The 21st Century Principal

It's the Teacher That Matters Most in Teaching and Learning, Not Screens, Not AI...That's The Lesson Needed for School Leaders in All These Screen Ban Efforts

2026-06-05T11:30:39.774-04:00

How can I transform teaching and learning to accommodate or integrate AI? THAT is the WRONG question.

The correct question is, if it follows that AI is actually another tool to be used in education should be: How can AI (or any tool) help teachers engage in better teaching and students engage in better learning?

The history of Ed Tech says we asked the wrong questions when the PC, Web 2.0., and social media came along. Then, we asked how can I use these tools to transform and revolutionize, rather than how can these tools be used to facilitate? To equip?

Perhaps that's why Ed Tech and the technology cheerleaders are desperately trying to defend all the technologies it has introduced in education.

Educators are susceptible to the “glimmer of gadgets” and have been for some time. Instead of asking the facilitating question, they sometimes look to the technologies for salvation, and the result is the present. Now, with little evidence to support a dramatic revolution in teaching and learning, important critical questions are being asked about the rightful place of technologies—screens if you want to call them—in the classroom.

We know how students learn and we have a repetoire of teaching methods at our disposal, and much of the research shows that what makes learning happen is WHAT A GOOD TEACHER DOES WITH THE STUDENTS DURING THE TIME THEY ARE IN HER/HIS CLASSROOM. It is really that simple.

Yet, instead of looking to the one single individual who has the potential impact on learning the most, we get tangled in our devices, or fanciful technologies if you will, and we forget the teacher.

I remember the minor debate in my schooling as a student when calculators appeared, (Yes I am that old.), but I don’t recall the raging enthusiasm to transform teaching and learning through the magical powers of the Texas Instrument calculator. It was seen as simply a machine, not a mechanistic path to save education, and we used it when it was useful and did not use it when our teachers determined that it was not useful and an obstacle to what they were teaching and what we were learning.

AI, if it is simply a tool, then let’s kick the pedestal out from under it, toss out all the hype, and lets just see if it really can help teachers teach and students learn. That has yet to be truly determined, in spite of the mad search for evidence to justify AI existence in the classroom rather than trying to see if teaching and learning improve.

And that is another issue as well, for the AI enthusiasts want their new shiny device so badly to be the salvation in the classroom, that they won’t give it time to demonstrate whether it will be useful or not.

Generative AI has not been around for more than a few years, and every opportunist under the sun is peddling it as the answer for all our problems, especially those in education. And, if anyone expresses concerns over its issues and problems, they are bombarded with promotional hype and labels of being a Luddite.

If I were to provide some experiential advice to all educators and especially educational leaders, stop listening to the AI cheerleading, and let’s settle down and see if this new technology offers teachers anything to enhance their teaching and students anything to enhance their learning.

Stop looking to technology to transform education. Stop looking for an invention that will somehow make learning happen. We know already what will make learning happen, and that is a well-trained, experienced teacher in the classroom equipped not with the fads of the day, but with she or he says they need to educate students.

Ultimately, let’s remember this: It’s the teacher stupid, that ultimately matters, not the gadgets!

When Tech CEOs Make Predictions About AI, Remember They Are Trying to Dictate the Acceptance of Their Product

2026-06-03T23:01:23.544-04:00

When a CEO predicts that AI will replace you, or that everyone will use AI, they are trying to get you to passively accept their future vision.

“Predictions about human beings attempt to change the future by altering what people believe and how they behave, which is why they are veiled imperatives or orders.” Philosopher Carissa Veliz “Prophecy”

Our Tech CEOs know this. They are trying to alter what people believe about AI and alter how people behave towards their product that they stand to make billions.

They want acquiescence to their vision, so their prediction is really a “veiled imperative or order.” “You will accept and adapt to my technology. It is inevitable,” is their meaning.

As Veliz points out, “When the CEO of a tech company says, ‘In the future, everyone will use AI,” he is trying to bend reality to that vision; in a way, he is saying something like ‘Go forth and get your AI before you fall behind! Go forth and fulfill my vision!”

They are dictating the future they wish to see.

Common sense says that we recognize what they are doing and force them to provide AI on our terms.

#AI #EdTech #AIinEducation #SchoolLeadership #Leadership

Predictions About AI and the Future of Our Students Limit Their Futures and Should Be Questioned

2026-06-02T12:01:27.804-04:00

One horrible consequence of all the AI predictions about the future jobs of students is that such predictions are anti-democratic.

Predictions, when followed as fact, become self-fulfilling prophecies, and that’s what these CEOs from AI companies want, and they know it. Those who have the most interest in its widespread use also know this.

But the reality is, when you make a prediction that “you are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist,” you taking a shot in the dark, for no one knows that future. Instead of playing a game of job training whack-a-mole, educators should perhaps not prepare students for any jobs, since companies constantly outsource, relocate work to other countries, as well as automate.

Instead, educators should be preparing students for a world of total uncertainty, because that is one sure thing about the future. We shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can foresee where they will be and the jobs they will have. Prepare them for a world of uncertainty.

Carissa Veliz, in her book “Prophecy” makes this point about prediction:

“When predictions determine our fate, WE LOSE FREEDOM. DEMOCRACY NEEDS UNCERTAINTY TO THRIVE. It’s only when we don’t know the outcome of a future election that we have democracy.”

By simply giving credence to these predictions about AI and all technologies, the freedom of students is stolen, and that should never happen.

All predictions about AI should be viewed with skepticism, especially from those who have an interest in their acceptance. Educators and school leaders have an obligation to prepare students, but not one based on these predictions.

Educate Students for Life and Just Ignore Those Who Make Predictions About the Future Job Statuses of Students

2026-06-02T09:14:52.767-04:00

“We must prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet,” says the AI consultant-enthusiast.

“No we don’t,” is the sanest of all replies.

As educators with common sense, what we need to do is ignore these AI consultants and Ed Tech prognosticators completely.

They have no crystal ball and can’t see into the future any better than anyone else.

Predictions are guesses. Predictions are NOT facts. Especially facts to be acted upon or to base life-impacting decisions on what we do with our students.

As philosopher Carissa Veliz writes: “An assertion about the future can be many things—an estimate, a desire, a warning—but never a fact.”

So, educators and school leaders can ignore and discard these baseless predictions about some future notion of what the job status of their students will be.

Their predictions are not substantive enough on which to base decisions about anybody’s life. To do so is severe malpractice.

And, the next time Bill Gates, Sam Altman or Jensen Huang spouts some prophecy? Take it for what it is: a prediction no better than that of a soothsayer predicting based upon his view of a pig’s entrails. They are just hyping for business.

Instead, you are an educator and smart enough to figure out AI for yourself and what place it should have in your teaching. You have to consider the long-term view when it comes to students’ lives, and AI may or may not be a part of that. Only the future knows.

Beware of the Soothesayers of Silicon Valley Who Use Algorithmic Entrails and Tea Leaves to Tell Us Our Future Lies with AI or Any Other of Their Inventions

2026-06-01T22:42:25.696-04:00

“Today’s ruling soothesayers are no longer astrologers, astronomers, sociologists, or even economists; they are computer scientists, data analysts, and engineers. Algorithms are the new tea leaves, animal entrails, and stars through which we hope to catch a glimpse of the future.”

from the book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI by Carissa Veliz

I just have a picture in my mind of the Bill Gateses, Sam Altmans, and Jensen Huangs, bent over algorithmic entrails, and the entire world sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for the these “infallible tech CEOs” to declare for us our future.

Our Soothesayers of Silicon Valley and their algorithmic tea leaves and algoritmic entrails continue each day to make self-serving and profit generating predictions for themselves.

I think we need to remember that predictions are not facts, whether you are using algorithms or pig intestines.

Educators need to be skeptical and take all that these Soothesaying CEOs and business leaders say with a grain of salt.

AI Is Not an IT Problem? It's a Leadership Problem? What Nonsense...School Leaders Need to Be More Critical of AI Consultant Claims

2026-06-01T16:51:35.778-04:00

Recently I saw a post where an AI consultant said that "AI is not an IT problem, it's a leadership problem." What nonsense!

So now, they are going to blame the leaders of school districts for a Silicon Valley creation that:

1) steals the copyrighted work of other authors to use in their training models,

2) in their LLM training they exploited low-wage workers in poverty-stricken parts of the world,

3) this product can create facsimile products that can pose as the work of creators to steal their livelihoods,

4) data centers for these products require massive amounts of power and water, often strapping the communities who have these deceptively forced upon with resource shortages,

5) these data centers are also having noise pollution issues in the communities where they are being placed.

6) there is growing concern about cognitive outsourcing for students and the consequences of that in children's futures.

7) Who knows what consequences that are yet to come...

So this AI consultant says, no, there's nothing wrong with AI, and that the problem is with school leaders.

The real problems with AI consultants and opportunists who are ignore the problems with this technology and already declare it as the savior of education, all for what has to be self-interest.

Added to this problem are school leaders believe such nonsense and hire these companies and consultants simply because AI has been mystified to the point that they think they can't possibly understand it. They are wrong. AI is not difficult to understand.

Isn't interesting that no matter the technology, it is flawless and causes no problems? It's always the educators, the leadership, the parents...or whatever the AI consultant can shift the blame to. It's standard sales tactics when you do not want someone to really look at the problems with a technology.

Good, solid leadership sees through all of these AI consultant sales pitches and cheerleading and acts accordingly. Be critical of all the AI Promo Rhetoric!

How to Sell Your Tech Product and Tech Consulting Business No Matter What with the Silicon Valley Marketing Strategy

2026-05-29T12:54:18.796-04:00

Want to sell any technology to everyone and ensure its total acceptance? Here’s how:

If I invented a product that had all kinds of potential dangers and harms but still wanted to make a bundle off that product, I would do the following:

-Convince everyone that my product is here, it's inevitable, and that they might as well use it.

-Convince everyone that failure to use my product means you are behind-the-times and irrelevant.

-Convince everyone that my product was just like a previously non-harmful product like a calculator, and that it was "only a tool." You can always blame the users for harms too.

-Convince anyone that any attempts to regulate my product will stifle innovation and just allow the Chinese to beat us.

-Utilize the Ed Tech and educators to make all the children of the world into proper consumers of my product.

-Buy a political establishment that will protect my enterprise at all costs—environment and health of the people be damned. Especially buy out local governments where I need to put my massive data centers.

-Tell wild fantasies about how my product has the potential to rule the world.

-Make my product as addictive as possible, and keep individuals using it for everything. Even invent uses and convince people to use it even if it is not actually more useful of effective. Goal is to keep users in the product.

That is a blueprint for ensuring product success no matter what harms and unforeseen consequences it might have. That’s the Silicon Valley marketing plan.

AI Boo's at Graduations Might Be Called For When School Leaders Callously Allow AI Cheerleaders and CEOs Sell Their Products at Commencement Ceremonies

2026-05-27T13:36:25.678-04:00

Boos might be called for from graduates when commencement speakers who stand to gain bundles of money from it’s adoption are invited by school leaders as speakers.

Graduations aren’t about their pet products and time for their marketing pitches; graduations should be about the graduates and their families.

Colleges and universities that get commencement speakers who sell their products should be ashamed and booed too.

School leaders should be skeptical of asking AI cheerleaders to speak at graduations. After all, we don’t allow Samsung to sell TVs are graduations.

ChatGPT: Not a Tool, But a Novelty In Search of a Legitimate Use

2026-05-26T11:20:44.930-04:00

I am increasingly seeing the ChatGPT creations where a user asks it to generate a drawing or illustrated map of themselves with drawings indicating who they are, based on the "conversations they have been having with the chatbot."

Don't get me wrong, can anything good come from that?

I hope the "conversations" these users have been having with that chatbot has not been too intimate. Silicon Valley has a notorious reputation with what they do with individual personal data.

Then there's the idea as to why I should care what ChatGPT has to say about me, though I will confess I am not a user, nor will I ever be. But, what credibility does a chatbot have other than what we decide to give it? It's like a bit tech "soothesayer" or horoscope with about the same level of truthfulness.

It's a machine, and it just spitting back to you what you have inputed, and some cases manufacturing that information in order to please the user. Really, it is just a more complex version of Joseph Weizenbaums' chatbot Eliza.

People are searching for ways to use GenAI, in order to give it legitimacy. They want so bad to find some usefulness for it, because it's so neat!

True tools are not like that. They are created to solve a problem, not a solution in search of a problem to solve.

School Leaders Need to Become Data Misers: Make Ed Tech Vendors Justify Every Single Bit of Data They Say They Need

2026-05-26T10:09:42.273-04:00

It is time for schools and school districts to get miserly with their students’ and staffs’ data.

Don’t share it, ever, with Ed Tech companies and vendors.

If they ask for data, make them justify every single data-point requested and then evaluate their justification.

If you deem their need for the data as unnecessary, tell them they can’t have it and need to work around it. Period.

If they say their product will not work without that data, tell them to redesign it so that they won’t need it.

School leaders need to be the ones in control of their students’ and staffs’ data, period.

Become a data miser when you work with any companies.

Bookstore CEO Open to Selling AI-Authored Books: This Reader Not Interested

2026-05-25T12:28:26.703-04:00

Recently, Barnes and Noble bookstore CEO says he would sell AI authored books as long as they are transparently labeled as such and if the customer demand is there. (Why CEO of Barnes and Noble Would Support Selling AI-Written Books in Stores)

That makes sense I suppose for a business. The success of AI books in this case will depend on demand. If readers value author-less books, then they can get them. Set aside my own question of why in the world would anyone want to read a book written by a machine.

I think the important thing is the disclosure and transparency regarding authorship. Personally, I am not interested in AI authored books. Part of me just can't get beyond the fact that such work would not be based on the living being's own experience of being human; it would be an assemblage of the experiences of many others and their writings.

The greater question is whether such AI authored works, such as a novel or book of essays would sell. My purchases are usually tied to authorial reasons. For example, I choose to read a book by historian Lewis Mumford because I enjoy his work, due to the knowledge that he wrote it, it has his style, his ideas, etc.

What for me that is a deal-breaker would be works that are AI authored impersonated works. For example, I would not be interested in a work generated by AI in Lewis Mumford’s style. That to me would require the knowledge that this was not a work that the historian penned himself.

As an avid reader, the notion that bookstores have authorial “knock-offs” on their shelves would not be a place I would frequent.

The Proper Role of Ed Tech and Educational Leaders in the AI Push into Schools

2026-05-24T12:51:39.055-04:00

“We as educators need to educate our students about AI,” is how Ed Tech’s latest pitch goes regarding their new project. Let’s look at what is really involved in that project.

Paul Kingnorth writes in his 2025 thought-provoking book “Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity”:

“…we need to understand the consequences of the Machine we have built, and which is now rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers, shopping for individual fulfillment in its global marketplace of goods, ideas, and identities.”

The Ed Tech calls for “AI Literacy” are part of the “Machine” project that Kingsnorth describes here, the project of “rebuilding us so that we may become more perfect consumers” of AI, Silicon Valley’s latest money-maker. Big Tech, as it did with the internet, Web 2.0, social media, has once again activated our Ed Tech establishment in schools to take on the task of transforming students and teachers into proper consumers of their latest cash cow, AI.

Part of this project of Big Tech has been to short-circuit any critical thought about AI as they have made it, about its moral and ethical uses, and even whether we should accept it as presented. They did this through their “inevitability” myth, and their “everybody-is-using-it” myth, both of which are not true and does not have to be true.

They have used these myths effectively in the past, and educational technology has been acting and is currently acting as the proselytizers of Silicon Valley since it beginnings as a disciplinary field. It is a discipline that exists to carry out Big Tech’s latest proclamations, and their latest is to get all of education—students, teachers, parents—to acquiesce without protest, to being blind, perfect consumers of AI.

Educators have no business acting in this role. If anything, they should be fostering critical-thinking individualists who decide for themselves the role, if any, AI will play in their own lives and use. These students can also decide for themselves whether acceptance or resistance is called for. The next generation can demand that AI serve humanity, not those who stand to profit the most from its success.

Reflecting back on thirty-plus years in education and my own role in Ed Tech, I have seen how educators become implicated in this whole project of consumer generation. Now, we see how this blind promotion of technology has not really transformed anything for the good.

Past history tells us, that this AI consumer project will not end well in its present form either, without ensuring that our students, teachers, and parents are able to think for themselves critically about the place and form of this technology in their lives.

We do not have to let Silicon Valley and Ed Tech decide for us.

When Your Inbox of Social Media Feed Is Flooded with AI Consultant Sales Pitches, A Bit of Skepticism Is In Order

2026-05-23T16:23:50.063-04:00

I’ve been noticing a flood of AI consultant sales pitches on LinkedIn.

Here is one typical AI consultant's sales pitch to educational leaders: "Students are already using AI. Teachers are already using AI. Therefore, you need help and guidance on establishing control of the situation. I have consulting services to sell you." (The last sentence is mostly unsaid of course.)

First of all, set aside the false "everybody is using AI statements." They have no way of knowing that. They don't know your teachers, your students. Besides, there are certainly both students and teachers not using AI. They are using a huge generalization to try to short-circuit any objections and misgivings you might have about AI and pre-empting discussion about their generalizations. It's the classic set up to "generate a need" for their consulting services and at the same disarm any first layer objections. Call them on their “truth” and you will find no support.

Truth is, these AI consultants-sales people also want to activate within you a bit of “technological-feeling-behindness” and a dose of “inevitability.” If you are behind, something bad is going happen, and if it is inevitable, you can’t do anything about it. Once these are established, you NEED their consulting and services, and if you don’t bad things are going to happen.

Secondly my question is it really education’s job to teach AI use? If they are already using it, then it is apparent they do not need our help with that. If it is to teach everyone how to use AI correctly, then is that really the educational institution’s responsibility? Is it an educator’s job to teach students and teachers how to be “good little consumers of this product”? I think a good argument can be made that the answer is no.

I have to wonder if the real goal behind all this is forcing everyone to accept and use AI.

Ultimately, I accept that the AI consultant is trying to sell her/his services, but before any of a school’s very limited budget is spent on these services, remember to question the sales rhetoric and recognize when they use marketing tactics to get you to purchase those services.

There is no urgency that would facilitate the need to spend money just to say you are doing something with AI.

AI Advocates and An Automated Dreamworld: A Fictional World Once Described by Author Kurt Vonnegut

2026-05-22T15:20:35.922-04:00

Would you like to see what the world will look like if the AI company CEOs, AI cheerleaders, along with EdTech AI evangelists get the automated world they so desperately desire?

I've been re-reading one of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels, Player Piano written in the 1950s. In that book, you have a world where the machines have replaced all the workers, doing the "so-called work that no one really wants to do.

It is a divided world where there are machines, there are engineers and managers, and there is everyone else. The machines do all the work. The engineers design machines for every task, because there is the faith that they can always do it better.

The managers keep the machines running and the engineers designing. The rest of the people? They take on the left over jobs, such as cleaning the streets; they become members of what is called in the “Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps” or the “Reeks and Wrecks.” They are the people for whom the automated, artificial society no longer had a place for, so they were relegated to the left-over portion of society because they “couldn’t compete with machines.” They even live separately from the machines, managers, engineers in a place called “Homestead” where they can be out of view and only interacted with when needed.

I read the book a few years ago, but now as I re-read, it seems to take on an even greater relevance in the AI arguments of today. It’s almost prophetic!

Vonnegut wrote in his Forward:

“This book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be,” and I think it a very apt description.

Player Piano is a book about what could be if humanity continues down a path of pursuing blind efficiency and profit at all costs, and mechanizing and automating everything including their thinking.

Player Piano is what happens when one views everything in the world as a design problem.

The problem with the vision that AI evangelists and promoters have for the future, is that it is a dreamworld, and a world where they thrive at the expense of many others. That’s world that Vonnegut captures in this novel.

There’s all this AI hype about freeing up workers so they can do more important work. But that is nonsense. That is not what will happen. History shows us this, if only they would read it. In this instance, our fiction is becoming our history.

Besides, the reality is, work does not always have to provide us with meaning; we can find meaning in our work, no matter what it is.

And then there is the dreamy idea a so-called “Universal Minimum Income.” That’s really nonsense. (Actually Vonnegut has such a feature in this society, and it does not wokr.) But it will not happen, ever, in a society such as ours. In our current society, we are constantly cutting food stamps, medicaid and all manner of services for those in need, and we expect our government is going to provide a universal income for everyone regardless of what they do? That is biggest nonsensical idea ever!

I am so glad to be revisiting the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano now, because it offers a clearer picture than ever, where this blind, religious faith in AI is going to take us. It is not a “Promise land of abundant milk and honey flowing" either.

I’m sure Vonnegut would have a big laugh at the thought of him being a prophet because that would be nonsense to him. But, his world in Player Piano and the beliefs that underpin it, are very much alive in the hearts and minds of AI dreamers.

Booing AI-Promoting CEOs and AI Evangelists: Perfect Opportunity for True AI Literacy

2026-05-21T12:13:20.241-04:00

When a CEO in a commencement speech tells a group of young people "To Deal with it!" over their boos about the mention of AI, these words seem to be echoes of the voices of manufacturers telling the Luddites the same thing when machines were installed to replace them in the factories of the 19th century.

This time, Big Tech, our government leaders, and Ed Tech establishment are relentlessly trying to instill into students the "inevitability" of AI and their need to quietly acquiesce to its replacing them in the workplace.

Amazingly, while so many have bought in to the inevitability myth, there are still young people who have the clarity of mind to see through the myths that have been constructed around AI specifically.

This questioning of AI’s rightful place in our world is a perfect opportunity for educators to foster, not passive consumer sentiments over the tech, but to empower students to question, to be critical, and to be in charge of AI’s place in the future.

Undoubtedly, people like this CEO does not want that. CEOs want to the power and the ability to replace humanity at will for power and profit.

Ed Tech had an opportunity to curtail the narrative that AI is inevitable, but it chooses instead to propagate the narrative.

But that narrative is a lie. The AI that is being created is not the AI we have to accept and adapt our lives to.

Despite what the myth says, AI isn't taking over anything. What is happening, CEOs and business leaders and even educators are making the conscious decision to replace humans for the sake of their own power and profit. It is that simple. They are making a conscious, ethical decision.

Because it is choice, made by human beings, it is also choice in how AI happens and a choice in what we allow it do. That is where AI literacy should be. We should be giving students all the knowledge and empower them with the choice.

Despite how it is spun by the AI pundits, commencement speech boos are not about fears and misunderstandings of AI; it is a sign that there are still individuals who are thinking for themselves, and that is what education should be about, not fabricating “good little consumers of AI.”

As educators, we should be arming students with critical thought that attacks the inevitability myth and other marketing myths of AI that can counter and help students decide their own future with or without AI.

There is a space yet for Luddite thinking when it comes to AI, and it is time to start booing the CEOs and prophets who are making these claims of inevitability.

What's Wrong When a CEO Says He's Replacing 'Lower Value Human' Capital with AI? What a Perfect Example of an Awful Leader

2026-05-20T16:56:17.846-04:00

Bill Winters, a bank CEO said during a investment leaders summit in November of 2025, that he was replacing "lower value human capital" with AI. (StanChart CEO Seeks to Reassure Staff Over 'Lower Value Human Capital' Comment from Reuters)

Think about that statement and what it says about the leader who says it. He has little value for humanity other than that which makes him and his shareholders more money.

This is an example of the worst kind of leader, and the worst kind of human being. The lesson to be learned is this instance? Don't follow this person anywhere!

What makes this problematic for me is that during my entire career in educational leadership, university schools of administration and school systems often turned to business and corporate leaders for models on how they should lead their organizations. We were even assigned in some cases books written by "successful CEOs."

But this incident should give any school leader pause before listening to a CEO boast about their leadership skills. It should also make one question whether anything a CEO tells you about leading a their companies can help in leading a school or district.

I have always thought that business/corporate leadership and school leadership are based on entirely different value systems, and this makes the two quite different. After reading about this incident, because the CEO is so blatantly anti-human, I am more than ever convinced that anything a CEO tells you about leadership needs to be viewed with heavy criticism and skepticism.

I realize that the CEO said his quote was taken out of context, but that does not fly with me. The use of the "LOWER VALUE HUMAN CAPITAL" cannot ever be smoothed over by reframing and damage control. It is a clear indication of where this CEO's value system is, and sadly, he shouldn't even be granted the label of leader.

Certainly not all CEOs have these values, but this story is a powerful example of bad leadership and a model of a bad leader.

Disaster Happens When Community College Decides to Use AI at Graduation: This Is What Happens When Educators Worship AI

2026-05-20T09:28:45.691-04:00

"Just because I can use AI to do it, does not mean I should."

In the video below, this Arizona community college failed to consider this. Its decision to have AI announce names and it skipped many graduates' names.

This is a fantastic example of using AI to search for problems to solve, instead of using it simply as a tool.

It is what I would call a "gimmicky" use of AI.

If an educator engages in "gimmicky" use of AI, it isn't about using it as a tool; it is about trying to look fashionable, with-it. This type of use has no place in education.

We should not be selling AI to our students; we should be teaching them to be critical users of it. Let Big Tech sell their own products.

The thinking behind this is NOT using AI to solve a problem; it's using AI to impress, to make a statement, or use AI because AI is AI.

This is an example of using AI ideologically and not because it was a tool to solve a genuinely problem.

AI, is it is ever to be useful, we need to kick it off the pedestal that Big Tech and EdTech has placed it on, and just put it in the toolbox. If it has any uses, then people will pick it up and use it.

New Must-Have Component Needed in Digital Literacy Approaches: Instruction in Screen Addiction Engineering

2026-05-19T10:09:08.750-04:00

There should be a new component in all digital literacy efforts:

Students should be educated on the engineered addiction aspects of these devices and technologies and what they can do take away Tech's entrapment power.

They should receive training, for example, on how features such as the "Like" button were utilized to lure them to these applications and keep them there. By recognizing the manipulating factors of this feature, they can de-elevate its importance and free themselves from its tyranny.

They should be receive specific instruction about how these devices can be exploit them and manipulate them.

They should also receive instruction in how to counter this built-in addiction feature and free themselves from the lure of screens. For example, they could receive instruction on "the notification" and how it is a siren's call to return to the screen. They could learn to limit or turn off all notifications at all times or during specific periods of the day. This would eliminate one major, addictive aspect of the screen and give them control over the device.

Ed Tech should transform digital literacy from being an effort to sanitize Silicon Valley devices and transform students into "good little consumers" of these, into being empowered and critical human beings who decide for themselves when and how these intersect their lives.

This would transform the field of Ed Tech from being a cheerleader for Big Tech, into actually giving children and their parents power of these devices.

Sadly, Ed Tech still sees its primary role as delivering new consumers to these companies.

AI Is Not Inevitable No Matter What Ed Tech Tells You

2026-05-17T11:02:21.199-04:00

Ed Tech’s argument to educators about AI continues with the inevitability argument, a genius marketing tactic of Big Tech.

“AI is here to stay so you might as well accept it and subject students to it, after all, they are going to use it anyway,” says post after post from the Ed Tech faithful.

That’s such a poor argument on so many levels.

First of all, the here-to-stay, inevitability argument… This is Silicon Valley dogma and marketing at its best. No technology is “inevitable” but think about it. If the Tech companies get users to acquiesce without protest, they’ve won from the start!

Sorry EdTech, we do not have to accept AI as is. We can, through our government, push for regulation and through our consumer choices, we can refuse to use their products if they are not up to our standards. Consumers always have a choice. Accepting inevitability means surrending power.

Secondly, the students-are-going-to-use-it-anyway argument… Does it really matter? Students often choose to use any number of products, and it is not education’s role to teach the proper use of these products. It is not educators’ responsibility to sanitize AI so that it is used properly either. If one follows that argument, we should be requiring gun safety for every student too, just because all students need to use guns for good purposes and not bad ones.

EdTech is so biased on the issue of AI they have become a 24-hour-a-day commercial for it. Is there not anyone with a critical thought among them?

The field of Ed Tech’s future depends on the acceptance of AI, cell phones, and all manner of gadgets, and that’s why it is a marketing arm of the Big Tech. After all, creating students who are CRITICAL USERS might mean that they can choose to not use, and that’s bad for business.

Educational leaders, parents and teachers should take all arguments about AI and cell phones, etc. coming for Ed Tech with a grain a salt.

Educators Should NOT Teach Students How to Use Technology with a Purpose: They Should Teach

2026-05-15T12:20:48.824-04:00

Ed Tech advocates say, "We should teach students how to use technology with a purpose."

Do we teach students how to use a pencil, an eraser, or paper with purpose?

No, we don't start with the device, then teach students the ways in which to use the device; we start with the purpose, that which needs to be taught, not the device. The device is actually only relevant in its ability to serve the purpose.

If the device does not serve the instructional purposes, acccording to the judgment of the teacher, it has no place in instruction.

We also don't sit around inventing ways to use a pencil or paper in the classroom. We use them when they suit our instructional purpose, which comes first.

Education has gotten this wrong quite often in the past. We exchange our instructional purpose for the technology to achieve that purpose and spend all our time on the technology.

Too often, Ed Tech confuses the technology as the objective and the purpose.

Education should never be about teaching how to use technology with a purpose; it should be teaching and instruction as the purpose, and the technology might or might not help in that.

Educate Students, Not Consumers and Users of AI

2026-05-15T11:57:18.329-04:00

It is not the function of education to sanitize and transform AI into a useful tool for humanity or even businesses.

If it is a useful tool, then it will find a place in that niche.

It is fallacy to think that if schools do not somehow educate to transform AI into a "magical tool of production" they are failures. This play on an educator's conscience is an old EdTech tactic and it is reprehensible.

There is tiresome post after tiresome post from AI experts, consultants and creators, who keep making hyped claims about its future. In reality, they ARE USING THE HYPE AND THE INEVITABILITY ARGUMENT TO ENSURE THEIR FUTURE INCOME AND WELL-BEING. The wise educator will cut through and look beyond the sales tactics.

After all, if AI flops or does not measure up to expectations, they will have made their money, and they can move on to the next technological invention like they have done in the past.

I understand when one has enthusiasm for a new gadget, but one must not let the glow and glitter shine so brightly that one can't really see. And, those of us out there that are subjected to this promo-rhetoric, need to keep our wits about us and our critical thinking hats on.

Digital Literacy and Information Is Teaching Students How to Become Dumpster Rats

2026-05-14T09:46:05.553-04:00

Information literacy is now about teaching students how to sift through a garbage dump to find what is useful.

Its teaching students the art of being dumpster rats, looking for the worthwhile amongst the trash and discarded.

Finding value in the Web has become a salvage operation.

When Educational Leaders See Employees and "Human Resources" and "Human Capital: Are You Devaluing Teachers?

2026-05-12T15:35:09.870-04:00

What is wrong with using the terms “human resources” and “human capital” as an educational leader?

I was reflecting today on my time in “human resources” and I realized that the entire time working in that area, the word “human resouces” always caused me just a slight shiver when I heard and used it. Why?

It is actually the word “resource” that is a bit bothersome, because it refers to “any material, person, or asset that can be USED to meet a need, solve a problem, or produce something value.” In other words, the term refers to USING people for some purpose.

I suppose it is just that word “USED” that bothers me, because that word so easily slips into manipulation and exploitation. The term “human resource” also makes me think of something like “natural resources” which are extractions from nature USED AND EXPLOITED for manufacturing purposes.

So the term “resource” has always had a slightly bad smell for me.

Then why not use the term “human capital” instead? Sometime ago, our North Carolina Public Schools started labeling its work force and teachers “human capital." When I heard the monthly webinar with the state called the “Human Capital Webinar” I had that same quiver of uncomfortableness.

But the word “human capital” has a bit of stench to me as well. Why? Capital means in many ways the same thing. Capital is a broad term for “financial assets, such as money, or physical assets, like machinery and buildings, USED to produce goods, services, or generate income or value.”

So is using “human capital” any better? Not really. One still has to slightly hold the nose on the “USED” part of that meaning if one sees people for more than just a tool to be used to reach a goal. It still has that slightly off-putting smell.

But, I suppose if your intention is truly to USE people for these purposes, then these terms work well.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how the use of the words “human resources” or “human capital” somehow deeply affects how leaders view those to whom they lead, especially school leaders.

Words have meaning and they have power. I have always believed that, and the terms and words a leader chooses, has power over a school leader’s work.

By viewing people as “resources” or “capital” to be used and manipulated for organizational purposes seems to avoid attaching any other value for people other than how they can be used for those purposes. This means leadership is about using and manipulating people to produce, and I think too often, school leaders will resort to any tactics to achieve their purposes.

Just maybe that’s why “accountability” has become gospel to educational leaders. Educational leadership as a field has taken all it can from the world of business, including the terms “human resources” and “human capital.” Accountability in the form of test scores gives purpose, and teachers simply become the resources and capital to that end.

Using words like human resources and human capital allows the school leader in good conscious to engage in the same kinds of exploitation and manipulation tactics as business leaders sometimes engage in. It can use people for the achievement of a simply purpose: increased test scores.

Perhaps it’s all OK in the end, but I do think educational leaders need to be a bit skeptical of all these leadership concepts and philosophies that have infiltrated educational leadership as a field.

Why? Because education is NOT just about “producing graduates” or even “producing citizens.” Narrowing education education into any single purpose or purposes limits its possibilities.

Education as a field is notorious for "relabeling" things when a term becomes fashionably and culturally unacceptable or somehow viewed negatively. For example, I still laugh to myself when I hear the word "learning cottages" to describe "mobile classrooms" or "classroom trailers." But I am not advocating a label change here, because this is not a language issue; it is a educational cultural issue and will not change by changing the "human resource" or "human capital" label. Those are only deeper symptoms of a way of thinking that sees employees as objects of exploitation for purpose. That's what should be the target for revision.

I realize that organizations are going to use the words “human resources” and “human capital.” But, I have always valued my own “slight discomfort” at the use of the terms, because it was always a reminder to me that, these terms did not have to determine how I viewed employees and that I could value them as the human beings they were too.

With the Instructure Canvas Data Breach It's Clear That Ed Institutions Either Pay Hackers Extortion Money or Pay Tech Solutionist Mob Bosses to Protect Data: The Cloud Is a Nasty Place

2026-05-10T10:21:53.469-04:00

Do educational institutions need to rethink their use of all cloud solutions?

If educational institutions want to exist in the cloud, they seem to have to pay either extortionist hackers or pay the "Tech Mob" solutionists for protection.

With the Canvas data theft, I am convinced that all the web is perceived as a money extortion scheme by everyone.

The hackers extort money from educational institutions.

Then, educational institutions have the choice to pay the hackers or suffer their data spread everywhere.

Or, they can pay additional Mobsters, in the form of data protection solutions to keep their data safe.

What's wrong with this? Educational institutions have to pay ransom to someone regardless in order to keep their data as safe as possible.

Either way, if educational institutions choose to use any cloud solutions, they pay for the solution, then they pay for the mob protection of companies that provide security.

The web has turned into an unsavory place where one has to pay for protection. That is a problem.

Ed Tech Doesn't Need to Advocate for Technology: It Needs to Shine a Spotlight on Its Flaws Too

2026-05-09T11:10:09.195-04:00

One key component of any Digital Literacy Program? Web content is not always there due to its merit; it's there because someone "pays for its spread" and "games the delivery algorithms."

Of course, the most astute users already know this.

But if we want truly digitally literate students, they need to know the games people play to get noticed.

They need to know that all web content, especially that disseminated on platforms, is not necessarily there due to its merit, but because it is like a paid informercial or because someone knows the algorithmic game.

As schools grapple with AI, it is important to include in literacy the games behind its creation as well. Its use of web content, including pirated copyrighted content in its development. Also, its use of exploited labor to train models, and its massive consumption of our natural resources and power.

Too often, educators get caught up in the shiny gleam of technologies as gems and fail to see that most of the time what they really have are rhinestones.

Ed Tech promotes the "gemstones" myth for all technologies.