THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN JOURNEYS SUMMER 2023.  

The End of High School English. A Threat to Education. AI, Do My Homework.

These are just a few of the headlines that have surfaced over the last six months. Artificial intelligence (AI). Several decades ago, the term was used more in science fiction movies than in news articles. Today, it has become one of the most common search terms on the Internet.

While the rapid spread of AI has led some educators and school leaders to restrict technology and express frustration regarding the perceived negative impact on learning, I am excited – and a little bit intimidated.

I am excited about the potential for AI to help our students learn and grow. I am also excited because AI will help push us all to a higher level of learning. If AI can effectively do many of the tasks we as adults do or have traditionally asked our students to do, how do we change our learning approach to emphasize the types of capabilities that our students need to master in an age of AI?

I am grateful that many of the changes we have made as a school over the last decade to focus on deeper learning have prepared us to address how we must adapt education in the face of this technological revolution. We are lucky to have a team of educators at Singapore American School who are not only excited but also very qualified to help move us forward.

As a school, we emphasize that we value not only content knowledge but also foundational skills like critical thinking, creativity, and communication. Our seven learning aspirations are:

With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly able to produce content knowledge, that will only highlight the value of our learning aspirations.

At the same time, I am a little bit intimidated because the changes to longstanding practices will not be easy. While we have already made many changes to promote our learning aspirations, we will have to significantly change a number of the ways that we have traditionally assigned work and asked students to demonstrate their learning. If we are giving students an assignment that AI can do for them, the answer is not to blame AI for doing it for them but to change our assignments in ways that call upon deeper learning skills. AI ultimately is a tool we want to teach our children to master—including discerning false or ill- founded information. Prohibiting its use may win some short-term battles but would cause us to lose sight of our long-term goals.

A great example of these long-term goals are predictions for how AI will change the range of economic opportunities that will be available for our students. The World Economic Forum has predicted that close to 85 million jobs will be disrupted by automation, technology, and artificial intelligence. At the same time, they believe almost 100 million new roles and jobs will be created in the process. University Professor and Maxwell Dean Emeritus at Syracuse University Shelly Palmer recently shared that it’s not artificial intelligence that is going to take jobs from people— it’s the people who know how to effectively use AI who will claim these jobs.

Our vision does not change, but our means to accomplish that vision must change.

We believe our focus on these learning aspirations will continue to empower our students to navigate the artificial intelligence movement along with other large-scale technological advancements they will inevitably see in their lifetime. This is why AI tools, much like Google and the calculator, will continue to come and go, but it is up to us to help students develop the types of skills needed to use the tools effectively now and in the future.

So what does this mean for us as parents? It means we need to make sure our conversations cover more than grades and test scores. Consider asking your child something in addition to the traditional, “how did you do on your last test?”.

Here are a few questions you might consider:
• Tell me about a group project you’re working on—what are you learning about working with other people?
• When you use ChatGPT or other AI tools, how are they most helpful to you, what are their biggest limitations, and where do you think they might get things wrong?
• What do you wish AI could do for you that it doesn’t do for you today?
• If they’ve got a presentation coming up, you might ask them if they want to practice with you and then ask them to reflect on how it feels to present and what they’ve learned about their personal presentation style.
• Who have you helped today? And just as importantly, who helped you? (It’s healthy to develop an understanding that sometimes we help and sometimes we need help)

We’re excited to see our Eagles grow as learners and cultivate the skills needed to be prepared for whatever the future holds.