🤖 Where are we headed with AI in education?

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📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ FREE WEBINAR: What’s Next in AI for Schools: Insights for 2026 — On Dec. 17, I’ll be exploring the trends shaping AI in 2026 and beyond with a district CTO and the CEO of Brisk Teaching. Join us!

2️⃣ The rise of deepfake pornography in schools (via The Guardian) — The use of ‘nudify’ apps is becoming more and more prevalent, with hundreds of teachers having seen images created by pupils, often of their peers. The fallout is huge – and growing fast

3️⃣ Preserving critical thinking amid AI adoption (via eSchool News) — Small but intentional practices keep humans at the center of the critical thinking process and turn AI into a gym for the mind, rather than a crutch.

📢 Your voice: Making steps in AI-resistant schools

Last week’s poll: If schools are AI resistant, how can you start to integrate it?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Start with teacher-centric AI (23)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Start with low-stakes activities (11)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Start at a low-impact time (like before break) (1)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else ... (6)

Start with teacher-centric AI: Schools shouldn't expect teachers to integrate something that they aren't first comfortable with themselves (speaking to myself here). All resistance comes from fear, and fear comes from the unknown. AI literacy for teachers will lead to AI acumen, which will cultivate best practices in the classroom as we wrestle through various aspects of AI usage. It's a disservice to students if teachers aren't equipped and empowered with the knowledge and tools necessary for navigating the AI frontier. — Christina Zapico, Instructional Technology Specialist for Cypress Christian School in Cypress, Texas

Start with teacher-centric AI: We have begun by teaching the teachers how to use AI productively for them. We are providing them with in-service opportunities and working with them during PLC's to give them ideas on using AI with the students. I have found that teachers are finding their own ways to use AI with the students after they have been excited to find ways that help their preparation. — T. Applegate

Something else: Begin with buy-in from the admin team. — D. Hunsicker

Something else: A combination of: ~ media literacy for ALL beginning with teachers and other districts stake-holders before any student activity ~ teacher-centric AI with a common language/expectations but teacher choice within those expectations/guidelines THEN ~start with low-stakes activities. — S. Burnett

Something else: Start with knowledge building for all. — P. Hausammann

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🗳 Poll: AI and the future of education

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.)

🤖 AI and the future of education: A new series of essays from UNESCO

When UNESCO revealed its competency frameworks for students and teachers, I started really paying attention. It’s the United Nations’ specialized agency for education — and it draws its research and views from a broad swath of people in education from all around the world.

Recently, they published a series of essays about “AI and the future of education.”

This is important! As leaders in our schools, it’s important that we not just look at today’s issues and struggles. We need to know what’s coming — and what big-picture changes we can impact and expect in the future.

However … this new UNESCO document was 165 pages.

What do we do with big documents like that? (Say it along with me …)

We throw them into NotebookLM to start to understand them.

Here’s my NotebookLM notebook with the UNESCO document in it — and several artifacts like video and audio overviews.

Below, I’ve summarized a handful of important points in the document that caught my attention.

HOW I WROTE THIS: I think it’s important to be transparent and share my process in creating this (especially since lots of creators just “prompt and paste” without human effort). In the post below …

• I asked NotebookLM to summarize the essays throughout the document.

• I picked essays that I thought were most pertinent and practical to K-12 school leaders (and asked NotebookLM for suggestions).

• I used those summaries (and questions I asked NotebookLM) to write the three summaries of the essays below.

• I wrote my own “my take” sections on my own.

• I used NotebookLM to summarize some of the other takeaway messages — and copy/pasted them at the end.

• I generated an infographic with NotebookLM to use as the post image above (and kept it even with its few typos).

1. AI could collapse assessment, opening up new opportunities.

It’s the question so many of us in education are asking: Even with highly complex assignments, what happens when students can generate the end product?

Authors Mike Perkins and Jasper Roe write: “The question is: what does the future of education look like when we can no longer be sure of our learners’ skills and capabilities? Is assessment, as we know it, in a state of collapse?”

Perkins and Roe suggest that this assessment redesign will be based on a divide.

• Some will be “digitally advantaged” with access to the best AI models, resources, and trained users.

• Some will be “digitally marginalized” WITHOUT access to those advantages.

For the digitally advantaged:

• Redesign assessment around human-centric skills, away from recall and analysis toward human judgment, ethical reasoning, and relational expertise

• Using an AI assessment scale to guide teachers in deciding how much AI is pedagogically useful. Learn more at https://aiassessmentscale.com

For the digitally marginalized: Learning to navigate with what the digitally advantaged have won’t be possible. Instead, they’ll need to work to get access.

• Lobby for sharing of resources and multilingual, open-source AI models.

• Make their voices heard so they’re included in restructuring the future of assessment.

MY TAKE: The AI assessment scale is a good start to help teachers understand the implications of AI in learning — and what the teacher’s expectation is. This is definitely more nuanced and focused on application than models like the stoplight (red: no AI; yellow: teacher permission; green: AI encouraged). In this AI assessment scale, the roles that AI plays in learning are more concrete — and focused on solid learning.

Also, in the United States and in lots of other advanced societies, most of us will be digitally advantaged. Many of the AI models are crafted around the English language and around western beliefs and traditions. We aren’t the ones that suffer the pains of being digitally marginalized, so it seems that it’s our place to do what we can to speak out for those that don’t have.

2. Could AI lead to the end of standardized tests?

We’ve heard this promise time and time again in education. There are things that we despise about standardized tests and we hope that something will come along and render them obsolete.

Could AI be part of the impetus to end standardized tests?

In their essay, Bill Cope, Mary Kalantzis and Akash Kumar Saini argue for something better than standardized tests.

They write: “Until now, tests have been the main way in which education systems formally determined what learners have learned. Summative assessment has been the principal point of accountability in formal education systems. For this reason, assessment has also tended to overshadow curriculum, so much so that much teaching and learning is frequently dominated by reverse engineering the epistemological and pedagogical expectations of assessments.

“However, as educators know all too well, assessments are peculiar artifacts and frequently not well aligned with learning. One of the most significant aspects of generative AI will likely be to render anachronistic legacy assessment instruments and processes. If and when this happens, the effect will be to open up new opportunities for pedagogy.”

Their suggestions at how this might look:

• Integrating assessment and instruction, eliminating the distinction between “we’re learning” and “we’re taking a test”

• Redesigning learning activities around artifacts (like videos, infographics, and software code) instead of tests

• Making students’ thinking processes external by explaining and justifying their learning

• Implementing continuous, transparent feedback that’s augmented by AI

MY TAKE: We are already starting to see the continuous feedback and the blurring of lines between instruction and assessment. AI platforms are letting students read/learn, then reflect and show understanding … and the AI platform can provide immediate feedback.

If the reason for a summative assessment is to capture how much students have learned at the end of a unit of study, this approach definitely has benefits! (Especially to students who suffer from test anxiety.)

A caution: We still must maintain a human in the loop. We should avoid “turning students over to the bots” and maintain the important role of humans in the learning process. Just because an AI seems efficient at providing feedback doesn’t mean that we don’t need humans, too.

3. AI is more than a tool; it’s a “civilizational disorientation.”

Philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé suggests that AI isn’t just another tool. It’s a force that’s unsettling the foundations of education. This can have positive and negative effects.

He calls this phase we’re in “civilizational disorientation.”

He explains: “I would like to stay a bit longer with the disorientation of these times, with what AI calls us to question, how its troubled and troubling emergence upsets the framework of what is real for our bodies, our systems, our senses and our standards of governance to navigate in the world.”

In the end, he’s going to be interested in “how learning learns,” a term he calls “paragogy.” He says: “Paragogy suggests that intelligence is not reducible to identity or property; it is accommodated within specific arrangements and conditions.”

MY TAKE: I think he’s spot on when he says that AI isn’t just another tool. I hear educators and thought leaders say “it’s just another tool; we have to learn how to use it.” And when I hear it, it always seems just a little too superficial.

The apps that we have created with AI are, in a way, just another tool. But we’re talking about a technological superintelligence — and one that can act on its own behalf. This is more than just another tool.

In his TED Talk — “What is an AI anyway?” — Mustafa Suleyman calls AI “a new digital species.” Rather, it’s a species that has IQ (knowledge and factual accuracy), EQ (emotional intelligence to be kind, supportive, and empathetic), and AQ (actions quotient; the ability to do things in the digital and physical world).

In our schools — and as school leaders, this distinction might not be consequential quite yet. But AI will evolve and we’re going to want to prepare students for a world where it exists. Eventually, I think it will matter.

Other findings in the UNESCO document

Prioritize a Pedagogy-First AI Strategy — School leaders must adopt a pedagogy-first approach, using AI selectively only where it clearly adds value, such as reducing repetitive administrative work, not allowing tools to dictate educational philosophy. This approach should be guided by establishing early, public guardrails for privacy and equity. (Reference: Chapter 3: Debating the powers and perils of AI)

Mandate Comprehensive AI Literacy — AI literacy must be foundational and compulsory, structured around three pillars: Conceptual literacy (understanding how algorithms work), Critical literacy (questioning bias and behavior), and Creative literacy (using AI effectively and ethically). This prepares students to be active agents who question systems, rather than passive consumers. (Reference: Chapter 3: Debating the powers and perils of AI)

Embed Compassion and Care into AI Design — K-12 systems should adopt a "compassion by design" framework, specifically mandating "nurturing pause workflows" that empower teachers to intervene and reflect when AI delivery moves too fast or overlooks a student’s emotional state. This ensures AI serves as a collaborator in fostering inclusive education, not merely an automation tool. (Reference: Chapter 5: Revaluing and recentring human teachers)

Protect the Teacher-Student Relationship — Educators must recenter the core of education on the irreplaceable "I-Thou teacher-student encounter", which cultivates autonomy and mutual growth, qualities that intelligent machines cannot replicate. Over-reliance on AI risks undermining basic human psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (Reference: Chapter 5: Revaluing and recentring human teachers)