This post blew up on social media — and showed some interesting beliefs.
I like posting on social media and sharing things I’m trying in class — or thoughts I’m having about the state of education.
I don’t dance, and I’m not particularly hilarious, so usually my videos don’t blow up.
But for me, I had one, across three different channels, perform pretty well … around half a million views all together.
You can watch it if you want: on Facebook, or on Instagram, or on TikTok.
When a video picks up steam, I can usually tell because the snarky comments start to roll in — even if it’s a relatively innocent post!
This time, it was an example of how I’m using AI to support my teaching. (Not teach for me, mind you … notice the distinction … because lots of folks missed it!)
There were LOTS of strong feelings and emotions and opinions. I learned a LOT by reading them and responding to them.
I wanted to share about this because I think there’s a lot about public perception here that can inform how you show up and act and lead in your school or district when it comes to AI. Let me know what you think.
Also: We’ve been discussing how to handle AI pushback in an online discussion in our DTT online community. It seems to fit here, so please share your thoughts if you haven’t done so!
In this week’s newsletter:
💻 Free AI Literacy Course: Personalized to Your Classroom
📚 New AI resources this week
👥 Community: How to handle AI pushback
👥 Community: “The sensible middle”
😡 Addressing AI anger from teachers on social media
💻 Free AI Literacy Course: Personalized to Your Classroom
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📚 New AI resources this week
1️⃣ Boston and New York City Take Opposite Approaches to AI in School (via Government Technology) — Boston is pursuing AI fluency for students while New York City has paused most student AI use through eighth grade.
2️⃣ Petaluma City Schools Draft Tiered AI Plan for Students (via Government Technology) — Petaluma is proposing a developmentally tiered approach: no AI in K–2, basic exposure in grades 3–5, responsible-use and ethics instruction in middle school, and broader access in high school.
3️⃣ How AI Is Transforming the Role of the K–12 Device (via EdTech Magazine) — Device purchasing decisions are beginning to become AI decisions too, as hardware increasingly affects which AI experiences, accessibility tools, and workflows schools can support.
👥 Community: How to handle AI pushback
In a recent AI for Admins newsletter, I shared something I’m hearing more and more from educators and school leaders …
Students are expressing concerns about the impacts of AI when asked to use it for assignments.
Teachers, of course, have their concerns about the impact of AI on learning and academic integrity.
Community members are asking pointed questions about the school/district’s stance on AI-related matters.
How do we handle it? Our community has some thoughts they’ve been sharing in our DTT online community. I’d LOVE to hear yours, too.
So glad I’m not the only one and others are talking about this. I’d looove to have different ways to handle this and see what others think!
This past spring semester and this fall, I’ve had students upset that they are being asked to practice writing prompts and check for bias in photo generators in my computer class. I get it! I support/understand their pushback.
I asked those students to research facts that support their feelings/fears about AI. Then make an infographic, poster, essay, slide deck, etc to share with our class. I still requested that they pay attention to the lesson and what the other students were noticing and doing. — Amy Brandon
First, I am trying to listen and hear concerns. Honestly, many of them are valid, and I share them myself. I see both the potential of AI (especially when you look at uses like AlaphaFold and Microsoft’s AI For Good initiative), but I also understand the environmental impact, the fact that intellectual theft was involved in creating models, the coming job and resulting societal disruption, and the possibility of AI leading to the extinction of humanity. — Chris Bach
My 8th-grade computer class started discussing AI today. Before we went into our school’s policy, we listened to the NPR podcast about the Students First Act. We discussed the student section and the teacher section. I am looking for some activities for this age group to complete on the topic, so if anyone has some ideas, please let me know. — Stephanie Barker
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👥 Community: “The sensible middle”
I wrote recently (and have said repeatedly) that people in school buildings every day seem to be part of the “sensible middle” … where we aren’t clamoring for outright bans on devices and tech — but we aren’t claiming it’s the savior for education. If it can help, we’ll consider using it.
Here’s some of the discussion in the DTT online community. Click here to see the responses — and to share your own.
Any tech is a tool. We have to decide if it’s the right tool for the job. Do I need a circular saw or a hand saw? Hammer or nail gun? Detail brush or spray painter? Part of our job as teachers is to help our students figure out the best tool to use - not necessarily the easiest path, but the one that helps them develop skills. If the tool (AI) is not helping us to develop skills, we should try to avoid it. — Tom Varnum
I like that category - the “sensible middle”. I was at a PD yesterday where the person leading the session said “The all-or-nothing mindset is almost always the wrong mindset” - this was specifically her thoughts on AI-bans and phone-bans. Pushing everyone to use the technology and making it all freely available to staff and students, especially without proper training, will likely open a floodgate of problems (including noncompliance with FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA). And banning it all not only puts students at a disadvantage with their futures in academics and industry, but also puts teachers in positions where they can’t use tools that could help lift the heavy weight we carry. […] The goal of the “sensible middle” is to provide reasonable access while mitigating potential problems. — Judson Birkel
I’m as worried about districts banning AI tools and the obvious inequity that will result from only kids from families who are tech and AI literate benefiting from AI as I am about cognitive offloading. Both are bad. The middle is the way forward. AI access and supporting students in using it for their benefit is an equity issue and the new digital divide. — Chris Bach
I’m also pro sensible middle! This argument about screens or not, paper or not, AI or Not, is too polarizing! It’s all about INTENTIONALITY baby!!!! — Rimmey
😡 Addressing AI anger from teachers on social media
People’s reactions to the post were telling. (Illustration by ChatGPT)
Last week, I shared a video on some of my social media channels — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X/Twitter. (Are you following me there???)
The topic: You can take student work done on paper and easily scan it using your school’s photocopier … then put the PDF of that student work into AI to get insights to guide your teaching.
I’ve tried it myself. (In fact, I wrote about it in my Ditch That Textbook newsletter a few weeks ago.)
The post took off! It’s rare for me to have a video (for teachers, a very narrow demographic) take off like this on THREE major platforms, so this must be of interest …
Click a link below to watch the video on that platform:
After reading the comments (pretty much all of them at this point) and responding to lots of them, I’ve learned some interesting things that I think could support our work as leaders in AI decisions in schools.
Some people are just mad about AI
And I get that. The interesting part is that they seem to be upset about different things — or are just morally opposed to AI all together. But lots of them seem to paint with broad strokes (as people on social media tend to do) and won’t get into specifics. Lots of times I would ask them why the idea was terrible (or why they thought I was terrible) and they never came back with a response.
(Except for one teacher who was mad at me because I didn’t capitalize “I” in my prompt on Gemini … because she thought I should know better as a fellow teacher. As you know, I do capitalize “I” in my newsletters … but when I use AI tools like Gemini, sometimes I get lazy because it doesn’t matter there.)
There’s lots of “all or nothing” thinking
As you saw above, sometimes people think they either love or hate the concept of AI.
In the same way, they think that if you’re using it in the classroom, you’re either fully using your human abilities with no AI — or you must be handing everything over to AI with no human oversight.
Actual comments:
“No thanks. I prefer to do the work myself.”
“So you don’t read their work.”
“I respect my students far too much to offload reading their work to a computer.”
“Hmm … that’s actually my job as a teacher. I don’t want to outsource it.”
I see this all the time. I’ve learned that whenever I talk about AI, whether someone is saying it out loud or not, I have to be explicit about the shared relationship between the human work and the AI assistance — and that it’s just that, assistance and not replacement.
People don’t understand the legal aspects
Lots of people questioned the legality of scanning those student graphic organizes and analyzing them with AI. Here’s how I justified it …
Student names were on the back, so when I scanned the front of the pages, there was no PII (personally identifying information) and their work was decoupled from their name.
I was using Gemini with my school account, so Google wouldn’t use my work to train future models.
You couldn’t really consider filling in a graphic organizer “intellectual property.” If it were a student short story or poem — or a journal entry about a sensitive issue — I would never consider doing this. This is really just pattern recognition.
“What about the environment?”
I get this one a LOT, and of course, there were comments about this, too.
When face-to-face, I always start by acknowledging that this is a concern I share with them. (I’m not a one-sided AI cheerleader, for goodness sake. I’m worried about energy and water and data centers, too.)
Although there is a huge environmental impact with AI, most of it isn’t coming from me uploading a PDF and analyzing it.
My research into my own energy/water cost for an AI prompt like that? About 2-3 teaspoons of water … and enough energy to charge your cell phone from 0% to 25%.
Put simply: Few enough resources that most people wouldn’t even notice.
Two of the REAL problems when it comes to environmental impact:
The sheer volume of AI prompts coming in every moment of the day is what compounds the environmental impact. If everyone limited their AI use like they limit water (turn off the faucet when you’re brushing your teeth), we would be in much better shape.
Another energy-intensive part that people don’t consider: when companies create / train a new AI model. Because AI companies are rushing to maintain an edge in the AI race, they keep rolling out new models. If they were less forceful about it, that would be one way to cut back on significant energy use and environmental impact.
Throughout my interactions with people on social media, it did make me consider how I could prompt differently — use text only when possible, don’t be lazy and just take pictures, only upload files when necessary — to be less energy-intensive.
Lots of people had positive reactions
My tendency (and that of many others, I’ll bet) is to look at the negative comments. But when I stop and consider all of the comments as a whole, here’s what I realized …
Lots of people reacted positively to it.
“Brilliant! I’m going to try this, thanks!”
“OH MY GOODNESS … genius!”
“I saw this this morning and tried it today. Absolutely genius and such a time saver. Thank you.”
… and some came to bat for me when others used poor tactics to attack.
“Thta’s so much more work dude just grade the paper yourself”
Response from someone else: “He is grading it. This is giving him the synthesis of how all students did so he can adjust his instruction …”
“I’m not mad at it, but to be clear, this is using AI to grade papers.”
Response from someone else: “No it’s not … it’s using AI to guide to evaluate current progress towards a standard and guide instruction. He isn’t getting grades from it, he’s creating new activities to try and close gaps. Actually it’s 180 from using AI to grade - which is easy, and he’s considering building new activities above and beyond to help his students.”
Here’s what this tells me … The general teaching populace is coming around.
Before it was, “I don’t understand it.”
Then, it was, “I just don’t think I like it.”
Then, it was, “I can see some ways we can use it.”
Now, I’m seeing, “I’m actually thinking about where it should and shouldn’t be used.”
For as frustrated as some of us (including myself) get about teachers and education being slow to respond to new strategies and technology, to me this is encouraging. ChatGPT has been around for almost four years now. To have nuanced discussions at scale in four years, it’s still a long time … but sometimes it takes us much, much longer to move in education.
What do you think?
We’ve been discussing how to handle AI pushback in our Ditch That Textbook online community. (In fact, I wrote about it — Addressing AI concerns and pushback — a couple weeks ago.)
What do you think? Have you seen any of the responses / reactions I mentioned here? What do you say? How WOULD you handle it?
Share your thoughts in the discussion …
I hope you enjoy these resources — and I hope they support you in your work!
Please always feel free to share what’s working for you — or how we can improve this community.
Matt Miller
Host, AI for Admins
Educator, Author, Speaker, Podcaster
[email protected]
