There’s a quote meme from economist Richard Baldwin making the rounds that says, “AI won’t take your job. Someone using AI will.” As someone who spends her days dreaming up ways to make education more inclusive, accessible, and successful for both educators and learners, I can’t stop thinking about this.
AI is so much more than the latest technology—it’s an inevitable disruption in education. But here’s the good news: that disruption doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m convinced AI isn’t here to eliminate the most important aspects of our work as educators. Instead, it’s a thought partner that amplifies what we do best and lightens the workload that often buries us.
"AI isn’t here to replace educators—it’s here to help us do what we already do well, but faster, smarter, and with greater impact."
When Catlin Tucker and I wrote our latest book, Elevating Educational Design with AI, we weren’t interested in hyping AI for the sake of it. (Goodness knows, we didn’t invent it—though wouldn’t that be cool?) Instead, we wanted to show how educators can harness AI to create learning experiences that truly meet the needs of all students—and in a fraction of the time it currently takes. AI isn’t here to replace educators—it’s here to help us do what we already do well, but faster, smarter, and with greater impact.
Don’t Just Trust the Robots
That said, we can’t just blindly trust AI. For example, as I drafted this blog, I asked ChatGPT: “What are some creative UDL options to provide to students as they work toward narrative writing standards?”
ChatGPT immediately generated the following:🤖
- Traditional Narrative: Write a story or personal narrative in essay form.
- Digital Storytelling: Create a multimedia narrative using tools like Adobe Spark, Canva, or Google Slides with images, text, and voiceovers.
- Graphic Novel/Comic: Use tools like Pixton or Book Creator to develop a visual narrative with dialogue and captions.
- Video Narrative: Record a short film, vlog, or animated story to convey the narrative.
These options were creative and innovative, perfect for content standards where students need to explain, analyze, or express ideas. But if the goal is to ensure every student produces a written narrative, some of these options miss the mark.
Knowing this, I refined my prompt: “All students need to produce a written narrative. Can you revise these options so all learners, regardless of variability, will be able to produce a written narrative by having options throughout the writing process?”
That’s when ChatGPT really started cooking. 🤖 Here’s the revised version:
- Traditional Narrative: Write a story or personal narrative in multi-paragraph form. Scaffold the process with graphic organizers, sentence starters, voice-to-text technology, or an AI-powered writing assistant to support idea generation and structure.
- Digital Storytelling: Create a multimedia narrative using tools like Adobe Spark, Canva, or Google Slides. Include written text for each image or slide to ensure the narrative structure is captured in writing. Voiceovers and visuals can add depth, but the written component remains central.
- Graphic Novel/Comic: Develop a visual narrative using tools like Pixton or Book Creator. Use prompts for captions, dialogue, and scene descriptions to ensure students produce a complete written narrative alongside the visuals.
- Video Narrative: Record a short film, vlog, or animation, but require a written script or screenplay as the foundation for the video. This ensures the narrative is fully developed in writing before it comes to life visually.
Why I Love AI as a Thought Partner
AI can be an incredible thought partner for educators, but it still needs us to guide the process, ensuring outputs are relevant, aligned to standards, and student-centered.
For me, AI is like having a co-pilot who never gets tired of brainstorming. Need ideas for a station rotation model? Done. Struggling to phrase a learning objective? Handled. Wondering how to make a lesson more accessible for diverse learners? AI can help generate multiple pathways and scaffold options in seconds—as long as you’re willing to continue the conversation and refine the outputs.
By offloading the heavy lifting—generating lists, creating templates, or analyzing data—we can redirect our energy toward designing transformative learning experiences that engage students in meaningful, innovative opportunities to share their learning.
A Sneak Peek at Elevating Educational Design with AI
In Elevating Educational Design with AI, we walk readers through a practical, AI-enhanced framework to rethink teaching and learning. Each chapter is packed with actionable strategies, thought-provoking questions, and a few good stories to keep things relatable and fun.
Throughout the book, we share what we’ve learned about using AI effectively, from crafting better prompts to ensuring AI outputs align with best practices and standards. Whether you’re working with high-quality instructional resources or starting fresh, this book offers insights and tools to bring AI into your professional practice in meaningful ways.
AI + Educators = Unstoppable
If you’re still hesitant about embracing AI, I get it. Trying something new always comes with a learning curve—troubleshooting, adapting, and finding the right balance. But here’s the reality: AI isn’t going anywhere, and the sooner we lean into its possibilities, the more we can shape its role in education.
AI isn’t here to replace us—it’s here to elevate us. With the right tools, the right mindset, and a focus on what matters most—student outcomes and agency and our own mental health—we can create a future in education that’s more innovative and inclusive than ever before.
Leverage AI to enhance, not replace, your role as an educator.
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