🤖 Attention: 3 flawed ideas, 8 better ones

🚨 Sale on my book, AI for Educators

The future is changing rapidly. AI is going to be a big part of it.

How do we prepare students for that future?

My book, AI for Educators, has a whole chapter about preparing students for an AI-integrated world — steps we can take now to start preparing students for their future.

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Right now, Amazon is displaying (for me in the U.S.) an 18% off discount on the paperback …

Regular price $24.95 USD … sale price $20.41 USD!

Get AI for Educators in paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon.

🗳 Poll: How to address the “attention economy”

This week’s question: How important is attention (and “attention dollars”) in addressing the impact of AI?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 5 (Very important) (44)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 4 (Important) (37)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 3 (Neutral) (3)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 2 (Unimportant) (0)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 (Very unimportant) (1)

Some of your responses:

• Voted “Very important”: Your post makes perfect sense to me! I agree that our students are in control of what they give their attention, so we need to work to help them see the value of what we're offering.

• Voted “Very important”: I like this analogy. It's basic economics. Scarcity exsists and with every choice, there is opportunity cost. What we need to focus on with AI in education is how to we help students embrace AI and use it to enhance learning and not replace learning.

• Voted “Important”: While I think it is important students learn about AI and learn how AI impacts the digital tools they may use, I don't think we are spending enough time addressing the guardrails and the need for in-depth research on how this particular technology impacts us as human beings both from a positive and negative standpoint.

• Voted “Important”: I think it is definitely important! I marked 4 instead of 5 because I think equally important is the science on willpower. Similar to attention, but slightly different, humans also have a finite amount of willpower to expend at any given time. I might make all the right decisions at the beginning of the day...but dang am I worn down by the end. I think this is also important to consider.

🗳 This week’s poll

Let’s talk solutions. What first steps can we take to help students be responsible with their “attention dollars”?

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.

💰 How to spend our attention dollars wisely

In our last newsletter, I wrote about attention — that hidden currency that students spend on things that matter to them.

To recap:

• Our attention is finite. We can’t spend it on everything all the time.

• Students only spend attention (like they’re spending dollars) on things that are important to them.

• With AI, it’s becoming easier and easier to complete tasks without spending our precious attention dollars.

• As students learn more about AI, they’re going to make even tougher decisions on what’s worth spending attention dollars on.

• Unfortunately, sometimes students don’t invest their attention dollars wisely (and get AI or someone/something else to do the thinking for them).

• We need to help them understand how to invest their attention dollars wisely.

You can read part 1 about attention as a currency here.

So … how do we handle this? How do we proceed? How can we help students to use their attention wisely — in a world where attention is one thing we all will choose to pay (or not to pay)?

Let’s start with what we SHOULDN’T do about this “attention economy” — with 3 flawed ideas.

Then, let’s talk about what we SHOULD do — with 8 better ideas.

So … what SHOULDN’T we do in schools about this attention economy?

Everyone is going to have an opinion on this. Because whether we’ve talked about it or not, every single classroom teacher has wrestled with this exact same situation.

⛔ FLAWED IDEA #1: Some will say, “We need policies and rules and punishments to force the kids to comply.”

• Umm … do you remember that stubborn horse led to water that wouldn’t drink?

• Also, human nature says that forced compliance doesn’t get us where we want to go.

⛔ FLAWED IDEA #2: Some will say, “It’s up to the students. This class prepares them for the future. If they don’t want to, they’re just hurting themselves.”

• Do you remember yourself as a K-12 student? All I had on my mind was: making my friends laugh, making girls like me, playing video games, and finding something good to eat.

• Also, let’s give a tiny bit of credit to students for identifying that (sometimes) the stuff they learn in school really doesn’t prepare them for the future that much.

⛔ FLAWED IDEA #3: Let’s just block and ban all AI and go back to the old school ways.

• Bans don’t place a magical “no AI” bubble over the school. Students will access AI tools on their own devices and networks if they want.

• AI is going to be a part of their personal and professional lives. They need to learn how to use it … how NOT to use it … and the implications around using it in certain ways. (I’ve been resisting this reason until now because it feels too cliche anymore. But there is some truth in any cliche!)

So … what SHOULD we do?

Let’s review the facts of our discussion so far …

• It’s STUDENTS, not teachers, who decide how they spend their attention dollars.

• If students DON’T see the value that we see in spending attention dollars on classwork, they won’t do it. (And will offload it to AI.)

• If they DO see the value — think it’s a good investment — they’ll do it.

• Value doesn’t mean they’ll spend. If the cost is too expensive (20 attention dollars for a McDouble), they’ll pass on it even if they think it’s valuable.

• We CAN try to cajole, badger, and manipulate students to spend their attention dollars, but it’s usually futile.

After teaching for more than a decade … studying AI nonstop for more than 2 years … and talking to HUNDREDS of teachers about this … here are conclusions I’ve drawn.

(I’d love to hear your ideas on this, too. PLEASE reply or comment with them depending on where you’re reading this.)

🟢 BETTER IDEA #1: Spend time on the WHY. 

• Sometimes, we skim over the reason why we’re doing classwork. We assume the student should already know — or inherently see the value in doing it.

• In today’s world, it’s easy to spend attention dollars elsewhere. (We’re competing against TikTok, Instagram and Twitch, for goodness sake.)

• Teachers should revisit the WHY. Why do we even do this assignment? What do students really get out of this?

• Teachers should consider the efficiency of student work. Is my assignment a $20 McDouble? Am I putting an unreasonable burden on students compared to what they’ll learn and develop?

🟢 BETTER IDEA #2: Spend time on the PROCESS. 

• When AI cheapens the end product of student learning, focus on the process the student used to get there.

• A student can shortcut the work (and save a bunch of attention dollars) when AI creates the artifact of learning. But it all comes crumbling down when they have to discuss the choices and decisions they made to get there.

🟢 BETTER IDEA #3: Spend time on RELEVANCE.

• This notion that “I should teach it, they should learn it, case closed” doesn’t really work when you consider that, in the end, it’s the STUDENT’S decision how they spend their attention dollars.

• This is kind of like #1 (spend time on the why). Ask: How is this relevant to them? How does this relate to students’ current lives? How will it relate to their life in the future?

🟢 BETTER IDEA #4: Break work into manageable chunks.

• This isn’t a way to dumb down learning. It’s a way to help struggling students feel as if they can, in fact, do the work. (Instead of saving their attention dollars and having AI do the work for them.)

• Research shows that student self-efficacy (the belief that they can do the work) has a huge impact on student learning.

• It will likely have a compounding effect. As they complete one chunk, then another … and one assignment, then another … they start to adopt an “I can” attitude.

🟢 BETTER IDEA #5: Give them access to their highly qualified teacher.

• Compared to any other factor in education, teachers have the greatest impact on student achievement.

• I’d say that students are much less likely to spend their attention dollars trying to figure something out in a textbook or an unclear online resource.

• Great teachers help students understand new material the first time. They help students find their way when they struggle. They’re the best adaptive learning technology that we have.

• An investment in teachers — and allocating as many minutes from great teachers to students — motivates students to spend their attention dollars on learning.

🟢 BETTER IDEA #6: Show students how AI supports learning.

• Many students aren’t getting any instruction on how to use AI in a constructive way. There’s a good chance that their primary source is from friends and from social media — on ways to avoid schoolwork.

• Some students will always look for the path of with the least effort, but lots of students want to do the right thing and learn.

• If students don’t even know how AI can support their learning, they don’t even stand a chance at using it in responsible ways for learning.

🟢 BETTER IDEA #7: Avoid making decisions to only stop and punish the abusers.

• Too many schools focus too much time, effort, and policy on the misuse of AI among students.

• When teachers demonstrate responsible ways to use it — ways that empower students and lift up learning — then students at least have the choice to use it in productive ways.

• When we vilify a technology — say that it’s something students should never use — it might have the opposite effect and make students curious about this taboo technology.

🟢 BETTER IDEA #8: Discuss how AI impacts work positively and negatively.

• Students are often unsure when and how it’s acceptable to use AI in their work.

• It’s the same in the workforce. A Slack study shows that nearly half (48%) of desk workers would be uncomfortable admitting to their manager that they use AI for common workplace tasks.

• Focus on being transparent and clear about how AI should (and shouldn’t) be used in classwork — and how it benefits (or harms) students.

What else can we do to maximize the importance of attention? And what other flawed ideas can we avoid?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit “reply” and let me know personally!

💻 How teachers and admins are using AI

Several surveys are emerging that highlight how teachers and school leaders are — and are not — using AI in their day-to-day work.

RAND, a research organization, polled more than 9,000 teachers and 3,600 in the United States during the 2023-24 school year and released the results of the survey.

The results:

• 25 percent of surveyed teachers used AI tools for their instructional planning or teaching.

• Of those teachers, ELA and science teachers nearly twice as likely to use AI tools as math teachers or elementary teachers.

• Nearly 60 percent of principals used AI tools for their work.

• Teachers in higher-poverty schools were less likely to use AI tools than those in lower-poverty schools.

• 18 percent of school districts provided guidance on the use of AI by staff, teachers, or students.

• High-poverty schools were half as likely to have received AI guidance as low-poverty schools.

You can get the full 24-page report by RAND here.