The AI Dilemma: When Students Lift Weights with a Forklift Ep 36
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: Welcome back to the Reach Every Student Podcast. I'm your host, Jon Bergman. Today I want to reflect on this past year and how my thinking has changed with regard to AI. And I want to share how I plan to use AI in the coming year. On a note, I'll be taking a break from the podcast for a few weeks as I go on vacation. My amazing wife has always wanted to take a cruise to Alaska and we leave later this week. And then we'll take a few weeks to go visit our adult children. Just amazing grown children and foster grandchildren. And we do that every summer. And so I will not be podcasting during that time. But I will be back in July with some more informative podcasts. Speaking of summer, I want to put in a plug-in for your summer PD. I've created three online courses that will up your game over the summer. Particularly in the light of AI, what I've found is that Flip learning is the ideal solution for AI because if you send home cognitively difficult stuff, students will cheat using ChatGPT or whatever. And flip learning is really a solution to AI. So I'd encourage you to take those classes. If you use the code JUNE25, J-U-N-E-2-5, you can get 25% off. Now, let's get to the topic today. You know, as I reflect over this past year, I want to take you through my journey through AI. So last spring, so a year ago right now, my principal came to me and said, hey, Jon, I'd like you to focus on AI. And for the next school year. I spent the summer reading and reading and reading and playing with A.I. And doing a lot of stuff. And the readings I did were pretty much like enthusiastic. AI is awesome. so I came into the school year pretty enthusiastic about AI. I had some plans on how to implement AI over the summer. Also, I was able to bring a platform to our school. An online tutorial AI platform, Flint K12. I am a fan of this, by the way, flintk12.com, I think it is, might be .org, but flintk12.com. I got a chance to meet the CEO, Sohan, and I was just like this, this could really be the answer, could do a lot of really cool things, and it can and still does, and I'll talk about that a little bit later. And so I started to implement AI in my classroom. And I thought it would be a game changer, but then as the year progressed, I got increasingly disillusioned with what I was seeing in my classrooms with AI. And I was disappointed because I saw a couple things start to happen. I saw some of my advanced students, students who are the best students at our school, and we have a high performing school, who were too quick To jump to AI to get help on, say, some advanced physics problems. And that really concerned me. You see, they weren't going through that positive struggle that we know is a part of the learning process. And I said, man, something is wrong. What is going on here? AI is too seductive. It is too easy for students to Do the easy thing and not do that productive struggle of learning. And then, even this great tool that I, I still love this Flint tool that my students were using. I started to actually assign problems or problems, right? Some questions, it was a geology class, some questions about geology and what students started to do, and I've commented on this before, is they cheated on the AI assignment with AI. And so they weren't really learning. They were doing, as I said in an article, I said it's like they're lifting going to the weight room with a forklift. They weren't doing the work themselves and they were struggling In the learning process. Now you might argue, and I still wonder, am I assessing the right things? Is my class not designed to be more project based? Is there ways I could change how I teach? That would be better in light of the world of AI? And I think the answer to that all is yes, and these are some things I want to change. I'll talk about what I want to change next, but I'm walking through the story now. After I got disillusioned a bit with AI, I started to do some more digging and some more research and then I found articles about how AI could be damaging and there's some research out there that says AI causes Students to lose critical thinking skills and, and I, as I, as I analyze that and as I have thought about that and watched it with real students in my class every day. I began to say, yeah, that's what I'm seeing too. That led me to write an article that went semi-viral called, AI will stupefy your students unless we do these six things. And was, by the way, the highest ever read article on the website where it was hosted. And I... I have really been doing a lot of thinking. The word, as I have shared before, the word that I would call myself is I'm weary about AI in education. I see some positives, but I see some big, big negatives. So that has led me, interestingly enough, to get opportunities to speak at AI conferences. I'm speaking at an AI conference late in June, and I'm preparing to talk about two things, about six things that... To do or will stupefy our students. I'm also going to talk about the positive nature of AI tutorials. So I'm again, I'm wary, but I also see some positives and I'm also speaking to conference later on learning in the brain. In February of 2026. So I'll put some links to those conferences in the show notes if you could visit me Fort Worth in late June, Texas, and then San Francisco in February of 2026. And though I am this, and I found myself in these conferences, I'm going to be the sort of the negative Nelly. I'm going to be the person who says we got to be careful with AI. so instead of being the enthusiastic AI guy, I'm the wary educator. but hopefully what I will bring to the table is I'm grounded in the real, real world with real students. So yeah, I'll put those links into the notes if you're interested in that. Later on in the year, I'm again reflecting on the whole year, later on in the year what interestingly happened is my Principal came to me and said, we need a policy for AI at our school. And so I led a team of about ten teachers or so. And we'd be created, with lots of help, with lots of, Inputs from all over the world, different schools that have done this, a policy or a, a rubric really is what we created, an AI rubric that will help our teachers at our school navigate the world of AI and this, this has been a game changer I think or will be a game changer As we implement this next year. The one thing that we have done that's different, I think, than any of the other AI policies is that we're going to require students to fill out an AI usage form. Where they describe and reflect on how AI helped and or hurt them in the process of using AI. And they'll provide a link to their chat. Gpt or whatever tool, most of the case we'll use this Flint tool to share that with us and I think that's gonna really help the students to critically think about their AI usage and make sure that they're using it well. So that's kind of in the future. And speaking of the future, um, how am I going to iterate? And so I've been thinking about this now, I mean, somewhat constantly. I think I need a break, right? Because my brain just keeps going and I need to turn it off for a little bit. Looking forward to this trip. Here in just a few days is how am I going to, go ahead. Number one is I want to move again. flip learning really is going to be such an essential and integral part of the way I teach. It has been for so long, but in the age of AI, I mean, the big idea of flipped learning, of course, is that when students They do the easy stuff at home and the hard stuff in class. And if you are a teacher and you're still doing the easy stuff, the information transfer, the lecture in the class, and then you send them home to do the hard stuff, in this day and age, They can just ask ChatGPT to do it. You've probably seen the article that came out. All the students are cheating their way through college now with AI. And I teach high school students, so it's true there too. So we, the idea of a flipped classroom course is you do the hard stuff in class. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to really make a focus on that is do the hard stuff in class. But they're still going to watch these cheesy videos or do this quick reading assignment where they're going to understand the essential elements of the topics of class ahead of time. Another thing I'm planning to do is I'm planning to, you know, I'm a science teacher, so this is going to be a bit weird for me, but I'm going to do more Socratic dialogues and The way I envision it working, we'll see how it goes, is that in my, particularly in my geology class, we're going to, they're gonna have watched a video the night before or read a portion of the textbook, And when they have done that in class, I'm gonna have like six questions that we're going to round table discuss. Now certainly there'll be days where we'll get out rocks and we'll analyze rocks and we'll do, stuff with, earthquake simulations and so a lot of sort of labby things that, that, that's part of my class and has been a part of my class forever. So, and that's such a huge part of learning. So we will continue to do that. But on the days where I want them to understand. So example. One topic we talk about, a little science lesson, by the way, is we talk about the nature of different volcanoes. So some volcanoes, I don't know if you know this, some volcanoes explode. Think Mount St. Helens. Side note, by the way, I'm headed to Mount St. Helens in a few days. I'm going to be shooting video at Mount St. Helens that I'll use in my flipped glass. I'm so excited. We're going to go into a lava tube in a few, oh man, I can't wait. Anyways, so Mount St. Helens explodes, but Mount Keleloa in Hawaii, the lava oozes out. And I want them to get to the learning, the key thing I want them to get to as they discuss the nature of the lava. So some lava is thicker. More viscous is the fancy term, and some lava is less viscous, thinner. And the thin volcano would be Mount Kiloa. In Hawaii, it just oozes out and it doesn't explode. Where Mount St. Helens, basically the pipes get clogged. Because of the thicker lava. But we'll get into the mineral content and why that matters. And anyways, I want them to have a conversation about that topic on whatever day that's going to be. And we're going to work on that together. You see, in the class, in the past, what I've had them do is kind of do it more individually. But I'm going to make it much more of a whole group conversational style class. Because I think that's, I want them to do that hard work. And I think there's a lot of power in the doing the hard work So that's one thing. Well, two things. Flip learning would be one thing, and then that Socratic discussion. And then again, even in the same geology class, I want to potentially... Play around with some project based learning where they're going to have to like solve some real problems. So I live in Houston, Texas, and we have a whole unit on flooding, And we have a problem in Houston with flooding. I think Hurricane Harvey, where most of Houston was underwater, and many of these students, their homes were underwater, and they were evacuated when Hurricane Harvey happened many years ago, and they were a little Kids at the time, but they'll remember these things. And so this would be a great opportunity for them to see if they could solve a aspect of this problem. Since we're going to be studying streams, stream beds, stream valleys, all these kinds of things. This is the perfect opportunity for them to find a real world problem and that's something that's very applicable in the world in which we live. And so that's kind of where I'm at right now. And frankly, I need to think through these things and I need some space. And I think what happens, I know this about myself, is that I need to take a break from thinking school-y stuff For a few weeks and just enjoy God's creation, enjoy nature on this trip to Alaska and to enjoy my family and just not think about it for a few weeks. So if you're a teacher, I hope you get that opportunity this summer to step away and stop thinking about your school stuff. And I think that what I have found for me is that if... And when I do that, I come back refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to think again about what's the next thing. And so I encourage you if you're a teacher listening to this. When your summer starts, I don't know if your summer has started already or if it will start soon, take time to just decompress. You know, one thing I'm looking forward to on this, this, cruise to Alaska is it costs crazy amount of money. To get Wi-Fi. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to pay for it. And I'm going to have no Wi-Fi for days on end. And you know what? I've got some books that I'm going to read. Some fun sort of summer reads. And then a crazy, like, theological book I'm going to read. But, like, paper books. One's on my Kindle. One's on my paper book. And I just need to unplug so that I can get perspective. And I encourage you to do the same. Hey, lastly, again, if you're looking for PD this summer, now, take your break, though. go to johnbergman.com, click on the courses link, sign up for one of the courses, and again, remember, there's a code Call June twenty-five J-U-N-E-2-5, no spaces, all lowercase, and that gets you 25% off each course. And if you need the break, Sign up for the course. It's online. You can take it anytime you want. You may want to get signed up and then just wait until you've had your break before you start. Hey, I would love if you would hit the subscribe button and share this podcast with others. Hey, until July of twenty-five this is John Bergman out.
