The high school where I teach blanket bans AI for the reasons you outlined above. Too much AI being utilized as avoidance real schoolwork and critical thought. But we can't afford to stick our collective heads in the sand. I am not now nor have ever been an ostrich. The rise of AI will force educators to re-imagine curriculum design and how to engage students with it. I'm chronically faced every year with students not at the requisite reading level so most barely have the stamina for reading and processing primary sources in a history class. Next year my goal is collaborate with AI on a plan to help create VALUE to the students in expanding their vocabulary with concept terms. The critical thinking prompts of yesterday are already obsolete. They will need to be refreshed with new ones that challenge them create something new, apply what they learned and maybe most importantly, self-reflect on the learning process. Meeting students where they are now means using collaborative AI to bring their experiences, their cultural background, and even biases into this process. It will be arduous but if it works we might be at the forefront of something pretty great.
The University of Chicago has not been a model of good stewardship in higher education and the moves being discussed here merit a generous dose of skepticism.
I was more interested in the process of how they went about it which, based on the sequence of events, is thoughtful. As with everything about school decision making, leadership choices will always be second guessed. Part of my point is that at least they laid out their reasons. Much of the criticism in that article detail financial decision making that significantly pre-dates the rise of generative AI - I'd be curious how or to what extent Professor Ando was involved (or not) in the AI and Education Working Group. Since the article pre-dates this decision by over a year, there is no substantive critique of what's discussed above. But I take your point! Thanks for the comment.
The high school where I teach blanket bans AI for the reasons you outlined above. Too much AI being utilized as avoidance real schoolwork and critical thought. But we can't afford to stick our collective heads in the sand. I am not now nor have ever been an ostrich. The rise of AI will force educators to re-imagine curriculum design and how to engage students with it. I'm chronically faced every year with students not at the requisite reading level so most barely have the stamina for reading and processing primary sources in a history class. Next year my goal is collaborate with AI on a plan to help create VALUE to the students in expanding their vocabulary with concept terms. The critical thinking prompts of yesterday are already obsolete. They will need to be refreshed with new ones that challenge them create something new, apply what they learned and maybe most importantly, self-reflect on the learning process. Meeting students where they are now means using collaborative AI to bring their experiences, their cultural background, and even biases into this process. It will be arduous but if it works we might be at the forefront of something pretty great.
The University of Chicago has not been a model of good stewardship in higher education and the moves being discussed here merit a generous dose of skepticism.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-university-started-long-before-trump/
I was more interested in the process of how they went about it which, based on the sequence of events, is thoughtful. As with everything about school decision making, leadership choices will always be second guessed. Part of my point is that at least they laid out their reasons. Much of the criticism in that article detail financial decision making that significantly pre-dates the rise of generative AI - I'd be curious how or to what extent Professor Ando was involved (or not) in the AI and Education Working Group. Since the article pre-dates this decision by over a year, there is no substantive critique of what's discussed above. But I take your point! Thanks for the comment.
At last - a reasoned approach.