Technolandy

Day 124 (of 2025/26) #tEChursdAI – those who misremember the “good old days” of paper and pencil

Spoiler: the “good old days” mostly worked for the students the system was designed for… but definitely not all learners.

The nostalgia you’re seeing around AI reminds me of something that happens every time a major communication shift arrives. A chorus emerges that says:

“Return to the old tools. They were pure.”

Our principal group had a session on AI the other day.

The message from leadership was refreshingly simple:

AI isn’t something to ban like cell phones.

It’s more like an electric assist on a bicycle.

You still pedal.

The motor just helps you climb the hills.

Although I did laugh when the presentation wondered what AI will do to the workforce in ten years.

At the current pace, we might have about ten weeks before the robot overlords invite us to collaborate.

But history keeps smirking.

People once said:

• the printing press would corrupt memory

• novels would rot young minds

• radio would end reading

• television would end thinking

• calculators would end mathematics

• Wikipedia would end knowledge

Education reacts to new tools the way a cathedral reacts to a marching band. The acoustics change and everyone worries the roof might collapse.

One part of the AI conversation that often gets buried under the panic is equity.

For decades the quiet truth was this:

Students with resources had

• tutors

• editors

• test prep

• writing feedback

• extra explanations

• intellectual dinner table conversations

Students without those supports were often told to try harder.

AI is strange because it democratizes something that used to be a luxury good. A decent AI tutor can now provide:

• instant feedback

• explanation loops

• brainstorming

• revision support

• alternative explanations

That doesn’t erase inequality. Access still matters.

But it compresses the advantage curve in ways schools haven’t had to grapple with before.

My bigger worry is something else.

Schools have a long history of adopting powerful technology in the most uninspired ways possible. A Ferrari gets used like a grocery cart.

Laptops became:

• digital worksheets

• Google Docs essays

• LMS submission machines

Instead of tools for creation, simulation, collaboration, and exploration.

AI could easily suffer the same fate if schools treat it like:

“a faster way to write the same five-paragraph essay.”

That would be the educational equivalent of buying a telescope and using it to look at your shoes.

Where things get interesting is that I currently work in a provincial online learning school. Online schools already operate slightly outside the gravitational pull of traditional classroom structures, which makes them useful laboratories for what learning might become.

Because the real disruption AI introduces isn’t just how students produce work.

It’s questions like:

• Why age-based cohorts?

• Why fixed pacing?

• Why assignments instead of inquiry cycles?

• Why assessment snapshots instead of continuous feedback?

AI pushes on the edges of those structures like tree roots lifting a sidewalk.

And the timeline compression is real.

People asking “what grade should AI start in?” feels a bit like asking what grade students should start using electricity.

It’s already in the walls.

The real professional question isn’t whether students will use AI.

It’s whether educators will learn to use it better than students do.

Historically, that’s where institutions stumble.

Once AI becomes a ubiquitous thinking partner, the whole model of

“produce a finished artifact so I can grade it”

starts to wobble like a chair with one short leg.

Either way, the next few years are going to rewrite how we think about school:

when learning happens

where it happens

and why it happens at all.

Which makes me very glad to be working in a provincial online learning school right now.

The robots probably aren’t coming for our jobs.

But they might show up at the next staff meeting…

and ask to join the committee.