It's the Teacher That Matters Most in Teaching and Learning, Not Screens, Not AI...That's The Lesson Needed for School Leaders in All These Screen Ban Efforts

How can I transform teaching and learning to accommodate or integrate AI? THAT is the WRONG question.

The correct question is, if it follows that AI is actually another tool to be used in education should be: How can AI (or any tool) help teachers engage in better teaching and students engage in better learning?

The history of Ed Tech says we asked the wrong questions when the PC, Web 2.0., and social media came along. Then, we asked how can I use these tools to transform and revolutionize, rather than how can these tools be used to facilitate? To equip?

Perhaps that's why Ed Tech and the technology cheerleaders are desperately trying to defend all the technologies it has introduced in education. 

Educators are susceptible to the “glimmer of gadgets” and have been for some time. Instead of asking the facilitating question, they sometimes look to the technologies for salvation, and the result is the present. Now, with little evidence to support a dramatic revolution in teaching and learning, important critical questions are being asked about the rightful place of technologies—screens if you want to call them—in the classroom.

We know how students learn and we have a repetoire of teaching methods at our disposal, and much of the research shows that what makes learning happen is WHAT A GOOD TEACHER DOES WITH THE STUDENTS DURING THE TIME THEY ARE IN HER/HIS CLASSROOM. It is really that simple. 

Yet, instead of looking to the one single individual who has the potential impact on learning the most, we get tangled in our devices, or fanciful technologies if you will, and we forget the teacher. 

I remember the minor debate in my schooling as a student when calculators appeared, (Yes I am that old.), but I don’t recall the raging enthusiasm to transform teaching and learning through the magical powers of the Texas Instrument calculator. It was seen as simply a machine, not a mechanistic path to save education, and we used it when it was useful and did not use it when our teachers determined that it was not useful and an obstacle to what they were teaching and what we were learning.

AI, if it is simply a tool, then let’s kick the pedestal out from under it,  toss out all the hype, and lets just see if it really can help teachers teach and students learn. That has yet to be truly determined, in spite of the mad search for evidence to justify AI existence in the classroom rather than trying to see if teaching and learning improve.

And that is another issue as well, for the AI enthusiasts want their new shiny device so badly to be the salvation in the classroom, that they won’t give it time to demonstrate whether it will be useful or not. 

Generative AI has not been around for more than a few years, and every opportunist under the sun is peddling it as the answer for all our problems, especially those in education. And, if anyone expresses concerns over its issues and problems, they are bombarded with promotional hype and labels of being a Luddite.

If I were to provide some experiential advice to all educators and especially educational leaders, stop listening to the AI cheerleading, and let’s settle down and see if this new technology offers teachers anything to enhance their teaching and students anything to enhance their learning.

Stop looking to technology to transform education. Stop looking for an invention that will somehow make learning happen. We know already what will make learning happen, and that is a well-trained, experienced teacher in the classroom equipped not with the fads of the day, but with she or he says they need to educate students.

Ultimately, let’s remember this: It’s the teacher stupid, that ultimately matters, not the gadgets!