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For decades, formative assessment has been a silent engine for learning—powering insights about student progress and worker readiness. But let’s be honest, in a world where technology is evolving faster than human skills, it’s time to ask questions about traditional teaching and learning models, and in many cases, modernize them. So, let’s talk about formative assessment in the age of AI. Formative assessment is the ongoing process educators and workplace trainers use to understand where students are in their learning and how to adjust instruction accordingly, through homework, essays, quizzes, and short writing assignments. Eighty percent of educators rate formative …

Neuroscientists have found birding is actually a brain hack. A new study published in JNeurosci, the Journal of Neuroscience found birdwatching may actually alter the structure and function of your brain—what is known as neuroplasticity—effectively helping to boost cognitive abilities, especially in more seasoned bird watchers. “Our brains are very malleable,” lead researcher Erik Wing, a research associate at York University in Toronto, explained. Wait, what exactly is neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity is basically the process or way your brain learns, creates memory, and adapts to experiences and trauma, according to Psychology Today. Research shows that …

When looking for an apartment in San Francisco today, artificial intelligence can seem inescapable; and that’s not just because every rental building seems to have an AI bot answering calls. In San Francisco, the technology’s ascendency—and the subsequent skyrocketing job growth— has helped make the apartment market one of the tightest in the nation, with the fastest growing rent in the U.S. Lisa McCarrel, Managing Partner of Move Bay Area, a relocation and rental housing service, has seen the rental market become frenzied in recent months due in part to the increase in AI and AI-adjacent jobs. With units harder to come by, she’s seen some potential tenants offer…

San Francisco restaurant Mister Jiu’s is kicking off its 10th anniversary celebration next month with a three-part dinner series in its Chinatown kitchen. The restaurant will host 10 celebrated Chinese chefs from around the world, including Dan Hong from Sydney, Australia’s Mr Wong, and ArChan Chan from Ho Lee Fook in Hong Kong. Guests, seated in tables of four or eight, pay $285 each for 16 dishes from four chefs, all inspired by classic banquet-style dining. The even is nearly sold out, and, according to executive chef and owner Brandon Jew, an exciting creative collaboration that the restaurant couldn’t afford to produce on its own. The extravaganza is sponso…

In the past, women’s work bags were designed to assert power. Women marched into the boardroom with hyper-structured “girlboss” totes or aggressively minimalist tech clutches. But there’s a shift taking place. Many work–life bags today are softer, both visually and physically. They’re lighter. They collapse. They transition seamlessly from the office to the many other things that fill your life: The mid-day grocery run, a coffee meeting that turns into school pickup, dinner with friends straight from the office. Every year, I test dozens of bags in search of the ones that best capture how we’re actually living and working right now. It’s clear that work bags are …

There’s a new epidemic sweeping companies worldwide: unhappiness. According to recent research, only 51% of employees frequently feel happy at work. Being happy is not just a “nice to have” in the workplace. The same research found that happy workers are 42% more likely to feel productive or motivated, meaning that employee happiness is directly linked to business outcomes. While many organizations have introduced initiatives such as “duvet days,” mindfulness classes, and wellbeing apps, recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that these have no discernible effect on employee mental wellbeing. So, what is the answer to curing this unhappiness e…

U.S. Army personnel may be training for cyberwar, but their own web browsing is quietly feeding the surveillance economy. According to a recent study by the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, corporate surveillance has deeply infiltrated the U.S. Army’s unclassified IT infrastructure in the continental United States. The researchers—who declined an interview request, citing increased scrutiny of external engagements by the Department of Defense—analyzed the 1,000 most frequently requested internet resources on Army networks over a two-month period and found that 21.2% were “tracker domains.” Those domains exist solely to harvest user data and analytics. A follow-…

Hiring well is one of a leader’s most important jobs. Having talented employees is a strong competitive advantage and allows your organization to produce results and create a productive and positive culture. It’s hard to do well, especially at senior levels where judgment and character become increasingly important, and there’s a high cost of recruiting or replacing someone. Substantive questions help assess a candidate’s skills and readiness for a job, and behavioral questions provide the opportunity to understand how they think and handle themselves. But ultimately, once you’ve established their competency, it’s time to decide whether a candidate’s character is the …

In 2001, Antoni was working at a business that was underperforming and facing layoffs. People didn’t know who would be cut or when. You could tell by people’s behavior that anxiety was at an all-time high. Managers were “networking” in the right corridors, colleagues started to crowd meetings to look indispensable, and teams were slowing down because nobody wanted to make the wrong move. One leader chose a different tactic. Every day, at the same time, he stood in the same spot where anyone could walk up to him. He shared what he actually knew (not what he guessed), answered questions without theater, and ended with a concrete direction for “today.” People still didn’…

By now, you’ve surely noticed it. Jean waistlines, sky-high not so long ago, are going lower. Low enough that you might need to think of underwear as outerwear. Across the fashion industry, experts agree that in 2026, ultra-low-rise will be a key business driver in the denim sector, with some brands saying that their low-rise styles have replaced the eternally popular high-rise as their best selling cut. “What we’re going to see in this next decade is [it’ll be] really dominated by the low-rise,” says Amy Williams, CEO of Citizens of Humanity group, which also owns the premium denim brand Agolde. “Right now, you’re sort of at that early stage where people are jus…

Roger Sauerhaft thought he had done everything right. The 38-year-old PR consultant had been running his solo practice in New York since 2021, paying $1,189 a month for what seemed like good health insurance through his state’s individual marketplace. In late 2023, he developed a medical issue that required a specialist, and started calling doctors’ offices—only to be turned away again and again. The closest in-network specialist was an hour away in Long Island. One medical administrator was honest with him: His plan’s network was too restrictive. He needed broader coverage—but that wasn’t available to him. “When you’re a solopreneur, your health is your bus…

At a park near Canberra, Australia, a series of small white pyramid-shaped boxes are part of a new experiment: Can “frog saunas” help bring back an endangered species? The green and golden bell frog—an iconic Australian amphibian with a call that sounds like a cross between a power tool and a quacking duck—is already extinct in the area. Like other frog species around the world, it was a victim of a deadly fungus called chytrid that has been killing amphibians for decades. But scientists are reintroducing the vibrant frog with the hope that a design intervention can help it survive. The “sauna” is a simple design, with bricks inside a plastic enclosure that he…

Three weeks into her new role as VP of operations, “Maria” got an 11:47 p.m. Slack from her COO: “Where are we on the Q3 supply chain numbers?” She had sent him those numbers that morning. She sent them again. By 6 a.m., Maria’s boss had changed the entire project scope based on a board conversation she didn’t know had happened. By noon, he’d cc’d the CEO on a complaint about “delays”—delays caused by his own shifting priorities. Maria didn’t push back: She absorbed the burden. She reframed his abrupt messages before forwarding them to her team. She stayed late recalculating projections to match his latest mandate. She deflected her team’s frustration with carefu…

A new word has entered the business headline writer’s lexicon over the last month: the “SaaSpocalypse.” Between mid-January and mid-February 2026, around a trillion dollars was wiped from the value of software stocks. The S&P North American Software Index posted its worst monthly decline since the 2008 financial crisis. Individual stocks have been savaged, with even Microsoft, the ultimate tech blue chip, falling by more than 10%. The panic is real. But is it rational? The catalyst for this turmoil was a series of product launches from AI companies—most notably Anthropic’s Claude Cowork tool and its subsequent upgrades—demonstrating that AI agents are now capa…

When a new general-purpose technology emerges—be it railroads, electricity, computers, etc.—companies react in predictable ways. A small minority tries to reinvent themselves around it; the majority looks first for ways to cut costs. Right now, in the middle of the most significant technological inflection since the internet, many organizations are choosing the second path. They deploy artificial intelligence to automate call centers, reduce head count in back offices, and squeeze marginal gains out of existing processes. They measure “AI ROI” in payroll savings and hours reclaimed. It feels rational. It feels disciplined. It feels safe. It is also the fast…

It’s a good day to be the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. This morning, the company unveiled its latest innovation in the weight-loss drug wars: the KwikPen. Per a press release , the KwikPen contains a months-worth of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 designed to combat obesity, and it’s designed to make taking the medicine more convenient. Alongside the announcement of this new innovation, Eli Lilly’s main competitor, Novo Nordisk, dropped the news that its experimental drug, CagriSema, perfomed worse for patient weight loss in a head-to-head trial against Eli Lilly’s proprietary drug, tirzepatide. A November study from the health policy non-profit KFF found that abo…

If Domino’s earnings on Monday prove anything, it’s that people are still eating pizza—even if fast food sales, in general, are slumping. “There seems to be a narrative out there that pizza is a challenged and declining category,” Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner said in an earnings call on Monday. “That is just not true, looking back to 2019, you’ll find a category that has generally grown approximately 1-2% each year, including last year 2025.” Weiner did, however, acknowledge the market was “mature.” The pizza giant reported strong fourth-quarter earnings results, with revenue coming in at 1.54 billion, beating estimates of $1.52 billion. It also reported a 15% quar…

Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight. Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom. Many of these data centers want the kind of f…

The American promise is one of equal opportunity, but in most of our communities today, access to the resources that enable prosperity are too far out of reach. That’s because there is one unseen factor that influences who is able to thrive and who cannot: capital. The flow of capital into communities has a dramatic effect on which kind of people can open small businesses, buy homes, and generally participate in the American Dream. Places that are already thriving are able to easily access capital. Banks see these neighborhoods as a “safe bet” and will readily support the opening of new businesses, construction of new homes, and mortgage lending. But those places …

For years, retail investors were dismissed by some on Wall Street as “dumb money.” That typically referred to those prone to trading on hype, or chasing trends rather than company or industry fundamentals, or responding late to big market moves. That’s no longer the case. An analysis of where retail investors put their money last year shows they outperformed two of the most popular, professionally managed index funds, SPY and QQQ, whose goal is to mirror the performance of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, respectively. Retail investors accounted for $5.4 trillion in trading activity in 2025 across stocks and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, according to Vanda, an indepen…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.2% year-over-year between January 2025 and January 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier—though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of …

Friday’s news of a major shakeup at Microsoft’s Xbox division caught the gaming world by surprise. Phil Spencer, who has run Xbox for almost 12 years, announced his retirement, effective immediately—just months after Microsoft insisted he was “not retiring anytime soon.” Asha Sharma, the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, was tapped to run the division. Once a powerhouse earner, Xbox has seen its profitability and influence shrink in recent years. (Xbox president Sarah Bond, long seen as Spencer’s heir apparent, was passed over and also left the company.) Sharma may face an uphill battle. Microsoft has not reported updated Xbox console sales or Game Pass…