Technolandy

Lots of AI in my algorithms lately – from book reading (Burnout from Humans – great free book about collaborating mindsets) and a bit of thinking from some other books and movies (so nice to have another season of Black Mirror to binge as it always does share some fun twisty looks at techtopias – places between utopias & dystopias?) and and and:

My wonder: will we get to a place in writing that is similar to calculators – if you ‘know’ how language works (nouns, verbs, etc) will we allow more to use the tech to help them finish it off… much as we do with maths… allow more time to focus on the synthesis of big ideas rather than worry about the minutia… Some of us will remember the controversy of using calculators – when they stopped being ‘of significance that they could be used to secure a loan’ as Steve Wozniak famously did to help launch Apple, and instead fit in a pocket, and indeed are now embedded into a personal screen that can cost less than some of those early number crunchers… “We” have often shared that not every student can process algorithmic solutions quickly/efficiently, so calculators are good to help with speed and accuracy. Why not look similarly to language?

Introductions matter (I love our school/teachers when we have used a “use AI for this!” And keep getting rebellion – and then noticing that a big reason is because we provide descriptive feedback rather than scores – students said they wanted teacher feedback on their thinking/creating, not what their tools produced… so turning around and wondering ‘why is it that students are using the AI rather than their own exemplars?’ Are they jumping through a hoop (great time to use a robot buddy!) or authentically working on something that they understand why they are doing what they do <– then the feedback… or perhaps, as Daniel Pink recently suggested, not feedback… ADVICE… is welcome for further improvement!

Teachers exploring the upcoming book I have been lucky enough to pre-read are going to end up rethinking how/why they are teaching particular traditional skills to learners… again, I shift back to the introduction of the calculator… at first it was cheating, then it was seen as a speedier way so thinking could focus on more than just the algorithm (though that has continued to be an emphasis of many… do you know your times tables? Even though Einstein was bad at his…) but for many learners, a tool to use to get through some work that would be very slow to go through… will we adjust this to writing, reading, graphing, etc? Key skills are always valuable but do we all need to learn the same stuff at the same time? Or can we better target ‘readiness’ aka Vykotzky’s Zone of Proximal Development rather than when their birthday hits a certain number of years?

Where/when (the time discrepancy) ought we start transitioning our thought about tech integration? Cuz what we have been doing has not led to a culture where reading writing and mathing is a common occurrence outside of the k-12 (and university) buildings… we need more modelling of these recreations in order to show value to the other parts about why bothering to learn a wider range of topics to be a ‘global citizen’.

And percolating in the background… is listening to a book (a tech adaption) the same as reading…. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMBqXsb6G/

And as a librarian, I love the concept of audiobooks; and yet I am also aware that it is not a preferred method for myself (though radio is my preferred media; I love audio podcasts… yes, I am a living example of hypocrisy) – and I appreciate the tiktok share about reading with eyes does different skills (eg skimming key words/phrasings) than listening to every. single. word.

And we can already see that AI is making tech embedded into real life is leading us in education into a possible Netflix/Blockbuster Disruption that many of us have been waiting for (anxiously – both good and bad versions) for a couple of decades: Disrupting Class

Is our banning/ignoring AI tools and personal screens making ‘school’ even less relevant/meaning/connected/resembling real life to our community youngsters?

So, my brain is really channeling my inner Will Richardson and Dean Shareski as I over-ponder some thinking about what it is we do vs what we maybe ought to do… supported by a student sharing today some self-directed work on creating a superhero – doing his own original drawing and then having AI create a bit of a scaffolding so that he can start to envision a final project he would like to get to, and can target some art skills to get there (or as my daughter pointed out – just pay another person a couple bucks to generate original content rather than AI… but if the AI does a good enough job….)

Definitely got me started to think that perhaps some of us who avoided creating comic book/graphic novels (whichever you prefer to call them) and from the wisdom of a primary student (who’s art skills are well beyond my own… apparently drawing skills skip a generation!)

But we can’t pretend this tool (still not referring to it as more than that, because if we start looking at it as plagiarism etc, then we are acknowledging its intelligence and are ready for our future robot overlords to begin their benevolent rule: AI reveals how it will take over world — and humans will ‘hand it the reins’…

Time to work on AI WITH Education before things shift to AI FOR Education (even as I continue the AFL wording – not even AI AS/OF Education feel like good ones…)