This week I attended a Pro-D seminar about building AI literacy in students. AI literacy is a skill of recognizing the strengths and limitations of AI, when it is best to use it and the impacts such a tool can have.
Outright prohibition of AI will not work and will deny students the use of a tool that will continue to play a large part in our lives. However, Students cannot fully trust AI to do the tasks flawlessly and foisting learning onto the AI will rob students of the opportunity to develop important life skills. So, it falls on teachers to help foster a healthy understanding and relationship with AI. Not every project requires AI and different assignments will require a different use of AI.
AI literacy is a swelling branch of pedagogy. In addition to the seminar I attended, there are a multitude of workshops being offered. One such is by New York University’s Professor Amal Shehata.
This is such a crucial moment to learn these skills as AI is rapidly evolving and it is difficult for students and teachers to keep up with the rate of change. Boundaries and expectations for pedagogy must be placed now before AI and irresponsible use of it gets away from us.