Before buying a robot for classroom use school leaders should have asked How is this going to l (1)
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why school leaders must think through how classroom AI robot decisions will look to students, parents, and the public.
Key Takeaways
- Perception Matters - School leaders have to consider how a decision will be received by students, families, and the broader public.
- Think Like a Headline Writer - Before piloting new technology, imagine the newspaper headline and whether it makes your judgment look sound or foolish.
- Innovation Needs Judgment - Trying new ideas is fine, but not without careful reflection on optics, context, and likely reactions.
- Humanoid Robots Raise Extra Concerns - A lifelike robot in a high school classroom creates obvious distractions and associations that can overshadow any instructional purpose.
Full Transcript
The district in western New York has purchased a very lifelike robot for use as kind of an AI tutor in its classrooms, and I think we have to never stop asking the question, how is this going to look? How is this going to look when we purchase a robot from a company that also makes... other kinds of robots for non-instructional purposes, how is that going to look to our students? How are they going to react?
How is it going to look to our parents? How is it going to look to the country and the media? Like, one of the things I was taught in leadership school was always envision what the newspaper headline is going to be. Before you make a decision, think, how is this going to look if it gets written up in the paper in some sort of hit piece about me? Am I going to look like a reasonable person who made a good decision, who exercised sound professional judgment, or am I going to look like the stupidest person who ever lived? Like, I think we just have to do that thinking to avoid decisions like this.
I mean, putting a robot, and not just, like, any robot, but, like, a specifically humanoid robot from a company that makes... specifically humanoid robots, yes, you know what I'm saying, in a classroom with 11th and 12th grade students, and, like, I get the idea to, like, pilot new things, to try new things, to try to be innovative, but we should never do that without thinking, okay, wait, how is this going to look? What is the newspaper headline going to be? And in this case...
It's not going to be good. Nobody's going to be looking at the school district and saying, oh, yeah, they're innovative. Wow, I'm so impressed with how they're meeting their students' needs and being on the forefront of teaching and learning with this great new innovation. No, the headline is, of course, what kind of robot is this? Let me know what you think.
