Back to the future: Reimagining the role of AI in education

Back in 2017, I specifically remember reading the 2017 Horizon Report (Educause) and being somewhat in disbelief of the projection that artificial intelligence would begin to find its way into the teaching and learning environment. At the time, I was surprised to read about how AI was used to teach preservice teachers, and provide a personalized pace for lessons based on the timing of student responses. The “best use scenarios” of educational technology as predicted by the 2017 Horizon report put students at the center of learning, as they worked with technology to collaborate, create, and connect with others. It was also in this report that we saw an emphasis on computational thinking and STEM-focused instruction, specifically in the area of computer science. As suggested by Hughes and Roblyer (2022), current adoptions of computer science curriculum continue to support students’ ability to think critically and problem-solve. While the use of AI in the classroom has evolved since its prediction in 2017, as I support teachers to harness the transformational power of technology in their classrooms, my work with educators is centered around the use of these innovative teaching tools to help students to think critically as both creators and consumers of information. Here we are in 2023 and AI seems to come to the forefront of conversations in teacher workrooms on the daily. The AI that teachers are referring to today has evolved from the AI predicted in the 2017 Horizon report. The predicted use of AI in 2017 was to save teachers valuable time as it allowed teachers to use adaptive assessments and real-time data to create a more personalized learning approach to learning. Its primary use was to help teachers to design data-informed instruction. We do see glimpses of adaptive uses of AI to facilitate the assessment process, and yes, the AI that we see today does save time, but I find that my work with AI is more commonly to help teachers to create rather than to use AI generated data. While adaptive assessments are saving teachers valuable time by isolating skills that students have not yet mastered, we’re seeing AI as a teacher’s assistant. Tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are helping teachers to design lesson plans, assessments, and even scoring rubrics. The Horizon Report (2017) recognized that the teacher’s role was “moving beyond” dispensing information (p. 30). This report recognized that computer software was increasingly being used to connect students with content. Five years later Hughes and Roblyer (2022) concur as they recognize that today’s students need to develop “fundamental understandings of how the Internet is structured and the range of online sources” (p.99). With so much content available to our students in so many different formats, now more than ever, it’s crucial for students to become critical thinkers as they evaluate content that they access on the web. This is where the confluence of AI and critical thinking occurs. As AI becomes more prevalent and more powerful, computer science curricula, which has been slowly adopted by most states (Rich et al, 2019), is essential to helping our students to not only understand how AI works, but to think critically about its uses. References: Educuase. (2017). NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition. Retrieved from https://library.educause.edu/resources/2017/2/nmc-cosn-horizon-report-2017-k12-edition Hughes, J. E., & Roblyer, M. D. (2022). Integrating educational technology into teaching: Transforming learning across disciplines (9th edition). Pearson. Rich, P. J., Browning, S. F., Perkins, M., Shoop, T., Yoshikawa, E., & Belikov, O. M. (2019). Coding in K-8: International Trends in Teaching Elementary/Primary Computing. TechTrends, 63(3), 311–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-0295-4