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☝🏼 Our students' AI future? 6 tips

☝🏼 Our students' AI future? 6 tips

Plus Ditch Summit prizes, a community, and a podcast

Matt Miller
November 27, 2023

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Heading into the future

During the Thanksgiving holiday, I did quite a bit of running. I’m trying to get back into the habit. Plus, all of those Thanksgiving calories weren’t going to burn themselves …

I’m a huge fan of listening to podcasts and audiobooks while I run. (Thank you, Spotify Premium!)

My most recent audiobooks have been The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman and Unmasking AI by Dr. Joy Buolamwini.

The more I learn about how quickly AI is growing, the more I think …

Where are we heading? And are our schools equipped to take us there?

In today’s deep dive, we’ll look at six tiny shifts we can make in classrooms — in our day-to-day instruction — to help prepare students for an AI future.

Also, don’t miss our new Ditch Summit contest (win prizes!), our new AI for Admins community, and a new DTT Podcast episode!

Inside:

🎁 Share Ditch Summit, win prizes!
🤖 6 ways to prepare students for an AI future
💼 New community: AI for Admins
🎧 DTT Podcast 191: Plan lessons faster with AI

🎁 Share Ditch Summit, win prizes!

The Ditch Summit is coming! It’s our free online conference for teachers (Dec. 11 to Jan. 5).

Every year, we do a contest where you can win prizes for sharing the Ditch Summit with others.

This year, the contest is a little different — with more winners and more ways to win!

Here’s how it works: Share the summit with others using a unique link we give only to you. When they click the link to sign up, you earn a referral.

5 referrals gets you a DTT sticker pack.
10 referrals gets you a DTT online course for free.
30 referrals gets you a t-shirt/tote bag from our merch store.
50 referrals gets you a hoodie from our merch store.

How to get your unique link: Go to DitchSummit.com and sign up. (I know, I’ve been telling you that if you get these email newsletters you’re already signed up. That’s still true. But if you want to win prizes, go sign up at DitchSummit.com. Trust me.)

In your Ditch Summit welcome email, you’ll get your unique link and some creative ideas to share it. Then go share it far and wide!

If you have any trouble, just hit reply to this email and I’ll help you out. (This is a new contest this year, so I’m sure there will be kinks to work out!)

🤖 6 ways to prepare students for an AI future

Back to that question I pondered at the beginning of this email …

Where are we heading? And are our schools equipped to take us there?

I know there are lots of us that want to prepare students for THEIR future — even if we can’t completely envision it yet.

We know that AI is starting to change the world, the workforce, and the way we live our lives. We want our students to be ready.

And we know that continuing to prepare them for the way the world is today just isn’t going to cut it.

So … what are some small shifts we can start to make today — right now — in our instruction that’ll start to prepare them?

I’ve been thinking about that a LOT lately.

Here are six small shifts we can make in our day-to-day instruction — little, doable things — to start progress in the right direction.

(Get more details about all six of these — and several prompts you can use in the classroom — in this post.)

Focus on “why” over “what” — Traditional teaching is hyper-focused on answering the "what" question over the "why" question. The “why” lets us emphasize the lessons learned, the guidance we can use in our own lives.
Focus on process over product — Many times, with schoolwork, we assign grades based on the product. Getting the right answer. The problem? AI and search engines make the product easier than ever. Let’s focus on the process — the “why” and the “how.”
Emphasize problem-solving skills — There are some common approaches to solving complex problems. But if you haven’t learned them, they might not be intuitive to you. No matter our future, we humans are going to have to solve complex problems on our own.
Discuss the ethics of actions — What’s right and what’s wrong? It’s tricky — especially when our definitions of right and wrong can be so different. Our future will be full of ethical decisions — especially in light of AI. We need practice at making them.
Highlight how to become a better learner — If we want our students be nimble to adapt to a changing world. they need to know how to be great learners. That way, no matter how the world changes, they’ll be prepared to adapt.
Emphasize collaboration and relationships — No matter what happens with AI, humans will still be roaming around the planet. And we may need each other more than ever in the future. If our students know how to collaborate and develop relationships, they’ll be better equipped.

In today’s new post — 6 ways to prepare students for an AI future — I go deep into each of the six. Each one includes a description, a “what this means,” a “how this prepares us for an AI future,” and some human (non-AI) prompts you can use with students.