Most educators are eager to identify ‘best practice’. For educators, finding an evidence-based source of best-practice is ‘gold’. Finding such sources are key to effective action in the classroom. Identifying the richest veins of gold matters. (Spoiler: This post will identify at least one vein of gold for you. Read on.)
Using Generative AI to enhance teaching practice and to enrich learning in schools is very much at its infancy.
While the body of peer-reviewed evidence for guiding educational decisions is growing, it is still quite limited. As such, it’ll likely be some time before there is consensus on what ‘best practice’ in using AI in schools actually looks like.
In the absence of a clearly identifiable ‘best practice’, easy access to fools’ gold is alluring.
Teachers and educational decision makers are often time poor. Convenient voices sometimes are substituted for the best voices. In an eagerness to be up to date with the latest AI tools, AI fashions and fads are seductive. Big name guest speakers and subscriptions to products of dubious lasting value are enticing. The world AI for education presents lucrative business environment opportunities education for unscrupulous and the ambitious entrepreneurs. Put bluntly, the expert voices on AI for education are now surrounded by a plethora of hucksters and grifters in the social media feeds of educators. These ‘suspect voices’ represent the fools’ gold of Ai in education. They often hawk superficial insights wrapped in edu-speak or technobabble profundity. They offer access to ‘shiny objects’ with limited lasting value. Far from being experts, these voices are little more than opportunists promoting their own products or spruiking themselves.
Let’s not reward fools’ gold voices with a follow, a like, a share, a subscribe, or a dollar. Instead, do some digging! Find the real gold!
Identifying expert voices requires discernment.
When choosing whose advice to follow, check out prospective sources carefully…
Ask…
- Who is this person or group?
- What are their credentials? How qualified are they to offer this advice?
- What do they actually do? What have they done previously?
- Where do they work? Does this indicate a genuine passion for innovation in learning?
- What are their skills? Teacher? Technologist? Brand ambassador? Sales representative?
- Why might they be sharing? What are their motives?
- What are their connections? Who collaborate with them? Who has employed them? Who follows them? Who has connected with them? Who quotes and shares their work?
Consider…
- Are they publishing or studying? For whom? Who with? Where?
- Are they genuinely connected with those who are thoughtfully and actively working in the field of AI for education?
- Where do they work? What is their role? Who do they work with? Where were they trained? By whom?
- What appear to be their motives? Do they share with generosity? Can you discern their values at play in their work?
- Are they followed by other respected voices or major players in the field of AI and education reward? Do their ideas pass the ‘sniff test’?
- Who is choosing to reward them with follows, likes, shares, and/or dollars? Who do they follow?
- Have you check what other reputable sources say about them?
A little bit of digging can bring ‘the gold’ to the surface.
So, what might a gold standard look like?
In your quest to identify educational best practice perhaps consider Ethan Mollick of UPenn an example of a ‘gold standard’ expert voice. Ethan Mollick’s work in guiding educators is certainly worth sharing!
While not at the coalface of teaching in a secondary school, Mollick’s work relates to education. It is the source material for many other expert voices. A quick look at his body of work allows us to create a ‘benchmark’ by which we might measure expertise.
Professor Ethan Mollick – A leading international voice.
- Departmental Profile at The Wharton School, UPenn.
- ‘Ethan Mollick’ on LinkedIn
- Interviewed on the Microsoft Worklab Podcast: The Urgency of Getting in Front of AI.
- Mollick’s One Useful Thing Substack
- Google Scholar list of publications.
- A seminal paper co-authored with Dell Accqua, McFowland et al (2023) Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality, Harvard Business School. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573321
- Mollick, E. and Mollick, L. (2023) Practical AI for Instructors and Students Youtube Playlist
Who else?
If you are looking for other expert voices, check out the work of:
- Stefan Bauschard, author of Education Disrupted: Teaching and Learning in An AI World.
- Dr Nick Jackson, founder of Now Future Learning.
- Leon Furze, consultant, author, and PhD candidate at LeonFurze.com.
- Dan Bowen, technologist and podcaster at the AI Education Podcast.
All generously share on social media.
This post was originally published on my Substack titled “An Idea Worth Sharing” on 18 March 2024. You can find that article HERE.
Disrupted History 