Creativity: While technology can enhance creativity, it can also limit it. Creativity—defined as the “production of something original and useful”—requires “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).” Creativity scores were rising for decades but began to decline in the 1990s, coinciding with the rise of technology replacing free play. The decline has been most pronounced in younger students.

skills students are more likely to miss are soft skills—critical thinking, collaboration, communication, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, creativity, and even simple eye-contact. These are the skills they’ll need to navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology and future workplaces.

handwriting notes improves memory, recall, and conceptual understanding of complicated material, while supporting brain development in young learners. Neglecting handwriting can hinder fine motor skills and areas of the brain used for reading.

Reading in print has the unique benefits of improved comprehension, recall, long-term memory, attention, working memory, and a deeper knowledge of the material

They note that distraction can come from merely having a device open to take notes. Even when there are potential gains from screens in schools, there is often a loss that comes hand-in-hand.

tudents aren’t getting smarter. How much technology has to do with these declines is still debated, but it is certainly a part of the picture.

the magnetic pull of technology is constant.

The problem is that screens have saturated every corner of education, often without any clear limits.

The other area of concern is the surprising amount of recreational screen time allowed in schools on both school-issued devices and personal cell phones. This includes device use between classes, during lunch or recess, as a reward, after completing work, or whenever there’s unstructured time during the day. It also includes student cell phone use during class, which is usually not allowed but is distressingly common.

What we’ve learned has led us to conclude that many schools have not incorporated a research-based approach to implementing technology in education, nor do they acknowledge the potential costs of displacing traditional methods in favor of screens in schools.

What is the primary function of a computer? When students sit down in front of a screen, what is the fundamental behavior that immediately jumps to mind?

digital tools do not obviate the need for sound pedagogy; and sound pedagogy will rarely be dependent upon digital tools.

“One interpretation of all this is that building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interaction…Another interpretation is that we have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogies that make the most of technology.”

When it comes to effective teaching and learning (pedagogy), we should select the tool best suited to the job; not the tool that is most prevalent.

to argue that a topic should be taught is far different than arguing that all things should be taught through that topic. The former is an argument about curriculum; the latter is an argument about pedagogy. For instance, you might believe we should teach table manners to students (curriculum), but that’s different than arguing we should teach all classes in a dining room over dinner (pedagogy).  Determining what to teach and how to teach are two very different considerations.

If we extrapolate and consider a typical U.S. academic school year of 36 weeks, these numbers suggest that students spend 198 hours annually using digital devices for learning purposes, and 2,028 hours annually using those same exact tools to jump around between scatter-shot media content.

most educational technology (EdTech) has not delivered the academic benefits once promised

Wieland et al. (2022) discovered that chatbots can be used for effective human-machine teaming during brainstorming and AI serves as a non-judgmental partner for brainstorming.

AI has been widely adopted in creative industries such as music, film, and entertainment during recent years and AI is being applied in the production of narratives in books and screenplays as well as in the production of musical experiences. In journalism, AI is used in several ways to speed up productivity by companies such as Forbes, BBC, Washington post and Microsoft, and also used by Spotify and Netflix to better serve recommendations and ads.

Scientific studies show that screen-free environments provide better conditions for children to develop relationships, concentrate and learn to read and write. It is therefore important for digital learning aids to only be introduced in teaching at an age when they encourage, rather than hinder, pupils’ learning. The use of such aids must therefore be carefully considered.

we asked college students to brainstorm – without technology – all the ways a paper clip can be used. A month later, we asked them to do the same, but using ChatGPT. We found that AI can be a useful brainstorming tool, quickly generating ideas that can spark creative exploration. But there are also potential negative effects on students’ creative thinking skills and self-confidence. While students reported that it was helpful to “have another brain,” they also felt that using AI was “the easy way out” and didn’t allow them to think on their own.

Ask the students to engage with the AI, checking the AI answers for errors and expanding on good or bad points the AI makes. Using AI as a reading partner and tutor has a lot of potential, but requires experimentation.

AI, however, is very good at summarizing and applying information. And it can now read PDFs. Or even entire books. This means that students will be tempted to ask the AI for help summarizing written content. While the results can contain errors and simplifications, these summaries will shape a student’s thinking. Further, taking this shortcut may lower the degree to which the student cares about their interpretation of a reading, making in-class discussions less intellectually useful because the stakes are lower

Instructors are going to need to decide how to adjust their expectation for essays, not just to preserve the value of essay assignments,

They will want to use AI as a learning companion, a co-author, or a teammate. They will want to accomplish more than they did before, and also want answers about what AI means for their future learning paths. Schools will need to decide how to respond to this flood of questions.

Many other educators are designing similar exercises. In doing so, we can take advantage of what makes AI so promising for teaching - its ability to produce customized learning experiences that meet students where they are, and which are broadly accessible in ways that past forms of educational technology never were.

A recent deep qualitative study of teachers found that teachers who used AI for both output (create a worksheet, develop a quiz) and to help with input (help me think through what makes a Great American novel, give me ways to explain positive and negative numbers) get more value than if they use AI for producing output alone. This points to a useful path forward in AI for education, using it as a co-intelligence and tool for helping humans do better thinking.

While we want to be careful not to become overly reliant upon the AI to do all the thinking, it can provide a helpful nudge when we need it

creative work must be open-ended. If an assignment is closed-ended, such as a multiple-choice question, there is generally only one correct response. This leaves little or no room for creative thinking. Projects and project-based learning provide the flexibility and space for students to be creative.

So how does AI fit into the creativity equation, and how do we address the concerns that AI use will actually hinder, rather than develop, student creativity? To unpack that question, it’s helpful to reflect on the work of Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. In the viral YouTube video summarizing his work, Johnson explains, “It’s important to remember that the great driver of scientific innovation and technological innovation has been the historic increase in connectivity, and our ability to reach out and exchange ideas with other people, and to borrow other people’s hunches and combine them with our hunches and turn them into something new.”

in 2023, creative thinking was already the second most sought after skill by employers. Analytical thinking was number one, and even though artificial intelligence is just beginning to impact jobs in the mainstream, AI was already the number three skill on the list

Imagine the possibilities if we could use AI to simulate learner responses during the instructional design process. What if you didn’t need to conduct endless interviews, waiting for learner feedback that sometimes never arrives? What if you could have instant conversations with virtual learners and rapidly generate reliable data to inform your design?

The glance reveals what the gaze obscures

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who was famous for his “slip box” or “zettelkästen” method, called his box of notecards his conversation partner. He made each note card as if someone else were going to read it. Because, he would point out, by the time he came to a card a couple days/weeks/months later, he would be someone else.

When you don’t have that mechanical resistance, when you give yourself the freedom to copy and paste, you’re not discerning. You capture anything and everything that strikes you at first glance.

Neither ought anything to be collected whilst you are busied in reading; if by taking the pen in hand the thread of your reading be broken off, for that will make the reading both tedious and unpleasant.

Kestin doesn’t think that current AI technology is good at anything that requires knowing a lot about a person, such as what the student already learned in class or what kind of explanatory metaphor might work.

Of course, the benefits of an AI tutor depend on students actually using it. In other efforts, students often didn’t want to use earlier versions of education technology and computerized tutors. In this experiment, the “at-home” sessions with PS2 Pal were scheduled and proctored over Zoom. It’s not clear that even highly motivated Harvard students will find it engaging enough to use regularly on their own initiative. Cute emojis – another element that the Harvard scientists prompted their AI tutor to use – may not be enough to sustain long-term interest.

He believes the best use of this AI tutor would be to introduce a new topic ahead of class – much like professors assign reading in advance. That way students with less background knowledge won’t be as behind and can participate more fully in class activities.

How would these results translate beyond Harvard's high-achieving student population?

1.Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE)

Beyond the AI Tutor Paradigm

How effectively do these learning gains persist over time?

Traditional exams and performance reviews that test recall and comprehension no longer hold the same value. We must develop new ways to assess learners' ability to work with AI, evaluate its outputs, and use it to solve complex problems.

But in our AI-enhanced world, memorisation can be achieved in more complex and nuanced ways.

In the traditional model, 'Remember' focused on recalling facts, terms, basic concepts, and answers. But in our AI-enhanced world, memorisation can be achieved in more complex and nuanced ways. In a world where we can access virtually any piece of information in seconds via our smartphones or AI assistants, the value of rote memorisation has significantly diminished. This doesn't mean that remembering isn't important. Of course, we still need to internalise and retain foundational concepts to be able to learn effectively and deeply.

as shift from systems of education and training which focus on learners’ ability to memorise and recall information, to a focus on what they can do with information.

Yet this fear overlooks the potential of AI as a powerful tool for guiding learners toward higher-order thinking.

Consider this: in a world where AI can retrieve and present information in seconds, is memorisation still a critical skill? Or should we be focusing on higher-order thinking skills that AI can't replicate

Acknowledge nuance and conditionality

Create questions to deepen their understanding and illuminate complexity

An overabundance of testing, rubrics, and uncomfortable feedback has taught students that school writing is best completed with as little personal investment as possible. As a result, many of our student writers are members of the "writing wounded" (Vopat, 2009): students who involuntarily groan whenever writing is assigned

When students understand that most writing in class is ungraded and meant to promote experimentation, thinking, and discussion, their volume of low-risk writing increases. The more they write, the more confident they become as writers

these assignments offer little sustained writing practice and only a few chances to try out new ideas related to content. However, when students are writing short pieces every day in every class, they can use writing to explore a topic and advance their learning

Model your search. Talk to students about how keywords are more effective than complete sentences.

As students think critically, modeling and supporting their note taking and annotations are essential. Ask students to think aloud with you as they explain what stood out for them in the text and provide feedback that highlights strategies like identifying the main idea and details. By periodically reviewing student note taking, you can provide support for their critical reading of a text, identify misconceptions, and recommend additional resources for them to explore.

Who is in charge of this website?What is the quality of the information?Do they have a bias or a strong opinion on this topic?I wonder why the author chose this word.I wonder what type of experience the reporter has with this topic.I wonder why the author wrote about this topic or chose to interview this person for the article.

As you work with students to think critically about what they encounter in online spaces, model how to ask questions as you read by thinking aloud to students. You might select one of the questions below and tailor it to the specific reading material you plan to share with students: