AI & Education - Transformation Towards Human Flourishing!

This is the twelfth and summarizing post I write on AI & Education over the last weeks. I Started out with the hype regarding AI & Education following the launch of ChatGPT in late November with an example of a 60 second essay:

I Went on to argue that we need to harness the power of AI to help students develop further. Sometimes you "ride the bicycle" and sometimes you do the drills.

#2 – Ride the bicycle or do the drills?

Then I interviewed teacher Anders Enstr?m :

I then went on to suggest the development of special purpose AI for education, inspired by the language development prototype I worked on with a small team in 2016.

So far I have moved around in the same waters as most educators do when they talk about AI. However, I think the discussion is reactive and unsufficent. It fails to address the bigger question - what do we want and need from education as individuals and society in the AI era. Professor Keri Facer suggested in her book "Learning Futures" that education should be “future creating” and I love it. Instead of just passively responding to changes in the environment we need to think what future we want and transform education so that it contributes to our vision. ?

So what is AI if we zoom out? AI is another great leap in the power available to humans. During the last two hundred years humans have built more and more powerful technologies. We have used those to make the standard of living better for many humans but at the same time we have created problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, species extinction and polarizing social media, all with the capacity to end the world as we know it. As our tools get more powerful we need to become better stewards of powerful technologies for the sake of humanity and the planet.

We need to develop individual and collective wisdom, kindness, and ability to see how things are connected in larger systems. That way we maximize the chance of people building technology and using technology with the best of humanity in mind. This ranges from forbidding killer drones to building algorithms and digital services that support people, to many things we have not thought of yet.

I developed my perspective on existential threat and what it means for education in a post:

?So how does education that develops these skills and traits look and work? It is all about going from a narrow knowing facts perspective to a wider perspective where human flourishing is the goal. I developed this over several posts.

First I wrote about bringing the most important human traits and skills to the center of education in the future. Creativity, art, music and other cultural expressions are very human just like our social and emotional skills:

Another post was about the need to make education community centric to be meaningful for all students and strengthen the public spaces and local societies across the world. Education should not just be to learn about the world, but to make the world better - that is the core of contributive learning and we all need it!

I also wrote about liberating education from the tight reigns of grades and testing and the following “teach to the test” problem that currently takes life & love out of education for many teachers and students. I wrote that it simply cannot be right that the state labels half of young people as less gifted than the other half. Let′s drop grading altogether and use the power of AI and other tools to secure quality, and qualify students for further studies. This will put focus on learning and discovery and enable an education system for all where we can have a richer idea of human potential and focus on human flourishing for all:

I also described the strange situation where many world leading school development experts agree to most of the above whereas many national discussions and proposals tend to get caught in nostalgic ideas that are not fit to territory today:??

I Went on to describe how we could manage to transform education through collegial development for millions of teachers:

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Finally, I described what signifies physical environments that work well today and that also would be able to support this transformation towards a system full of meaningful learning, rich experiences and human flourishing.

I end with a quote from UNESCOs report Futures of Education:

"Transform education now, the future of people and the planet depends on it"

#education, #AI

Thanks to all the brilliant people whose work I related to or that I tagged in different posts: Maria Wiman , Anders Enstr?m , Adriano Di Prato , Dr Phil Cummins , Benjamin Freud, Ph.D. , Andreas SCHLEICHER , Daniel Schmachtenberger , Joanne McEachen , Peter Lippman , Keri Facer and others.

This might also be of interest to fellow educators, thinkers and developers such as Fredrik Plahn , Jesper Sj?gren , Carl Heath, Kristina Bj?rn , Sandra Wissting , Jannike ?hlgren , Annika Renestam , Troed Troedson , Adebayo Alomaja ( BayoGPT ) , Kim Flintoff , Jeremias Andersson , Magnus Anclair , Ulrika Jonson , Annika Agélii Genlott , Frida Monsén , Frida Edman , Frida Brismar P?lsson , Frida Gustafsson Wenn? , Fredrik Svensson , Mikael Ahlstr?m , Helena L′Estrade , Roz Lind , Jan Hylén , Daniel Lundqvist , Nora Bateson , Johan Sj?lin , Ante Runnquist , Johan Lindstr?m , Maria Nordmark , Jannie Jeppesen , Anna Tebelius Bodin , Wille Sandels , Ida Karell , Niclas Fohlin , Lina Axelsson Kihlblom , P?r Lager , Joe Obidiegwu , James Nottingham, FRSA , Dwayne Matthews O.C.T (he/him) , Patricia Diaz , Linda Mannila , Micke Kring , Angelica Hedin , Lene Rachel Andersen , Tomas Bj?rkman , Judith Wolst , Anna Nordell Westling , Anna Fell?nder , Jesper Levallius , Johan Falk , Marina Malmqvist , ?rjan Johansson , Ove Lidstr?m , Magnus Blixt , Daniel Weiland , Ann Ulfves , Lina von Post mfl.