · K-12 & Higher Ed · Follow-up Marketing and Admissions, One Team: Closing the Funnel Gap Most Institutions Leak Through Most institutions run marketing and admissions as semi-hostile sibling departments, and the funnel leaks through that seam more than anywhere else. 13 min Read →
- Part 1 Why Fundraising Belongs in Every Educational Institution: Breaking the Taboo and Closing the Gap The wealthiest institutions are systematically funded by patronage; modest institutions struggle. 13 min Read →
- Part 2 How to Build a Fundraising Strategy That Compounds The operating model — donor segmentation, the cultivation-to-stewardship cycle, the calendar that respects donor rhythms, the team, transparency as system design, the timing reality of multi-year fundraising, and the failure modes that kill otherwise-promising programs. 15 min Read →
- Part 3 The Case for Support: The Document That Makes Donors Say Yes The canonical donor-facing document — the seven sections of a working case for support, how to write each one, and the discipline of keeping it current. 14 min Read →
- Patronage · Mechanisms Catalog · Follow-up A Catalog of Fundraising Mechanisms: Galas, Marathons, Plaques, and the Quiet Conversation Sixteen specific mechanisms — annual fund, major-gift conversation, capital campaign, gala, plaque unveiling, marathon, planned giving, and more. 18 min Read →
- Patronage · Targets Catalog · Follow-up A Catalog of Fundraising Targets: From Sports Facilities to Solar Panels Thirty discrete projects an institution can package and offer to donors — facilities, sustainability, people, programs, strategic. 17 min Read →
- Patronage · Donor Discipline · Follow-up Donor Matching and Due Diligence: The Other Half of Fundraising The other half of fundraising is knowing whom to ask — and when to decline. 14 min Read →
- Patronage · AI · Follow-up AI for Fundraising: Accelerating the Relationship Without Replacing It How AI changes the economics of fundraising — prospect research, personalization at scale, donor analytics, impact-report generation — without changing the central truth that fundraising is a relationship discipline. 15 min Read →
- Patronage · Implementation Guide · Follow-up The First Year of Fundraising: A Quarter-by-Quarter Implementation Guide The field manual — what to actually do in the twelve months between deciding to build a fundraising program and running one. 16 min Read →
- Part 1 The Recurring Panic: Every New Tool Was Going to Destroy Learning (and Why AI Won’t Either) The alarm is 2,400 years old and always wrong — from Socrates on writing to calculators, PCs, and the Internet. 8 min Read →
- Part 2 The Crisis Was Never AI: Two Well-Intentioned Mistakes That Broke Learning Disengagement predates AI. We fragmented knowledge into measurable competencies and replaced practice with one-off projects. 8 min Read →
- Part 3 No Shortcuts to Mastery: The Beatles, Picasso, Larry Bird, and 100 Exercises Excellence requires extensive, deliberate practice. Quantity is the precondition for quality — not its enemy. 8 min Read →
- Part 4 What AI Finally Makes Possible: Deliberate Practice at Scale Extensive, personalized, instantly-fed-back practice — for every student, not just those with private tutors. 10 min Read →
- Part 5 Intelligence Is a Muscle: The Electric Bicycle and the Two Futures of AI in Education Will AI make students think less or more? It depends entirely on how we design its use — and that is our job, not theirs. 8 min Read →
- Part 6 Amplification, Not Substitution: Six Practical Ways AI Transforms Teaching From lesson planning to assessment — six concrete uses that amplify the teacher instead of replacing them. 11 min Read →
- Education · The AI Era The Expired Syllabus: Why We Can’t Teach 2026 the Way We Taught 2025 — and What 1985 Knew A syllabus is a set of assumptions with a schedule attached — and the assumptions of 2025 have expired. 12 min Read →
- Part 1 The Maps We Copied — and What They Teach Us About AI in Education We all copied the rivers of Africa out of a book, and no teacher called it plagiarism — because the map was never the point. 7 min Read →
- Part 2 The Knowledge: What’s Still Worth Learning When the Machine Already Knows the Way London’s cab drivers memorize their whole city. GPS made that look obsolete — until you learn what the effort was quietly building. 9 min Read →
- Part 3 Should We Still Teach Coding? A Principal’s Question in the Age of Vibe Coding Yes — but teach the foundation, not the syntax. What to keep, what to change, and the trap of letting two vibes replace learning. 9 min Read →
- Part 4 The Infographic I Didn’t Publish: AI Drift and the Discipline of Checking Everything A good tool produced something polished and wrong. How we caught it — and why every AI output needs a compliance checklist before it carries your name. 8 min Read →
Comprehensive AI learning designed for educators, by educators. From awareness to mastery.