Fighting Apathy and A.I. with Meaning and Relevance
Imagine, for a moment, you are a student.
You just got home after a full-day at school. You took the bus to an away game, played and watched another game, took the bus back. Your parent is out, so you are helping younger siblings get dinner and ready for bed.
It’s late, you are tired, and remember all the homework you still have to do.
Your phone is dinging with messages and Snapchat notifications.
Your friend reminds you that you don’t really need to do all 30 math questions for homework, you can just pop open Photomath and jot down the work and answers.
What do you do?
Or maybe you’ve been procrastinating on that writing assignment. You didn’t get to pick the topic, and now have so much research to do in order to finish it up.
Your friends are all done because they used a combination of Jenni.ai and Quillbot to help them write it in 30 minutes instead of hours.
What do you do?
Or you are part of a group project. A few of your group members have been slacking and you need this grade to keep your GPA headed in the right track. No one is responding about the slide presentation that needs to be turned in as part of a benchmark check tomorrow.
You can easily use SlidesGPT or Gamma or Canva Magic to finish the presentation in a matter or minutes.
What do you do?
Your teacher just posted 10 discussion questions on Google Classroom to answer, most of the peers in your class is finished because they used Coursology.io — but you are interested in this subject and want to learn more about the topic.
What do you do?
While all of these scenarios are very real, and happening right now—they are still only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Artificial Intelligence tools in school.
This fall, most of our students will no longer have to go to “another website like ChatGPT” to get access to AI. It is built right into Google Docs, Slides, Microsoft apps, Apple products like “Notes” etc.
The last two years may have been when AI first came onto the scene as a reality, but this fall will present an enormous shift in our learning environments - ubiquitous access to AI tools for almost every possible school-related task.
A Hinge In History
Last year I hosted an AI in education panel where I was able to interview Alec Couros, Donnie Piercy, Alana Winnick, and Vicki Davis. In this conversation Vicki quoted Cultivated Abundance author, to describe this moment as a “Hinge in History”.
Hinges of History are powerful moments in time, not only for the changes wrought by their inciting events but also for the changemakers who follow in their wake. These pivotal moments represent paradigm shifts in which a central truth is no longer valid or a new discovery expands the frontier of human knowledge. These monumental shifts create periods of transition that enable pioneers to enact great change — for better or worse — that would otherwise not be possible.
— Mihir Pershad
Many of us have lived through hinges in history, specifically the “internet revolution” that powers much of our world today (and this blog post or email that you are reading would not have been possible without it).
Some hinges are undoubtedly bigger than others (for example the Printing Press or the Telegraph), and we may not know the full impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence for many years (or decades) to come.
But, here we are, faced with another challenge on our hands as educators.
What do we do? How should we respond?
Change Is An Opportunity
As my friend and colleague George Couros often says, “Change is an opportunity to do something amazing.”
We could respond to these new Artificial Intelligence tools in the following ways:
AI Cheat detectors for every assignment
Paper and pencil for everything
In-class tests where you can’t use any technology
And the list goes on.
We could lean into compliance and double down. After all, it is much easier to teach from PPT slides, textbooks, and tests/quizzes.
Or…and just hear me out for a second…we could do something amazing.
I’ve been blessed to work with educators all around the country (and world) this summer. It doesn’t matter if it is a group of folks from Hawaii or Nova Scotia, from Alabama or NYC, from California or Ohio.
We already know what works and doesn’t work.
Kids are not normally engaged in lectures, textbooks, homework, and traditional assessments. The apathy problem is not going away by staying the course.
Our best learning experiences as adults didn’t happen when compliance was the focus either.
We know what happens when kids can tap into inquiry, and curiosity, and solve problems.
We know what happens when students get to work on challenges that are meaningful.
We know what happens when learners dive into a relevant curriculum and project-based learning experience.
We know what happens when kids care about their learning.
Our Big Focus For This Year
In reality, we are in the tough spot of having to work in systems that are not necessarily designed for kids to care about their learning.
Much of our curriculum, content, and pre-existing resources were not created with that as a priority.
Yet, here we are.
If kids, or adults, are forced to solely be compliant in their learning and work—then guess who is going to be their biggest partner in doing that work?
But, when we focus on meaning and relevance things change.
If we don’t care about that email to a colleague or parent, then why not have ChatGPT or any other AI tool write it?
If we do care, we’ll write it ourselves from a place of meaning and value.
If we don’t care about that lesson or activity, then why not have an AI tool create it?
If we do care, then maybe we use AI to generate some ideas or to finetune our plan, but in the end, our thoughts and changes make it special.
If kids don’t care about all of these assignments they have to do then of course they are going to use AI to do the assignments for them.
But…if they do care, then there is an opportunity for real, deep learning to happen.
If that is the goal, then let’s focus on making learning as meaningful and relevant as possible when we have the ability to do so.
This change, just like any other hinge in history, is an opportunity to do something amazing.
More Human in an A.I. World
The big question around Artificial Intelligence is this: Are we using this technology for new and better learning experiences, or to do old things in new ways?
One of my favorite AI tools that I share all the time is Magic School.
Tools like it can save teachers hours of time, if used for the right purposes.
That should leave time for more HUMAN activities like creating, designing, making, and problem-solving with our students.
It should open up new curricula opportunities for meaning and relevant learning experiences.
It can usher in a new era of project-based learning that connects to the local community and global network in human ways.
Or…it can help us create more worksheets, multiple choice tests, and boring compliance-based activities.
The Elephant in the AI Classroom, is much like any technology, what are we going to use it for?
The answer, might just decide the future of what education looks like. And if we don’t focus on a more human experience, then apathy will continue, and A.I. use could spread to all the wrong places.
