There’s an old adage that says (paraphrasing) we know the past but cannot change it and we do not know the future, but we can shape it. It is possible that perhaps the “unknown unknowns” of the future have never been so evident, and yet, it has never been more important to wayfind as a society. In the last weeks alone, a group of AI leaders have come out and said “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” This succinct cautioning might be an example of making an “unknown unknown” a “known unknown.” It’s what we do next that counts.

To make this statement, AI leaders are thinking far down the road and weighing the information that they have now with trend data and making the assertion that given disruption, we are dealing with an exponential rather than a linear curve.

Although many of the challenges we face in our VUCA World are immense in scale, scope and significance, thinking about the future doesn’t have to be existential and/or time spans of hundreds of years. In his recent book, Kevin Kelly shares that “we overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in ten years.” This inability to calibrate the relativity of time leads to stifled projections and, often, overpromises or underdelivers.  

In a recent workshop with the Stanford d.school, we worked through a variety of exercises that followed a new framework of five approaches they created for encountering uncertainty like a futurist. One of the panelists, Tim Foxx, Director, Center for School Study Councils at UPenn, shared the following words: “For some, to access hope they must harvest it from the future rather than the present.”

This leads us to the first approach, worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is adding rich texture and detail to the futures we imagine. It’s about making futures tangible through complex, considered storytelling. In the words of the d.school, “[it is] an architectural blueprint of a future society […] which allows us to prototype and even experience in multidimensions.” Frankly, we don’t do enough worldbuilding in any industry. What is the possible future that we are collectively imagining? One thing is for certain, we aren’t there yet.

Example: Throughout time, marginalized and oppressed communities have looked to worldbuilding as a way of “harvesting hope from the future”. Afrofuturism is one example of a group using worldbuilding towards a common good. Think Black Panther, the writings of Octavia Butler, the music of Parliament Funkadelic and more.

Example in Schools: In the education world, many folks are discussing an education ecosystem; we recently published a resource on the Unbundled Learning System. This ecosystem, although we have not yet seen a comprehensive picture of what world this might build, is a potential form of worldbuilding.

Trace Change Over Time

It’s crucial to learn from the past, so as not to make the same mistakes. We must “learn to see change in waves of patterns, cycles and trends. [We must] toggle between short-term possibilities and long-term promises.”

Example: Over time we have seen innovations that have followed an exponential growth curve. Whether it be economists measuring wealth, global trade influencing supply chains, etc. By looking at these curves we can better understand the potential impacts of a technology like AI and plan accordingly.

Example in Schools: John Dewey and others were saying many of the things we are saying today in the early 20th century. They were responding to industrialization. What are we responding to? How can we predict the next triggering event rather than react to it?

Seek Visions of Coexistence

Possibly the most crucial superpower of the 21st (and perhaps the 22nd century) will be to “learn to dream, imagine and build together.” This superpower differs from collaboration and creativity. It requires a multiplicity of possibilities, a radical empathy and an unrelenting hope.

To paraphrase the poet, author, activist and facilitator Adrienne Maree Brown, “We’re living inside the imagination of someone else.” It doesn’t work for most people and it certainly doesn’t work for the planet.  It’s time to imagine a new one.

Jane McGonigle from Institute for the Future says, “When something of massive consequence happens that no one predicted, we often say it was simply unimaginable. But the truth is, nothing is impossible to imagine. When we say something was unimaginable, usually it means we failed to point our imagination in the right direction.”

Example: Alongside the announcement of the Green New Deal, this video was put out as a political advertisement. Regardless of your view on the vision, the willingness to image was a welcome respite to the otherwise cynical barrage of political advertisements.

Example in Education: The Knowledge Society, a great program for young people to pursue emerging technologies and global challenges, encourages questioning and visioning the future. To respond to complexity, we will require nimble and powerful learning engines.

Seeing in Multiples

When was the last time a question you asked had a clean and clear answer? This approach to the future empowers you to “see in multiples,” and “allows us to get comfortable with plurality and ambiguity.”

Example: Climate solutions are complex and without seeing in multiples, it would be even more challenging to meet the great demands of the energy transition. Designing solutions that include a variety of energy sources (such as wind, nuclear and solar) is one way that multiplicity can drive change. 

Example in Schools: Unfortunately, it is still a rarity to see students on the school board. Although they are the core stakeholder in learning, they are frequently notincluded in the decision-making because, oftentimes, students are viewed as a vessel to be filled. A multiplicity mindset allows educators to view students as both mentee and mentor; someone to learn from while also being someone to share learning with.  

Empathy for the Future

So much of thinking about the future requires us to get outside of our own limited perspective to put ourselves in the shoes of those that we, and the earth, do not yet know. To design a just and equitable future we must first “seek to understand the full range of moral, ethical, social and equitable implications of different futures.”

Example: Roman Krznaric talks about “being a good ancestor.” Too often, we think about the future as a place to deal with our refuse (landfills, non-biodegradable plastics). Empathy for the future is a shift towards compostable goods and a dramatic reduction of single-use plastics.

Example in Schools: We know that innovation and disruption can move rapidly, sometimes overnight. One example of having empathy for the future is preparing our teachers (and thereby our students) with the skills mentioned in this blog. The future will not wait for us to catch up, it’s coming to us.               

Imagining new possibilities helps us to think beyond the box and identify new ways of thinking about new pathways for students. New technologies and trends that inform new learning models and skills shape new opportunities.  We are all futurists and are all capable of imagining what could be. Every decision we make shapes the reality for future generations. We must embrace not knowing, and prepare ourselves with new tools and mindsets that enable us to grapple with what could be and pay attention to signals that help predict and prepare for upcoming challenges.

Interested in learning more about futures and collectively imagining an education system that works for all learners? Sign up for our What if? Newsletter and get a weekly prompt, as well as join the queue for future design sessions and events.

The post The Time For Futures Is Now appeared first on Getting Smart.

from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/15/the-time-for-futures-is-now/

By: Benjamin Freud, Ph.D.

I’m not getting myself all worked up over how generative AI is going to revolutionize the world of education. I’m not spending too much time trying to find my bearings and make sense of this new world we entered since OpenAI’s successful promotion strategy of ChatGPT.

AI didn’t emerge out of nowhere on November 30, 2022. We could all see this coming when IBM’s Watson outperformed two former Jeopardy champions, demonstrating the superior information retrieval capabilities of a fast processor and large memory bank compared to the human brain. This false comparison is one we often hear, and it’s no wonder we feel uneasy about AI. We tend to view the brain as one big computer, overlooking its organic, emergent network. We fear becoming obsolete.

In response, we build walls to protect ourselves, afraid that AI will take our jobs, send us hurling into uncertainty, puppet us all in its relentless quest to purchase cheaper paperclips. We call out to celebrate (reclaim?) the attributes that supposedly make us human, uniquely human. You can pick out of a hat which attributes you want to defend, it really doesn’t matter — let’s celebrate because AI is a threat to everything that doesn’t make humans stand out.

Unfortunately, we also believe in human exceptionalism. We believe that we have the right, nay the duty, to ignore the laws of Nature so that we may write our own. Reclaiming what makes us uniquely human is the same treacherous game we’ve been playing all along. It is a game of separation and domination, extraction and extinction.

Our society continues to place value on competition, wealth-creation, hierarchization, and meritocracy. We ask ourselves what “the future of education” will be, ignoring that education is but one part of the greater systemic whole and that the latter is too resilient and empire-oriented to permit any of the changes to education that will threaten it. Suffice it to say, AI will not revolutionize education. ChatGPT and other tools of the future might change how we do things, but none of them will change why we do things.

That is up to us, and that is where we must hold hope.

An Old Story

Perhaps there is a modern “school-focused” twist on the allegory of the cave. In this version, rather than prisoners mistaking shadows on the wall for reality, schools are fully aware that there is a vibrant world outside the cave. Here, the purpose of school is to prepare students for that world, the real world. For 12 years, young people document knowledge and facts and skills, “proving” just how full of knowledge and facts and skills they are. Schools aim to get kids ready for the real world outside the cave, this magical place that awaits them. They have to make sure that the product is good enough for release.

There is no real world and school world dichotomy. How dare we suggest that kids live in a world that is sub-real? Kids live in their world and it is absolutely real — full of hopes, fears, joys, dramas, transformations, and setbacks.

In truth, there is no cave. People of all ages learn all the time, everywhere and under incredible circumstances. We reconfigure the spacetime of learning by dispelling the cave. Now, we stand under the vast blue sky, together, and we can start our journey, together. In which direction shall we head? Will we walk together?

If we do, we don’t have to notice the same marks in the landscape as we head toward the horizon. We don’t have to walk single file. We don’t even have to draw the same maps. But we must walk together. And when we look around, we see that this walk together, means all life together: human, non-human, and more than human.

When we do this, we become a collective, a bio-collective. A collective doesn’t mean we are all the same. It means that we are all together, not separated, celebrating all of our diversities coming together. In the words of Bruno Latour, “All, but not two.”

A New Story

Imagine schools as places where we learn through contribution to all life. Not places where we are inspected for our knowledge and facts and skills. Imagine success no longer determined by individual assessments or grades. Rather, success is measured by the contributions made to the thriving of the bio-collective.

I am because you are, I succeed because you succeed, and I thrive because you thrive.

This is the horizon toward which we head. I’m not suggesting it’s where we need to be now. I’m not providing a map of how to get there either. I’m asking what would it take for that first step? I’m asking how we can dispel the cave and not build more walls and monuments to preserve and glorify our human exceptionalism?

The story of the whole is more than the story of our society, our systems, and our ways of living. The story of the whole is the story of human non-exceptionalism. It is not the story of how we act on the world, but how we respond as the world.

So let us tell the story of the whole, of our entanglement as the world. This is a new story that we can enact. Through this enactment, we can create a new culture and a new set of values for these liminal times.

Let us tell this story with a diverse group of voices — from education, from schools, and from learners. This is no longer the story of competition and nationalism, individualization and separation. This is the story of coming together, sharing, and contributing to the whole.

What would it take to write this new story in our schools today?

Learning as a Collective

Schools are organized within specific configurations of space and time. These configurations can be reconfigured.

Perhaps the first step toward having schools bring together the collective is for schools to treat learners as members of a collective. No longer individualizing, quality checking each product along every stage of what the school churns out, of what the school wants its typical graduate. In this collective, the learner-doer’s successes might simply be the measures of their positive contributions to community. It’s not “show what you know,” it’s “How have you contributed to the community, as a member of the community?”

This doesn’t mean we let go of “traditional learning” or assessments. Instead, we reconceptualize them. For instance, we write narrative texts and our success is based on how much we moved the thinking and the feeling of our targeted readers — not whether we use the right transition phrases or enough literary devices. Through making and growing, we tell the story of contribution to the collective.

These might sound like big, utopian ideas, but this is a time to come together around hope, not despair, kinship, not exceptionalism, courage not cynicism.

While grand in scope, it isn’t so difficult to imagine. After all, many of these things are what make us human. Isn’t this what happens in the workplace? In the “real world?” In our homes? The emphasis may not always be on contribution to the collective, but we determine our success based on the mark we have left: sales based on consumer demand; reduced use of automobile traffic in favor of bicycles thanks to redesigned bike lanes; a sense of higher quality of life after the implementation of a well-being program.

This is not the time to act out of fear. This is not the time to let the storm gather outside (metaphorically and otherwise) as we hide behind our human exceptionalism and exponential tools. This is not the time to separate ourselves from the world as 150 to 200 species of plants, insects, birds, and mammals go extinct every day, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

This is the time to come together as a collective, a bio-collective. Instead of walling ourselves off, let’s set limits on that which prevent life from thriving and regenerating. Let’s tell a new story of the world, by the world. This story doesn’t get told unless all places of learning and generations of learners walk together.

In which direction shall we head? Will we walk together?

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from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/14/learning-as-a-collective/

By: Sarah Miles and Denise Pope

At Challenge Success, we partner with school communities to elevate student voice and implement research-based, equity-centered strategies to improve student well-being, engagement, and belonging. We know from our research and the work of others in the field that these three elements of the student experience are intrinsically linked. Through a series of blogs for the Getting Smart community this summer, we look forward to unpacking well-being, engagement, and belonging with you and diving into what that looks like in the school communities where we have worked over the past 20 years.

How is well-being defined?

Experiencing a sense of well-being is a broad concept that encompasses the physical, economic, emotional, and social aspects of wellness. Even though one’s safety, financial security, and physical health are important factors of well-being, for the purposes of this blog, we focus on the aspects of well-being that can be nurtured in classrooms and schools across departments, disciplines, and activities. In our student survey (also known as the Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences) we track several indicators that can help us understand trends in student well-being including sleep, stress, and support.  Informed by the data we have collected from our partner schools*, as well as other researchers in the field, we have learned some best practices to support student well-being that we are eager to share with the Getting Smart community.

*Challenge Success survey data referenced in this blog were collected from over 15,000 high school students and 4,000 middle school students across the United States from January-May 2023.

Creating the Conditions for Well-Being in Schools

Reduce Unhealthy Stress

While it is natural for students to experience some level of stress as they are attending to their studies, work, family obligations, and relationships, we hope to avoid chronic stress that has an unhealthy impact on students. In our surveys,  we ask students to list their major sources of stress, and the answers are consistently grades/tests, workload, and lack of sleep. These are often good places to start when addressing key levers within the school setting to reduce undue stress.

1. Rethink Assessment: Grades, tests, midterms and final exams can be particularly stressful for students who believe the stakes are high and who often don’t know what to expect, how best to prepare, or how to show what they know on time-bound, traditional kinds of assessments. We often work with schools to consider changes to their overall assessment practices to allow for more transparency, scaffolding, and flexibility. For instance, we ask teachers to increase their use of performance-based assessments where students can choose different ways to demonstrate what they’ve learned. Teachers can offer opportunities for ungraded assignments, revision and redemption, and self-assessments. Try letting your students decide which assignments to grade or giving quizzes to check for learning without recording points. There are a whole host of ways to reduce student stress when it comes to grades and assessments, and even small shifts can go a long way in putting students at ease (Schrader, 2023).
2. Balance High Expectations with Care: While we don’t want to cause undue stress, we certainly still aim for students to engage deeply with their learning. In the search for the “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 2978) – we want to nudge students past their comfort zone, holding them to high expectations, while offering encouragement, support, and scaffolding to help them reach mastery. Teachers can hold students accountable for completing their schoolwork while also explicitly showing that they believe in their abilities and respect and value them as individuals. Try co-creating expectations and agreements, and reminding students that the goal is to focus on learning and improvement rather than grades. Schools might consider doing away with class rankings and publishing college acceptance lists. This helps to let students know that their inherent value is in who they are, not what they produce and that we believe in their potential (O’Reilly, 2018).

Help Students Get the Sleep They Need

It will come as no surprise to anyone who interacts with young people that they are not getting enough sleep. In fact, although teens need 8-10 hours of sleep per night, 43% of high school students in our surveys are getting less than 6.5 hours per night, and the data is only slightly better for middle schoolers.

Lack of sleep (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 2022) has profound effects on the human experience and is linked to physical and mental health problems, injuries, reduced learning and focus, and difficulty judging and reacting to other people’s emotions. Children who are sleep deficient might be overly active, have trouble paying attention, and struggle to meet expectations at school.

In our survey, 70% of high schoolers report feeling exhausted in the last month. While as educators we can’t make teens go to bed earlier, there are some ways we can support their rest:

1. Reduce Homework: Research shows that middle school and high school students who self-reported higher workloads in school tended to also report more symptoms of exhaustion and lower rates of sleep (Galloway, Conner, & Pope, 2013). As an individual teacher, reducing the amount of homework you assign may be one of  the quickest ways to create more time for sleep in your students’ lives. In addition, for students to reap any benefits from homework, they need to see its value and purpose. Ideally, the assignments should be interesting and engaging, and should encourage students to apply their learning as opposed to practice rote skills (Challenge Success, 2020). Finally, consider having homework-free weekends and holiday breaks so that students can truly rest.

1. Host a Sleep Campaign: Of course, students may not necessarily take advantage of this extra homework-free time by going to bed earlier. So we urge educators to pair a reduction in workload with explicit lessons on the value of getting more sleep.  Educating students and families on the importance of sleep and the effects of using electronic devices before bedtime can have a big impact on how students prioritize their time outside of school. We find these campaigns to be particularly effective when they are student-led. Download our Sleep Campaign Resources here.
2. Start the School Day Later: California was the first state to implement a mandatory later start time (De Leon, 2022) for middle (8 a.m.) and high schools (8:30 a.m.), a change that many other states are now also exploring. While a state-wide mandate is helpful in establishing universal guidelines, districts – and sometimes individual schools – don’t have to wait for a mandate, and should consider the viability of moving the start time later. Even a 30-minute change once or twice a week can have a significant impact for students.

Provide Emotional Support

A great deal of what we naturally do as educators is rooted in caring deeply for our students. We strive to know them, to understand their strengths, and to support their growth. That being said, the past few years have been incredibly difficult for students and educators alike, and we weren’t surprised to see that students are often missing school for health or emotional reasons. In fact, 42% of high school students and 38% of middle school students missed school for a health or emotional reason in the month prior to taking our survey this past winter or spring. Moreover, our data show that most students do not have a high level of confidence in their ability to cope with stress, and many believe their teachers don’t care whether or not they come to school.

In our work, we see relationship-building as the primary way to create a safety net of emotional support around students. While it would be wonderful to increase the number of counselors and other support staff in schools, that isn’t always possible, nor is it wise to infer that counselors alone are the solution. Instead, we encourage all faculty and staff to find ways to connect with students. From small moments of kindness to listening when a student has a personal problem, there are many ways schools can offer students emotional support.

1. Make Time for Relationship Building: Scheduling time for advisory, clubs, and other less-structured activities allows teachers to form authentic relationships with students. Several of our partner schools have adopted four-year advisory programs where the advisor stays with the same 15 to 25 students for their entire high school career. Meeting times may vary from advisories that meet daily to those that meet once or twice a week for 15 to 40 minutes, but most have found that the consistency across the weeks and years is really what drives the positive student-teacher and student-student relationships.
2. Model and Teach SEL Skills:   In the past several years, we have heard from many schools that students need more time to practice social-emotional skills such as understanding their own emotions, identities, values, and goals (Hoffman, et al 2020), regulating their own emotions and behaviors (Gross, 2015), empathizing and feeling compassion for others, and collaborating and communicating effectively with others (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Williams, 2019). Many educators are incorporating practices such as mindfulness, movement, and breathing exercises into their classroom routines. We especially appreciate the resources offered by CASEL and IFSEL for concrete lesson plans and tips for helping students learn these vital SEL skills.

Well-being = being happy all (or even most) of the time

Adolescent psychologist, Lisa Damour, Ph.D., emphasizes in her work that one of the ways we can best support teens is by helping them to see that well-being doesn’t mean being in a state of perpetual happiness. Rather, being well is having the resilience to move through a difficult emotion and reflect on it from the other side. We may not be able to shield students from all of the ups and downs of adolescence, but we can certainly take some intentional steps to focus on the protective factors that we know will make a difference for their well-being in the long term. We invite all educators and decision-makers in schools to consider these research-based strategies for improving student well-being in school settings.

Sarah Miles, Ph.D., M.S.W., is the Director of Research at Challenge Success.

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is the Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and Co-Founder/Strategic Advisor at Challenge Success.

The post What Is Student Well-Being, and How Do We Create the Conditions to Support It in Our Schools? appeared first on Getting Smart.

from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/13/what-is-student-well-being-and-how-do-we-create-the-conditions-to-support-it-in-our-schools/

The classroom isn’t the only place for students to engage in history or civics. In the same way education has evolved from a space of passive to active learning, museums have taken their work to the next level. No longer just quiet halls to meander at artifacts shielded behind glass, museums are increasingly turning into community hubs creating interactive and immersive experiences for their guests. Their goal – to create opportunities for people to engage in their history, understand the present, and think about the future.

As we explore pathways to facilitate civic engagement, it might be worthwhile to investigate the role that museums play in creating pathways that enable youth to step up and take part in the world around them. It can be hard to create authentic experiences in the classroom that allow students to make community connections, engage in meaningful dialogue, or learn about events that have shaped (or are shaping) our world, especially when there is growing pressure to censor history, reading materials, and current events.

Museums can act as a valuable community intermediary, a connector of disparate sectors, communities and opportunities that schools alone wouldn’t be able to achieve. They have the ability to tell history with a fuller breadth and depth than most schools and can dramatically increase the number of voices who have a role in shaping this history. They can act as community centers to bridge local actors, and create forums around issues – and many want to do just that. The American Alliance of Museums is encouraging museums to take a bigger, bolder look at their place in their communities and to  “reinvent not just what they share, but how they serve their communities”. Perhaps it’s time for educators and schools to explore how they might partner or work with museums to generate more opportunities for students.

Community Building

Organizations like The History Co: Lab have demonstrated the power of co-creation, and showcased the numerous possibilities museums have to act as connectors and facilitators of learning.  Through their work, they have supported museums across the nation to engage in Lego Foundation’s Power of Play helping them create gamified, immersive experiences. In Kansas City, they have created The Learning Collaborative to create a ‘civic learning ecosystem’ between educators, museums, and other local actors. They prove the power of museums to act as a local anchor and facilitator for civic engagement.

Real World Learning

Changes in the curriculum can often move slowly. Museums have the possibility to be more agile and cover topics that are valuable but have not necessarily been embedded into curriculum standards (yet…). The Smithsonian has created ample resources around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) creating curriculum, lessons, professional learning, and events to support teachers as they engage students in these critical topics.

Immersive Pedagogy

From virtual field trips to family game nights museums are working to provide opportunities to make learning come alive for youth. The Durham Museum has created a series called Museum Live! to engage students in exhibitions and displays. These thirty-minute segments facilitated by museum educators bring museum content directly into the classroom. In addition, they offer virtual field trips to provide greater access to learning opportunities.

Like many other museums, President Lincoln’s Cottage had to reinvent itself during the Pandemic creating new ways for community members to engage in its mission. They created virtual family game nights, as well as a program called Lincoln Letters that provided gamified experiences to help visitors explore issues around Lincoln’s legacy – issues like sustaining democracy and fighting for justice. In addition to these experiences, they’ve also created a teacher-in-resident program which led to the creation of the board game Brave Ideas. A bold game co-created with students to inspire youth to generate their own ideas to solve problems and make their communities better. Their goal is to facilitate respectful dialogue within the community and support new ideas that foster a future full of freedom, justice, and humility.

Moreover, students respond to games and immersive experiences in ways that help them build skills toward civic engagement. In participating in these types of opportunities, and/or playing or designing games they get to practice skills like creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. With the Brave Ideas game, students enjoyed “coming up with unusual and creative ideas to solve problems”. Others appreciated being able to tap into their creative side or  “just how fun it was to play it, but at the same time, you could learn and see different perspectives, on very important matters.” Students appreciate hands-on learning, and museums can help us provide students with chances to apply content in new ways so that they learn to tolerate different perspectives, communicate with one another, and co-create the type of world they want to live in. 

As museums begin to prepare for the semi-quincentennial of our nation, the U.S. injects an extra $50 million towards civics education. We should do more to explore what a quality civics education looks like, thinking more holistically of all the pathways we might employ to help students show up and get involved. Museums offer just one of the many opportunities we have to make incredible partnerships to support our students’ learning and ability to engage as citizens.

The post Civic Engagement: Museums Create Meaning appeared first on Getting Smart.

from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/12/civic-engagement-museums-create-meaning/

For more on AI in education, check out recent publication that highlights companies and organizations who are paving the way. Learn More

We are a few months into a new age of human-computer interaction, an era that will change how we work, our aspirations and even our identity. The rise of artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, boosts productivity in content creation–text, code, images and increasingly video.  

An OpenAI/Penn study suggests around 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by the introduction of large language models (LLM), while 19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted. Unlike prior waves of automation, higher-income jobs face greater exposure to LLM capabilities.

With tools built on top of LLM, including sector-specific models such as BloombergGPT in finance and MedPalM2 in healthcare, about half of all worker tasks in the US could be completed significantly faster at the same level of quality.

With the caveat that none of us knows how AI will influence life and work, the following are six preliminary conclusions about the nature of work and learning.

1. AI narrows the skill gap.

Generative AI augments content creation and boosts response capabilities, especially for low-skill workers and learners. A new Stanford/MIT study of customer support agents showed that generative AI increased productivity by 14% on average with the greatest impact on novice and low-skilled workers. AI also narrowed the productivity gap between lower-skilled workers and workers with more skills.

Next generation AI tutors will accelerate skill-building (even better than current adaptive systems i-Ready, DreamBox, i-Station, ALEKS) by modifying path as well as level.

MIT’s David Autor optimistically told NPR “that we could use AI to expand job opportunities, lower barriers to entry to a whole range of occupations, and reduce inequality.”

Accelerated skill building and real-time skill augmentation are promising developments and may begin to level the skills playing field but the experience gap (below) is likely to widen along with the wealth gap.

2. AI augmented workforce values experience.

New productivity and quality expectations may raise employment experience requirements. “Employers might reasonably expect entry-level workers to be conversant with AI and something like 50% more productive. And this means while the skills gap may narrow, the experience gap could become a chasm,” said Ryan Craig, Achieve Partners (a private equity firm that invests in hiring intermediaries).

“The bar for good entry-level jobs will be higher, meaning fewer jobs that look entry level, and rendering career launch even more difficult,” said Craig. He continued, “Employers will only want to onboard entry-level workers who’ve already proven they can do the job…The problem will become even more acute with the emergence of industry-specific large language models”

“In the ChatGPT era, the future of career launch and socioeconomic mobility will depend on scaling pathways that not only teach, but also provide relevant work experience. CTE and youth apprenticeships will become priorities for every high school,” said Craig.

“As generative AI transforms entry-level jobs and puts a premium on experience, these earn-and-learn models are likely to be the best bet for helping millions of young people launch careers,” added Craig.

Author of the forthcoming book Apprentice Nation, Craig thinks work-based learning (client projects, internships and apprenticeships) can narrow the experience gap for high school and college students.  

3. AI makes Super T professionals.

 For three decades, talent consultants have referred to T shaped professionals as having the breadth to collaborate across disciplines with the depth of expertise in a specific field. For individuals and teams, generative AI extends breadth and, with sector specific tools built on LLMs, extends expert-level depth.

BloombergGPT answers financial questions, conducts analysis, and builds projections.  Google’s Med-PaLM2 answers medical questions and supports diagnosis (and passes medical licensing exams). GitHub Copilot and Replit Ghostwriter generate, complete, and explain code. All of these, to Craig’s point, are most useful to workers with some sector knowledge and experience.

AI changes the vocational identity of augmented professionals. It affords a new sense of purpose and agency–expanding the scope of the change you can make in the world. Suddenly, you can be a 5x coder, maybe a 10x coder, doing more than a skilled team could accomplish in the same period of time.

AI may not take your job, but a clever, sector-knowledgable augmented (Super T) human will.  

4. Augmented work requires new skills.

 In a May research brief, Microsoft said “As AI reshapes work, human-AI collaboration will be the next transformational work pattern—and the ability to work iteratively with AI will be a key skill for every employee.”

“ChatGPT and the underlying technology of large language models is likely to change nearly every job that involves writing, analysis or otherwise processing information…someone with prompt engineering skills will find themselves in demand across a growing range of professions, from coding and engineering, to marketing, management, law, research, product development, administration and many others,” said ASU’s Andrew Maynard.

Prompt engineering requires analytical judgment, intellectual curiosity, and creative evaluation–three of the top skills identified by Microsoft. Leaders they surveyed said “it’s essential that employees learn when to leverage AI, how to write great prompts, how to evaluate creative work, and how to check for bias.”

Problem finding, a precursor to prompt engineering, is spotting work worth doing–work that matters to you and your community. KEEN, a network of 55 engineering schools committed to developing an entrepreneurial mindset, calls it opportunity recognition which leads to solution design and impact delivery. It takes curiosity, willingness to explore contrarian views, connections for many sources, and a commitment to creating value for communities.

5. Be a Better You.

With the widespread use of generative AI, we will all be producing less and editing and curating more. Editing requires Models of Excellence–you have to know what good looks like. Editing also requires a personal narrative. To be a better communicator than ChatGPT, you have to be a great storyteller.

Kevin Kelly told Steve Levitt that in the age of big prediction models, there is value in being unpredictable. “A really worthy goal is to arrange your life or become something where you’re not predictable by A.I. Again, A.I. is a prediction thing. It’s going to try and guess what the next average human would say, and you don’t want to be the average human if at all possible. You want to be you.”

And, while you’re being your best creative self, get the facts right. The early models of generative AI we’re co-creating with hallucinate convincingly. Add an explosion of deepfakes and editing for creativity AND accuracy is the new challenge.  

6. Augmented work changes pathways bets.

The dynamic velocity of the employment market makes postsecondary learning more important than ever. However, it is more important than ever to pursue learning with a sense of purpose and a plan for employment. Debt without a degree and related employment is the new worst case scenario. If you can get a full scholarship to a selective college take it and start building work experience. If not, consider an earn and learn ladder, find an employer willing to pay for training and development.  

Liberal arts might be more valuable than ever–they build the knowledge, skills, and mindsets that make us most human–but don’t pay too much for a degree without building experience and employability.  

Next Steps for EdLeaders

Start the conversation with staff and community about the age of human-computer interaction. They need to hear from you. You don’t need all the answers, you just need to show up and acknowledge that we’re living through something new and important.

Banning generative AI isn’t an option. After an initial ban, NYC Chancellor David Banks said, “New York City Public Schools will encourage and support our educators and students as they learn about and explore this game-changing technology while also creating a repository and community to share their findings across our schools.” They launched a Day of AI to explore new possibilities.  

Encourage exploration and use with disclosure. Take a human-centered, teacher-in-the-loop approach (see US ED OET Recommendations for more). Update your code of conduct (and your acceptable use policy as needed) and give instructional staff the ability to establish parameters around when and how students should engage in AI to complete an assignment or project.

Update your digital citizenship training and introduce the ethics of AI beginning not later than middle school.

Start iterating assessment and grading practices. Assume that any work done outside of school is augmented.

Expand access to Real World Learning including internships, client projects, and entrepreneurial experiences. Expand access to accelerated pathways including college credit and credentials.  

This change won’t be easy but this new era means young people can do more than ever–more than we dreamed possible even a few months ago. It’s time to invite them, especially learners furthest from opportunity, into a future of possibility, into work that matters. Their potential just got bigger and better.

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from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/09/the-rise-of-ai-new-rules-for-super-t-professionals-and-next-steps-for-edleaders/

By: Michael T. Conner

The shift into post-Covid has created an unprecedented opportunity for change. In my last blog, I framed the need for urgency in the post-Covid stage of Education for Generation Z and Generation Alpha. Only 15% of Black students and 21% of Latino students are enrolled in advanced courses nationally. Three core drivers are contributing to these inequities: limited offerings of advanced classes, resource disparities in urban centers, and radically diverse schools denying access to available seats. Accelerating the urgency to dismantle the current iteration of high school verticals is a necessity to reach ALL.

The question – how do we demystify and dismantle a systemic quandary that has plagued Black and Brown students historically in education? We need to define the next practices in the context of creating structures, systems, and underpinning data that create access in a model for ALL. Creating new Pathways of Prosperity will take immense perspiration and preparation; however, it can be achieved as illustrated in the examples below.

Competencies, Time, and the Excellence Loop

The Jeffersonian Model’s “compulsory laws” have codified students into a batched standardization. Examples such as grade levels by birthdays, teacher recommendations for advanced placements of students, letter grades, universal screens for homogenous grouping in content areas are systemic in the education culture, and secondary tracks that lead to siloed opportunities for readiness in college and career. The Excellence Loop challenges these notions to create and lament Pathways of Prosperity. By examining your current structures and systems through the Excellence Loop, intentional change will occur underpinning a strong stance in the context of scientific transformation that will facilitate access and opportunity for students that have been historically excluded in the education ecosystem.

In Wilder School District 133, Superintendent Dr. Jeff Dillon has created a K-12 model that eliminates time to ensure students meet criteria based on individual mastery of standards and course outcomes. Time and differentiation are foundational cultural pillars for access as learning becomes personalized, resource allocation is individualized, and the primary mode of pedagogy is consistent with practitioner facilitation. Wilder School District 133 serves a high migrant population, and the high school model features flexibility for career and work opportunities throughout the day. The day has “structure” to time, albeit non-linear for equity and access to accommodate students and families. Hence – Wilder is closing the “Access Gap” and “Expectations Gap” for students in relation to the Excellence Loop.

Another example is Equal Opportunity Schools, a non-profit organization in Seattle that supports districts with transforming structures and systems to ensure access to rigorous courses for historically excluded students. Equal Opportunity Schools underpin Insight Cards with districts to shift discussions around teacher recommendations and policies regarding advanced placement entry. Aspects of the Excellence Loop can be found in these examples, but how does this look from a systems perspective?

The Creative Staircase for Intentional Change

It is a myth that creating Pathways of Prosperity is an instant change. The Creative Staircase, as seen above, is a “whole-to-part” and “part-to-whole” process where the journey from “Micro Innovation” to “Serial Disruption” occurs systematically and strategically. When I served as Superintendent of Schools, we designed an Innovation Lab at the middle school that vertically matriculated into a high school “Aerospace and Manufacturing Pathway.” The 6-12 pathway prepared students in five different STEM verticals (middle school innovation model) coupled with an extended high school pathway experience focused on aerospace and manufacturing (demand and market alignment). Advanced certificates, using artificial intelligence to deepen learning, and creating virtual reality opportunities to deepen competencies were everyday experiences for students. We must challenge the status quo intentionally, boldly, and unapologetically.  The road will not be simplistic or linear, albeit profound outcomes will occur if the organization remains committed to achieving prosperity. We cannot stop until we have achieved prosperity for ALL.

Michael T. Conner, Ed.D., is the CEO/Founder of Agile Evolutionary Group, Corp., Pathways Fellow for Getting Smart, and former Superintendent of Schools. He is the creator of the Disruptive Excellence Framework and author of Intentional, Bold, and Unapologetic: A Guide to Transforming Schools in the AC-Stage of Education.

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from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/09/creating-new-pathways-of-prosperity-for-all/

By: Louka Parry

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

-Abraham Maslow

Schools and organizations are human systems, filled with opportunities. And yet there is a profound difference between building from a foundation of schooling and building from a foundation of learning.

Rather than simply replicate and scale the arrangements of schooling, we must seize the possibility to shift from a schooling system to a learning ecosystem to truly empower learners, educators, and parents to create a virtuous future for themselves and their communities.

Clearly, we live in this moment of increasing complexity with generative AI (ChatGPT), geopolitical crises (Ukraine), financial instability (inflation), pandemics (Covid), and ecological precariousness (climate change, biodiversity loss) impacting all aspects of living in the modern world. With this as the backdrop, we get to move away from the rigidity of schooling models we’ve inherited (and unconsciously reinforce) and venture into the emerging learning paradigm.

Technology, if used well, might allow us to return to our deep humanity

The future will be what we make it and therefore certainty is an impossibility. But if I can be so bold, it’s clear our future will be one filled with life-long, life-deep, and life-wide learning that must unlock both human and planetary flourishing. This means leveraging exponential technologies to become more human and solve wicked problems as we create new possibilities. To cultivate first-class human beings, rather than second-class robots, as the saying goes.

As an education futurist and learning strategist, and CEO of The Learning Future, my days are filled with all kinds of wonderful conversations and work in, on, and about learning (plus all the other prepositions). I am lucky to attend a range of global fora relevant to this, including an Education Futures Fellowship at

Salzburg Global Seminar

last year and the UNGA, and reflecting on this I want to share a list of themes that I see are emerging and exciting me and other rather brilliant educators and innovators with whom I work and learn.

So below is an incomplete and constantly evolving list of key concepts for our collective Learning Future.

A-Zs that can unlock learning

This new alphabet (terribly English-centric), from A-Z, seeks to help learners, educators, leaders, and parents discover some of the key trends and themes that are taking hold. Our challenge will be how we choose to redesign and remake our experiences, environments, and ecosystems so that we unlock our true creative potential and thrive in the future.

Agency — The feeling of conscious control over our actions and their consequences. Last year, we released a podcast with the brilliant Charlie Leadbeater and a network of Australian schools that unpacks 10 lessons for placing agency at the heart of schools. [Listen]

Belonging — We have a need to belong and yet 1 in 5 people suffer from chronic loneliness*. Cultivating environments of belonging that create a social fabric is key to psychological safety and any optimal learning or work experience. (*Campaign to End Loneliness)

Creativity — A fundamentally human skill, to create something that wasn’t there before, great words from a mentor of mine Larry Rosenstock. In this creativity crisis, it’s essential we develop our unique creativity at all levels of education and work to best contribute to the economy and society.

Discernment — In a world awash with information, navigating misinformation and developing the ability to think critically is a key pillar of education. How do we decide what is right and challenge bias and mental models? We develop our capacity to challenge, question, take perspective and unearth bias.

Embodiment- We live our lives in our bodies and practices that help us connect the brain and body are the baseplace for optimal well-being through learning. Mind-body interrelationships are so clear as the extended mind research is now telling us.

Flourishing — The ultimate goal of education and all social progress. Collective flourishing — where we have social prosperity in planetary limits set by biocollective.

Generative AI Generative artificial intelligence describes algorithms (such as the now infamous ChatGPT) that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos by giving it tasks in fairly usual language. It has huge ramifications for schooling, especially assessment, and also for the workforce. (McKinsey)

Humanistic psychology — (thanks Maslow!) As a whole person, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Inquiry-based learning — A focus on investigation and problem-solving. Growing a learner’s capacity for curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity through real-life questions, problems, and scenarios to explore.

Joy — An under-appreciated emotion, it is more than happiness. Joy can co-exist with sadness and it is often a by-product of the core modality of play.

Kindness — “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” (Aesop). Above all, be kind. Famous last words from Aldous Huxley. Schools and workplaces that cultivate kindness create psychological safety and more virtuous cultures that support optimal learning and growth.

Learning intentions — Provide clarity of the knowledge and understanding, to support student success and guide improvement strategies.

Meta-learning — Learning about learning, especially mental models. We become great learners only when we can rise about our learning and look at how we learn best, and what models we are using in our life to learn quicker. Great work from FS blog.

Neuroscience — Brain research highlights how complex structures and processes of the brain impact human functioning and behavior (affective and cognitive). See the excellent work of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

OCEAN: Who are you? OCEAN is an acronym that seeks to deconstruct personality and increase self-awareness by considering your: Open-mindedness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Great article here.

Pedagogical core: This refers to the content (the what?), the resources (with what?), and the teachers (with whom?). It is the core business of schools and when we focus on all these elements it offers many ways of innovating learning environments and transforming education (OECD, 2013).

Questioning: “My mother made me a scientist,” recalled physicist Isidor Rabi, Nobel Prize laureate. “Izzy,’ she would say, did you ask a good question today?” (Forbes, 2020)

Relationships: quality relationships are shown to be the strongest predictive factor for our health. And increasingly I consider all learning as understanding relationships, between concepts, emotions, memories, possibilities, and perspectives.

Self-determination theory: One of the most important ways of understanding how we can help ourselves and others live a purposeful life. (Deci & Ryan, 2000)

Trans-disciplinary learning — Making connections across subjects that allows for deeper learning and grows learner capacity to tackle complex global problems we face now and in the future.

Understanding — “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (Covey, 1989). So much of our learning is not about knowledge, but about understanding, which is connecting knowledge

Vitality — Rather than thinking of just the outputs of school. Even the well-known PERMA framework added vitality after the fact.

Wellbeing — Evident in our sense of satisfaction, a connection to meaning and purpose. It is the sense of feeling well, linked to our thoughts, emotions, actions, and experiences. This is a core goal of modern learning organizations and systems, as the renewed global focus tells us.

X — The unknown variable. In our complex world, not all can be known, not all can be understood. Yet we must still make progress, and factor in the unknowns.

Yes (as a default) — So often we default to no in our schools and workplaces, or as leaders. If we start with yes it opens possibilities that can then be explored through ideation and prototyping.

Zest — remember that this is your life. Nothing is achieved without enthusiasm and ultimately we should all ask ourselves this key question of ourselves, our colleagues, and our students: what is yours to do today?

I’m aiming to create a short video of each of these terms across the rest of 2023. If you want to follow along, check out The Learning Future YouTube Channel and the podcast that we release.

Whatever learning you’re currently engaged in, I hope it brings you new discoveries, and new self-awareness and reminds you of the difference you make to the world around you.

Here’s to a full year of fully human learning.

This post was originally published here.

Louka Parry is the CEO and Founder of The Learning Future, an organisation that supports schools, systems and companies to thrive in tomorrow’s world. A former teacher, he became a school principal at 27 years old and was named Inspirational Public Secondary Teacher of the Year for South Australia.

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from Getting Smart https://www.gettingsmart.com/2023/06/08/our-learning-future-from-a-to-z/

Regional initiatives are a critical part of creating durable New Pathways. When taking a regional approach, it becomes easier to incorporate larger-scale industry partners, develop highly intentional and robust support and guidance and also enable access to new funding models.

One great example of this, recently highlighted in the New Yorker, is Connecticut Technical Education and Career Systems (CTECS). CTECS is a state-run vocational education program that offers high-quality technical education to students in Connecticut. It was established in 1910 and has since grown to become one of the most comprehensive technical education programs in the United States. With a focus on providing students with hands-on training, CTECS has earned a reputation for producing highly skilled professionals who are in demand across a range of industries.

CTECS offers a wide range of technical education programs across 17 campuses in Connecticut. These programs include courses in areas such as advanced manufacturing, automotive technology, culinary arts, information technology, healthcare, and many more. The programs are designed to prepare students for careers in their chosen field, whether they are looking to enter the workforce immediately or continue their education at a higher level.

Curriculum Development

The CTECS curriculum is shaped by a number of key stakeholders, enabling it to stay relevant and robust amidst technological changes.

Certain projects, like the development of a sustainability-minded e-house, are being funded and driven by interested community partners like the Connecticut Green Bank. CTECS also hires and leverages trade experts at the district level, attending trade shows, etc. Beyond that, there are program advisory committees and input from the state department of labor, ensuring workforce needs are being met throughout the state.

Teaching within these programs also requires some specific life experience. Teachers within CTECS must have at least 8 years in the field and maintain their licenses so that they are able to work within the community. Upon being hired, they must also take a few college classes that are reimbursed by the state. The CTECS network does its best to match what these potential teachers were making in their previous industry.

Community Connected Projects

Through this program, the students and the faculty co-run a business, The Student Workforce, that does real projects throughout the community. Aside from community members being able to bring their cars into the school for support from the young mechanics, members can apply online for the school to come do electrical, plumbing or other construction work on their house.

The school-run business will then vet the projects based on curriculum alignment and the size of the job. There is a maximum of 18 students per teacher for safety reasons and out-of-school projects must be able to utilize all 18 students. “The projects are meant to enhance learning and supplant budgetary restrictions,” said Brent McCartney, Architectural Construction trade consultant for CTECS who also oversees the Student Workforce. S “Teachers are selective with jobs to ensure the most diverse experience for students. This means some jobs are passed over to prevent redundancy.”.”

Once the project is done, the school is paid (usually about 1/5th the cost of a professional project). This revenue goes right back into the shops to help buy equipment, etc.

These students are also able to participate in a rigorous work-based learning program where they are able to leave school to work full or part-time jobs if they meet certain criteria.

In Conclusion

This program got off to a bit of a slow start, however, with the rising interest in trade-based professions, demand has surged in recent years. “For this next enrollment period, we got 7000 applications for our incoming class. That’s more than double the available seats,” said Kerry.

The next phase is the launching of a robust Career Center to better inform parents as well as students about the myriad work opportunities and to help industry partners more directly reach the students with news and announcements about project opportunities, event opportunities and more.

Across the country, there are skilled worker shortages and growing global challenges that will require reskilling and redoing infrastructure at a never before seen rate. One of the keys to addressing this shortage is to encourage more young people to consider a career in the trades. Many high school students are pushed towards traditional four-year college programs, even if they are not interested in pursuing a degree. However, CTECS offers an alternative path that can lead to a successful career without the need for a college degree. By providing students with a practical education that leads directly to a career, CTECS is helping to fill the skills gap in industries like electrical work.

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