🤖 10 keys to using AI in education

📚 Summer reading: AI for Educators

Is it finally time to wrap your brain around all of this AI stuff?

Get a grasp on how it can save you time — or how to navigate academic integrity?

My book, AI for Educators, is a quick page turner … a primer on AI for busy educators who just haven’t had time to explore and understand AI yet.

It dives into big issues, like …

• What do I need to know about AI to really get it?

• Can it be used to support teaching and learning? How?

• What about cheating and academic integrity?

• How do I prepare students for an AI-integrated future?

Plus, there’s a free companion website with even more resources, including links, templates, videos, and more.

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ How AI could transform the way schools test kids (via Hechinger Report) — AI has the potential to shake up the student testing industry, which has evolved little for decades.

2️⃣ Schools’ AI Policies Are Still Not Clear to Teachers and Students (via EdWeek) — Educators say their districts have not made their artificial-intelligence policies clear to educators and to students.

3️⃣ Using AI in Preschool and the Elementary Grades (via Edutopia) — These tips for using artificial intelligence with younger learners guide teachers to age-appropriate exploration of this technology.

📢 Your voice: AI saving time is …

Last week’s poll: Finish this sentence: Teachers using AI to save time is ...

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 welcome relief. Teacher burnout is real. (19)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ great! They'll use that time to do great things. (13)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ underwhelming. AI can be used for so much more. (8)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (7)

Welcome relief: We need to start somewhere in regards to teachers becoming both familiar with, and knowledgable about the use of AI. What better way to break the ice and get teachers to understand AI more than ways to save them time! It can only go up from here. — Crystal Blais

Underwhelming: I can't disagree with the other answers, but "time" is not THE reason for burnout. There is so much to the job and time is just the easy scapegoat. Using AI to solve real problems, help with creativity, break writer's block, and maybe offer advice in times of struggle - these are far more powerful. — Matt S.

Underwhelming: We are doing ourselves and our students a disservice by stopping there. Building more engaging, through provoking activities, deeper discussion practices, AI resilient practices, activities, and assessments, and so much more. Let's build our AI literacy and we'll be able to better build student AI literacy. — Chad Sussex

Other: Teachers using AI to save time is a little worrisome. In their rush to save time, I worry they will not be a critical consumer of the product AI created. — K. Forsman

Other: Overwhelming! Too many tools and too little guidance. — R. Blommer

Other: An illusion. AI is good at taking away some of the mundane tasks like writing lesson plans no one is ever going to look at. What concerns me, however, is that if teachers are saving time on the mundane things, they will just be given more things to do. "You finished that in 20 minutes rather than an hour? Great! Now you have time to do this additional task!" I'm worried AI just gives the illusion we can fit one more thing on the plate. — Tia Miller

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: Keys to AI in 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.)

🔑 10 keys to using AI in education

I’ve been thinking and writing and speaking a LOT about AI in education for the last 2 ½ years.

By now, I’m starting to hone in on some of my core maxims on using AI in education.

So, I figured it’s time for a top 10 list — 10 keys to using AI in education.

This is my list today! If you ask me tomorrow, it might be a little different.

But when it comes to preparing students for an AI-integrated future — and supporting teachers now in the classroom — these are some of the ideas I keep coming back to.

In March, I wrote about 10 maxims for students about AI. There is some similarity here, but this list is more general guidance for human-centered AI use. (The student maxims are more about AI as applied to the classroom and classwork.)

What would you add to the list? This list isn’t comprehensive! What makes your list that wasn’t on mine — or what’s the most important one? Let us know in the poll above!

1. Human thinking before AI.

I heard a keynote speaker at a major edtech conference recently tell us that he’ll use ChatGPT to write a speech or an article for him … then he’ll edit it afterward.

I thought: “Do you even know the audience you’re speaking to? Do you understand what our goals are in education?”

Instead, he should have said: Human thinking before AI. I’ve started operating more and more from this perspective personally — and it’s a great fit for the classroom.

Brainstorm. Make a list of what you know. Create the first draft. THEN get AI assistance.

The big thing we’re all worried about (well, ONE big thing we’re worried about) is thinking. Our ability to reason and think critically and solve problems. If we don’t do it ourselves, that muscle will atrophy in humans and we’ll get worse and worse at it.

And, of course, students will shortcut the thinking and try to do it with AI. They’ll misuse it. It’ll happen. But if we keep modeling the importance of it — and if we keep designing learning around doing human thinking first — I think we have our best chance at success.

2. Keep the main thing the main thing.

We have schools that are looking to boost AI literacy … and add new AI-related courses … and sign big contracts to bring in AI tools for students and teachers.

All of that is well and good, but let’s be certain of something …

Keep the main thing the main thing.

Let’s remember what we’re trying to do here. We don’t need to solve the AI problem here. We’re here to:

• help small humans grow into capable big humans

• promote thinking and skill development

• help students learn how to thrive in this big world

• develop students in many facets of their lives

Sometimes AI can help us do that … but we don’t need it for everything.

The main thing isn’t AI. It isn’t technology.

The main thing is our students. It’s the humans.

Let’s make sure to remember that.

3. AI isn’t neutral.

We might think that because it’s a machine, artificial intelligence will give us neutral responses.

Neutral answers — devoid of the political leanings and the personal opinions and the incomplete lived experiences of humans.

Not true. AI isn’t neutral.

Its dataset (the information it uses to become “artificially intelligent”) is human-created, so it has all of our biases — gender, racial, socioeconomic, religious, geographic and more.

AI reflects humanity.

And remember, that’s not a new thing. Even textbooks aren’t neutral. Winston Churchill is credited with saying: “History is written by the victors.”

There’s no more a “neutral AI” than there is a “neutral human.”

4. The more important the task, the more humanity you need.

In a March edition of this newsletter, I pitched this guiding principle I had been using with AI …

• The MORE important it is, the LESS I lean on AI.

• The LESS important it is, the MORE I lean on AI.

Why? I want to bring what’s special about me — my experiences, my perspectives, my unique spin — to whatever’s most important.

The problem? I can’t provide that level of my own humanity to everything. Like you, I’m busy. There are LOTS of places where I could spend my time.

So I have to decide what’s most important. And yes, that means judgment calls.

When there’s more to do than there’s time to do it, you have to judge what’s most important. And you should spend your attention and your humanity most there.

Here’s another problem. Students are realizing this, too. And when they don’t see the importance or relevance to your assignment, they might make that same judgment call — and spend less of their attention and humanity on your assignment than you’d like.

That’s why we have to constantly do everything we can to make sure students understand WHY we’re doing certain things in class. (And we have to ruthlessly judge whether what we’re doing is worth doing — and trim out or adjust irrelevant classwork if it truly isn’t worth doing.)

5. Always be critiquing.

The ABC mantra in sales is “always be closing.”

I want students — and teachers! — to always be critiquing (when it comes to AI).

When AI does its work — creating something, predicting something, suggesting a course of action, etc. — lots of judgment calls and assumptions happen in the background.

When those assumptions happen, they’re not always logical to humans — and not always in our best interest, either.

But when we get lazy — or when we trust AI a little too much — we stop using our human brains to analyze, to do our own independent judgments, to determine whether the AI product is appropriate.

Always be critiquing AI, from the most minute detail to the broadest application:

• Critique AI responses — what it gives us.

• Critique AI models — the models themselves and their tendencies.

• Critique AI companies — who determine the algorithms that run the models.

• Critique AI implementation — how it’s being used by humans.

• Critique AI’s role in society — when it should/shouldn’t be used.

6. Augment, don’t replace.

When folks start talking about AI in the classroom — or AI in education in general — the conversation is rather binary.

• AI or no AI.

• AI is good or bad.

• AI is helpful or hurtful.

• AI is cheating or it’s not cheating.

The better conversation is how AI is being used in our work — and whether it makes us better as humans.

Instead of asking “AI or not?” … let’s ask: “how much do we augment our human abilities with AI?”

If we’re becoming academic cyborgs, how many of our limbs and human faculties do we replace with robot parts?

I wrote about the AI cheating spectrum, a graphic (below) I created to help us think about this concept of “augment, don’t replace.” The big question we’re asking here is: How much augmentation should happen?

7. When AI cheapens the product, focus on the process.

I talk about focusing on the process of learning — instead of just the product students create — in the latest version of my AI keynote speech.

I also wrote about that idea (and the keynote) here.

AI is really good at creating the products that we want students to create to demonstrate understanding and learning.

But when we focus too much on those products, it’s easy for students to shortcut the learning — the process — and just give us the product.

When AI cheapens the product, focus on the process.

Instead of asking for the essay or the research report, we ask …

• What did you find most interesting in this?

• Was there a part in the writing process where you struggled?

• If you could do this all over again from scratch, what would you do differently?

When all we grade is the end product, what are we really teaching students? We’re implying that the process isn’t the valuable part. Get to the end product by all means necessary -- because that’s how you’ll earn the points in the grade book.

8. Look past the technology problems to address the motivation problems.

It’s so easy to point the finger at AI and say that it’s ruining education.

The reality is that AI is just the most recent technology highlighting the same problems we’ve had in education for decades (centuries?).

Often, it’s a lack of engagement … a lack of motivation … a lack of relevance … a lack of interest.

AI is just the latest manifestation of these bigger issues around education. We saw it with Chromebooks … and Google search … and the internet.

(Hey, for me in high school, it was a cattle farm outside my social studies teacher’s classroom. I didn’t need technology to disconnect from less-than-inspiring instruction. I would just look out the window at the cows!)

Sure, let’s take the appropriate precautions with our technology … but let’s not allow it to become a scapegoat for bigger issues at play.

9. When you plan, look through your tomorrow glasses.

I’ve explored this metaphor several times in my book, AI for Educators, and in my AI keynote speeches, and I still believe in it.

We can’t plan by looking through our today glasses. We need to look through our tomorrow glasses.

What do I mean by that?

If we’re going to make moves to prepare students for an AI-integrated future, we can’t just prepare them for the way the world is today.

(Honestly, it’s hard enough to prepare them for today’s world — because the technology is changing so rapidly!)

When we use AI — or talk about AI — in schools and classrooms, we need to constantly ask ourselves: What are our students going to need to survive and thrive in a world of AI — and is this preparing them for it — and how?

To me, teaching kids how to use ChatGPT (or AI assistants as they are today) has some benefits … but AI technology is going to change significantly in the coming years.

Instead, let’s teach them to solve problems and think critically so they can figure things out as it changes.

Let’s teach them how AI works and how to navigate it (AI literacy) so they have the fundamental building blocks.

Let’s teach them to maximize their humanity and know how to effectively balance AI work and human work.

In that way, we’re looking at the real issues and problems they’re likely to face in the future — and building their capacity to adapt to it.

We’re looking through our tomorrow glasses.

10. We need teachers more than ever.

The final key to using AI in education is remembering to deploy our most important asset.

Human teachers.

I don’t think the human teacher becomes obsolete anytime soon.

YouTube. Khan Academy. Search engines. The internet. Encyclopedias. The printing press.

People bemoaned the creation of ALL of those things and worried that they would usurp the power of education.

And yet … here we are. Teachers. Still teaching in 2025.

Teachers — especially really good ones — are great at getting students to think, to ask the right questions, to wrestle with tough topics. That’s going to serve them — all of us! — in an AI-integrated future.

Teachers build relationships and maximize their humanity — and help students to do it, too. We’re definitely going to need that.

To round out this list, let’s just remember the power and importance of great teachers (and the people who support them so they can do their jobs effectively).

Education isn’t an information transaction business. It’s human work — and we still need humans in that process.