Technolandy

Day 8 (of 2025/26) #tEChursdAI the third option (thanks @theatlantic ) @tyler_a_harper

AI share: https://apple.news/A2gH_t35BSFOXtPESWRS4KQ or https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/09/ai-colleges-universities-solution/684160/ spoiler warning – seek the third option to break down barriers that ableists don’t need to think about.

Video support: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOe6rA5D8BA/?igsh=MW56bTc2MTdwaHN2NQ==

I am still living in between the two big reactions in K-12 education to AI, which I am sure is similar in many other environments: do we ban it, or abdicate to it. (No question mark because it’s rhetorical and not really a good question)

Let me tell you that there’s a use that’s particular, a use that’s peculiar and more dignified… (TS Eliot fans just smiled!) and that’s leaning in and mindfully collaborating with it.

I admit, it makes AI different… and, in my ‘Pollyanna mindset’ making learning & knowing even more vital… lest we think that simply knowing how to transcribe questions on a piece of paper into a calculator alone makes someone a mathematician – even though many of us have used that tool as encouragement to a student to check enough boxes to earn a credit and move to the next year… which behooves me to wonder if the AI Language Models will do that for the students who are better with numbers than letters – enter in the right question, and make use of the answer provided…

Knowing that you still need to ‘know’ if the answer provided makes sense in order for it to be correct, not just right.

And while it is going through the same ‘ban mindset’ that books first went through, then calculators (which still face some resistance with them becoming much more powerful than the TI-SC-10 that made my teachers upset with me) But as my view has been since I first experienced the power and equity that using a computer enabled me within my own learning… I am much more in favour of learning with, rather than ignoring and hoping things go away (admittedly, there are some things I hope go away, but stupid multiple choice tests continue to be popular… I am okay with smart mc tests, but those are much rarer to find…)

Now, I agree and worry about learners over relying on AI, and the lack of equity that may exist when some people can afford some AI models that their peers cannot. But I also have seen again, and again, experiments where we tell our in-person students to ‘only use AI on this assignment’ and we get resistance and rebellion – the catch of course being that our teachers use a LOT of descriptive feedback, so they want the valuable discussions to be about their work, not their AI-buddy’s work. In discussion, they all agreed that if the point of the activity was to check a box, then they would happily let AI fill in the scantron and do other stuff… The feedback style is under-valued in the use of screens and AI in the education environment.

Love the focus on being critical thinker as (so far) AI loves to be helpful and will create (fabricate) exemplars for use (had a colleague who was using an AI to help with editing term comments, and started not recognizing some students names – the AI created some extra ones to help with the overall review of the flow of editing them…

job of the future: asking good questions.

This is what leads me into the third option of leaning in and collaborating with AI as an inquiry team would gather… a professional learning community… a research partnership… splitting the work and comparing results and poking at each other with what they each know, and don’t know. 

I don’t like the proposal of ‘if they had the guts to do so’ to eliminate wifi and de-tech classrooms and the broader campus. Nothing says ‘keep the elite elite’ like getting rid of tools that provide accessibility and equity unlike any other time in history (not everyone had a set of outdated encyclopedias in their homes growing up… not everyone had access to shelves of books and magazines… but they do now – must be making some in power more than a little nervous…

We can look at AI as a tool for cheating, much as many have (and do) view tools like calculators and the abacus… but those tools have enabled more mathers to do things that would not have been possible before… sure, we are worried now that the more ‘human’ component (reading and writing) is also being done more efficiently (word chosen mindfully) than most humans… because it shines a light on the fact that not every neurological profile is going to be talented at reading and writing… my own thinking shifted when I realized that some brains cannot create pictures from words in their minds…

I’m in agreement that schools (k-12 and universities) have never mimicked the real world, but I am worried that banning AIs and personal screens further alienate the ‘learned world’ and further impact student autonomy, equity, access, and inclusion… I can see a lot of ‘stepping back’ from tech being under the guise of ‘safety and educational rigor’ but covering up the segregation that has hidden in plain sight in K-university environments for way too long…

I appreciate the writing of Tyler to show some of the nervousness of how immersive AI has become… and as I will restate and correlate it with mental health and social media… “if only there were a place where kids gathered and could learn and practice how to more effectively, affectively, and mindfully make use of these tools… super powerful when used, but wildly overwhelming when they are using the user. 

But I’m sorry Tyler, your call to move further than have an honour code and think that the older styles of showing learning  by ”writing essays in class, proctored by professors, and taking written tests or oral exams” has long been a subtle way that systemic discrimination hides in plain sight. We can do better, and have done better when we can use a variety of tech tools to shine a blue light on so that we can call out the inherit bias that keeps limitations on societal movement and change. It was definitely hurtful to read the justification to your idea for a no-extorting policy is important – because ‘other students’ will get the same allowance… good! That’s the point – unless you think it’s also unfair that I’m wearing glasses which give me an unfair advantage over some others because they help me see things near AND far… don’t punish disabilities because others are benefitting – that’s the reason some will shovel snow off the stairs before they clear the ramp…

In conclusion:

Some students should write essays. Some should have oral exams. Some should create a presentations. Others may be able to do an interpretive dance ooh, what if this was required? <— what, you can’t? Guess you don’t really want to get into our phd program… it’s a prerequisite for the type of student ‘we’ want, but unbiased (so long as you have 12 years of dance theory and practice under your ghillies… 

We should not ban.

We should not give in.

We should find the middle path where we know when and how to best collaborate with the powerful language model 

– that can help students get started when writers block strikes… get unstuck… provide feedback in real time… coach writing to make sense… to re-explain when the student needs it, not when an EA/teacher might be available… to predict feedback based on rubrics… 

to break down barriers that ableists don’t need to think about.

Script for my video (worked on with my AI collaborator):

“I keep hearing people saying there are only two choices with AI in schools: ban it, or give in. But there’s a third option we’re not talking about enough: mindful collaboration.

We finally learned we shouldn’t ban calculators, and we shouldn’t ban AI. We need to take advantage of this teachable moment in time and teach students how to use it—when it helps, when it misleads, and how to question it. That’s real critical thinking.

Ban it, and you widen inequities. Abdicate to it, and you hollow out learning. But teach it well, and we break barriers. That’s the path that keeps students thinking, creating, and actually learning in an AI world.”