How Women Use AI
Education

Red, Yellow, Green: Teaching Kids to Think in the Age of AI

S2 E4 with Dr. Sarah Thomas, Instructional Technology Specialist & Founder, EduMatch. Sep 30, 46 min.

Dr. Sarah Thomas describes herself as an AI centrist, seeing both the promise and the risk clearly. She walks through the red, yellow, green stoplight some school districts use to decide when AI belongs in an assignment (red: no AI, yellow: AI as a check, green: free use), crediting it as an idea she's seen done well, and talks through Sally, the humanoid classroom robot pulled from a New York school after a privacy backlash, as proof that informed parents pushing back is exactly how this should work.

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About this episode

She and Mercy also discuss cognitive offloading, the risk of students and adults outsourcing thinking they still need to build, why she believes staying informed about AI is a professional duty for educators, and the keynote she had AI write, then scrapped the day before delivering it because it didn't hit the way she wanted.

In her words

Nobody learns to write by watching something else write for them.

Dr. Sarah Thomas, on learning to write

Key moments

  • The red, yellow, green stoplight some districts use for assignments
  • The Sally the robot story and why parent pushback worked
  • The keynote she had AI write, then scrapped the day before delivering it

Resources mentioned

  • BookThe Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

    The book behind the four zones Sarah uses to decide where AI fits in her own work, from competence to genius.

  • WebsiteCommon Sense Education

    Sarah singles out its resources for students.

  • Cover of Closing the Gap: Digital Equity Strategies for Teacher Prep Programs
    BookClosing the Gap: Digital Equity Strategies for Teacher Prep Programs by Nicol R. Howard, Sarah Thomas, Regina Schaffer

    The first book in ISTE's Closing the Gap series, on digital equity in teacher preparation. Sarah notes in the episode that chapter five includes a section on generative AI, part of it written by an AI and disclosed as such.

  • Cover of Closing the Gap: Digital Equity Strategies for the K-12 Classroom
    BookClosing the Gap: Digital Equity Strategies for the K-12 Classroom by Sarah Thomas, Nicol R. Howard, Regina Schaffer

    The second book in the series, for classroom teachers and instructional coaches, connecting digital equity to the ISTE Standards.

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