#264 – Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom, with Carl Hooker

Unpacking Education February 21, 2024 42 min

In this episode, we are joined by Carl Hooker, an educator, author, and speaker, to talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in a new era in education. We talk about several related topics from his new book, Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom, and explore practical ways that students, teachers, and systems can adapt to the changes brought to the learning process by AI.

Read a transcript of this episode.

Carl Hooker
Educator, Author, Speaker, Consultant
Paul Beckermann
PreK–12 Digital Learning Specialist
Rena Clark
STEM Facilitator and Digital Learning Specialist
Dr. Winston Benjamin
Social Studies and English Language Arts Facilitator

. . . AI will not replace a teacher. However, a teacher that utilizes AI correctly in their daily work will be a much more effective teacher, which means students will become much more effective learners.

Carl Hooker, from his book, Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

Human in the Center

When teachers are first exposed to generative artificial intelligence tools, like ChatGPT, it’s easy for them to identify potential concerns. Will the AI do all the work for students? Will students use it to cheat? Will students lose the ability to be creative and think critically because the AI can do those things for them?

Our guest, Carl Hooker, believes that we can strike the proper balance and keep the human at the heart of learning, even with AI in the equation. He says, “I like the idea of keeping the human in the center. AI is the assistant. AI is the feedback. AI is the tutor, the thought partner, but it’s not the learner. The learner is still the most important part.” He adds, “Human compassion will never be surpassed by artificial intelligence.”

This perspective colors almost every aspect of our conversation about AI in the classroom and what type of effect it may have on education and the learning process. The following are a few highlights from our conversation:

  • About Our Guest: Carl Hooker has been an educator for over 25 years. He has held a variety of positions in multiple districts, including first grade teacher and director of innovation and digital learning. Among other accomplishments, Carl has written eight books and is a keynote speaker and podcast host. His latest book is titled, Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom.
  • Writing a Book About AI: Carl says that people instantly want to know if he let AI write his book for him. To this, Carl responds with a chuckle, “Have you seen how AI writes?” While Carl would never let the AI do all the writing for him, he does admit that it can be a “great thought partner.” During his own writing process, he used AI to help him brainstorm ideas and get through bouts of writer’s block.
  • A Possible Path to Personalization: Carl says, “I think AI might finally be the thing that gets to . . . personalized learning—the things that we’ve been talking about, you know, for several decades. Maybe this will be the thing that does it.”
  • Teacher Concerns: Carl has noticed that teacher reactions have changed over time. They started with fear and concern. Then, teachers began to embrace the idea. When the new school year started, concerns of academic integrity and cheating slipped in, and now, teachers are concerned about overreliance on AI and the loss of creativity and critical thinking. Carl responds by saying that it’s okay to acknowledge and address these concerns. He also adds a positive spin on the conversation, saying, “Right now, it still takes our creative and critical thinking skills to make it generate what we want it to generate. . . . I want to make sure we’re still learning the foundational skills and not just letting AI do everything for us.”
  • Guilt: With AI, there is a “guilt of using it” for a lot of people, says Carl. He felt this when he used AI to help him write a eulogy for his father when he was facing writer’s block and didn’t know how to get started. AI provided him with assistance, but he still did most of the work. He says, “It gave me a skeleton, which then I filled in with story, but I would say 20% of it was AI-driven.”
  • The Right Questions: When introducing new technology, Carl leans on some key questions: “What does the tool provide? What does it give us that actually helps with learning? . . . What is it doing with our data? What is it doing with student data?”
  • Benefits: The possibilities of becoming more efficient through the use of AI are exciting to Carl and the teachers he has worked with. If we can harness these time-saving opportunities, Carl says, “Now we can actually go back to the human side of teaching. We can take away all the administrivia and start actually working on the human side of teaching.”
  • Strategies: Elementary teachers are the gatekeepers to this technology in their classrooms because of age restrictions. When they feel it’s appropriate, they can model its use with students, prompting them to help analyze AI outputs and work to improve in that content. Older students who are allowed to use generative AI tools on their own can benefit from other gatekeeping strategies, like the red light, yellow light, green light approach, which signals to students when they cannot use AI, when they may use it to a limited degree, or when they may use it as they see fit.
  • Training Teachers: Carl has found that many teachers still have not been trained on AI. This is something that districts must address, and he offers a general blueprint for doing this. He suggests letting teachers get their concerns out first. He says, “Once we get that off our chest, now let’s look at examples of how it can be used, and then you need to give them time to play with it.” After that, he says, “We travel down the bias path” and explore how AI can produce content that is biased. “The tool itself isn’t biased, but it’s taking our own inherent biases that we put on the internet.”
  • Don’t Ban It: “Once you tell a kid not to use it, they’re all going to use it,” says Carl. We need to find ways to help students learn to use this new tool responsibly.
  • Value Process: While students may use AI to generate final products, the learning process becomes much more important. Carl says, “You can’t use AI to cheat process.” The key, therefore, is to hold students accountable to the learning process and check in on them throughout that process.
  • A Favorite Tool: Carl admits that on any given day, his new favorite tool might be different because they change so quickly. Currently, he is enjoying HeyGen, a video capturing and creation tool that can produce lifelike videos of someone based on 2 minutes of imported video. It can even change the language being spoken in the video.
  • Digital Literacy: As AI evolves, new digital literacy skills will be increasingly important, especially in terms of elections. Carl believes that people will be “duped by it.” Because of this, media literacy skills are becoming more important than ever.
  • HI Over AI: Carl believes that human intelligence (HI) will always be more powerful and important than artificial intelligence (AI).
  • Future Benefits: Carl sees AI as being an equalizer for students. AI has the potential to bring tutors and academic support to all students. He says, “This is an opportunity for people who didn’t have opportunity before.”

Guiding Questions

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

  • What do you know about artificial intelligence?
  • What concerns do you have about AI?
  • What possibilities excite you about AI?
  • How have you seen students using AI?
  • How have you seen teachers using AI?
  • How might AI be used effectively in the classroom?
  • What steps can you take to become more informed and skilled with AI?

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