Since I've spent the last couple of weeks setting up the Blackboard sites for my classes, and the past week fielding emails from students asking me why the "schedule" link goes to Spring 2022, here's a humble request for AI: Scan the whole damn site, check that every link works, alert me to any date references that don't fall within this prescribed range. Not glamorous, and it's not gonna make anyone a billionaire, but it sure would be helpful, and they all say they want to help, right?
I think I've mentioned this one before, but imagine that, embedded inside Blackboard, there was an Artificial Intelligence so powerful that it could notice that the last thousand times I created a link I selected "open in new window" and then just make THAT the default setting. Wild, huh?
I'm gonna go with no on AI making a master schedule because, as with all things in education, making the schedule isn't just a mathematical operation but also an exercise in human empathy, which AI does not have.
Re: Master Scheduling - I've slayed this beast many times with schools/districts. In fact I'm headed to Kentucky next month to work with 17 schools on just this issue. I could see *a* place for AI in this jungle called scheduling, but not *the* solution (but it might be able to get close). I once built an interactive excel spreadsheet so ridiculous to see if a principal's fever dream of a schedule was possible - and then had it programmed to respond to differing parameters (class size, time of day, etc). It took me 8 hours - but it worked to show trade offs and the like.
But yes, please AI folks deliver something that can... Show me a straight 7 bell schedule with these staffing parameters and these scheduling constraints. Now for a 4x4 or a year round AB block or straight 8 or year round AB block with a skinny day on Wednesday - with or without an advisory block 2 days a week or... or... or... some software can approximate some of these decisions. Part one is what will our bell schedule look like (which is hopefully informed by mission/vision work) and then can our staffing levels support it - I would love to work with someone that actually understood anything about AI (that is most definitely not me) to see what is possible for scheduling - because lord knows I know a ton about that.
There's a consistent narrative that attracts political conservatives in particular but isn't exclusive to them that imagines teaching as an act of authority, command and domination: that the teacher demands obedient attention and remakes or remolds the students, and the students who refuse should be relentlessly compelled to submit, whereupon they will actually learn. It's rather like the root narratives associated with boot camp--disorderly subjects are to be broken down by physical and mental intensity and by the attention of an unyielding authority, whereupon they can become excellent soldiers. In real life, we know it doesn't work like that. Even in an all-volunteer army, some enlistees fall out, others never really embrace the discipline, and others are broken down and never really get built back up. In a mass conscription army, this really doesn't work. Any more than it does in education.
And yet the idea really persists--and it sneaks into marketing and product design on some level--the assumption that what teachers need is a way to hide the spinach of discipline and authority inside a chocolate chip cookie, that what you're doing is tricking students into submission.
A quote that's stuck with me over the years is a prison guard who said, "We rule with their consent." Not that I think of myself as a prison guard, but if you understand that nothing happens unless we all AGREE to make it happen, it makes things easier.
But consent is a concept that political conservatives have often struggled with, including their current candidate for President.
Maybe I haven’t played enough with AI yet but I don’t trust it to make a schedule that actually works given the complex parameters of our school. Because it’s not just the schedule but the students attached to the classes and the teacher preferences and so many other variables.
But if it did work, sign us up! Would love this for our scheduling team!
Really like the points raised, especially the power of pumpkin lattes (!) and SteveB's point -- which I'd translate to mean: Hey, can AI do the part of my job that I hate - rather than nosing around in the parts that give me joy? It's early days but I'd like to predict the most powerful role of AI in education will be making *other* stuff work well -- whether it's (ahem) LMSs, or something else. We haven't done a great job of identifying the real "pain points" of educators (instead of just imagining what students want) -- And there's a role for educators in articulating those pain points clearly! Let's make AI into a workhorse, not a Lipizzaner!
Can we say there are two views of math education? One says it can be administered, all that is required is love or fear. The other says, at bottom, math is about abstraction: to count to 1 all I need is to count to zero, 1 is its "successor" that only depends on what zero is. And that would be?
I am trying to say that administered math education is inherently frustrating because understanding abstraction can't be scheduled.
Can math educators learn to explain theirs is not merely a matter of pedagogy, it is necessary for them to understand how math works, even beginning math for young learners.
I haven't read that Labaree book, but the paradigm of teachers vs doctors is a common theme in his work for good reason. More people need to understand the concept of an unwilling client. Of course, then the charge is "If you were a good teacher, you'd have willing clients!"
This is why people designing curriculum and apps, as well as school administrators and education professors, need to continue to work in classrooms with full teacher responsibilities at least part-time to be relevant and actually respected (as opposed to simply tolerated) by teachers. My wife is in health care and I can tell you that there wouldn't be a chief of surgery who is not a surgeon himself or herself.
I've been an educator since 1979, long enough to see the teaching fads come, go, and come again. There is great teaching out there, but great teachers, who motivate students to want to come to class AND to learn are rare. I will admit, I found my personal class size limit is about 8, except for music performance classes.
I'm continually amazed that, even though we've been teaching for millennia, that our understanding of how learning works is astonishingly poor. There MUST be time for one teacher to get in the face of one student and ask, "OK, where did this fall off for you?"
Unmotivated students should be cut loose. Late bloomers should be delayed, without stigmatizing them. In my work at a local community college I saw MANY people who had flunked out or left high school, only to return about a decade later with a plan and a purpose. Rocket science wasn't a remote possibility when they were in high school. After some education as an adult, some of them went on to work for NASA. That was NOT my doing!
We keep trying to stuff education into K-12 classrooms. I can't recall that much of what I did there prepared me for life, yet I loved school and was an "A" student. There are not many students like me, yet our educational model is built for students like me. "What works?" has endless answers. "Wait and see" is not one the educrats like. It erodes their business.
Reading this article just drove home how far into collpase we really are. Everyone running education is lacking big picture thinking, seeing and execution. It is all down hill from here
Since I've spent the last couple of weeks setting up the Blackboard sites for my classes, and the past week fielding emails from students asking me why the "schedule" link goes to Spring 2022, here's a humble request for AI: Scan the whole damn site, check that every link works, alert me to any date references that don't fall within this prescribed range. Not glamorous, and it's not gonna make anyone a billionaire, but it sure would be helpful, and they all say they want to help, right?
I think I've mentioned this one before, but imagine that, embedded inside Blackboard, there was an Artificial Intelligence so powerful that it could notice that the last thousand times I created a link I selected "open in new window" and then just make THAT the default setting. Wild, huh?
I'm gonna go with no on AI making a master schedule because, as with all things in education, making the schedule isn't just a mathematical operation but also an exercise in human empathy, which AI does not have.
Re: Master Scheduling - I've slayed this beast many times with schools/districts. In fact I'm headed to Kentucky next month to work with 17 schools on just this issue. I could see *a* place for AI in this jungle called scheduling, but not *the* solution (but it might be able to get close). I once built an interactive excel spreadsheet so ridiculous to see if a principal's fever dream of a schedule was possible - and then had it programmed to respond to differing parameters (class size, time of day, etc). It took me 8 hours - but it worked to show trade offs and the like.
But yes, please AI folks deliver something that can... Show me a straight 7 bell schedule with these staffing parameters and these scheduling constraints. Now for a 4x4 or a year round AB block or straight 8 or year round AB block with a skinny day on Wednesday - with or without an advisory block 2 days a week or... or... or... some software can approximate some of these decisions. Part one is what will our bell schedule look like (which is hopefully informed by mission/vision work) and then can our staffing levels support it - I would love to work with someone that actually understood anything about AI (that is most definitely not me) to see what is possible for scheduling - because lord knows I know a ton about that.
There's a consistent narrative that attracts political conservatives in particular but isn't exclusive to them that imagines teaching as an act of authority, command and domination: that the teacher demands obedient attention and remakes or remolds the students, and the students who refuse should be relentlessly compelled to submit, whereupon they will actually learn. It's rather like the root narratives associated with boot camp--disorderly subjects are to be broken down by physical and mental intensity and by the attention of an unyielding authority, whereupon they can become excellent soldiers. In real life, we know it doesn't work like that. Even in an all-volunteer army, some enlistees fall out, others never really embrace the discipline, and others are broken down and never really get built back up. In a mass conscription army, this really doesn't work. Any more than it does in education.
And yet the idea really persists--and it sneaks into marketing and product design on some level--the assumption that what teachers need is a way to hide the spinach of discipline and authority inside a chocolate chip cookie, that what you're doing is tricking students into submission.
A quote that's stuck with me over the years is a prison guard who said, "We rule with their consent." Not that I think of myself as a prison guard, but if you understand that nothing happens unless we all AGREE to make it happen, it makes things easier.
But consent is a concept that political conservatives have often struggled with, including their current candidate for President.
Damn. You just took down a whole flock of birds with that stone. Well played.
Pumpkin spice latte (and brioche) season is certainly winning over my 14 year old. Let's hope the boba people don't catch on.
Maybe I haven’t played enough with AI yet but I don’t trust it to make a schedule that actually works given the complex parameters of our school. Because it’s not just the schedule but the students attached to the classes and the teacher preferences and so many other variables.
But if it did work, sign us up! Would love this for our scheduling team!
Really like the points raised, especially the power of pumpkin lattes (!) and SteveB's point -- which I'd translate to mean: Hey, can AI do the part of my job that I hate - rather than nosing around in the parts that give me joy? It's early days but I'd like to predict the most powerful role of AI in education will be making *other* stuff work well -- whether it's (ahem) LMSs, or something else. We haven't done a great job of identifying the real "pain points" of educators (instead of just imagining what students want) -- And there's a role for educators in articulating those pain points clearly! Let's make AI into a workhorse, not a Lipizzaner!
I do like the suggested text in emails, I'm not very original, and I do tend to use the same phrases over and over, finally a job AI can do well!
Can we say there are two views of math education? One says it can be administered, all that is required is love or fear. The other says, at bottom, math is about abstraction: to count to 1 all I need is to count to zero, 1 is its "successor" that only depends on what zero is. And that would be?
I am trying to say that administered math education is inherently frustrating because understanding abstraction can't be scheduled.
Can math educators learn to explain theirs is not merely a matter of pedagogy, it is necessary for them to understand how math works, even beginning math for young learners.
I haven't read that Labaree book, but the paradigm of teachers vs doctors is a common theme in his work for good reason. More people need to understand the concept of an unwilling client. Of course, then the charge is "If you were a good teacher, you'd have willing clients!"
Thanks for recommending this book.
This is why people designing curriculum and apps, as well as school administrators and education professors, need to continue to work in classrooms with full teacher responsibilities at least part-time to be relevant and actually respected (as opposed to simply tolerated) by teachers. My wife is in health care and I can tell you that there wouldn't be a chief of surgery who is not a surgeon himself or herself.
I've been an educator since 1979, long enough to see the teaching fads come, go, and come again. There is great teaching out there, but great teachers, who motivate students to want to come to class AND to learn are rare. I will admit, I found my personal class size limit is about 8, except for music performance classes.
I'm continually amazed that, even though we've been teaching for millennia, that our understanding of how learning works is astonishingly poor. There MUST be time for one teacher to get in the face of one student and ask, "OK, where did this fall off for you?"
Unmotivated students should be cut loose. Late bloomers should be delayed, without stigmatizing them. In my work at a local community college I saw MANY people who had flunked out or left high school, only to return about a decade later with a plan and a purpose. Rocket science wasn't a remote possibility when they were in high school. After some education as an adult, some of them went on to work for NASA. That was NOT my doing!
We keep trying to stuff education into K-12 classrooms. I can't recall that much of what I did there prepared me for life, yet I loved school and was an "A" student. There are not many students like me, yet our educational model is built for students like me. "What works?" has endless answers. "Wait and see" is not one the educrats like. It erodes their business.
"Unmotivated students should be cut loose."
How can we tell which students are unmotivated? Is there some kind of genetic screening?
Reading this article just drove home how far into collpase we really are. Everyone running education is lacking big picture thinking, seeing and execution. It is all down hill from here
Wow!