mguhlin

AI-Powered Students? Part 3

What do you think the next five years in education will look like in regards to AI? Complete integration or total ban of AI?

I struggle with this question. Is the matter entirely out of our hands as educators and parents? That is, unless we adopt draconian methods to restrict it? And, will draconian methods fail for the simple reason that human beings will do everything they can to access what they shouldn’t? Questions, questions. 

Over the next five years, I suspect we will see a mad dash to adopt AI in schools. AI will find its way into:
  • Test/item analysis to more easily provide results of high-stakes assessments to district admins. It will be mediated through data management systems for schools with graduated/tiered access to more sources of data integration from district systems/dashboards.
  • Special education individualized education plan (IEP) preparation plans
  • Language teaching as a replacement for certified educators, as well as other areas of need that can be replaced, augmented, or supplemented (haha), with AI tutors
  • Curriculum management systems will now make it easy to insert new curriculum, lessons, objectives, activities, generate worksheets/organizers that can be printed or use immediately online via digital delivery systems
  • A perpetual state of amazement about new, emerging AI tools (one or more every day) 
  • Exhortations from district leaders and those who seek to appear innovative, that AI is fantastic, wonderful, and transformative. It will revolutionize education as we know it, then some vendor will step in to say how they are using AI to simplify teachers’ lives and relieve the tedium of teaching
  • New policies will be put in place to prohibit AI tools from replacing educators (but it will anyways), regulating the use of AI by students (they will anyways just as they access other tools using their smartphones or AI-enabled devices, which will begin to pop up any moment now)
  • Every PD organization (think alphabet acronyms of orgs) will make a rush towards AI, to show how they have transformed their business model to use AI to bring better services and benefits to members
Tremendous pressure will be put on school systems to adopt AI tools, to tout those tools on their websites, in their curriculum guides, and eventually, teacher preparation programs. To be innovative, you need only state that you are using AI, or that your process was designed by an AI. The pendulum will swing far, far, far to the side of AI.
Then, I predict the environmentalists, social justice advocates, and in a stunning alliance, the liberty crowd will step in, advocating against AI. 
In the next five years? Schmaybe. Will there be outright bans and opposition to AI in schools? Yes, and there SHOULD be. 
I love this list of questions EDUCATORS and ACADEMICS should be asking in schools. As a technology director, I know I would have been more critical. As someone now focused more on facilitating professional learning, my aim is more about introducing people to new technologies, and figuring out how they might support proven instructional strategies. . .”how can we use AI to better enhance student agency in the classroom?” (I’ll have to come back to that one later).
Here’s one of the questions (see the rest in Lawrie’s succinct blog entry) we should be asking AI advocates and proponents:
Can you provide examples of how the AI features have directly benefited students in their academic and career? (via Lawrie Phipps)

Prognostications

In a few years, we’ll see a mish-mash of technologies in schools, a combination of best of sale (the ones that had the best sales pitches for schools) and tremendous inequities of access. The rich, the private/charter schools will have what they want, and they will use it without reservation to advance their position. 

Public schools, populated by the masses of children from the rest of us, will look on with envy, and wonder, what happened to the promise of AI to make our lives better? Where did the money to improve school infrastructure, hire more teachers, train more staff, get more books into libraries, provide at home digital access, go?

AI On Demand?

We can’t pull the plug on AI. We must demand that all have access at no-cost. ChatGPT 5, and other tools, available for free. The only problem? What about the effects of AI server farms on the environment, water usage, and on people training the AIs, scanning for inappropriate content?

Alas, what happens to AI tools when they finally get good enough to do their own policing of content? Are we headed for sci-fi visions of enslaved AI workers? Let’s hope not. 

But what’s the alternative?

Image Credits

I had so much fun generating the images illustrating this blog entry. While I started with Nightcafe, Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator is my go-to tool. The prompt used:

a tidal wave of artificial intelligence sweeping away schools and people with money tycoons looking on

Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

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