Educators everywhere are grappling with AI in their schools and classrooms, as professionals and with students. Many of these conversations focus on what tool to use and when to use it, or about how to “future-proof” students from the continually evolving nature of AI tools. These conversations aren’t bad, but they aren’t the full story.
It’s our premise that students will continue to need to cultivate key skills in a world with AI. Rather than displacing things like critical thinking, communication, collaboration, or empathy, these skills become even more important when AI is at the table taking on new tasks at an exponential pace.
These are skills that make us human and help us apply our own values and contexts more fully to the use of AI. Additionally, as discussed previously, these skills have been identified in Pennsylvania’s new Career Education and Work Standards as critical for our future workforce. They enable students to determine if we should do something, regardless of whether it is technologically possible. Just because it feels easier and appears more efficient, are the costs to myself and others worth it? Are the tools that I may have access to equitably accessible by everyone, or have I made assumptions that aren’t valid?
In March, Aaron Altemus and Debbie Pixton from our team had the opportunity to talk with educators at Hampton Township School District about how they might use AI to help cultivate their Portrait of a Talbot competencies – things like communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Their workshop focused on how to keep our thinking about AI human-centered and how that mindset can guide decision making about if, when, and where to use AI with students across all grade levels.
Following the morning workshop, Debbie had the opportunity to participate in a panel about the use of AI in school in service of their Portrait of a Talbot competencies and the district’s strategic plan. Questions covered the need for industry, postsecondary, and community partnerships; strategies for engaging students in ways that cultivate key skills; and what’s most critical for students graduating from the district.
In preparing for the panel, one question really stuck out, given the Consortium’s role at the intersection of education and work: From your various lenses, the classroom, research, workforce, and community, what will distinguish a Hampton graduate who thrives in an AI-driven economy from one who merely adapts?
The answer may not surprise you.
Students who don’t let AI drive them will be distinct. They are the students who continue to own their own decisions, their own learning, and their own health. Students who build their understanding of AI and their ability to evaluate AI will use AI as a tool, but they will thrive because they will still have a range of tools in their toolbox. They will have other means for thinking, creating, problem solving, building relationships, and more. When AI becomes the only tool, or the driver for everything else, that is when graduates are in a position to constantly respond instead of organically evolving the way they work. People who can leverage tools and think outside and around them, who can work with others and put humans and their needs at the center of decision making – they are the students who will thrive.
Anyone interested in learning more about AI literacy, beyond the use of tools, might be interested in Digital Promise’s AI Literacy: A Framework to Understand, Evaluate, and Use Emerging Technology. The report provides a useful framework that supports our thesis. Its primary focus is that AI Literacy includes understanding and evaluating AI as essential components, valued as much or more so than AI use alone.
