Day 40 (of 2026/27) ai or else…?!? a #courageousminorty influenced though on #edAI
Hmmm Are we redesigning education to accommodate AI, or are we using AI as an opportunity to redesign education?
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A thought I think is worth pursuing…
We should be less concerned with whether AI is present in education and more concerned with the conditions under which it is used.
Turning AI off doesn’t necessarily make learning better. Turning it on doesn’t necessarily make learning more innovative.
The challenge is designing learning environments where technology expands human capacity, increases learner agency, supports educators, and strengthens relationships rather than replace them.
The goal isn’t AI-enabled education. It’s better education, enabled by AI. (ABC – AI in BC…)
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1. We shouldn’t confuse controlling technology with designing learning.
Google is responding to legitimate concerns from parents and educators about cheating, misinformation, screen time, and student dependency.
But there’s a significant contradiction: if schools disable AI, they may also lose access to Google Search.
That creates a false choice between accessing information and accessing AI.
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We’ve been here before with calculators, the internet, Wikipedia, smartphones, and now generative AI.
The educational question shouldn’t simply be whether students use AI, but how, when, why, and with what support.
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We need to teach discernment, not just impose restrictions.
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2. AI should support productive struggle, not eliminate it.
Google’s proposed Guided Learning approach is interesting. The stated intention is to move from providing answers to guiding students through learning step by step.
I like this!
But there’s an important distinction: a tool marketed as a tutor doesn’t automatically become a good tutor. For some it will great – others will need more Claude…
The article even demonstrates this tension when the consumer version of Guided Learning produces a complete AP history essay.
I still value this as an opportunity to explore what AI-supported teaching and learning actually looks like.
- Can AI provide feedback without doing the thinking?
- Can it scaffold learning without removing productive struggle?
- Can it help teachers personalize learning while preserving the human relationship?
- Can we use it to increase learner agency rather than create another dependency?
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3. The platform shouldn’t get to dictate the pedagogy.
Google has an extraordinary presence in education. Its decisions about search, Chromebooks, Classroom, and Gemini can influence the options available to entire school systems.
The article raises a legitimate question about the relationship between commercial interests and educational autonomy.
I am a ferocious fan against ‘single platform’ (even if a district wants to choose ‘the right one’….)
So, if a school wants conventional search without AI-generated summaries, should that be an option?
Or is that like relying on the abacus for solving math problems…?
If a school wants AI available for some learners, some activities, and some purposes, should it be able to make those decisions?
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We need to be careful that we’re not simply exchanging one form of technological dependency for another.
Schools need:
- The autonomy to make informed decisions.
- The ability to select tools based on pedagogical purpose.
- Multiple pathways to access information and demonstrate learning.
- Professional capacity to evaluate emerging technologies.
- A clear understanding of who owns, controls, and benefits from the data and platforms we use.
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The irony is that we could end up allowing technology companies to determine the boundaries of educational innovation while educators are left debating whether AI should be switched on or off.
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The Wired article also makes me add:
4. A search engine can become an answer machine: We used to ask students to find the information. Now we’re asking them to evaluate the information that has already been found for them. Both are important skills. But if we remove the first, how do we teach the second?
A school could decide that students need to practise finding, evaluating, and comparing information, but the platform could make that traditional learning process harder to access.
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5. AI can make learning look easier while making it less meaningful. We shouldn’t be asking how much work AI can do for a student. We should be asking what barriers AI can remove so that the student can do more meaningful work.
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- The conditions of learning shouldn’t be determined by a corporation. We have spent decades asking teachers to become more innovative, more responsive, more individualized. Now we have a technology company deciding which versions of innovation are available to us.
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Sigh… it’s an interesting time to be in education – is that a celebration? Or curse?
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And perhaps that’s the most interesting part of this whole conversation…
Google is making decisions about what information students see, how they access it, and whether they can use traditional search without AI-generated summaries.
Schools are left trying to work around those decisions.
We have spent decades asking educators to be more innovative, more responsive, more individualized.
Now we’re in danger of allowing technology companies to determine the boundaries of that innovation.
I don’t think the answer is to turn AI off.
But I don’t think the answer is simply to turn the AI on.
I think the answer is to ask better questions. Prompt engineering in the purest form?
What do we want students to learn?
What do we want them to be able to do?
What conditions will help them get there?
And how can we use technology to make those conditions better?
Because the goal isn’t to redesign education so that it fits the technology.
The goal is to redesign education so that it better fits the learner.
And if AI can help us do that, wonderful.
But the technology should be working for the learning.
Not the other way around.
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