Your work and Terry Underwood's work have some type of special sauce for this about implementation and integration...I really like that Feb 3 "cognitive bleed" argument guest post from Nigel Daly within this topic today too. I'd caution that the initial thought within HS education should continue to be "why this tool now" for integration- is it perceptions of machine intelligence usefulness, productivity, profitability guiding the instructor to feel a necessity to use these tools? How much are we working within what pushed Dewey to both "free" students within a constricting educational setting, but also arguably set a path that now "limits" students within that same setting - education for material world understanding that translates to self-sufficient skill sets that increase a graduates productivity in a society built on monetizing skill sets? Can the instructor clearly clarify the future use, production, or profit from the intellectual work in the room aided or guided through this specific tool usage? Thinking as a current AP Lang teacher, but also an AP scorer in June. All of those roles are reflective of systematic choices of education that lead to pressure for efficient tool usage. But also, I'm a dad who went to sleep around 11:15 because his youngest daughter was writing poetry (for a contest she found and wants deeply to win) and working through nuance of word choice at specific time within poetic structures - and not using any other tool besides dialogue and acquired vocabulary from years of choosing reading physical books for leisure. Isn't the goal of any of our tools to assist students in expanding their ability to use language and make meaning in this world and their views of what they can not see as well? Language for transcendent wisdom, too...maybe unproductive in the longer run of productivity in material time, but our poetry and humanities usually has the breath and effort of people before us who worked, sometimes unproductively, to craft art that remains inspiring, challenging, uplifting, humanizing through time. Poetry, music, sculpture, the arts overall.
There's a swimming pool of Postman's Technopoly embedded within these questions you ask and HS educators in humanities need to be thoroughly clear on where the water is, the deep end, and that they are including swimming in that type of water as the instructional designer, or that they are quickly accepting and platforming machine intelligence tools as the "chlorine", to maybe finish out the metaphor. Keep up the excellent work!
You write about this topic in such a compelling and thoughtful way—thank you for this deeply resonant reflection. Let me know if you’d ever be interested in contributing more formally; I’d love to hear more about your classroom, your experience as a scorer, and your daughter’s poetry (what a beautiful and grounded counterbalance to some of these systemic pressures we’re naming).
You're absolutely right that "Why this technology, right now?" is a question that deserves to be foregrounded. We need that pause for critical interrogation. But I also think we’re in a moment where we can’t treat that as the only question. In many ways, the "now" has already been decided for us—by platforms, by market forces, by institutional inertia—and we're often responding from within that compressed timeline rather than choosing it. That doesn’t mean we abandon the question, but it does mean we have to pair it with others: How do we respond to the presence of this technology in ways that still align with our pedagogical values? What other kinds of meaning-making must be protected or re-centered in the face of it?
Your references to Dewey, Postman, and the arts really land here. There's a tension between education as preparation for a monetized skill economy and education as preparation for humane living—and it's a tension we feel acutely in the humanities. The poetry your daughter is crafting—unassisted, deliberate, rooted in years of lived language—reminds us what’s at stake.
I love your metaphor of swimming in Technopoly’s pool—especially the idea that educators must help students become aware of the water itself, not just float in it. That kind of awareness may be our most important task.
Thanks again for this comment. It’s the kind of reflection that stays with you.
Great article. I wasn't aware of such erroneous data. When I first came across it, I responded with the following, if you’d care to read:
The spectral headline currently haunting higher education is this: “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College.” Once again, we’re seeing calls to ban AI from classrooms, to return to in-person assessments, to dust off quill and parchment, to revive the oral exam. This reactionary cry to Make Academia Gothic Again may be understandable, but it’s ultimately unnecessary and unproductive.
If many students are indeed using AI to cheat their way through college, my response is, “No shit!” These are young people who have lived their entire lives in a digital world and now have free access to a system that contains nearly all documented human knowledge. It knows what would take a thousand lifetimes for any one person to learn, let alone recall in milliseconds. It’s a polymath in your pocket.
The real responsibility lies with educators. It’s on us to teach students how to use this technology responsibly, ethically, wisely. AI cannot be ignored. It will not disappear. It is only becoming more ubiquitous. No shit, they’re using it to cheat; we haven’t properly taught them how to use it. We haven’t lived up to our commitment: to prepare students for the world they’re actually entering, which will be an AI-driven world.
Great post Nick, thank you for shedding light on the hysteria that surrounds this. I would love to chat about the work that we are doing at Maryville University. Going on 2 years of data…
"Journalists should apply the same standards to educational reporting they apply to medical claims." The problem is, they don't report accurately on either. It only sells when it's sensationalised. Whilst I agree with you, I think the drama is sometimes necessary to bring about change. The fact that the curriculum in most countries hasn't been properly updated in 30 years blows my mind.
I agree with so much of what you're offering here, though I do wonder if you are contributing to the polarization you are critiquing by suggesting that there is something nefarious and intentionally obfuscating about the panic around AI and research showing negative impacts of AI in education. You describe an excellent approach to "real research" - but the way you frame it, everything else is somehow fake. I absolutely agree that we need to develop longitudinal large scale study over years! But we also need a diversity of research and study itself, including on-the-ground experience, philosophical inquiry, creative research and inquiry using the tools as they are evolving beneath our fingertips, right now! As a digital arts-based education researcher, very concerned about AI—both the potentials and the dangers—my research doesn't qualify in your paradigm of 'real'. Also, I just would offer that it is not wrong to be really really (really) worried about AI in education! It's not insane to feel panic. Especially when many folks who are building these things are having existential panic attacks of their own. It is not wrong to have serious ethical issues with wholesale adoption of AI in education. Though I agree we need to deal with it, not cover our eyes and say 'no-no-no-no' till it goes away. We need careful, considered, well-articulated implementation plans and partnerships with students, as you rightly observe. Anyhow, thank-you for this piece! I appreciate the provocation it offers and look forward to reading more.
I'm a random (techno optimist) mom out here in the world wondering, "how do I raise my 7-year old boys to be prepared for the brave new world we face?" I stumbled across your newsletter a while back, and it's part of my weekly rotation. I forwarded this article to multiple moms because it captures what my instincts (and my research) have been telling me. Really well done. Thank you!
Your work and Terry Underwood's work have some type of special sauce for this about implementation and integration...I really like that Feb 3 "cognitive bleed" argument guest post from Nigel Daly within this topic today too. I'd caution that the initial thought within HS education should continue to be "why this tool now" for integration- is it perceptions of machine intelligence usefulness, productivity, profitability guiding the instructor to feel a necessity to use these tools? How much are we working within what pushed Dewey to both "free" students within a constricting educational setting, but also arguably set a path that now "limits" students within that same setting - education for material world understanding that translates to self-sufficient skill sets that increase a graduates productivity in a society built on monetizing skill sets? Can the instructor clearly clarify the future use, production, or profit from the intellectual work in the room aided or guided through this specific tool usage? Thinking as a current AP Lang teacher, but also an AP scorer in June. All of those roles are reflective of systematic choices of education that lead to pressure for efficient tool usage. But also, I'm a dad who went to sleep around 11:15 because his youngest daughter was writing poetry (for a contest she found and wants deeply to win) and working through nuance of word choice at specific time within poetic structures - and not using any other tool besides dialogue and acquired vocabulary from years of choosing reading physical books for leisure. Isn't the goal of any of our tools to assist students in expanding their ability to use language and make meaning in this world and their views of what they can not see as well? Language for transcendent wisdom, too...maybe unproductive in the longer run of productivity in material time, but our poetry and humanities usually has the breath and effort of people before us who worked, sometimes unproductively, to craft art that remains inspiring, challenging, uplifting, humanizing through time. Poetry, music, sculpture, the arts overall.
There's a swimming pool of Postman's Technopoly embedded within these questions you ask and HS educators in humanities need to be thoroughly clear on where the water is, the deep end, and that they are including swimming in that type of water as the instructional designer, or that they are quickly accepting and platforming machine intelligence tools as the "chlorine", to maybe finish out the metaphor. Keep up the excellent work!
You write about this topic in such a compelling and thoughtful way—thank you for this deeply resonant reflection. Let me know if you’d ever be interested in contributing more formally; I’d love to hear more about your classroom, your experience as a scorer, and your daughter’s poetry (what a beautiful and grounded counterbalance to some of these systemic pressures we’re naming).
You're absolutely right that "Why this technology, right now?" is a question that deserves to be foregrounded. We need that pause for critical interrogation. But I also think we’re in a moment where we can’t treat that as the only question. In many ways, the "now" has already been decided for us—by platforms, by market forces, by institutional inertia—and we're often responding from within that compressed timeline rather than choosing it. That doesn’t mean we abandon the question, but it does mean we have to pair it with others: How do we respond to the presence of this technology in ways that still align with our pedagogical values? What other kinds of meaning-making must be protected or re-centered in the face of it?
Your references to Dewey, Postman, and the arts really land here. There's a tension between education as preparation for a monetized skill economy and education as preparation for humane living—and it's a tension we feel acutely in the humanities. The poetry your daughter is crafting—unassisted, deliberate, rooted in years of lived language—reminds us what’s at stake.
I love your metaphor of swimming in Technopoly’s pool—especially the idea that educators must help students become aware of the water itself, not just float in it. That kind of awareness may be our most important task.
Thanks again for this comment. It’s the kind of reflection that stays with you.
Great piece! Did some research on all this moral panic surrounding AI as well, lots of articles looking to embed themselves in arguments common to emerging tech:https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13548565251333212
Nice, Brent. Will check it out!
Thanks Nick! Speaks to what your talking about here I think
Great article. I wasn't aware of such erroneous data. When I first came across it, I responded with the following, if you’d care to read:
The spectral headline currently haunting higher education is this: “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College.” Once again, we’re seeing calls to ban AI from classrooms, to return to in-person assessments, to dust off quill and parchment, to revive the oral exam. This reactionary cry to Make Academia Gothic Again may be understandable, but it’s ultimately unnecessary and unproductive.
If many students are indeed using AI to cheat their way through college, my response is, “No shit!” These are young people who have lived their entire lives in a digital world and now have free access to a system that contains nearly all documented human knowledge. It knows what would take a thousand lifetimes for any one person to learn, let alone recall in milliseconds. It’s a polymath in your pocket.
The real responsibility lies with educators. It’s on us to teach students how to use this technology responsibly, ethically, wisely. AI cannot be ignored. It will not disappear. It is only becoming more ubiquitous. No shit, they’re using it to cheat; we haven’t properly taught them how to use it. We haven’t lived up to our commitment: to prepare students for the world they’re actually entering, which will be an AI-driven world.
Great post Nick, thank you for shedding light on the hysteria that surrounds this. I would love to chat about the work that we are doing at Maryville University. Going on 2 years of data…
Sounds great, Phil. Let's set up a time.
https://calendly.com/philipkomarny/30min
Excellent read!
Thanks so much Nick. This came just at the right moment.
Beware the binary and always beware the hyperbole!
"Journalists should apply the same standards to educational reporting they apply to medical claims." The problem is, they don't report accurately on either. It only sells when it's sensationalised. Whilst I agree with you, I think the drama is sometimes necessary to bring about change. The fact that the curriculum in most countries hasn't been properly updated in 30 years blows my mind.
I agree with so much of what you're offering here, though I do wonder if you are contributing to the polarization you are critiquing by suggesting that there is something nefarious and intentionally obfuscating about the panic around AI and research showing negative impacts of AI in education. You describe an excellent approach to "real research" - but the way you frame it, everything else is somehow fake. I absolutely agree that we need to develop longitudinal large scale study over years! But we also need a diversity of research and study itself, including on-the-ground experience, philosophical inquiry, creative research and inquiry using the tools as they are evolving beneath our fingertips, right now! As a digital arts-based education researcher, very concerned about AI—both the potentials and the dangers—my research doesn't qualify in your paradigm of 'real'. Also, I just would offer that it is not wrong to be really really (really) worried about AI in education! It's not insane to feel panic. Especially when many folks who are building these things are having existential panic attacks of their own. It is not wrong to have serious ethical issues with wholesale adoption of AI in education. Though I agree we need to deal with it, not cover our eyes and say 'no-no-no-no' till it goes away. We need careful, considered, well-articulated implementation plans and partnerships with students, as you rightly observe. Anyhow, thank-you for this piece! I appreciate the provocation it offers and look forward to reading more.
I'm a random (techno optimist) mom out here in the world wondering, "how do I raise my 7-year old boys to be prepared for the brave new world we face?" I stumbled across your newsletter a while back, and it's part of my weekly rotation. I forwarded this article to multiple moms because it captures what my instincts (and my research) have been telling me. Really well done. Thank you!
You are asking the big question. Some days I am more understanding than others.