If you’re like me and are looking for a place online to share ideas — and read what others are doing in education, you’ve come to the right place.

We just launched the new Ditch That Textbook online community.

Here, you’ll find thousands of educators sharing what works … sharing their real lived experiences in schools and classrooms … discussing how to address the big issues addressing education today.

💌 It’s invite-only, but the good news? Your invite is in the red button below.

Click it. Write your introduction. Go through the short set-up sequence. And start engaging with other educators!

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ Free Student AI Literacy Webinar with Matt (via Holly Clark) — We discussed how to incorporate AI literacy into any class with practical ideas right out of my new book.

2️⃣ The FULL 5-Part Student AI Literacy Webinar Series (via Holly Clark) — Watch replays of five webinars with next steps, integration ideas, cautions, and classroom guidance.

3️⃣ Schools Are Teaching AI — and Making a Massive Mistake (via Washington Post) — Argues that schools are overemphasizing prompt-writing and tool use instead of deeper AI literacy, ethics, and student agency.

Last week’s poll: Which of these AI data "upgrades" are you most interested in?

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ The Role/Data/Goal framework for prompting (4)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Predictive analysis (what might happen next) (1)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 NotebookLM to analyzie multiple documents (8)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Analyzing community/city/state/national data (0)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (1)

NotebookLM: Closed-source AI is super helpful in our unique, hybrid homeschool program. — R. Joslyn

NotebookLM: The capabilities of NotebookLM to identify and visualize trends from various data sources are remarkable. I truly believe that it is essential for schools and districts to utilize this tool in any way possible to enhance and streamline their processes. — B. Mischnick

NotebookLM: I have already started learning Notebook LM, but would like to see some interesting uses of it our how teachers are using in the classroom. Do they start with the interesting...video overview, or audio overview and then more the teaching materials and do they actually ask students to read the whole articles that are put into the Notebook. — K. Pike

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: Enhancing the 4 C’s with AI

Instructions:

❤️ Rethinking the 4 Cs Through Human-Centered AI

This post was written by Anna Hanrahan, M.Ed, Instructional AI Strategist for Trafera. She spent 20 years as an elementary school teacher, STEM teacher and Gifted specialist. Find her on LinkedIn here.

I’ve always known that I wanted to be a teacher. It was never really a question or a decision; it simply felt like part of who I was. Both of my parents were educators, which no doubt helped me shape an appreciation for the profession. I also always loved children, usually spending my weekends babysitting instead of hanging out with friends, so going into teaching felt like a natural fit for me.

Throughout my two decades of teaching, I witnessed many changes in education. I came to understand the truth behind a common educator joke: “Wait a few years. That school of thought will come back around again.”

I developed an in-person, hands-on understanding and appreciation of what worked well with students and what, frankly, was junk. 

During my third year of teaching, while finishing my master’s degree, I encountered an idea that helped bring a lot of clarity to my approach to teaching. A professor introduced me to the National Education Association’s “Framework for 21st Century Learning,” built around four essential skills: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. 

I can’t overstate how much the simplicity of these ‘4 C’ skills resonated with me! They provided a clear, practical lens through which I could evaluate my teaching and design learning experiences with intention.

From that point on, the 4 Cs became my guiding framework. I introduced these skills to my students the very first week of the school year, and we revisited them consistently. They weren’t just concepts we discussed; they became embedded in how we approached learning. Every lesson I planned was shaped in some way by those four skills, and students knew I would ask about them when I checked for understanding during our conferences.

In November 2022, ChatGPT became available to the public. At that time, I had recently transitioned out of the classroom to work for an EdTech company, which gave me a unique opportunity to explore this emerging technology from an educator’s perspective.

Initially, my focus was on how AI could support educators by exploring tools, experimenting with prompts, and identifying ways to increase efficiency. Like many others, I was drawn to the practical question of how this technology could make daily work easier and experimented a lot with the ‘gimmicky’ features of AI.

However, as conversations around student use, responsible AI practices, and AI literacy began to grow, I found myself shifting my approach to AI and returning to the 4 Cs. When I started reading about ‘Human-In-the-Loop’ or ‘Human-Centered’ AI, that’s where it all clicked for me. 

There has been a growing conversation and movement around Human-Centered AI (HCAI) in education, and I believe it is essential for schools to base their policies and approach to AI using this framework. While there are many formal definitions out there, my personal definition of Human-Centered AI is as follows:

Human-Centered AI is an approach to technology that keeps people in charge, grounded in ethics, fairness, and transparency. It prioritizes student well-being and teacher expertise, using AI as a supportive tool, not the focus.

At its core, Human-Centered AI is a collaborative partner that enhances human capability, helping people become more thoughtful, creative, and analytical, never replacing or bypassing human insight or decision-making.

With that definition in mind, it’s easy to see how the tried and true ‘4 Cs’ fit into the Human-Centered approach of AI literacy in schools. 

When it comes to the first “C,” Critical Thinking, students cannot passively accept information when interacting with AI. AI literacy requires understanding that these systems can make mistakes, making verification with trusted sources essential. While AI can serve as a useful starting point, students and educators must approach its output critically and independently evaluate its accuracy, logic, and supporting evidence.

In this way, Human-Centered AI strengthens critical thinking by shifting students away from memorizing facts and toward actively analyzing information, questioning assumptions, and assessing the reliability of claims rather than treating outputs as authoritative.

Communication is the second of the ‘4 Cs’. Traditionally, I viewed communication as the students talking and listening to each other or to me, the teacher, to convey their ideas, understanding, questions, disagreements, and support. While this is still incredibly important in the classroom, the use of AI adds another layer to communication.

Since AI interfaces are fundamentally linguistic, prompt engineering becomes a superpower of sorts. Students learn that if they use vague, imprecise language when interacting with a chatbot, their output will be disappointing.

Students learn to practice clear communication every time they prompt and are also learning to communicate with one another about AI’s output, debating and discussing its validity and usefulness, and make choices about what they read and hear. 

Next is Collaboration. While technology can sometimes feel isolating, HCAI reframes it as a support system that helps ensure all learners remain actively engaged in shared work.

In this model, AI is not replacing collaboration but strengthening access to it. For example, imagine a group of four students working on a project, where one student has severe dysgraphia and finds writing or typing difficult. Traditionally, this student might be unintentionally left behind, not due to a lack of ideas, but because the technology barriers to sharing thoughts and ideas are too high. Through an HCAI approach, tools such as speech-to-text reduce those barriers by supporting the student’s ability to contribute in real time. As a result, the student can fully participate in the group, share ideas as they emerge, and remain an active, equal contributor rather than becoming isolated.

The final traditional “4 C” is Creativity. There has been ongoing concern that AI may limit student creativity, especially as these systems are now capable of writing stories, composing music, generating artwork, and even producing books.

However, from a human-centered perspective, AI should be understood as a tool that ignites and expands creative possibilities while still leaving direction and intention in the hands of teachers and students. Rather than diminishing creativity, AI shifts it toward decision-making and intentional design.

For example, a student might use AI to generate twenty different brainstorming ideas for a science project. While the ideas originate from the machine, the student must critically evaluate, select, and combine them with their own interests and knowledge, elements that the AI cannot access, to develop a meaningful final product.

Ultimately, creativity in the age of AI is not about replacing human imagination, but about enhancing it through thoughtful choice, curation, and purposeful design.

Beyond the 4 Cs, there may be room for an honorary fifth: Connection. If AI can responsibly take on some of the more repetitive or mechanical tasks in education, it creates more space for what matters most: human relationships. In that space, teachers and students can spend more time connecting, mentoring, discussing ideas, and engaging in meaningful learning experiences that no technology can replicate.

Those trusty 4 (or 5!) Cs don’t become less important in the age of AI. The tools, policies, and even the technology have shifted dramatically over time, but the foundation has not. The 4 Cs that first gave me clarity as a teacher still anchor my thinking today, now through the lens of Human-Centered AI.

AI isn’t replacing these skills; it’s reshaping how we see and use them, making thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, and connection more visible in the learning process, easier to teach, and arguably more important than ever, and this makes my teacher heart so excited for the future!