Lance Key is a fan of artificial intelligence technology
The award-winning educator and support specialist for the Putnam County School System in Cookeville, Tennessee, focuses on helping teachers incorporate technology into their classrooms and has given hundreds of professional development presentations across the country.
Has discussed some of your favorite ai tools with me, but he also says that he increasingly thinks about the application of artificial intelligence in education in a broader sense than in specific tools. He believes educators should start thinking about the ways technology will change the world and start preparing their students for that from a variety of perspectives, including learning how to program ai and navigating deepfakes.
In many ways, ai reminds Key of Google’s debut in 1998, when many educators worried that students would turn to Google for easy answers and lose the ability to think critically.
“In education, we are normally one or two years behind in everything,” he says. “Unlike Google in 1998, I hope we don’t fight ai for that long.”
To that end, he suggests three resources to help prepare teachers and their students for that future.
Code.org, a popular computing resource in general, offers a variety of ai-specific lessons for teachers and students, Key says. These resources include ai 101 for Teachers, an online series brought to you by Code.org in collaboration with ISTE, ETS, and Khan Academy.
For students, Code.org offers coding and other STEM-focused lessons designed to help them understand how technology is changing the world.
This free programming resource from Google allows students to learn about ai in one of the best ways possible, by programming their own ai tools and writing and running with Python.
“It’s a platform where you can write ai models for kids to practice and learn,” Key says. Knowing the ai models, so to speak, can help students learn more about this important technology and demystify what it is doing.
This Department of Defense program features a variety of STEM resources including after-school programs, student internships, competitions, and professional development opportunities for teachers.
Key recently participated in a DOD ai bootcamp for teachers. The training provided educators with insights into ai and explored some of the technology‘s potential in the future. One aspect of ai that Key is excited about training is its predictive power. For example, artificial intelligence models are being developed in the healthcare field to help recognize cancers early. In education, ai could identify students who need more support sooner.
“If we embrace it and start using it correctly, we can start using predictive analytics that can help us see where students are going to struggle,” Key says.
