AI Literacy Matters: A Conversation With Melanie Marzen
Melanie Marzen is a technology integration specialist at Evanston Township High School (ETHS). She also is an instructor within the School of Education and Social Policy, teaching a course called Educational Technology.
How can artificial intelligence (AI) literacy empower individuals to make informed decisions about the ethical and societal impacts of emerging technologies?
There's no one clear cut answer in terms of the usage and environmental impacts of AI. It's easy to subscribe to any ideas you’re immediately exposed to. Some people may not see any potential benefits while others may not care about the ethical implications of AI. It’s important to constantly think about AI and its usage with a technoskeptic mindset, especially in broader contexts. I am weary when people outright reject or overindulge in AI without critically analyzing its implications, not just theoretically, but in practice. This is true AI literacy. The biggest issue is if people ignore it.
Why is it important to be AI literate?
If you do not know what to look for when receiving an AI output, you might miss the hallucinated, or misinformed, ideas it spits out. We need to make sure students are aware of all the possible things that could go wrong. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do if students don't have intentional hands-on experience using the tool.
In what ways does AI literacy go beyond technical skills? Why is this critical for digital citizenship?
AI literacy goes beyond knowing how to use a tool. It’s easy to get excited about the potential of a tool versus the actual impact. For instance, many argue that integrating AI - especially in education - can save people time. But, to what extent do we actually need to save time? I think with every technological advancement, saved time is used as an excuse to squeeze more tasks into our already overloaded schedules. We need to ask ourselves if a more mindful approach is more appropriate for the task at hand. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
What else should people consider?
The ethics of the data that an AI is trained on. Is it copyrighted data? Are people giving personal and sensitive information? What are the environmental considerations that AI companies participate in? There are broader questions to be asked before focusing on the use of a tool, especially if it is replacing a task that would traditionally be done by a human.
What are the potential consequences of not prioritizing AI literacy in education?
Teachers have been talking about how they felt like giving up once AI was introduced into education. Many wanted to ban it and not think about it. However, students are still going to use it, most likely inappropriately and unethically, meaning pretending it doesn’t exist is not going to work.
At ETHS, once teachers began using AI a little on their own, some became excited while others started to fear its possibilities. Fear makes us forget that the questions educators are asking are the same concerns students should be wrestling with. Opening a discussion with students about what you’re afraid of can clue them in on how AI can be used effectively. Without these conversations, students will not be equipped to make their own decisions about when and why to use AI and, instead, go with the status quo.
How can AI literacy be made accessible to all?
That's the challenge. I feel like a lot of mandated efforts, like web modules, are pre-packaged, dry, and not personalized. The organizations implementing these efforts may also not be on board or ready to have these conversations.
To prioritize training for teachers equally across the board is seemingly impossible. Instead, we have to create a more organic ground-up approach. We should start with a small nucleus of teachers and then slowly grow their AI literacy so they can have conversations with students.
How do we make those talks effective?
Teachers need to be invested in increasing AI literacy by implementing personalized strategies in the classroom. Students may watch a variety of videos about digital citizenship, but it only works to a point. At the end of the day, unless you’re digging into AI literacy with the student on a fundamental level, you’re not going to meaningfully change their behavior.
How can AI help bridge educational gaps and create learning opportunities for all students?
AI can support acquiring new languages and be used to create supporting documents for emerging multilingual students to help with translanguaging. But it goes beyond this. We need to question how we can get students to effectively use tools to help themselves if the teacher can’t provide the necessary resources or doesn’t know the native or preferred language of the speaker. Students should be empowered to support themselves in a variety of capacities.
What about students with disabilities?
AI can support students on assignments by changing the Lexile score (how readable a story is) of texts, for example. There’s a lot it can do that teachers wouldn’t have the time, know-how, or capacity to do. We could also empower students to use AI in ways that assist their specific learning needs. Of course, this approach would require adequate experience effectively using AI and assumes the student has a solid grasp on the ethical and moral implications of using AI. Therefore, having discussions about AI with students is extremely crucial.
What are some of the most exciting ways AI is currently being used to enhance learning experiences in classrooms?
I have enjoyed seeing teachers use AI to create a huge bank of scenarios that they wouldn’t have the time to make on their own. For instance, a zoology teacher at ETHS made between 50 to 100 different profiles of make-believe animals. Students had to create an environment where the animal could thrive. AI was effective because students had to use their knowledge from class to make decisions. No one could look up the answers because they were using imaginary animals. Without AI, the teacher would not have been able to do this on his own.
AI can also tailor content for emergent multilingual students based on their different learning needs which would be otherwise impossible. This is especially important as there could be 10+ different languages in the same classroom that a teacher would have to support.
Final thoughts?
The big idea is that unless you are actively using AI, you’re not going to see the potential. If we continue having discussions from a variety of contexts - both philosophical and practical - we may have some grasp on AI.