Hear me out… what if teachers were chefs?
Write a reflection about your perception of the current applications of AI in education.
Are these good applications?
I don’t know. Who decides what is good?
That may be the bigger question. Vetting these tools is new for all of us. Shiny promises often yield applications that miss the mark.
Are they helpful to support teaching and learning?
They can be. But not at the push of a button.
Is the evidence of their efficacy strong and appropriate to the desired educational outcomes?
Evidence provided by applications usually just feels like marketing. If there is evidence, it is rarely a wide enough sample to call the data valid and reliable.
Do you have any concerns about the uses of AI in education?
Oh heck yes, but not in the “robots are taking over the world” way. More of the… digress with me here for a minute…
More of the, let’s say, teachers are solidly good chefs, and AI applications are the finest tools and gadgets William Sonoma has to offer, the real primo stuff. And, let’s say we surprise our solid chefs by packing their modestly sized kitchen with 3 versions of every single thing you can find at a Wiliam Sonoma in-store and online. We are talking about everything from a gingerbread man waffle maker to a gold-plated sous vide. We do this unboxing on a packed night when the restaurant is full of customers demanding their demands. Nothing changes about the kitchen, except there is less room to work and create due to overwhelming tools to sort through. There is no more help. There are no days off to learn and marry their current skills with the help the tools can offer. And we walk in 2 weeks later to find the chef, having carved out a little space to work, not using one of their many beautiful, bright, and shiny tools but instead, standing there with a wooden spoon in hand, mixing their ingredients just as they had always done. We are aghast! We gave them so much, we gave them everything! We want data! We want growth! And they refuse to grow.
Not only have we not helped them, but we have set them back by the mental load we unboxed at the same time as that gold-plated sous vide. We would never think this reasonable with physical tools. But, we do it every day to educators when we drop application after application in their lap and consider the job done. There should be a heavier weight on the shoulders of educational leaders to know what teachers and students need, really know and to be the vetters of tools. We want instant, we want fidelity, we want miracles but we often stop short at the work to implement the miracles. My concern is that with the lightning-speed rate of “New & Improved & Powered by AI” stickers we see placed over old marketing materials, we feel the need to match that pace. It is not sustainable. It never will be. When we think of AI, we think of these great neural networks mapping these mazes of computing magic, but that is only half of the puzzle. They also have to bridge these mazes into a world where teachers still buy their own pencils. That, philosophically, is a wide divide and we the run the risk of a Wylie Coyote moment when we underestimate the divide and overestimate technologies capabilities.
