Educational Leaders Need to Learn Locally First, There's No Consultant and App for That

Wait! Before you spend that money on an educational consultant or “expert” consider these thoughts first.

Wendell Berry, essayist, novelist, poet, and farmer, once wrote about a problem he experienced on his property. He had wooded hillside where he wanted to pasture livestock, but there was no water source available.

He consulted an expert, then set about clearing land of trees and grading it to create a small pond on a “narrow bench.” It successfully filled with water and seemed to resolve the problem.

That fall and winter, it was extremely wet, so the hillside collapsed into the pond, completely filling it. In spite of the expert advice, he was back to square one. He says:

“The trouble was the familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge. The fault was mine.”

In other words, he did not know enough about the local, and just acted, and the result was his fault alone.

He said he got “expert” advice at the project’s outset, but he forgot something he already knew to be true:

“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place. If one’s knowledge of one’s whereabouts is insufficient, if one’s judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.”

Berry hits on some very important points that educators and school leaders often forget: Experts and consultants do not know everything about your school or district no matter how many “success stories” they tell or “testimonial tales of salvation” they offer. They lack complete contextual knowledge.

They do not know your schools, your classrooms, your students, your communities, your parents, and not all of these are the same. Schools are complex places, and an “expert” or consultant bearing a formulaic solution will not always provide a solution to the problems you face.

You have no choice but work hard and get know everything locally, and that takes effort and time, sometimes months and years. And you have to be willing to learn and listen instead of acting like a physician and prescribing medicine about an illness that looks like something seen elsewhere, but is really a unique, local problem.

Once you know locally, you can then make sounder judgments regarding solutions. There is no expert that is going to be able to provide instantly successful solutions so set aside the marketing and sales hype from the thunderous consultant crowd, and listen and learn locally perpetually.

This is the hard work of education; no shortcuts allowed.

Learn locally first as much as possible before calling in the experts, and once you have called them in, know your schools, your districts, your people and your community. Then you will have the knowledge to make sound judgments about solutions and their “expert” advice.

Before Signing That New Technology Contract, Be Sure to Consider Technical Debt: It's Always There and the Salesperson Isn't Going to Tell You About It

I recently heard the term “technical debt” used in a conversation about the use of AI in software coding. It refers to “the future costs associated with relying on shortcuts or suboptimal decisions made during software development.” 

I suggest that educators and educational leaders experience a kind of “technical debt” when they adopt technologies in their classrooms and schools, and that these debts are not always considered, especially in the glitter and glow of devices that are being marketed to them. 

These educators and educational leaders can’t envision the future costs of these technologies because they suffer from the eyeglaze that accompanies these devices.

But technical debt is a real future cost when selecting ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY and educational AI solutions are no different.

What’s particularly frightening with AI, it is so novel that all of these technical debts are not known yet.

In other words, schools don’t really know how the adoption of these technologies will impact future budgets if it is to be maintained. This is especially true since companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have not yet figured out how to profit from their products. This alone, makes all future costs of GenAI to schools unknown.

School leaders would do well to be aware that any adoption of a technology on offer from an Ed Tech company as well as any other tech solutions comes with these Technical debts.

This means being vigilant and skeptical and asking questions about possible technical debt is important, even if it is currently unforeseen. 

For example, asking about the profitability of a company can be important as is the current health of that company. Will this company be around 5 years, 10 years? 

Educators need technical solutions that are not going to saddle them with technical debts that will consumer even more of the already scarce budgets. 

A complete investigation into the solution and the company offering it is vital, otherwise, schools and school districts will find themselves saddled with technical debts impossible to resolve.

Is It Me, Or Are Some AI Advocates and Trainers Sounding Like Revival Preachers? Its a Tool Not the Foundation for a Ed Tech Religion!

Has anyone else noticed how the educational AI promotional movement has become like a religious revival movement? And, that it is being heavily promoted by those like AI companies, Ed Tech consultants, and even educators who stand to gain billions of dollars and professional recognition because of it?

I recently saw a LinkedIn post, “the official AI Promo Echo Chamber,” where an ISTE AI trainer and consultant actually boasted like he was in a old time tent revival meeting: “I have set out to train EVERY K-12 TEACHER AND COLLEGE FACULTY MEMBER IN THE COUNTRY ON USING AI TO TRANSFORM TEACHING AND LEARNING.”

Pardon my thoughts here, but that sounds like a “fanatic on a mission” not some individual who is thoughtful and measured about AI and its uses. His mission is not to thoughtfully explore the possibilities of AI; it appears his mission is to ram down the throats of educators everywhere his beliefs in the transformative powers of AI technology.

We’ve been here before where Ed Tech advocates boasted about the so-called “transformative power” of technologies, but usually the only thing that gets transformed are the wallets of those selling and consulting for these technologies and the slim budgets of schools scrambling for ways to pay for them.

This ISTE AI trainer and promotional evangelist also boasted about “standing on the stage at Google’s headquarters” training the first cohort of new converts. I can’t even begin to suggest how nefarious this is, for you have a Big Tech company poised to siphon billions more from K-12 to college education than they have already done with their Google Apps and Chromebooks. At the heart, this seems like an AI fundamentalist, evangelistic effort. That is the Ed Tech way in the 21st century.

The problem with AI efforts in education right now is that it is being promoted as “transformative” when Generative AI in its currrent form has only been around for around 4 years. It hasn’t been around long enough to even determine what its long-term consequences might be much less transform anything.

The AI implementation efforts right now, which is clear from the ISTE AI revivalist preacher, is not a thoughtful, careful, and critical examination of AI as a tool; it is “a gospel of salvation wrought through the technological marvels of artificial intelligence.”

These evangelists aren’t interested in training criticial users. Instead, they seem to want to convert the entire educational establishment on behalf of AI companies who are bankrolling the entire movement.

These AI movements have the slight flavor of totalitarian, fundamentalist movements, and “AI zealots” are set out to convert the masses on its saving possibilities even before there is any established research.

And what’s worse, they are engaging in misformation like the notion that AI has been around for years, as stated by one AI promoter, which is not entirely the truth. AI has been around at the edges of our applications, but generative AI is only a more recent development. Those preaching for conversion even sometimes use half truths and even false statements all in the service of gaining converts.

It’s time for educators everywhere to be thoughtful and critical of those who are leading this AI movement. Instead of allowing them to make boasts about the “transformative” possibilities of their favorite technology, its time to question them. During their “training” sessions, when they make claims, ask them to support those claims. Question their evidence. You might even question their affiliations with tech companies and organizations and their sponsors. That certainly can explain their presence.

When a movement like this gains some religious flavors, concerned educators should be skeptical. They should question everything. They should be concerned about what this technology might do to students and even our society years down the road. Most of all, they need to call out this inevitability narrative. 

After all, as historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI: “Technology only creates new opportunities; it is up to us to decide which ones to pursue.” 

It is up to us, all educators, parents, school leaders to decide on which AI opportunities we should pursue. We should not leave that choice to those like Google and their paid consultants and revivialist preachers to make that decision for us.

An Important Component of AI Literacy and Digital Literacy: Teaching Students to Be Critical Users and Not Just How to Work With Technology

Are you educating students to use AI or are you educating students to work with AI? How you approach AI and all technology with your students in the classroom matters.

Educating students to use AI places the technology in “tool” or “utilitarian” status. The tool is subordinate to the user. The user is in control. She decides when, where, why, and how to use the technology. The user controls the technology entirely.

In opposition, educating students to “work with AI” places the technology in equal or dominate status. It is not placed in tool status at all. Instead, the technology enjoys the status of  co-worker and sometimes even supervisor or manager. The student is placed in a partnership relationship or an subordinate relationship to the technology. The student does not have full control of the when, where, why, and how of the technology’s use. He must accept the presence of the technology as an inevitable part of life and even possibly submit to its decision-making and direction. (Is it any wonder why Big Tech wants us to teach this relationship?)

When Ed Tech uses the phrase “Educate students to use AI” or “Educate students to work with AI” it defines the students’ relationships to the technology, so deliberate thought is needed in the way the technology can be empowering to the student, or it can enslave the student. Educators must be deliberate and vigilant in their approaches.

We should be educating students to be potential and critical users of AI, with special emphasis on the critical. We should never teach students to be co-workers or submissive to the technology. Students should be taught that AI and technology has political and other consequences when it is used, not passive acceptance of its use. There are times when AI should not be used, and that should be part of the instruction.

If we want students to be free users of AI we should place students in total control of the technology, not teach them to be passive, submissive users, and this is done by educating them to be critical users not simply users.

Screen Time Bans and Limits Are Really A Search for a Healthy Relationship to Technology

Those who are asking for screen-time limits are people who seek to relieve children from what writer Paul Kingsnorth calls "the eye-glaze of screen burn."

It is a quest for a healthy relationship to technology instead of the almost worshipful stance currently held by so many in Ed Tech.

A healthy relationship to technology is one where all the world, digital to analog, is in the toolbox.

A healthy relationship to technology is not an endless quest to elevate it to the "go-to solution."

A health relationship to technology is the recognition and acknowledgment that even though technology might be used, sometimes it does not have to be nor should it.

A healthy relationship to technology is valuing the human over the Machine always.

Finally, a healthy relationship to technology is one where devices are not a constant intrusion and distraction; they are simply a toaster sitting in the background and used when needed  and not a device constantly beeping like a little child, demanding our attention.

Screen time limits and bans have arisen because of the excesses of a Ed Tech discipline and industry agenda that so desperately wants devices on every desk, in every hand and used during every lesson.

It is time to remove the glitter, gleam and dazzle from devices and treat them as we have microwaves, clocks, watches and power saws: as simply tools.

A New EdTech Definition of a Chatbot

 Definition of a Chatbot:

A cheap way for a company to pretend to care for their customers without really caring at all.

Can also be utilized to replace human tutors when humans are too cheap to pay a real person who cares to tutor.

Also, still another way for EdTech companies to squeeze even more money out of already scarce education budgets.

The Arrogance of Silicon Valley and Big Tech Is Harming Us All

I had my Google Search set up to avoid using the "AI Overview" and after the browser updated it eliminated that option.

This is clearly how Big Tech and Silicon Valley are going to make "AI Inevitable." 

They are going to force it down users' throats.

The AI Overview in Google can't be trusted to be correct and it does not provide access to the sources it uses.

For now, I will simply switch my default search to another search engine.

We are now in an era when Silicon Valley CEOs and Tech Companies think they know better than we do what we want in our tech products. 

Tech companies want to dictate our products. A consumer backlash is starting, and it will be more powerful that simple "Boos at Graduations" too.