🤖 Sustainable (and unsustainable) AI decisions

🛠️ Get our AI Teacher Toolkit

Want to help equip your teachers with AI tools, prompts, and resources?

We’ve compiled our 25-page PDF — AI Teacher Toolkit — that you can share with them for free. It includes:

• AI tools to save teachers time and support their work

• copy/paste AI prompts to plug into ChatGPT

• example activities to do in the classroom

• a printable guide for parents to use AI to support learning at home

Want to share it with the teachers you support? You can copy the text above and send them to this link: ditch.link/toolkit 

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ CoSN2025: What Concerns Hinder Schools’ Adoption of AI? (via EdTech Magazine: From bias in the data to ethical dilemmas related to implementation, some K–12 schools are hesitant to go all in on artificial intelligence tools

2️⃣ How AI Is Transforming Business Operations in K-12: Back-office and IT staff are using generative AI tools to boost productivity and operate more efficiently

3️⃣ The Future of Math Class: How AI Could Transform Instruction: New data show math teachers are not being prepared for the AI-powered math class of the future

📢 Your voice: Evaluating and choosing AI tools

Last week’s poll: What is most important when evaluating and choosing AI tools?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Creating a comprehensive list (5)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Establishing a solid selection process (26)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Do a risk analysis on potential tools (12)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Do a pilot program with teachers (6)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Get feedback from a variety of perspectives (15)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (3)

Establishing a solid selection process: It is important to understand what criteria are important for your specific situation. Each school or district is different. What are you trying to achieve with the tools? — E. Pierson

Get feedback from a variety of perspectives: Ultimately, the teachers will be the ones implementing and using the tools that we offer or choose to buy. Kinder is vastly different from 5th grade and 12th grade. We need solid feedback from a range of people and perspectives to ensure that what we end up with meets the needs of the staff in the best way possible across the board. — A. Anderson

Do a risk analysis on potential tools: If we are giving potentially transformative tools to teachers and students, we need to make sure that they have more potential for positive transformation than damaging transformation - I'm thinking especially about students using chat bots. What kinds of guardrails are in place if a student starts using harm-based language? — K. Rosenberg

Establishing a solid selection process: It is important to first narrow down the list to tools that can have high impact in multiple ways for both teachers and students. As teachers continue to gain proficiency in tools, they can then explore other niche tools. — N. DeGroot

Establishing a solid selection process: In the fall of 2023, our AI Task Force decided it was important to develop a vetting system. There were two main categories with a handful of questions for each: Classroom Alignment & Learning; Data Privacy & Security. Through the GForm we created and scoring rubric we have been able to carefully evaluate tools. We then have a website we use to communicate all of that. — Chad Sussex

Get feedback from a variety of perspectives: We can't forget to include our students in the feedback loop, as to what is effective and helpful in their learning. Teachers sometimes implement new technology for the sake of not being left behind, even though it might not make sense considering the task at hand. If students are asked, "Was this easy to use, helpful for your learning, and/or engaging?", we may be surprised by their answers. — Dave Sherbinin

• Matt’s response: YES! The worst feedback loop involves people that aren’t in the classroom. One that includes classroom teachers is better. But one that includes students — that’s the best. As Dave said, teachers have their own (good and bad) reasons for wanting to use technology. We need the whole picture.

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: Making AI decisions sustainable

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.)

💰 When making AI moves, make it sustainable

Just within the last several days, two edtech AI companies have made major announcements in my state — Indiana.

• MagicSchool announced a partnership with ESCI (Educational Service Centers of Indiana). In this release, it names MagicSchool as ESCI’s preferred AI partner Indiana’s ESCs and their schools with a discount on MagicSchool institution-wide.

• SchoolAI announced a similar partnership with IAPSS (Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents). I couldn’t find a news release with details, but I’m guessing it’s a similar arrangement.

Now, there are two issues at play in my state … and you might have them in your state at some point …

1. Two organizations are partnering and endorsing different products — products that do similar things.

• Competition is good in that it keeps competing businesses hungry to innovate and improve.

• However, in this case, these companies are trying to make inroads with decision makers at the state level.

• The problem? They’re approaching two different parts of the school district — MagicSchool with the instructional tech side, SchoolAI with the superintendents.

• The result in our state? A potential standoff between two decision-making entities in the district.

• This is a problem especially when decision makers don’t do their due diligence and are swayed by the siren song of a company’s sales pitch — and they don’t work to find out what’s best for students and teachers and learning.

2. Both companies are pushing for funding through a grant.

• It’s Indiana’s Digital Learning Grant — a program where districts can receive up to $50,000 for initiatives that enhance learning and support digital learning.

• Indiana promoted a similar plan in recent years to pilot educational AI platforms. And I applaud the Indiana’s department of education for supporting schools in their decision making.

• But lots of Indiana schools passed on the AI pilot because they didn’t want to get teachers excited about a platform they could only financially sustain for one year.

• We all know what “grant funded” means. It means temporary (in many cases). Grant funding expires. It isn’t renewed. Or it’s allocated to something different.

• Part of the problem with edtech in schools — and other non-tech programs — is that we tend to chase the new, shiny object.

• The problem? It burns teachers out. They’re sick of the coming and going of new curriculum, new initiatives, new platforms. They worry about putting all of their resources in a new learning management system because the district will switch away from it — and it’s time-consuming to move their materials.

So … what am I saying here?

If you’re a school leader, please please please please … I’m begging you …

Do the best that you can to make edtech decisions SUSTAINABLE.

I know that things change.

I know that you have to change course sometimes.

I know that it’s impossible to predict the future.

But please keep in mind the crippling cost — the time factor, the burnout factor, the money factor — in making a decision and not following through on it.

What can you do?

Last week, I wrote about being smart and responsible when evaluating and selecting AI tools. A lot of that applies here.

Based on my time as a teacher, my interaction with hundreds of districts over 10+ years of consulting, and stories from fellow educators in these situations, here’s what I’d suggest …

• Keep your goals front and center. If you’re going to sign a contract for a new edtech / AI product, know what you want to get out of it. How will it improve outcomes? Instruction? What is it good at — and do those strengths match what you need?

• Do your homework first. Go all the way down to the individual features inside the product. Get into the weeds. Look at the back end.

• Talk to EVERYONE. Talk to teachers — your teachers AND teachers from other districts that are using it. Talk to students; show it to them and get their feedback.

• Pilot, pilot, pilot. Recruit teachers with different characteristics (not just your tech all stars) to try it out. Gather feedback at different stages of the game — not just after a week or at the end. Talk to teachers AND students AND the IT staff who monitor it on the back end.

• Compare. Don’t go all in with the one product you fell in love with at a conference or in a demo. Actively seek out competitors — and see how they’re similar or different. That demo or sales pitch you got? It might have helped you realize you need a SOLUTION … not necessarily that particular PRODUCT.

• When you commit, commit. Have a reason for choosing a particular product. Have a goal that you want it to support — and a way of measuring it. Have teacher and student feedback showing that this tool is indeed needed.

• Create a sustainable path. If it’s worth the financial commitment today, it’d better be worth the future commitment, too. (Or the commitment to reach the goal you’re committed to reaching.) Make a sustainable plan to get there.

• Be willing to walk away. If you can’t determine how it’ll help real needs your school/district has, walk away. If you can’t find a way to fund it long enough to reach your goals, walk away. If it doesn’t have the features you and your teachers and students need, walk away.

• Evaluate your commitments. If you have to switch down the road, talk to everyone. Figure out why it’s best. Go through all the steps of determining why the new path is necessary. And for heaven’s sake, be transparent. Tell everyone why the first path didn’t work — and why the new path will. (And you’d better have receipts from conversation and feedback from others on both of those.)

Do the sustainable hard work. Please.

This is hard work.

It’s time-consuming.

But it’s hard work that produces the kind of schools and districts that lead to good learning and happy teachers.

Listen. Teachers are burned out. (You know that. So do I.)

They’re tired. But they’re not just tired from the exacting day-to-day work they do in the classroom.

They’re tired of being jerked around. They’re tired of being told to follow a new program or platform — with fidelity! — and then being told the next year that it isn’t our direction anymore. (Especially when they already knew it was a bad choice but had no say in the matter.)

Programs like Indiana’s Digital Learning Grant are fantastic — and partnerships like the ones with MagicSchool and SchooAI can really help your budget ends to meet.

But they’re one part of a bigger picture … of a bigger decision.

Use them as a place to start a conversation … not a singular reason to make a decision.