🤖 Preparing students for a technological revolution

🕵️‍♂️ The District That Found Its Missing Curriculum

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📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ ICYMI: NotebookLM notebook with 30+ state AI guidance (via AI for Admins) — Use this notebook we shared last week to ask questions and investigate what states are suggesting about AI.

2️⃣ Hour of AI Unveils 100+ Free Activities to Help Demystify AI (via PR Newswire) — Code.org’s new global initiative offers free lessons and challenges to build AI literacy among educators and families.

3️⃣ What Impact Are AI Chatbots Having on Writing Skills? (via K12 Dive) — Educators debate whether AI tools help or harm students’ writing, as more learners lean on chatbots for composition.

📢 Your voice: State AI guidance

Last week’s poll: Where would you like to see more state AI guidance?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Setting policy (6)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Instructional practices (13)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Cautions and safety (7)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Integrating AI literacy (23)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else ... (1)

Integrating AI literacy: There is never enough time during the school day. And I believe AI should be embedded in all content areas. It should not just live in computer science. I would love realistic ideas and suggestions. — J. Thompson

Instructional practices: The pace of change is too fast to address everything, but teachers in the classroom desperately need help with instructional practices around AI. There is only so much bandwidth for learning on their own on top of everything they already have on their plate. — Marcus

Integrating AI literacy: Through speaking with teachers, I have found many missed opportunities to teach AI literacy to students. How to use it correctly to support writing, among other things, rather than simply choosing to shut it down altogether in the classroom - we are handicapping our students!

Setting policy: What safety protocols should be looking for from our admin when updating policies to include Ai? — A. Donnelly

What would you like to read in AI for Admins?

What’s a topic you’d like to see covered here? Hit REPLY to this email and let me know.

Have you done anything you’d like to share with the AI for Admins community? Hit REPLY and let me know.

Would you like to write a guest post to support and equip AI for Admins readers? Hit REPLY and let me know.

🗳 Poll: Student poll on AI and the future

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

🎙️ Preparing students for a technological revolution

We’re preparing our students for a technological revolution.

Pat Yongpradit said this on the keynote stage at the OKSTE Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last week.

To some, it might have sounded like hype … like bluster … like hyperbole.

But to me, seated in the audience of his keynote speech, I was nodding my head.

Everyone keeps calling artificial intelligence “just another tool.” And today, in many ways, it is — and that’s the way that lots of us are using it.

But when you start to really study AI — and the predictions of how much smarter and more capable it’s supposed to be in the coming years — you start to realize that it’s going to be more than just a tool.

That’s where it’s going to be more important than ever for students to have AI literacy — an understanding, an adeptness, a fluency around artificial intelligence.

This is what Pat shared in his keynote — and I wanted to share my takeaways from it.

Who is Pat Yongpradit?

He’s the chief academic officer at Code.org and he leads the efforts of TeachAI. A big part of his work now is spreading the word about AI literacy and Code.org’s efforts to equip students and schools for AI.

Before that, he was a computer science teacher in Maryland. He talked about leading a “women in tech” club and teaching his students how to code.

Today, he posts prolifically on LinkedIn about the role of AI in education.

Setting the AI literacy stage (literally)

The smartphone cameras came out when Pat displayed this slide …

This study of students in Europe showed that …

• 74% of students believe that AI will play a significant role in their professional lives

• 46% of students think their schools adequately prepare them for AI

• 44% of students perceive their teachers as well prepared to work with AI applications

• 49% of students worry that AI could widen gaps in academic success among peers

Honestly? I was kind of shocked at how prepared that students thought their schools and teachers were with AI. (I wonder if we had a similar survey in the U.S. if those numbers might be lower?)

That first stat is the one that caught my eye. So many students identify that AI is going to be a big part of their professional lives. And I have to wonder … are we preparing them for it? (And if so, how?)

Teaching BECAUSE of AI

Pat identified three relationships that teachers tend to have with AI …

• Teaching WITH AI: Using it as a tool to teach

• Teaching ABOUT AI: Teaching students how it works and its limitations

• Teaching BECAUSE of AI: Changing our teaching practices to respond to a world full of AI

Lots of the edtech companies want us thinking a lot about the first one (teaching WITH AI). That’s because they want their product to be a solution. They want us using it so their company can succeed and thrive.

We’re going to have to be careful about how we proceed with the second one (teaching ABOUT AI). There’s a level of AI literacy that students need to have. But beware … if all we do is teach students how to use today’s AI apps and technology, we’re preparing them for the past.

• We’ve seen some of this with coding. Lots of edtech talking heads told us in years past that “coding is the future” and it’ll lead to high-paying jobs for students. Now that AI can write computer code, we’re needing FEWER coders.

• We need to be careful with this in AI. It’s going to impact lots of jobs in the future, but we run the risk of guiding students into disappearing jobs again if we only encourage them to learn about how AI is used today.

• That’s why I believe in AI literacy. If we help students understand how AI works — and we encourage them to develop human skills like critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, lifelong learning, etc. — they’ll be better equipped to handle AI no matter how it looks in the future.

That third one? Teaching BECAUSE of AI? That’s one that lots of schools — and teachers — either don’t want to deal with. (Or they aren’t sure how to do it.)

• The stronghold to punish and block AI as a response? In lots of corners of education, it isn’t going away. (In fact, I just recorded a quick video for a school about why AI detectors are so problematic — including research findings.)

• Lots of well-meaning teachers understand that things are going to change. They either (1) haven’t found good alternatives yet and/or (2) are sad that AI is compromising some of their best teaching practices (that are still relevant to their students today).

We’ve seen this before

Pat shared a quote that relates to AI in education right now:

Then he showed us that we’re really applying a similar idea to AI tools that had been applied to a different technology years ago …

I know, I know … LOTS of folks are making connections between the AI of today and the calculator controversy of the past. But the more that you look at it, the more you see commonalities.

Check out this image he shared about news coverage of the calculator controversy …

It’s striking to me that people were worried about the cost of electricity and batteries as prohibitive to daily, regular calculator use. Of course, today, the energy use of calculators is minuscule — especially if it’s a simple four-function calculator that’s solar powered.

Pat highlighted that there were both benefits and risks with calculators in the past … and in the end, we decided that the net gain (calculating the benefits AND the risks) was worth it.

It all has to do with how you’re using it.

Connecting AI literacy to learning

I started to see connections between my upcoming book — AI Literacy in Any Class — and the frameworks and concepts that Pat shared.

AI literacy is at its best when it’s done in context — when it’s connected to the work and the learning that students are doing already.

In this graphic — from an upcoming AI literacy framework from Code.org — all of these areas of connection are highlighted …

If these areas are already part of what you teach, it’s easy to connect AI literacy.

• If you’re a computer science teacher (or CS is part of what you teach), you’ll be able to fold in AI literacy seamlessly.

• You can connect it through content that deals with ethics (like social studies).

• In English classes, media literacy and digital literacy might be part of what you already teach.

During the Q&A time at the end, I asked Pat what he would say to teachers who say that AI literacy is “just another thing” … something else to add to their already full plates.

He said: It’s already part of their standards. He pointed to this slide, saying that there are existing academic standards that connect to these areas.

I see what he’s saying …

… but if you have to start teaching AI literacy as a way to cover standards you’re already covering, it still feels like “just another thing.”

(That’s why I’m excited about writing AI Literacy in Any Class. I feel that it adds that “any teacher, any time” side of the conversation.)

Conclusion: We’re all in this together

He wrapped his speech up saying that if you feel overwhelmed or are struggling, you’re not alone. Everyone is trying to make sense of this and do right by students.

You can get Pat’s slides here — including the slides for his breakout session, “Enabling Conditions for AI Literacy.”