# Michael Harvey

Michael Harvey is a New Zealand teacher who writes about education technology, AI, and how to design learning that keeps teachers and students in control.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/michael-harvey/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjharvey
- LinkedIn followers: 2,892
- Topics: artificial-intelligence, ai-in-education
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Michael Harvey is useful for testing how education AI tools maintain teacher and student agency.

- Best for: Education AI companies seeking a practitioner to test if features support meaningful learning.
- Not for: Campaign requirements for platform endorsements, mass reach, or evidence of classroom results.
- Check first: Confirm audience demographics, such as roles, countries, and seniority, and request recent results.

### Takeaways

- AI should widen choices for teachers and students, not make them.
- Pedagogy must guide technology choices, not the brand logo.
- Innovation requires testing unfinished ideas before they are fully formed.

## Main ideas

- **AI should widen choices for teachers and students, not make them**: Harvey sees Google's shift from Gems to Skills as more than a product change. Skills could let teachers encode practices such as Socratic questioning, misconception diagnosis, source evaluation and formative feedback as reusable capabilities—moving beyond prompt engineering to what they call portable pedagogical design. The question is who decides which capability gets invoked. If platforms increasingly choose when support appears and what a student needs, judgement shifts from teachers and students to platforms. Harvey's test: do teachers retain the call on why, when and how AI supports learning, and can students seek help, question it, reject it or work through a problem first?
- **Neither technology companies nor education companies should own the design of learning**: Harvey credits Becky Keene with a useful technical distinction: a Gem is somewhere you go, whereas a Skill is something AI uses when that capability is needed. They also report Keene's suggestion that large AI companies will supply the intelligence while education-specific companies supply learning design. Harvey finds the distinction useful but rejects the framing: learning design should belong to neither kind of company. Teachers and students should retain meaningful agency over it.
- **Pedagogy first, whichever technology ecosystem it comes from**: Selected as New Zealand's Microsoft Elevate Education Fellow for 2026-28 in the same week as becoming a Google Innovator, Harvey rejects the idea of choosing sides. Technology matters only when it helps design better learning, strengthen relationships, give students greater agency and support teachers. They want to connect these ecosystems rather than treat them as competing camps.
- **Innovation means testing unfinished ideas, not waiting for a eureka moment**: Reflecting on three days at the Google Innovator Academy in Melbourne, Harvey says the biggest takeaway was not a Google tool but people, pedagogy, curiosity and permission to test ideas that are not fully formed. Their account of innovation is deliberately unglamorous: try something and see what happens. The graduation post frames the end of the programme as the start of the work, with coaches and fellow educators turning rough ideas into more purposeful projects expected to change, grow and sometimes be completely reshaped over the following year.
- **Learning from teachers who see the same problems differently**: Invited to review sessions for ISTELive27, Harvey highlights what they want to learn from: ideas that challenge assumptions, celebrate student voice and make teaching and learning meaningful in an increasingly AI-influenced world. They say some of the most valuable professional learning comes from conversations with teachers who see familiar challenges through completely different lenses, and note the value of contributing to a global community from a New Zealand classroom.

## Work to read

- [Google’s Gems-to-Skills shift—and who should shape learning](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mjharvey_aiineducation-studentagency-teacheragency-activity-7512613347192778752-Lt05)
- [Microsoft Elevate Fellow and Google Innovator: no sides to choose](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mjharvey_microsofteducation-microsoftelevate-googleinnovator-activity-7511628957260156928-w2ch)
- [What innovation looks like after the Google Innovator Academy](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mjharvey_apparently-im-a-google-innovator-now-activity-7512008306639495168-7Sw4)
- [Invited to review sessions for ISTELive27](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mjharvey_istelive27-istelive27-iste-activity-7513743387800289281-ZR_0)

## Brand relationships

- **Google for Education** (mention)
- **Microsoft Elevate** (mention)
- **ISTE** (mention)

## Partnerships

Michael Harvey's five LinkedIn posts (1–7 October 2026) describe vendor relationships as educator-community programmes, not sponsorships, advertising or paid collaborations: a Google Innovator cohort place at the Melbourne academy (#MEL26), a Microsoft Elevate Education Fellow place for 2026–28, and an invited session-reviewer role for ISTELive27. They frame these as professional development and community, and make clear that the tool brand is not the deciding factor — the pedagogy is. Their focus on teacher and student agency, encoding good pedagogy into AI, and questioning which skills an AI invokes and when could suit a brand seeking critique or context from a practising teacher, rather than a straight promotional slot. Before planning outreach, ask for their sponsorship policy, media kit, pricing, booking route and any available package or deliverables.

## Alternatives

- Mary Harper: For an education AI company deciding who to work with on a tool that preserves teacher and student agency, choose Mary Harper when the question is how teachers are prepared, not how a feature behaves with a learner. Both posts focus on the systems behind the classroom: a Learning Policy Institute framework for designing teacher preparation around the science of learning, and a Texas Workforce Commission grant awarded to the Children's Learning Institute. The grant funds CDA credentials, registered apprenticeships, associate degrees and bachelor's degrees for early childhood educators, as described from Harper's position at TXAEYC. The preparation framework offers the kind of structure a programme proposal needs: five principles for preparation that is coherent, clinically grounded, developmentally informed, equity-centred and modelled by faculty, rather than merely described in coursework. If the company's route into schools runs through educator-preparation programmes, accreditation conversations, clinical partnerships or a state workforce pipeline, Harper's material speaks directly to that buyer decision.
- Staci Lapis, M.Ed: For the same need, Staci Lapis is the alternative when the company needs someone to build student-facing screens rather than critique the pedagogy behind them. Their posts describe ten years of language instruction and community work before a move into UX, visual and conversational design, and a working app, Studywavve. It lets students in different places share resources, message each other, schedule virtual meetups and exchange feedback on assignments. The posts specify the features: an onboarding flow that auto-populates a profile card with image, language, subject, interests and location; filters for subject, interest and language; and the design systems behind the interface. A company designing collaboration or equitable-access features, or needing a design system for an AI tool's student-facing screens, is closer to this work than to a pedagogy critique. The 2023 post also names the areas Lapis is seeking work in, including UX, conversational design, instructional design and AI in education.
- Dan Greenwald: For the same need, Dan Greenwald is the alternative when the question is how a product reaches schools, not how it treats the learner. Both posts focus on market conditions: building a for-profit company inside systems not driven by money, where adoption is slow, budgets are tight, stakeholders are numerous and trust barriers are high; and the claim that education innovators and the ecosystems around them drive change. In the March 2026 post on GESAwards, Greenwald says they shared insights from nearly 1,200 startups in the 2025 cycle, launched the next cycle and led a panel of seven startups scaling across countries. It is the closest thing in Greenwald's posts to a route into the global EdTech ecosystem. If the company wants insight into cross-country scaling, introductions to founders and educators, or a candid account of why adoption stalls, this is the layer these posts address.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/