I recently read Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (2024).
My top takeaways were:
Ø Ethical use of AI must be baked into our curriculum and practice.
Ø AI can always produce C-level work, more cheaply than humans.
Ø AI has created new ways to analyze DNA, music, computer code, and brain waves.
Ø AI also generates (interesting) misinformation.
Ø Relationships with humans take time and care; relationships with an AI do not.
Ø AIs are much more focused listeners than humans.
Ø We are going to be able to think differently using AI, maybe even better.
Ø Those who use AI well will have an advantage in the marketplace.
Ø Used well, AI is a collaborator.
Ø An emerging learning outcome for schools is AI literacy.
Ø We are experiencing only the first wave of AI-inspired jobs; subsequent waves are still unknown.
Ø Ideally, the AI does not think for us but helps us think better.
Ø AI is exceptional at weeding out the 99 bad ideas to get to the 1 good one.
Ø AI is recursive in that everything it produces also goes back into the dataset, as does every question we ask of it.
Ø The ability to think and adapt is golden currency in the workforce.
Ø The range of quality in responses from AI is consistently higher than that of humans.
Ø It is just as easy for faculty to build a case to accuse any student of cheating with AI as it is for students to cheat using AI.
Ø Asking the right question (prompt) is the premium human skill.
Ø Language barriers will disappear as result of AI.
Ø Historical definitions of plagiarism no longer apply.
Ø More encouragement and less instruction = better effort, higher self-efficacy, and more learning.
Ø The easy out would be to say that AI can be used for everything or nothing; not likely, not doable.
Ø A motivating model for effort: I Care, I Can, I Matter.
Ø Just-right challenges are not too easy or too difficult: at either extreme, we quit.
Ø “All assignments are now AI assignments.” (p. 198)
Ø Good writing is good editing.
My favorite quotes:
“If the internet changed our relationship with knowledge, AI is going to change our relationship with thinking.” (p. 2)
“What we call cheating, businesses see as innovation.” (p. 5)
AI will eliminate some jobs, but it is going to change every job: those who can work with AI will replace those who can’t. (p. 28)
“Most problem solving, however, is a combination of both divergent thinking (what might I be missing? How else could I look at this?) and convergent thinking (What is the best solution?).” (p. 46)
“Still, the way to get better at everything is to get better at something.” (p. 105)
“Pedagogy is about improving the odds that students will learn.” (p. 130)
“It would be much simpler if we could either say that AI can be used for everything or nothing, but neither seems likely or prudent.” (p. 143)
“Feedback is essential for learning, and we’ve long known that the best feedback is like a tennis net: objective, immediate, and specific (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).” (p. 162)
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John Wooden, Hall of Fame basketball coach and player (p. 184)
“I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday.” Misty Copeland, Principal dancer, American Ballet Theater (p. 235)
“Education, parenting, and democracy have always managed an uneasy tension between what to think (content) and how to think (process). As the internet provided more immediate access to content, it profoundly shifted that balance to process. Our new future is teaching students how to think with AI.” (p. 238)
I read this book in a team study with other interested educators. A most worthy learning endeavor. I can highly recommend it to any educator at any level.
