There are significant implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for education, teaching and learning, and for teachers’ roles and competencies. Indeed, AI can process vast amounts of information and text far beyond any human capacity and can produce new content across the range of symbolic representations of human thinking, identify patterns in data presented in various formats, and can facilitate human decision-making by predictive analyses. Emerging practices in the use of AI in education clearly demonstrate the potential of AI to enable new forms of teaching, learning and education management and enhance learning experiences and support teacher tasks.

However, AI can pose significant risks to students, the teaching community, education systems and society at large. AI may threaten human agency, intensify climate change, violate data privacy, deepen long-standing systemic inequalities and exclusion, and lead to new forms of discrimination. In education, AI can reduce teaching and learning processes to calculations and automated tasks in ways that devalue the role and influence of teachers and weaken their relationships with learners. It can narrow education to only that which AI can process, model and deliver. Finally, it can also exacerbate the worldwide shortage of qualified teachers through disproportionate spending on technology at the expense of investment in human capacity development.

The use of AI in education therefore requires careful consideration, including an examination of the evolving roles teachers need to play and the competencies required of teachers to make ethical and effective use of AI. Teachers are the primary users of AI in education, and they are expected to be the designers and facilitators of students’ learning with AI, the guardians of safe and ethical practice across AI-rich educational environments, and to act as role models for lifelong learning about AI. To assume these responsibilities, teachers need to be supported to develop their capabilities to leverage the potential benefits of AI while mitigating its risks in education settings and wider society.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the face of education and how we deliver instruction. While a few items from the original list remain, the introduction to remote and virtual learning into our lexicon means that we have some new tools and strategies to deploy during this upcoming school year.

Before I share the list, let me just say I know this list is a bit ambitious. Educators are fatigued after this last year and half and learning new things isn’t necessarily tops on the list for anyone. That said, through adversity and change, innovation arises. Most of the items on this list are free or “freemium” but some do cost money. This post is much like whenever I deliver professional learning; My goal isn’t for a teacher to try EVERYTHING but instead pick one or two ideas that they can implement in their classroom this coming school year.