Attention, AI, Education, & what learning is for

"Hold on a second. So, my highlight is a moment. I think Ann Marie’s heard this story. It's a moment from the class I was teaching in March, teaching Bachelor of Education students. I’d given them a copy of a 1977 New York Times article about how the television was killing classrooms. 'Kids these days,' it said, 'they just can't handle anything... All they do is talk about TV, they stay up too late. They can't talk to each other. They don't play anymore.' This was the capsule article for my class on Ed Tech, and I'm hoping... I'm hoping that the light bulb is going to go on, like, I'm hoping it's going to get there.

So, Isabella is sitting, she’s about three seats in, about 30 minutes into reading, she gives me one of these… [stretches]. I'm like, 'Isabella, having a hard time getting through that article?' She's like, aw, tl:dr: 'I get the point.' I'm like, my dude, 'What do you want to teach?' And she goes, 'Oh, Grade 5 students.' I'm like, 'Do you want your Grade 5 students to be able to read for longer than that?' And she goes [look of surprise] and she just stops. And like, the whole... like it all happens in her head. Like, 'Oh my God, I can't read anymore.'

And then the person next to her goes, 'I don't even watch the first 30 minutes of movies anymore. I can't stand the exposition.' And it starts pinging around the room as everybody's doing these deep personal declarations of how they can't pay attention to anything. And then one student, like right in the front, her hand goes like this, [slowly raises hand] I've never seen her raise her hand before: she just talks. But she raised her hand tentatively and goes, 'Oh my God, is this what this whole course has been about?' I’m like, 'Yes, this is what the whole course has been about. Thank you for figuring it out on the last day!'

Yes, things are changing, all these things matter, but it's not about the buttons, and it's not about this. It's about how we change as a culture. Like, this is a deeply cultural moment that we're stuck in right now.

[Aside about the cat]

So that's my favorite... that's my favorite edtech moment from 2024. 

My... My worst moments of 2024 are more of a sequence of moments... my March of sadness as I go from department to department in my now ex-job, for those of you who know. I'm going to work with Brian in the new year. Yeah, it's going to be good times. It's just a March of sadness, in walking into department after department and realizing... on AI... in realizing that the conversation that they need to have, about what learning is for, is the one that they've never really had. And that's... that's me out. I'm going to... I'm going to pick my man Brian, 'cause... we're going to be doing this team show all next year."