Given AI, do we know whether our children are learning? 👩‍🎓

That question was at the heart of the professional development session I ran last week for Horace Mann School‘s History Department.

I think the teachers left a little less certain about the answer. (Which was one of my goals. Sorrynotsorry.)

I showed them how, with just a few minutes of prompting, Generative AI can create unique writing that can pass for student work. And how, with just a little additional time to fine-tune it, a student can turn that AI output into work that reads exactly like their own. Not just short essays; fully-reasoned and cited research papers.

It wasn’t just doom and gloom. We discussed positive use cases and potential solutions. I’ll share some in future posts.

But my point today is that we’re living through an existential moment in education, and educators must rise to meet it.

A student can now produce excellent work… without actually doing much learning or work!

Therefore a teacher who doesn’t adjust MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE TEACHING.