What I’m learning, what I’m teaching, and what I’m learning about teaching
Part 2 of My Reflections on Ed Tech and Horvath’s Book The Digital Delusion
Though I agree with much of his critique of Ed Tech, Horvath’s vision for how to do education better contains subtle reactionary tone. I first picked up on this political stance before I read the book. Horvath, in an interview with Drew Perkins on his Thought Stretchers Podcast, made mention that he felt that the 1990s and early 2000s, when he was coming up through secondary school, were “peak western education”. I found this a very odd claim. I am also a product of “western education” in the 1990s. I graduated from high school in Canada in 1998. I’m not so sure everyone had the same “peak” experience.
Some Reflections on Ed Tech After Reading The Digital Delusion by Jared Cooney Horvath (Part 1)
Discussions about AI in education are everywhere these days. It’s a topic on which I’ve been doing some reading and thinking lately. In that context, I recently finished reading the new book by Jared Cooney Horvath called The Digital Delusion. What follows are some of my reflections on Ed Tech, which had been brewing already, but have come into greater focus following my reading of Horvath’s book. I’ll use Horvath’s term, “Ed Tech,” throughout this post; he uses it as a catch-all term for digital and internet-connected education tools and devices. Horvath’s book is divided into three parts; he develops his critique in parts 1 and 2, while part 3 consists of recommendations and resources for how different stakeholders can respond. For me, parts 1 and 2 elicited different reflections, so I’ll focus on part 1 in this post, and in a subsequent post, on part 2.
Will LLM Generative AIs spell the end of the humanities? Would that be a problem?
This emphasis on written text remains a unifying feature of the subjects of the humanities today. This is not to say that reading and writing are not important in other disciplines. Scientists, for example, certainly must be literate; but written texts are more of a means to an end in those fields. In the humanities, reading and writing are epistemological; texts are the data, textual interpretation is the method, and the act of writing is the meaning-making process. To study history requires reading both primary texts and the narrative interpretations of historians. The study of literature involves interpreting meaning from poetry and prose. Studying philosophy requires the student to make sense of the written treatises of philosophers. To be a historian, a novelist, a poet, or a philosopher requires that one write, write, and write some more, not just to share knowledge, but to create it. It’s no coincidence that the humanities grew in influence during a period of expanding literacy rates, the invention of the printing press, and the wider distribution of texts.
ChatGPT for Teachers: The Risk of Off-Loading Pedagogical Reasoning
I have concerns about the accelerating roll-out of generative AI systems in education. Many of these concerns relate to uncritical student use of AI tools, but I’m also skeptical about the implications of these tools for teachers.
This week, Open AI released ChatGPT for Teachers. According to Open AI, ChatGPT for Teachers is built upon ChatGPT 5.1 (the version available publicly through paid subscription), but specifically with teachers and school leaders in mind. It’s designed to work seamlessly with tools and software that teachers already use, facilitate collaboration with colleagues, and provide examples from other teachers. Supposedly, it’s built with teacher-specific tasks in mind, and is data privacy compliant with US FERPA rules for student data. I must confess upfront that I have not used it. It’s currently only available to verified K-12 teachers in the US (Open AI has rolled it out free for US-based K-12 teachers through June 2027). I will note that my paid subscription to ChatGPT has given me access to version 5.1 since it was released on Nov. 12 (and to version 5.0 before that). I will also note that I recently spent some time playing with Khanmigo’s AI teaching assistant for teachers, which is built upon the 4.0 version of the ChatGPT LLM system.
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