Technolandy

Day 27 (of 2025/26) #tEChursd-ai share on a district leaning into AI… great article by @cbc @OliverPearson

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-classrooms-integrating-artificial-intelligence-1.7652224

Love the education minister and superintendent of Anglophone East School District confirming that “it’s not a trend. It’s here and it’s going to transform education” – as I have been repeating myself highlight that AI only magnifies my claim that personal devices (esp cell phones) are the biggest disruption to the traditional forms of education since the book became adopted as an ‘appropriate media’ and not the distraction device that makes students rely on it rather than the better form of learning and communicating – audio/oral/aural traditions.

I’ve been a subtle fan of the work being done in New Brunswick since I used this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDM3D4MNQBs as a template to challenge the school district I was at the time to better embrace 21st Century Skills in education – especially as I had confirmed with friends who had just moved out east that the promo video matched what they were experiencing with their school aged children!

Now I’m already casting an eye into that the 22nd century learner is going to need… and I have to look back in some old storage devices to see if I still have my pirated and edited video challenging myself and my colleagues… 15 years ago… where does the time go??

I really appreciate the confirmation bias that I read in the article about when students leave our system, they are going into a new economy in a new world in comparison to when most/all of us who are creating the learning conditions experienced… and even when I went to school most of my disengagement occurred when the schooling was tremendously disconnected from the real world… I know many on my algorithms wish and hope that the apex of schooling and learning was reached in the mid-80s and a focus on kids sitting in rows, learning the same thing at the same time and the same rate along with prescriptive behaviour monitoring was good for everyone… even though we know that even then many (many!) learners were not in the classroom because of a variety of ‘streams’ that diverted them (my grad class of 60ish started with 120ish in grade 8…) schooling needs to at least have a connection to the world outside the brick and mortar building and probably why I am feeling a strong connection with my school community connected to our Provincial Online Learning School that mixes (not blends) in person opportunities along with self paced modules…

And of course as good educators share things openly – all my stuff on my blog site is of course for anybody to use with or without checking in with me – and I still chuckle when I think of the times (more than one) when I have been in a pro-d workshop and have seen some of my content being shared (not being claimed as the presenters own work, but as an example of what is ‘out there’ – yes, both out there on the web AND ‘out there’ in terms of ‘what direction is this? ‘ – check out my Recreational Mathematics Series for History of Math https://technolandy.wordpress.com/recreational-mathematics-2/ and where I am pushing some units in New Media: https://technolandy.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=11600&action=edit

So I am thrilled to look at (and share with our district AI team) some of the work already being done around guidelines, guides for admin, teachers, students, parents and suggested activities!

https://asdeast.nbed.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/AI-Document-Guide-1.pdf

Hmm – LOVE that they are connected with Code Breaker (hope to be finish my new new new new new edit of a book for them imminently-ish)

AND… love the confirmation from teachers that are sharing that as they use some of the tools, they are legitimately gaining time – I have likewise been seeing some great gains as we more personalize learning journeys, it is so much more easier to standardize and produce rubrics that match up to a students learning journey (we refer to it as the Student Learning Plan) and any IEP adaptions (Individualized Education Plan)

As I have been sharing some philosophy and tools to encourage some exploration for improving others background knowledge on my AI page as well (every #TecHURSD-AI – started as T(ec)hursday when my teaching day/time emphasized tech on Thursday (I’m a sucker for a good alliteration or other play on words) and has since changed the “Y” (why) to be about AI (yes, nerd alert!) https://sd47.bc.ca/pol/page/8661/a-intelligence though I also don’t define what the “A” stands for…

Part of my presentation I’ve done also link in with the view of evolution of how tech has most recently disrupted education… and in my opinion we are in a ‘blockbuster moment’ where we can either be passive and ignore the disruptor, as Blockbuster Video did when Netflix presented itself… or be part of the change <— admittedly, this is the disruption more than a few of us have been anticipating and waiting for since around 2010…

1980s: computers entered schools (I’m proud that my dad had gotten in trouble by a superintendent because he installed an Apple lab right next to a ‘perfectly good typewriter lab’… and when we read an article in Time magazine highlighting a high tech school in Texas… I noted that we had a bigger lab in little old Lillooet (not as true anymore… scale of adoption and all that)

1990s: the arrival of the www and finally better acceptance that the word processor was superior to the typewriter and the arrival of acceptance to what the computer experience can do to create equity and enable a focus to be more on content and structure over ‘neatness”

2000s: the start of the laptop crazy (I made a proposal for laptops when our elementary lab was due to a refresh – it was turned down, but a new superintendent was hired and over the summer plans change – which when I got the phone call from my principal, I took to mean a delay… but instead was thrilled that our laptop initiative was going forward all of a sudden… though Dr Peacock did arrive in my classroom noting that ‘we’ll be watching’ – so of course when I had my students make a presentation to a board meeting, later on, I made sure that I ‘forgot’ my laptop, but fortunately two students who attended the meeting had presentation on an iPod touch and a portable projector… not going to do the math to demonstrate how far back that was – but it was uncommon for board rooms to have a projector…

2010s: personal screens started to be more prevalent and the rise of the social medias – both good and bad; I know in education we like to focus on the negative sides of socials, but there are a lot of positives as well… yes, I miss the #edutwitter communities…

2020s: here comes AI and it is only accelerating the ability to personalize and individualize a learning model that we used to think was best as a factory model – enter based on date of birth and a predetermined “you’ll be done and graduated as the class of 2XXX”

Really appreciate MacLean sharing that with 1600 teachers rather than a 1 size fits all model, there are 1600 different ways to explore AI and with 20,500 students… well just as many student approaches

And I don’t totally disagree with the ‘restrictions’ in place… though I would push back, as I always do, on setting an “age” rather than a ‘readiness’ because setting an age limit always makes a lot of assumptions for the herd, but not really does a job on the individual. Thus why a gradual guided release of responsibility model is always beneficial!

But this article is a delicious recruitment tool… comments like “We look at evaluation assessment through a different lens… [from] just producing a product to ‘how do we produce that?’” are very enticing – I’m going to enjoy digging into the shares while watching to see what the Atlantic coast is pushing us to leapfrog and do better 😎 Happy to be “the first follower” (another youtube video that I’ve re-used and shared!)