Weekly Newsletter

Practical AI Strategies

Dealing with Shadow AI in Schools

Plus: Practical activities for building subject expertise with and without AI

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Term 2! Down here in the Southern Hemisphere we're transitioning to Autumn. Out here on the farm, that means that we've had days where we've lit the fire, and days where it's still hitting 30°C... If your students are anything like my kids, the change in season makes them a bit wild. Now's probably a great time to step away from computers and phones and make the most of the dwindling sunlight - get outside and play! The second article this week focuses on developing expertise, and includes a lot of discussion about why putting away devices is probably the first step.

But first, a follow-up post on last week's launch of the VINE Guidelines, focusing on "shadow AI"

Shadow AI: Bringing covert AI use out of the dark

Shadow IT has been a perennial problem in organisations for decades, and AI has made the problem worse in schools and universities. Shadow AI happens when staff start to use undeclared or unauthorised technologies in and out of the classroom.

Most of the time, though, it's not malicious. Shadow AI often comes from a place of frustration: approval of new apps takes too long, institutionally sanctioned platforms aren't good enough, and so on. The bigger problem, as we argued in the VINE Guidelines, is Covert AI. Covert AI is the deliberate and secret use of explicitly unauthorised technology, and it's more harmful than Shadow AI.

In this week's article, I focus on three of the methods suggested in the guidelines: risk zoning, 'business managed IT', and a 'paved road' approach to approval.

Read more about Shadow AI on the blog

Resistance Training Toolkit: Expertise

The second post this week kicks off a series about a project I've been working on with a handful of schools this year: the Resistance Training Toolkit.

When I was in the classroom, I got a lot of use out of toolkits like Ritchart's Making Thinking Visible, and the Harvard Project Zero tools. I believe we need something similar for AI in education: an evidence informed, practical set of activities that can be adapted across many disciplines.

This first post presents a few draft activities, and expands on Expertise as the first aspect of the Resistance framework I wrote about a few weeks ago. The activities are informed by long-standing education research, as well as the emerging research around GenAI in education.

I'd love you to read it and get in touch with any feedback, critique, or suggestions. Just hit reply to this email and let me know what you think.

Resistance Training Toolkit: Expertise

Keep an eye out for posts over the next few weeks with the other four areas of the framework: evaluation, metacognition, feedback, and "stretch".

Cheers,

Leon

PS: The Practical AI Process is a comprehensive course which takes educators from Foundation through to Advanced levels of AI use. If you'd like to shift your understanding of AI and learn about everything from prompting through to multimodal GenAI and AI agents, then join hundreds of educators currently completing the course.

​Click here for more information.​

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