OpenAI has recently produced a course called ‘Chat GPT Foundations for Educators’ which is designed to be a silver bullet to teach educators how to use AI. The course is the product of a partnership with Common Sense Media which is (usually) a reliable source of ‘common sense’ reviews. What they seem to be missing is how teachers can use AI effectively and purposefully. They are not really encouraging teachers to be co-designers, critical evaluators and engineers of content.

It basically falls short of practical (and not contradictory) use case scenarios and has omitted a lot of big picture questioning about the ‘why’ behind the use of AI. The current debate appears to be an assumption that teachers should choose between AI or the highway. But maybe this yes/no binary thinking is the real problem.

AI shouldn’t be an ‘all in’ or ‘all out’ or Yes/No debate. It is much more complicated than that.

If there were a fork in the road that was ‘AI or the highway’, choosing the highway (non AI) is (still) just fine. If you haven’t read about the OpenAI foundation course you can find a useful critique of it here: How does OpenAI Imagine K-12 Education by Erik Salvaggio.

Here are some of the key points of critique:

it assumes that teachers are passive producers of content
it posits that productivity is more important than effective pedagogy
it does not teach critical AI literacy
it does not target pedagogy
it is not a best practice example of UDL in action (no closed captioning)
it assumes that administrative tasks can all be automated
it does not seem to value the agency of teacher-owned creative processes in course design
it overstates the predictive capabilities of AI
and my addition:
it assumes that teachers need to be ‘all or nothing’ consumers

OpenAI seems to champion itself as a heroic solution to all of the problems that teachers have. It does not really dig into any additional problems that using AI blindly also produce.

If you stand with AI - then you obviously must use it for everything and save so much time and create so many more resources and power up your productivity to the point that even writing your own meeting agenda can be outsourced. But - quantity does not beat quality. And producing does not equate to creating.

When I was at Elam School of Fine Arts, my professor said to me (when I was churning out bad art at a rate of knots): ‘There’s enough sh*t in the world. Why contribute to it?” And I think this is golden advice that can be applied to finding your own position on AI in education.

An easy ‘out’ is to stand on the opposite road with those who say No. You might stand in solidarity with teachers who see AI as a flash in the pan that is best avoided. These teachers might be summed up as the ‘pen and paper warriors’ who want to make sure that text books are used instead of laptops. If you avoid technology, then you also do avoid a lot of the ‘bad’ things - but you also run the risk of stealing learning opportunities away from students who also need to learn critical AI literacy. Teachers have a duty to empower students to understand, question, and navigate AI responsibly. This isn't just about using the tools to enhance their own productivity but helping students to critique and control their own uses to be critical creators of the future.

If you want to start using AI in the classroom it is ok to do so cautiously. In fact, it is best to use any tool with your pedagogue hat on and ask all of the questions like ‘where is the science’, ‘how does this enhance learner experience’, ‘how does this increase critical thinking’, ‘how might this offer more agency’, ‘how might this remove barriers to learning’ etc. And if it doesn’t align to your lens of what education should be and needs to be in the future, then don’t use it. Or more simply put, if you are adding to the sh*t in the world, don’t.

AI, when used purposefully, has the power to enhance, augment and improve learning - but you have to become an active architect of learning and do so.

So what next? Thinking and Linking:

Prioritise Critical Literacy: Read up on AI’s limitations, biases, and ethical implications. Foster a culture of inquiry rather than blind adoption. Read widely or at least dip your toes in: 12 Best Blogs on AI
Focus on Inclusivity: Accessibility should be a baseline, not an afterthought. All training materials must meet diverse needs to ensure equitable learning and expand rather than restrict learning accessibility. Use AI to expand not restrict.
Balance Efficiency with Depth: Productivity should not come at the expense of the thoughtful, creative processes integral to teaching. AI should enhance, not overshadow, pedagogical engagement.
Collaborate and Innovate: Join a community of practice to join in the critical conversation (this AI Forum is really worthwhile. It has fortnightly recorded webinars and emailed transcripts for an easy win for those of us who might be time poor). Even if you don’t join a community of practice, you might share innovations, successes, and challenges with AI in education with your colleagues in-house.
Critique your Use: Think about process over product, learner agency and the experience for the learners above all. How is augmenting and enhancing learner experience? How is it supporting more critical thinking? Ask ethical questions: How does this tool support diverse learners in my classroom? What biases might the AI outputs carry, and how can I address them? Are the benefits worth the potential trade-offs in creativity or critical thinking? My work-in-progress rubric is below.
Become an engineer not a consumer: There are SO MANY new AI tools on the market right now with Chat GPT being just one drop in a vast ocean. Popular educational solutions like MagicSchool.AI can create educational consumables in seconds, but the outputs might not be of true benefit to students’ experience. Consider how you might engineer your own more purposeful solutions rather than accepting ready-made products that might push passivity or feed another tech company’s coffers.
Explore Innovation: For some interesting use cases for how to innovate with AI in the classroom check out Harvards’s AI Pedagogy Project (this was also mentioned in the first blog link).
Put Pedagogy over Product: AI tools are only as effective as the intentionality behind their use. Targeting strategies like flipped classrooms, differentiation, UDL or gamified learning means that you can apply AI to pedagogical frameworks purposefully.

Ai in the classroom rubric for self assessment level 1 to 4 work in progress by katrina ward — I created this rubric (work in progress) based on the ITL Microsoft Partners in learning rubrics. There are more categories in the rubric - but this is the first page as an example.

AI might not be a silver bullet or a magic solution, but neither is it a storm to be feared.

It’s not really an “AI or the highway” scenario, forcing a binary choice of ‘this or that.’ AI is simply a tool, and like any tool, its value lies entirely in how we use it. By asking critical questions, exploring practical use cases, and fostering collaboration, we can move beyond the ‘yes or no’ debate. Instead, we can become thoughtful, critical users who forge our own purposeful path forward—together.

I added this as a provocation - does the SAMR rubric work when considering AI? SAMR rubric by Puentedura adapted for AI use.

Thoughts? Questions? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

This term I’ve been playing with visual learning and metaphor as a way to anchor students’ understanding about a new Achievement Standard in English (1.2 - Demonstrate understanding of specific aspects of studied texts). After exploring and explaining a ‘boat and anchor’ metaphor in class with quick sketches on the whiteboard, I took the time to draw it up as a published whiteboard on Canva so that students could ‘connect the dots’ and revise the key requirements of the task more easily.

Breaking things down into pictures is a way to reduce cognitive load and is also a way for students to connect with their learning beyond written instructions. Using images to support learning is a way to offer both scaffolding as well as differentiated learning opportunities. Using pictures to support words (or visuals to work alongside verbals) aligns with Dual Coding Theory which you can read more about here. The main principle is that retention and memory is enhanced by offering pictures as well as words. Applying a UDL lens, pictographic representations are also useful supports for students with dyslexia, dyscalculia and autism and can make learning more ‘universally’ engaging.

Application of metaphor

The boat metaphor I used in this instance was a way to discuss the importance of tying an observation about aspects of a text to the author’s purpose, to the theme and to draw attention to the fact that the ‘treasure’ of this learning is exploring a personal response. This was a useful mataphor because it helped students to understand that naming a technique and giving an example of it is like pushing a boat out onto the water - it will float away if it is not anchored to anything. The examples need to be linked together (like a chain), the boat needs to be anchored to the author’s purpose (why is it there in the first place) - but also that the ‘real treasure’ is our own responses and thinking about the ideas or themes in the text.

I used the metaphor of a boat and anchor ‘chain’ as a way to explain that examples need to be linked together for their writing to be convincing. If students zoom into the chain, they can see that it is also likened to a venn diagram in order to show diagrammatically that the connection between aspects and how they work together is where the magic happens. By recreating the anchor metaphor in Canva, I was also able to add explainer post its at each section of the image for students to zoom in and out to - depending on how much support they needed. In this way the visual whiteboard works as a differentiated learning tool too.

VIsual learning is away to present complex information in a more memorable way. My interest has been in whether or not this way of presenting learning is ‘actually helpful’ or if it is a waste of time. As it turns out, verbal feedback from the students indicates that it ‘is really helpful’ and I have noticed that they are able to talk about ‘anchoring’ their ideas to the author’s purpose. It also has served as a way for students to know that the ‘treasure’ is the most important part and that they need to explore different ways of connecting to a text in order to have a justified personal response. From a numbers standpoint, when I look at ‘click through’ analytics or observe how many students are ‘in the board’ each lesson (and out of class time), this has been a quick indication that presenting learning visually is something that the students are keen to engage with.

Targeting asynchronous delivery

I ended up extending the whiteboard canvas in Canva to summarise the other key documents that are already loaded to the Learning Management System. Where information was new, I added a ‘NEW’ sticker and drew their attention to it in class and on the class stream (live feed) to ensure that students who had been away would not miss the notification. I also screenshot the board and reposted it to the stream to indicate ‘where’ on the map there might be updates to check out. The benefit of the visual map as a way to present learning is that the students can ‘explore’ all of the resources in one place and have a better understanding of how they fit together through the process of exploration (active learning) and they also don’t need a tab open for every document.

Addressing Challenges with Google Classroom

Google Classroom can be a frustrating conduit for learning..There is limited functionality as far as how resources can be presented to students. The list view has limited iconographic or colour-coding functionality and I am constantly guiding students how to find things even when there are clear titles because the headings alone are what distinguishes one resources from another. Students seem to waste so much time clicking in and out and around to find documents. By presenting hyperlinks to the key resources within the Canva whiteboard, I am able to streamline the ‘purpose’ of each doc with explainer notes. Similarly, students can ‘see’ what they are about to click on before they click into it.

A major benefit of visual learning is how complex information can be presented in a more memorable way. Finding a metaphor and using visual aid is a useful way to present multiple steps or share pieces of a bigger project. Using a whiteboard is also an engaging way for students to zoom in and review/pick a path and explore class materials as well as supporting information or explanatory notes without needing multiple tabs open to organise their exploration.

Visual learning and using visual aids can also make it easier for students to process and remember information. Additionally, the use of metaphor can also improve memory retention so that students can visually re-trace connections by remembering parts of an image. Further, presenting material visually and/or with metaphor is a more inclusive way to present information because it can so easily include iconographic supports.

Trials and Tweaks

If I were to use this particular canvas again, I might make it more linear rather than ‘scattered’ or I might potentially number sections or use more arrows to indicate flow and progressions. In this instance and as an initial experiment, this map was built alongside students and added to incrementally to build on synchronous and collaborative learning in class. As a tool, the students were already familiar with the boat/anchor metaphor so the board served them like a revision tool. If it were a stand-alone tool that I needed students to explore on their own, I might need to scaffold the pathways a bit more clearly.

Canva whiteboards are a fun way to present a lot of information in a visual way. An important note is that this visual learning/mapping tool is presented ‘as well as’ the list view within Google Classroom rather than ‘instead of’. It is also an optional way to explore materials and is not a ‘must’ for students who prefer more traditional delivery methodology.

Miro is another great whiteboard tool with a few more embed functions that Canva hasn’t got yet (although it needs a paid account). As a note, my Canva account is an education account and the hyperlinking of docs is a workaround to try to get some of the functionality of the Miro ‘embed PDF’ option that I like. (Just as an FYI). I have found that you can embed video and powerpoints/slideshows relatively easily within Canva too.

And that’s my picture.

What do you think? How might you use more visual learning tools or metaphors in the classroom?

Finding your position on AI in education

Visual Learning and Metaphor in the Classroom