To what extent should the Library Learning Commons be the center of AI literacy in a school?
By Jennifer Casa-Todd
The author, an Ontario teacher-librarian and new Canadian School Libraries (CSL) Board Director, shares important observations and experiences about the role of the teacher-librarian in preparing students and teachers in the use and examination of AI in research and assignments, posing key questions for consideration and discussion.
Jennifer Casa-Todd is wife, mom, educator, a former Literacy Consultant, a Google Certified Innovator, and author of several educational publications. Jennifer was nominated for the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence (2024), was the recipient of the YSCPC Teaching Excellence Award (2023), and recipient of the ISTE Digital Citizenship Network Award (2020). She is also an ISTE Community leader, a Google Educator Group leader for Ontario and a Board member for the Canadian School Library Association. Jennifer can currently be found supporting pre-service teachers at Lakehead University (Ontario) or supporting student travel experiences for credit. She is passionate about showing parents, teachers and students how they can use technology and social media positively and productively. Learn more about her at
jcasatodd.com
I appreciate your work on "demystifying AI" -- definitely an issue that educators at all levels need to be prepared to address! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Diana. I would love to chat with you about your own work around this topic in elementary.
DeleteJennifer - thank you for this. You've actually (and I am not finding this happens often) addressed the algorithmic bias and critical thinking pieces. I, like you, get frustrated by the focus on "cheating", rather than the focus on "how does this tool actually work, and how do we help our students think critically about that?". I am finding that these patterns are still around in the post-secondary environment. Lots to talk about.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, Lisa. I too am at post-secondary right now and agree that conversations need to shift there as well as at every level. For me, equity is a big one right now; every single one of these platforms costs big bucks and the promise doesn't always match the results. Lots to talk about for sure!
DeleteHi JCT, love this. Critical thinking about how AI needs to be framed as more of a new media literacy rather than a cheat is much needed.
ReplyDeleteI was listening to a Davos talk on reskilling (because we have a huge shift happening in work and most graduates - recent or otherwise - don't have the digital skills needed for it). Reskilling and revising education were central themes this year. The moderator of this panel jumped in at the 40 minute mark with this:
"Too many schools are reacting to #AI by saying this is cheating - the reality is students are going to use it anyway - we need to give assignments where you expect the use of AI and show your prompts and then we'll score you on how well you're collaborating with AI"
https://youtu.be/yhWgYKbZqrU?si=MNBdmmi2NA4Nwo8o&t=2455
Our first use of Github's co-pilot (in 2022) was mandatory in my senior comp-tech class. Students had to include a critique of what it did well and where it struggled. The most interesting feedback came from some of our weakest coders - they didn't like it - it kept going off in strange directions they didn't understand. That year we had the Skills Ontario gold medalist for coding in the class. He thought it was brilliant. Didn't like it for writing new logic, but for things like completing recursive loops he estimated that it sped him up by 40%.
ICTC just had me update their AI course for post-secondary. I included a 'prompt engineering' section in each module that challenged students to consider if their use of AI was enhancing or replacing them (because they're using it anyway so why not teach them effective use?). One question consisted of 3 research pieces and then an opinion. I suggested if students were using the AI to generate their opinion, they might as well drop the course because they aren't actually taking it. The prompt suggestion was to use AI to help parse the research questions and then use those summaries to formulate an informed opinion instead of a guess.
Thanks so much for reading and for bringing your ICT lens to this conversation. I wish I had AI to help me when I was running the coding club at school and kids (way beyond my skill level) asked me to help them debug their code! I really like the example you cite in the new post-secondary course; those are the conversations we need to have. AI exists, so how might we use it to help us become better thinkers and writers? Going to check out that video. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an important conversation at all grade levels. I’m coming at it from a K-5 lens and trying to figure out how to introduce the power and potential in AI while also introducing the ethical dimensions. One thing is certain, it’s not going anywhere and like all technology, those who learn to harness its power reap its benefits most. I’d love to adapt your “ok or not” questions for a younger audience.
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