"Together, we designed and ran an AI Theory and Composition class at my school."
For me, this is such an intriguing path for many schools to consider offering: to get teachers enthusiastic about doing the work you both have done to create a specific course + space to help students develop this expertise—and then to broaden it organically within school communities over time.
(Also: way more effective than just "flipping a switch" and telling all teachers to implement AI without any guidance or resources!)
Yes! After this experience, I think Nick agrees that "flipping the switch" is a recipe for disaster. If we had had the luxury of working in collaboration with other teachers in a department or school with skin in the game, we would have had a much different book to write. It's somewhat of a mystery why the impulse is to withdraw into the classroom with the door shut and let this pesky bot have its way with us humans.
For a long time now, I've thought that we need a "5th core class" of digital literacy in schools—which of course now would be largely built around AI literacy.
I don't think it's a "mystery" that educators who have not been offered time and resources (and who also have some valid ethical questions) would be resistant to AI implementation within their courses; I do think that the productive move would be to help develop literacy amongst students and teachers alike in the school building through courses like yours, though, from which it could begin as an "opt-in" and then organically grow!
Thanks, Marcus, for your encouraging response. We are excited about our cautious progress. You are right about the mystery. The lack of training and ethical dilemma combine to paralyze many educators. And productive moves take time, energy, thought, and flexibility. That last item in particular. We hope to give other educators a little courage, perhaps a pathway to try incrementally. The change will be slow, but steady from this point forward. Problematism will eventually give way to solutionism. It always does.
That sounds like a fantastic opportunity to keep up your work with broader impacts. I'd love to see your frameworks applied in that area as a proof of concept and then expanded.
Congratulations on your new role! It is heartening to hear that you are going to be a taking on this role of guiding AI on this larger scale and speaking in Korea. Our future needs more people like you (and Terry) guiding ethical, responsible AI.
Congratulations! And thank you both for the post about your excellent work.
I'm very curious about what a 'writing situation' looks like. Could you tell me more about "investigations of specific writing situations and designed their own work within those contexts."?
Also, I'd love to hear about your suite of FERPA-protected suite AI tools. Were these organised by you are provided by the school? I'm having problems securing AI tools for my classes and I'd like to hear how you solved this problem.
I'm developing an AI+writing class for next year and I'm very keen to learn from your experiences. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Ryan. Nick can tell you more about the tools. I think for now we need to hold off on publishing about "writing situations" because we are working on a chapter for the book. We're planning to propose the book to two academic publishers who can get some eyes on it. It is a key concept that reshapes the landscape from "assignment" to "project." As Nick can attest, it's risky business the first time through a project with students and AI, but it pays off for the kids. Stay tuned.
Thanks Terry. I wish you well with the publishers. I guess, if they're academic, then we may not hear about it for a few years ;-)
I agree that it's risky in that everybody is figuring out how to do this and it's a bit messy. I plan for my students to be part of the creation process so we can figure it out together.
I look forward to reading about your methods in due course.
Hi, Ryan, thanks for your interest. You are lighting the fire in our writing furnaces.
I piloted a tool called BoodleBox. BB is primarily being used in college and university contexts. BB follows FERPA and COPPA protocols--anonymizing at API, sending on only essential data to coordinating AI models, deleting all content on their side of the bot after 30 days. BB offers access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity Pro, and a few open-source models. My students and I piloted another a tool called Power Notes earlier in the school year, but that tool didn't allow the free flow of prompting we required for some of the more interactive parts of our curriculum, so we shifted to BB. I had students-guardians sign use contracts to make BB a possibility for our student and in our school content. BB probably offers a little more freedom than is necessary for most secondary use cases.
Thanks Nick, Your furnaces are heating the house. Great to see a community of AI educators working together to find solutions.
Thanks for sharing BB, that looks like it might be a perfect fit for what I'm looking for. I've bumped it upstairs. Any comments on your pilot experience? What was it good at? Where did you bump into limitations?
Note that this system doesn't work like Khanmigo, etc. No real-time monitoring features. Students need to share their work through BB for instructors to see chat interactions. This system also doesn't throw up massive red flags when students start to dig into murkier waters. The first quality worked well for the kind of trust we were trying to cultivate in our classroom space. The second quality is a bit of a concern for K-12 contexts.
But the BB people are amazing to work with. Very responsive to feedback. The application is evolving through user engagement. DM if you want some contact info.
Thanks. I work with smaller groups and we trust each other, so I don't foresee any issues. I'll see what the boss says, but I may take you up on your connect. Much appreciated.
"Together, we designed and ran an AI Theory and Composition class at my school."
For me, this is such an intriguing path for many schools to consider offering: to get teachers enthusiastic about doing the work you both have done to create a specific course + space to help students develop this expertise—and then to broaden it organically within school communities over time.
(Also: way more effective than just "flipping a switch" and telling all teachers to implement AI without any guidance or resources!)
Yes! After this experience, I think Nick agrees that "flipping the switch" is a recipe for disaster. If we had had the luxury of working in collaboration with other teachers in a department or school with skin in the game, we would have had a much different book to write. It's somewhat of a mystery why the impulse is to withdraw into the classroom with the door shut and let this pesky bot have its way with us humans.
For a long time now, I've thought that we need a "5th core class" of digital literacy in schools—which of course now would be largely built around AI literacy.
I don't think it's a "mystery" that educators who have not been offered time and resources (and who also have some valid ethical questions) would be resistant to AI implementation within their courses; I do think that the productive move would be to help develop literacy amongst students and teachers alike in the school building through courses like yours, though, from which it could begin as an "opt-in" and then organically grow!
Thanks, Marcus, for your encouraging response. We are excited about our cautious progress. You are right about the mystery. The lack of training and ethical dilemma combine to paralyze many educators. And productive moves take time, energy, thought, and flexibility. That last item in particular. We hope to give other educators a little courage, perhaps a pathway to try incrementally. The change will be slow, but steady from this point forward. Problematism will eventually give way to solutionism. It always does.
That sounds like a fantastic opportunity to keep up your work with broader impacts. I'd love to see your frameworks applied in that area as a proof of concept and then expanded.
Congratulations on your new role! It is heartening to hear that you are going to be a taking on this role of guiding AI on this larger scale and speaking in Korea. Our future needs more people like you (and Terry) guiding ethical, responsible AI.
Thanks so much. You are very kind. I am excited to carry on with this work and to hopefully make a broader impact.
Congratulations! And thank you both for the post about your excellent work.
I'm very curious about what a 'writing situation' looks like. Could you tell me more about "investigations of specific writing situations and designed their own work within those contexts."?
Also, I'd love to hear about your suite of FERPA-protected suite AI tools. Were these organised by you are provided by the school? I'm having problems securing AI tools for my classes and I'd like to hear how you solved this problem.
I'm developing an AI+writing class for next year and I'm very keen to learn from your experiences. Any guidance would be much appreciated.
Thanks, Ryan. Nick can tell you more about the tools. I think for now we need to hold off on publishing about "writing situations" because we are working on a chapter for the book. We're planning to propose the book to two academic publishers who can get some eyes on it. It is a key concept that reshapes the landscape from "assignment" to "project." As Nick can attest, it's risky business the first time through a project with students and AI, but it pays off for the kids. Stay tuned.
Thanks Terry. I wish you well with the publishers. I guess, if they're academic, then we may not hear about it for a few years ;-)
I agree that it's risky in that everybody is figuring out how to do this and it's a bit messy. I plan for my students to be part of the creation process so we can figure it out together.
I look forward to reading about your methods in due course.
Hi, Ryan, thanks for your interest. You are lighting the fire in our writing furnaces.
I piloted a tool called BoodleBox. BB is primarily being used in college and university contexts. BB follows FERPA and COPPA protocols--anonymizing at API, sending on only essential data to coordinating AI models, deleting all content on their side of the bot after 30 days. BB offers access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity Pro, and a few open-source models. My students and I piloted another a tool called Power Notes earlier in the school year, but that tool didn't allow the free flow of prompting we required for some of the more interactive parts of our curriculum, so we shifted to BB. I had students-guardians sign use contracts to make BB a possibility for our student and in our school content. BB probably offers a little more freedom than is necessary for most secondary use cases.
Thanks Nick, Your furnaces are heating the house. Great to see a community of AI educators working together to find solutions.
Thanks for sharing BB, that looks like it might be a perfect fit for what I'm looking for. I've bumped it upstairs. Any comments on your pilot experience? What was it good at? Where did you bump into limitations?
Note that this system doesn't work like Khanmigo, etc. No real-time monitoring features. Students need to share their work through BB for instructors to see chat interactions. This system also doesn't throw up massive red flags when students start to dig into murkier waters. The first quality worked well for the kind of trust we were trying to cultivate in our classroom space. The second quality is a bit of a concern for K-12 contexts.
But the BB people are amazing to work with. Very responsive to feedback. The application is evolving through user engagement. DM if you want some contact info.
Thanks. I work with smaller groups and we trust each other, so I don't foresee any issues. I'll see what the boss says, but I may take you up on your connect. Much appreciated.
Are you going to publish any materials on the AI theory and composition class? I would like to teach that.
Yes. Nick and I are working on a book. I’ll see how he feels about dipping into that material prior to submitting a book proposal