AI-Generated Audios
A few weeks ago, I announced that I would be presenting at the IFE Conference 2026 in Monterrey, Mexico. IFE stands for the Institute for the Future of Education, an institution created at Tecnológico de Monterrey dedicated to driving innovation in education. Along with my colleagues Viviana Hall and Roberta Mesquita, we shared our work on “Reimagining Multilingual Classrooms: AI, Active Learning, and Digital Storytelling for a More Inclusive Future.“
I want to tell you about what happened there, not just in the conference room, which was a wonderful experience, but in an unexpected conversation on a campus path that reminded me why we do this work in the first place.
A Campus That Inspires
I’ve been visiting Mexico for many years, but my visit to Monterrey last week was my first time setting foot on the Tec de Monterrey campus. It was a wonderful experience.
The campus is a living ecosystem that stretches across a significant part of the city. Modern architecture sits alongside green spaces. Students move between classes with purpose. There is an energy here that any educator recognizes immediately, especially someone like me who has spent years working with higher education institutions across the country. You can feel the hum of learning in progress, the quiet confidence of an institution that knows its mission and is clear about what it wants to achieve.
One thing I didn’t expect was the wildlife. Peacocks, deer, and ducks share the campus with students and faculty, wandering the same paths as if to remind you that they were there first. At one point, a deer crossed the path ahead of me, and I stopped to let it pass, a small, instinctive show of respect for an animal that moves through this space with more seniority than any of us.
And then there was the peacock. I was rolling a purple-tinted suitcase when one of the campus peacocks began following me. He caught his own reflection on the surface of the suitcase and started pecking at it, fighting with himself. Then, as if to settle the argument, he spread his feathers wide, a full display against a blue Monterrey winter sky. It was one of those moments you don’t plan for and never forget.
As I walked through those paths preparing for our presentation, I found myself thinking: this is what educational spaces should feel like. Intentional. Thoughtfully designed. Built for the work that happens here. A place where you are not separate from nature but part of it, a living, breathing thing among other living things, sharing a space that was created so that new ideas could grow.
The International Community of Educators
The conference brought together educators from across Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Different languages, different educational systems, different challenges. But in every conversation, the same thread: a genuine commitment to improving education.
We met professors redesigning teacher preparation programs. Instructional designers experimenting with immersive technologies. Researchers investigating how students actually learn. Administrators trying to scale good ideas across entire institutions.
The excitement around artificial intelligence was palpable. Not hype, not fear, just honest curiosity about what these tools might make possible. And underneath that curiosity, a careful attention to what matters: Will this help students learn? Will this support teachers? Will this make education more accessible, more effective, more human?
But what struck me most was the attitude in the room. There was a willingness to try, to experiment, to get their hands on these tools and figure them out. Not recklessness, but a genuine lack of intimidation. Where many conversations about AI in education get stuck in caution or resistance, this community leaned forward. The energy was: let’s try it, let’s learn from our mistakes, let’s iterate, let’s not let fear keep us from understanding what this can do. And if it doesn’t work, we adjust. That openness, that practical courage, was refreshing. And it wasn’t reckless. It wasn’t “move fast and break things.” It was something deeper: a collective understanding that we are standing at the edge of something profoundly disruptive, that AI and what comes after it will reshape education whether we participate or not. This community understood that this technology can make or break what we’ve built, and they chose to be part of shaping it rather than waiting to react.
These are our people. The ones who ask the right questions and then actually build something to test the answers.
An Evening of Culture and Connection
One evening during the conference, we attended a theater performance on campus that left a lasting impression. The show was a stunning, modern interpretation of classic Mexican cultural heritage, a production that brought together dancers, singers, and artists in a celebration of the traditions that define this country. It was bold and contemporary, but deeply rooted, the kind of work that honors the past by reimagining it for the present.
After the performance, everyone gathered in the foyer outside the theater. Educators from different universities, different cities, different disciplines, standing together, talking, laughing, sharing impressions of what we had just seen. I met professors and colleagues whose passion for education was immediately evident, the kind of people who remind you that this profession attracts a particular kind of heart. There is something worth noting here. At a conference about artificial intelligence and the future of education, some of the most meaningful moments happened in spaces where technology played no role at all: a theater filled with live performers, a foyer filled with human conversation. Not everything that matters can be digitized, and not every connection can be optimized. Sometimes the most important thing is just being in the same room with people who care about the same things you do.
An Unexpected Guide
Here’s where the story shifts. On our second day at the conference, Viviana and I needed to find a pharmacy outside the campus. We were looking for a specific gate that would take us to that part of the city. The campus, as I mentioned, is expansive. We were visibly lost.
A professor noticed us. He introduced himself as a faculty member at Tec, someone who had been teaching there for more than thirty years. He said he knew his way around the campus and the city, and he insisted, genuinely insisted, on walking us to the gate we needed so we could access that part of Monterrey.
What started as a simple courtesy became something else entirely.
As we walked, he began talking about his work at Tec de Monterrey and his three decades as a professor. And that’s where the magic started. He told us stories. He pointed to buildings and explained what happened there, why they were built in the first place, what they used to be, and how they had changed over the years. He described how the campus had evolved over decades, how even the organization of the paths and the layout of the buildings served a purpose in the way students move through their learning.
He spoke with pride, yes, but more than that, with love. A deep connection to the campus, its students, and its purpose. The kind of affection that only comes from years of investment, from watching generations of students pass through, and most importantly, from being part of something larger than himself, something he knows is making a difference.
By the time we reached the gate to get off campus and after this unexpected tour, Viviana and I didn’t want to leave. We wanted to keep walking with him, keep listening, keep learning. This professor had turned a ten-minute walk into a masterclass in institutional knowledge, campus culture, and what it means to be an ambassador for the work that educators are doing at that institution.
And here’s the thing: we learned more in that walk than we could have from any brochure, any welcome app, any website, any official campus tour. Because this came from his heart, from his passion. And that, in itself, was a lesson.
The Human Touch in an Age of AI
That walk stayed with me because of what we had just presented at the conference.
Our panel was about AI in education. We demonstrated our projects for AI-powered mentorship in multilingual contexts. We talked about digital storytelling, structured learning experiences, intelligent systems that can scale support across languages and professions. The technology is real. The potential is significant. We believe in this work. But walking with that professor, I was reminded of something we can never forget: AI can simulate conversation, it can provide information, but it cannot embody institutional memory. It can guide learners through structured experiences, but it cannot share three decades of lived wisdom in the inflection of a voice, the gesture toward a building, the warmth of someone who genuinely wants you to understand what an institution of knowledge means.
This is not an argument against AI in education. It’s actually a reminder of what we are building toward and why it is so important that educators get involved in the work of guiding AI in education. Because here is what I truly believe: if we leave this technology in the hands of technocrats alone, if we step back and let others decide how AI shapes learning, it can easily go in a direction that damages or undermines the work we have been doing in education for decades. The tools are powerful, and power without pedagogical understanding is dangerous.
But on the other side of that coin, I see something remarkable. If we are part of this process, if we leverage the power of these AI technologies for our purposes and our goals as educators, this technology can enhance our reach in ways we never imagined. It can help us connect more students with people like the professor who walked us to that gate. It can handle the repeatable, the scalable, the structured, so that educators have the time and space for the human connections that truly matter, the ones that only happen when a teacher is fully present with a student who really needs that extra attention.
That is what we are trying to do in our projects. We use AI to facilitate the work of educators, not to replace it. The goal is to free educators to do more of what that professor did for us: be fully present, share what matters, and connect human to human in ways that leave a lasting impression.
I don’t have all the answers. But I know this much: AI becomes something worth building when it enhances, expands, and facilitates the work of educators rather than sidelining them. That is how I see it, and that walk in Monterrey only made me more certain.
To everyone we met at IFE 2026: thank you for your questions, your insights, and your willingness to engage with difficult ideas. To the organizers at the Institute for the Future of Education and Tecnológico de Monterrey: thank you for creating space for these conversations.
And to the professor who walked us to the gate: thank you for being the kind of educator who still believes that ten minutes of genuine attention can matter. You reminded us why we build what we build.
That’s the future of education worth building.
