Guide to AI in Schools: A Perspective to the Perplexed

I’m pleased to share our new “Guide to AI in Schools: A Perspective to the Perplexed”: tsl.mit.edu/ai-guidebook. 
 
Your first instinct might be “Sweet mother pickles, do we actually need another AI guidance document?” That is a sensible reaction. So, we’ve done two things that are different.
 
First, our guidance is sourced almost entirely from practicing classroom educators and school leaders. We wanted to share what people who have 30 students in front of them every morning at 8am were discovering, trying, celebrating, and worrying about. (And the brilliant Julie M. Smith from the Institute for Advancing Computing Education did the editorial organizing.)
 
Second, we are adamant that we have no idea if our guidance is any good. From the introduction: 
 
A guidebook of tying knots will show you exactly how to tie the knots the correct way. A guidebook on AI in schools in 2025 can’t possibly do that because we don’t even know what the knots are, let alone how to tie them. What we can show you is how people are taking this new kind of rope and bending it around in interesting ways, some of which might prove sturdy and some of which might prove faulty. And we won’t know which is which for a long time.
 
Humility will be an essential virtue in wrestling with AI over the next decade or longer. When educators try to incorporate new technologies, some of their initial guesses are very wrong–sometimes modestly wrong, sometimes disastrously wrong. Our guidebook is a catalog of hypotheses and experiments, some of which you may be inspired to try in your own context.
 
Take a look, and we’re happy to hear from folks about your reactions, your critiques, and what you might be eager to try and test. If you find it useful, please share widely!
 
We have a new Homework Machine podcast interlude episode coming out this week, where Jesse Dukes and I talk about my own teaching, and how I’m changing assignments and teaching in my MIT classes this fall to adapt to the arrival of AI. Check it out at teachlabpodcast.com. 
 
You have my best wishes for the start of the school year.