I know we don’t use physical violence in education, but if there ever was a time for a good old-fashioned dope slap it is now. 2001 Space Odyssey’s Hal in the form of generative AI is across the street from our campus and, if you are not prepared for Hal not only telling when the school day starts or perhaps analyzing student achievement scores or handing you a virtual pink slip, then prepare for a virtual dope slap. AI is not coming; it is here. Oh, “Hi, Hal. Let’s talk about some creative lesson planning.”
Two C words: certainty and change
Shakespeare’s Antonio (The Tempest) taught us “the past is prologue to the future”. We can learn from Antonio. Educators act the part of traditionalists in most scenarios. We prefer the certainty of yesterday and today and aver change in the unknowns of our future. This is a stereotype perhaps, but accurate. If we consider the past half century, it safe to say that most teachers do not deal well with uncertainty or loss of control. They like and lock in on a six-period day, a nine-week quarter, and a four-quarter school year. Children are to be at their desks and ready for instruction when the class bell rings. Keep your cell phones in your pocket or I will confiscate it! Suggesting changes to the school day and school year or class structure disturbs the institutional status quo and school is an institution. We like lateral change, if there is to be change at all.
Like adults in other occupations, when educators feel change is being done to them rather than by them, they become even more change resistant. A diagram of change theory shows that there always is some initial resistance, a bump in the graph line, to the installation of change. Teacher attitude toward change is that bump. Also, there is a pecking order in a school and teachers have status in that order; change risks their loss of standing. Change also raises issues of insecurity. Change too often is viewed as a determination that things were not going well or even were going badly. If not, then why change? Lastly, change often necessitates new learning and veteran teachers frequently resist going back to school. In our institution of public education, change happens but it has not always been a happy time.
Moore’s Law and AI
Gordon Moore posited in 1965 that “the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every decade.” In 1975, he modified the observation to “doubling every two years”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
We use Moore’s Law simply as a statement that the rate and degree of change in technologies is ever increasing. When applied to generative artificial intelligence, the rate and degree of change can be measured monthly not in two years’ time. What AI could do last summer is now history to what it can do this winter. And, if the past is prologue to the future, generative AI’s reach into our culture is growing exponentially. Consider reading these sources among so many others on the Internet.
https://hbr.org/2022/11/how-generative-ai-is-changing-creative-work
I am an educator. I am not a technologist. I rely upon my capacity to read and listen and study. I encourage all educators to do the same. As my thoughts about generative AI are constantly changing, I dabble in the uses of AI for educational purposes.
In my role as an educational consultant for teacher preparation programs, I write courses to teach teacher candidates how to teach. I am using Chat GPT 3.5 to start the writing process. Chat never is the finished product, but it is remarkable how, with carefully worded prompts appropriately loaded with the names of instructional leaders and the titles and key concepts of their works, Chat prints a respectable outline in seconds of time. A better prompter no doubt would cause a better outline. However, the act of using Chat GPT moves me to wonder not only how can classroom teachers can use generative AI but how can they teach children to use generative AI to propel their learning of our grade level and subject content curricula?
21st century skills and AI in the post-pandemic
Although the 21st century began 23 years ago, most of our public-school curriculum is written for 20th century goals. The Common Core standards were a 2010 recapitulation of curricular objectives at the time. Reformers of education and student learning strove to create new strategies to bring all children to common benchmarks of performance of 20th century curricula.
As devastating as the pandemic was to national health (1,000,000-plus deaths), the economy, state and national politics, and our understanding of truth and lies, it does pose one very positive educational opportunity. We can use the pandemic as a 20th to 21st century skills divide. In the post-pandemic, we can make 21st century skills the focal outcome of a 21st century education not the vehicle for carrying 20th century skills into a next century.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills prepared by the OECD/CERI (Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation/Center for Educational Research and Innovation) listed the following as learning and innovation; information, media, and technology skills; and life and career skills for children around the world. These are the skills, they said, that will make the learning of core subjects (all that we teach in school) and core themes meaningful in the 21st century.
21st Century Skills:
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- Collaboration
- Communications
- Information literacy
- Media literacy
- Technology literacy
- Flexibility
- Leadership
- Initiative
- Productivity
- Social skills
https://www.oecd.org/site/educeri21st/40756908.pdf
AI as a rough draft
Generative AI is the right tool at the right time to make each of these twelve skills come alive for children. More than Googling the Internet, AI allows a student to craft a creative and intelligent product through the use of well-phrased prompts. The product of AI is not the final product of student learning, but just the beginning. Standing upon the shoulders of AI, students then make the product their own – they refine the AI rough draft. And that is the power of the AI tool.
Whether it is an essay, an architectural rendering, a drawing of a bowl of fruit, the solution to a mathematical problem, a summation of the history of Rome, or the creation of a next Rubik’s Cube, the work process is the same. Student prompts create an AI output that is the rough draft for student refinement. We want children to learn how to prompt and then learn how to refine. It is the refined product of generative technology and student talent that is submitted to a teacher at the end of the day.
Easy? No way. There is a boatload of instruction children need in order to be prepared to use AI. There is a world of context that must be constructed in order for generative AI to be used appropriately and for its rough product to be understood.
Simple? Not. Veteran teachers today will remember the learning curve for teachers and students when hand-held calculators were introduced in schools. Veterans will remember the learning curve required before desktop computer stations were placed in classrooms – one station per classroom was a big deal. There was a learning curve required for laptops, notebooks, and IPad usage in classrooms. Cell phones? We still struggle with how that technology fits into teaching and learning. AI is just another in the long line of innovations that require teacher and student learning.
Don’t get in the line for dope slapping
NPR’s Car Guys taught me the term “dope slap” decades ago as a way to signal to another person that their stupidity is reaching the top of the stupidity gauge. In the years since, I developed a virtual dope slap that is part facial part verbal and a whole lot visual. No one gets slapped, but someone gets a clear wake up call.
In the past fifty years of working in public education, I observed teachers who bragged about being Luddites. I observed teachers move to the back of the room because they did not embrace change. They are the Doubting Toms who believe the change will fail or go away. I observed teachers as pioneers who did not run from change but stood in place and diligently worked with it until, over time, they developed new skills. There are pioneers in every new innovation. And I observed pathfinders who eagerly embrace change and are out in front of the rest of us in trying to understand and use features of the change. Given every new technology innovation in education, there have been Luddites, Toms, Pioneers, and Pathfinders.
In a 21st century school, there is little room for Luddites. They made their name and reputation in Britain’s textile industry two centuries ago; they failed then as they fail now. AI is not coming; it is here. Don’t get in the line for dope slapping and don’t be a Tom. 21st century children need 21st century teachers; be a pioneer or a pathfinder. Be a teacher.