The AI Frontier Wakelet Collection
Daily Resource Share / May 2nd, 2023
The last few weeks of my work life have revolved around artificial intelligence. I am working on a course for Utah Education Network on AI in schools called The AI Frontier. The course is meant to be an introduction to AI in classrooms beyond trying out an AI and seeing what it can help you do (albeit sometimes poorly). Too many times with new technologies, the mindset is to try it out, see how it fits (or doesn’t) into your learning community, and then institute it. The problem is that the educator is stuck with the brunt of the three major aspects of being creative: they have to imagine the use, they have to build the use case, and then they have to institutionalize the process and tool. That leaves educators in a somewhat disappointing space; they often don’t get to step three because after imagining, developing, and prototyping use cases for the technology in their classroom, they are already too tired to share their work with others. It is a fine line between empowering and overwhelming educators. I know that I often get to the end of building a process or idea with students and by the time that I want to share, I am either too tired to share or my imposter syndrome comes out to play.
So, the question is, how can we provide professional development that empowers teachers to develop actionable projects using AI? No, that is actually not the question that we want to answer. It is too shortsighted. There will always be something new to try and to build our classroom learning around. The goal shouldn’t be focus only on AI, but to develop professional development that encourages teachers to explore new technology gives them protocols for using it, and helps encourage them to build their own learning environment systems for using technology. It is important to help educators to walk away from a PD experience with goals in mind and a practical framework for building their goals.
The AI Frontier is a course that I hope will help teachers to engage in learning about AI, but also about using new technologies, that will help them build a framework for their classrooms. The course will be free for all Utah educators and will launch later in May. As a taster, check out this Wakelet collection that is full of articles, videos, and a variety of AI to try divided by content area.
