I've listened to a handful of podcasts with education academics and professionals talking about AI. They invariably come across as totally lost, like a hen inviting a fox in to help watch the eggs.

It's perhaps to be expected, as these education people are usually non-technical. But it's definitely concerning that (once again) a lack of technical and media literacy among these education types will lead to them letting (overall) unhelpful tech swarm the system.

Look up some of Tressie McMillan Cottom's writing, podcast appearances, public lectures, etc etc. She's a McArthur-certified Genius and a full professor at UNC, and she's a spectacular writer and public intellectual.

She wrote "Lower Ed", about for-profit colleges in America and has identified places that more elite schools are copying that playbook.

https://bsky.app/profile/tressiemcphd.bsky.social

https://www.instagram.com/tressiemcphd/

>It's perhaps to be expected, as these education people are usually non-technical.

I don't think that's totally correct. I think it's because AI has come at everyone, equally, all at once. Educational academics didn't have years to study this because it was released on our kids at the same time.

> But it's definitely concerning that (once again) a lack of technical and media literacy among these education types will lead to them letting (overall) unhelpful tech swarm the system.

I hate this kind of framing because it puts the burden on the teachers when the folks we should be scrutinizing are the administrators and other stakeholders responsible for introducing it.

AI companies sell this tech to administrators, who then tell their teachers to adopt it in the classroom. A ton of them are probably getting their orders from a supervisor to use AI in class. But it's so easy to condescend and ignore the conversations that took place among decision-makers long before a teacher introduced it to the classroom.

It's like being angry at doctors for how terrible the insurance system is in the US.

EdTech has been like this for a long time. It's more education (educators) than technology.

What's exciting is that tech will be able to help provide more meaningful support instead of throwing dozens of software tools at a student.

I am pretty close to this because my spouse is a school board member and I do a lot of AI work for my job, and the problems of AI in education are completely intractable for public schools. The educators lack the technical background to use AI effectively, and moreover, they are completely out of the loop in terms of technology decisions, and the technology staff lacks enough knowledge in both education and AI for them to make competent decisions about it.

It’s a recipe for disaster, and you are going to see school systems set money on fire for years trying to do something with AI systems that never get rolled out, or worse, rollout AI systems that tells kids to kill themselves or makes revenge porn of their classmates.

School boards default answer to everything AI related right now should be “no”.