Technology Essentials in Education Episode 37:
How Vibe Coding Can Help Teachers Build Custom Tools

About the Episode

In this episode, Monica welcomes Greg Bagby—a veteran educator with 30 years of experience spanning teaching, principalship, district leadership, instructional coaching, and EdTech consulting—to explore the concept of Vibe Coding. Greg demystifies this emerging trend, explaining it simply as using natural, plain language to build custom web applications and tools without writing traditional syntax, brackets, or code. Drawing from his own problem-solving workflow, Greg breaks down how educators can shift from spending money on third-party software subscriptions to building lightweight, hyper-specific apps tailored to their exact classroom or administrative challenges. He shares a real-world example of building a CSV data converter for a school secretary struggling with a clunky Student Information System (SIS), as well as practical ideas for interactive vocabulary drag-and-drop activities. Throughout the conversation, Greg highlights the importance of leveraging existing tools (like Canva Code or Gemini with Google Sites), keeping AI literacy and student data privacy at the forefront, and embracing rapid prototyping through conversational feedback loops with Large Language Models (LLMs).