I’m putting the finishing touches on editing for my new book, AI Literacy in Any Class. Working on this book has been a journey:
I began thinking about it and brainstorming in 2025.
I started writing the manuscript in September 2025.
I finished the manuscript in December 2025.
I’m hopeful to publish the book by March 2026!
My upcoming book: AI Literacy in Any Class
As I edit and revisit each chapter of the book, it continually forces me to ask: How does this change the professional development I’m providing for teachers?
Since I started doing AI trainings for teachers in 2023, the information and activities I include has evolved — because the teachers’ knowledge and understanding has evolved.
Yet there are still lots of schools and districts where teachers are craving professional development — and it just hasn’t happened yet.
Today, I decided to make a list — what are the priorities for teacher AI training in 2026?
Below, you’ll find my list. I’m calling it a blueprint!
In this week’s newsletter:
🎉Join me at Panoramic 2026!
📚 New AI resources this week
📢 Your voice: Biggest AI transition challenge
🗳 Poll: Creating an AI PD blueprint
🗺️ AI professional development: A blueprint
🎉Join me at Panoramic 2026!
I’m excited to share that I’ll be speaking at Panoramic 2026, Panorama Education's free virtual summit on Thursday, February 26, 2026.
Panoramic is a full day of learning, inspiration, and practical ideas for teachers and leaders. You’ll hear from voices across education on how AI can support student learning, make teaching a little easier, and help create the kinds of classrooms where deeper thinking and creativity thrive.
And if you can’t make it live, every session is on-demand, so you can watch whenever it fits your schedule.
📚 New AI resources this week
1️⃣ Google Reinvents The School Textbook With AI (via Forbes) — Google’s Learn Your Way reimagines the traditional textbook with AI-powered personalization, multimodal learning, and deeper student engagement.
2️⃣ Rethinking Meaningful Learning and Student Work in the Age of AI — In this podcast, I discuss the impact of AI on student learning with Panorama’s Brittany Blackwell.
3️⃣ Schools Need to Adopt Clear Rules for AI Use. Parents Can Help Make That Happen (via The 74) — Effective advocacy requires patience and persistence. Fortunately, families wanting to get involved have proven models to follow.
📢 Your voice: Biggest AI transition challenge
Last week’s poll: What is the biggest challenge for school leaders navigating the AI transition?
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Supporting traditionalists (who feel AI is an "existential threat") (7)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 Defining values (what "human-led" learning looks like) (23)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Vetting platforms (which AI tools are pedagogically sound) (10)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Culture shift (getting students to want to do work) (24)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (3)
Supporting traditionalists: It's a mind shift that needs to happen. Many traditionalists still hold to the thinking that we can teach how we have always taught. Supporting this group while working on the mind shift that needs to happen is tough. You don't want to discourage the teacher, but you know the students are not learning in those ways anymore. — Tammy Applegate
Defining values: Many people believe that AI will hinder students' critical thinking skills. However, I believe this only occurs if students are not properly guided and taught how to effectively use AI to enhance their learning. "Human-led" learning can grow exponentially when AI is used correctly. — Brent Mischnick
Other: I think Supporting Traditionalist and Defining Values are interdependent challenges with which our school is currently grappling. The rapidly advancing technology necessitates a reevaluation of what's important to teach and how to teach it while discovering ways to leverage the technology safely, responsibly, and respectfully. — Nissa Hales
Culture shift: Students see the shortcut AI option as a timesaver, which negates the learning. The struggle to find the balance on what is important to learn and using AI as a tool is real. I think it's also creating an existential crisis of "what is the point" and "will my career field be eliminated by AI?” — C. Andrew
What would you like to read in AI for Admins?
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🗳 Poll: Creating an AI PD blueprint
Instructions:
Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!
Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.
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.)
When creating an AI PD blueprint, which piece is most important?
🗺️ AI professional development: A blueprint
A blueprint for professional development on AI for schools.
Over the past three years, I’ve delivered lots of professional development on artificial intelligence — from keynote speeches to full-day workshops to breakout sessions.
In the school districts I’ve visited all over the United States, here’s what I’m finding:
Teachers don’t feel that they know enough about AI.
They want solutions — steps they can take to move forward.
They know that students are using it and want to be proactive.
Whether they like it or not, they understand that AI is here and they need to act.
Because the “AI in education” category is so broad, it’s hard to know what’s important — and where to start — and what will really move the needle.
My own professional development offerings have evolved over time. I’m finding that teachers need less information about what LLMs like ChatGPT are and what they can do — and more information about how they can be used and the implications of them on the classroom.
Today, I’ve pulled together a blueprint — 10 topics that I have found to be relevant to my K-12 teacher audiences.
This isn’t an all-encompassing list but rather a set of priorities. If I had limited time with teachers and wanted to present topics that were most important, these are some of the topics that I would cover.
1. Understanding AI basics
A bit of AI 101 will help teachers understand what’s “under the hood” with AI models — as well as how and why they produce the results that they do.
AI is trained on a huge dataset and works on statistical majorities.
AI models are confident (sometimes wrong) guessers.
Large language models (LLMs) are adaptive and can figure things out without perfect user input.
2. Using AI for teacher tasks
In an education world where teachers are saddled with lots of tasks and responsibilities, AI can help take things off their busy, overfilled plates.
Use AI to get teaching ideas, creative analogies, new activities, etc.
Use AI to help with communication (i.e. tone and wording of emails).
Use AI to analyze data, provide examples, level texts, etc.
3. Implications on student use
EdTech companies are developing AI-powered apps for use by students. Not all schools/districts have approved their use (even though lots of students are already using AI apps on their phones and personal devices).
AI chatbot programs (like Brisk Boost, SchoolAI Spaces, and MagicSchool MagicStudent) can provide students with immediate feedback and act as a thought partner.
It’s incredibly easy to write instructions for these programs. You can even have an AI assistant like Google Gemini or ChatGPT help you write them. Once teachers try it, they’ll see that it’s manageable.
Guardrails are essential. The chatbot needs clear instructions on what NOT to do — and how to respond when students struggle or when they’re not challenged enough.
4. Privacy and safety
Any AI platform looks safe. It doesn’t look like you’re sharing sensitive information that could put you in harm’s way. If we — teachers and students — aren’t careful, it could have serious consequences.
Students need to know not to share personally identifiable information (PII) — and teachers need to know to remove student PII.
Understand when AI apps are (and aren’t) using your data to train the model. School Google and Microsoft accounts (as well as most K-12 edtech programs) won’t.
If PII or other sensitive information is shared — and is used to train future AI models, that data could be delivered to users of AI platforms in the future — or be stolen through data breaches by hackers.
5. Implications on academic integrity
This is one of the hottest AI topics in education right now. Teachers want to preserve student thinking and the whole reason we teach and learn. They feel like they’ve lost control and want solutions — or at least to be heard.
It’s getting harder and harder to detect AI outputs — and AI detectors are wildly inaccurate. There’s no single reliable way to detect AI use.
Teachers should engage students in discussions — whole-class and individual — about responsible use, benefits, consequences, etc.
Understand that we will never get 100 percent student compliance (we never have in education!). With instructional design, try, learn, and adjust to make incremental improvements.
6. Ethical issues
AI brings plenty of inherent consequences and risks when we use it. If we don’t understand the implications, then we might be setting ourselves up for failure — or contributing to something implicitly that we don’t agree with.
There are intellectual property concerns. AI models are trained on tons of data — text, images, video, music, code, etc. — that it obtained without consent.
AI models aren’t neutral. Their biases and leanings show up in all sorts of topics, from race and gender … to preferences in books and movies … to suggestions on how we live our lives and solve problems.
Other ethical concerns include energy use, water use, impact of data centers on communities, and the influence of AI developers on the outputs and results that AI systems create.
7. The AI/human balance
Everyone that uses AI has to determine how much is OK … how much is too much … and where it’s responsible to use AI. Instead of a binary “AI / no AI”, it’s a spectrum. (Check out my graphic on the “AI cheating spectrum” as an example of the nuance of AI use.)
Teachers consider: What is the best use of my human faculties? What can AI automate that isn’t dependent on my humanity — but helps me to preserve my humanity?
Students consider: At what point is AI taking over the tasks that help me to learn? What use of AI would be considered unfair or irresponsible?
Leaders consider: How do I create the circumstances to set students (and teachers) up for success with AI? What do I need to provide (apps, discussions, training) and what do I need to scale back?
8. Instructional decisions: Should I or shouldn’t I?
Now, to zoom in on the AI/human balance implications on teaching, it’s especially hard for teachers. They need to understand that their decision to use AI instructionally — and not to use it — has implications either way.
Using AI can expose you to teaching ideas you wouldn’t have conceived on your own. But it can also eliminate the creative outlet of coming up with unique ideas on your own.
Per this research paper: “AI-generated content predominantly promotes teacher-centered classrooms with limited opportunities for student choice, goal-setting, and meaningful dialogue.”
Again, it isn’t an “AI / no AI” argument. Teachers might make planning and instructional decisions every minute about whether AI would support or hinder their work.
9. Using AI for student feedback
When teachers see the potential of AI in education, this is a benefit they identify quickly. Providing student feedback can be cumbersome and time-consuming. But just because AI can provide feedback doesn’t mean that it always should.
AI can provide quick feedback that is timely, getting it in students’ hands faster. If the teacher is transparent about AI use to students — and they use it ethically, it can have its benefits.
But AI-generated feedback can feel inauthentic to students. They see it as a double standard: “I can’t use AI to do my work but the teacher can? That’s not fair.”
Over-relying on AI-generated student feedback can disconnect teachers from a source of formative assessment data on how students are progressing.
10. The future of education
AI technology will continue to progress — quickly. As it gets better — and people start to understand how to implement it effectively — it will change how we teach and how students will learn.
Where is AI headed — and what implications might it have on how we teach and learn?
How might it impact education in positive ways? What are areas where we need to preserve and protect humanity and the human touch?
What is the purpose of school — and how does it (or doesn’t it) change with the existence of AI?
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]
