In thinking about how much school district treasure will be spent on AI, on angst about preparing children and teachers for AI, I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with these 2019 musings from Donna Lanclos. Of course, “musings” may be the wrong word. Lanclos makes some incredible points from her perspective in this talk.
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The framing of education as a place to sell more tech, as a potential market for a home-grown edtech silicon valley, rather than a common good to be opened up to as many people and practices as possible, this framing is a political actThe narrowing of education to a credential that gets you a job is a political act…your actions cannot just be about pedagogy and systems, but must be about politics and policy.
In edtech, I see the same old rush to make money off something new and exciting. It makes me wonder, “Is this really a new thing, AI? We haven’t seen it before. But then, we hadn’t seen other technologies before, and they seemed quite revolutionary when first introduced.”
No doubt, before long, there will be (probably already are) AI microcredentials, prompt-writing certification programs, and all designed around specific systems that may not be around in a year or two. The so-called “middleware” of AI that will find itself obsolete, irrelevant, unwanted.
But teachers with evidence-based instructional strategies that reflects proven ways to teach, to learn…those will endure. So, time to push back. To say, “Yeah, yeah, AI is revolutionary, but we need to take some time to reflect on whether it should take hold in K-8 classrooms.”
Or am I completely wrong?
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