Great arguments backed by the data. I, too, am nervous about letting kids lose with LLMs in the classroom. There is little guidance and less research supporting it. Do you see any place for student use of AI? Coding? Feedback? Other forms of multi-modal generation? Given the way most students seem to be using the technology, I do fear that the adults who are skilled with using AI are projecting onto younger people a level of domain expertise they have built up over years and assuming the students will simply develop those as they use the LLMs. Great post and lots of useful data!
Yes, in some ways the digital native idea has it completely the wrong way round. In the early days of Google it was adults who had 20+ years of non-internet life & literacy skills who were able to easily find what they wanted with an internet search. A lot of kids were just clicking aimlessly not understanding what they were doing. Something similar is happening now with LLMs, with the added problem of hallucinations.
You make an important point here! People with high-level and high literacy skills naturally discover the creative power that digital technologies afford. Those without such backgrounds, just as naturally, fall in line with wherever the machine is leading them.
It is very interesting that to develop teacher skill for trainees I would argue that it really helps to sometimes do proper lesson planning from scratch rather than use pre-planned resources. In other words, proper thinking about the planning stage and the pedagogy behind it really helps understanding of effective delivery. I think AI might De-skill people in ways that aren't immediately apparent as a problem.
I am regularly dismayed to see so many teachers using AI to generate lesson plans. It is a violation of the creative act of teaching! It is also crass and superficial way of using AI.
A timely reminder that “training for work” and “doing the work” are not the same thing. This piece cuts through the employability debate in higher ed by showing why over-relying on AI in the classroom can actually undermine the very skills students will need to use AI well in the workplace. Interesting to see such a clear articulation of the gap between workplace efficiency and the slower, more deliberate processes that build expertise.
But you can use AI to help you generate some alternative structures to up level an existing text you have written, without changing the content, then use these structures in a new text later. It can be very empowering for more able or advanced learners of modern languages to see how a few new synonyms added to a sentence can stylistically enhance a text for example. I agree though, at the end of the day, the students have to be able to write fluently without the aid of AI and I do not advocate it for producing assessments.
Great post. I’m fascinated by this right now and actually wrote about it today. My view is that schools never move quickly enough - and with AI, they probably shouldn’t try. Not just because they can’t, but for many of the reasons you outline here.
My bigger worry is the more dystopian scenario: a two-tier society with an ever-widening gap between those with the education and economic means to harness AI, and those without.
Great piece! Looking forward to your next one about the possible decline of widespread literacy. This is a topic that I think about continually. I do think we're heading in a direction of privileging orality more than literacy, and I believe that education needs to adapt and lead in this direction; hence my two posts this week about oracy: https://iaincoggins.substack.com/p/writing-writes-people-speak?r=3yqfw and https://iaincoggins.substack.com/p/self-resolving-crisis?r=3yqfw. Although I'm a writing teacher, I'm increasingly finding myself arguing for the development of a new rhetoric, for oral composition and performance-based assessment. I am envisioning "English" classes of the not-too-distant future being more like drama classes. Writing will be a core skill to be mastered, but it will not be central to the curriculum. It will be one medium among others with which students engage.
Great arguments backed by the data. I, too, am nervous about letting kids lose with LLMs in the classroom. There is little guidance and less research supporting it. Do you see any place for student use of AI? Coding? Feedback? Other forms of multi-modal generation? Given the way most students seem to be using the technology, I do fear that the adults who are skilled with using AI are projecting onto younger people a level of domain expertise they have built up over years and assuming the students will simply develop those as they use the LLMs. Great post and lots of useful data!
Yes, in some ways the digital native idea has it completely the wrong way round. In the early days of Google it was adults who had 20+ years of non-internet life & literacy skills who were able to easily find what they wanted with an internet search. A lot of kids were just clicking aimlessly not understanding what they were doing. Something similar is happening now with LLMs, with the added problem of hallucinations.
You make an important point here! People with high-level and high literacy skills naturally discover the creative power that digital technologies afford. Those without such backgrounds, just as naturally, fall in line with wherever the machine is leading them.
It is very interesting that to develop teacher skill for trainees I would argue that it really helps to sometimes do proper lesson planning from scratch rather than use pre-planned resources. In other words, proper thinking about the planning stage and the pedagogy behind it really helps understanding of effective delivery. I think AI might De-skill people in ways that aren't immediately apparent as a problem.
I am regularly dismayed to see so many teachers using AI to generate lesson plans. It is a violation of the creative act of teaching! It is also crass and superficial way of using AI.
A timely reminder that “training for work” and “doing the work” are not the same thing. This piece cuts through the employability debate in higher ed by showing why over-relying on AI in the classroom can actually undermine the very skills students will need to use AI well in the workplace. Interesting to see such a clear articulation of the gap between workplace efficiency and the slower, more deliberate processes that build expertise.
But you can use AI to help you generate some alternative structures to up level an existing text you have written, without changing the content, then use these structures in a new text later. It can be very empowering for more able or advanced learners of modern languages to see how a few new synonyms added to a sentence can stylistically enhance a text for example. I agree though, at the end of the day, the students have to be able to write fluently without the aid of AI and I do not advocate it for producing assessments.
Great post. I’m fascinated by this right now and actually wrote about it today. My view is that schools never move quickly enough - and with AI, they probably shouldn’t try. Not just because they can’t, but for many of the reasons you outline here.
My bigger worry is the more dystopian scenario: a two-tier society with an ever-widening gap between those with the education and economic means to harness AI, and those without.
My post if you’re interested:
https://open.substack.com/pub/msoplreflections/p/when-the-jobs-disappear-ai-ubi-and?r=2nj6f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Great piece! Looking forward to your next one about the possible decline of widespread literacy. This is a topic that I think about continually. I do think we're heading in a direction of privileging orality more than literacy, and I believe that education needs to adapt and lead in this direction; hence my two posts this week about oracy: https://iaincoggins.substack.com/p/writing-writes-people-speak?r=3yqfw and https://iaincoggins.substack.com/p/self-resolving-crisis?r=3yqfw. Although I'm a writing teacher, I'm increasingly finding myself arguing for the development of a new rhetoric, for oral composition and performance-based assessment. I am envisioning "English" classes of the not-too-distant future being more like drama classes. Writing will be a core skill to be mastered, but it will not be central to the curriculum. It will be one medium among others with which students engage.