Keynote Presentation: AI in Education Summit

by | Saturday, December 16, 2023

Note: The image above is the result of a two-stage creative process—done in collaboration with AI. Dall-E was tasked, over multiple iterations, to craft a woodcut-style image, to abstractly capture the idea of AI and education, with dark and light motifs, aiming to represent the inherent risks and boundless opportunities in this space. The backdrop, the textured wall was generated using the Adobe Firefly. The overall composition and design aesthetics of the piece were curated by me in Keynote.

I was invited to give a Keynote presentation at the AI Summit organized by MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) and Michigan Virtual in East Lansing, Michigan. It was great to be back in East Lansing, on the MSU campus. There was more than a bit of nostalgia in the cool December air, given the 18 years I had spent at MSU, before coming to ASU.

The nostalgia factor was heightened by the fact that I was staying in the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center. As it happens, the last time I had stayed there was 25 years ago, when I had come to East Lansing for a job interview. The rest, as they say, is history.

At this conference, I was part of an impressive lineup of speakers, including Dan Fitzpatrick, Dr. Sabba Quidwai and Sal Khan. No pressure there! You can read a report about the conference overall, written by Justin Bruno on the Michigan Virtual website titled: Highlights from the 2023 AI Summit.

In my talk I spoke to both my excitement and concerns about generative AI and its implications for education and broader society. Sarah Wood (@myedtechworld) live-sketched my talk (what an awesome super power). In an email conversation with me she told me that the sketch was created using Powerpoint. Powerpoint? Wow. What an amazing super power. The live-sketch, capturing the key ideas of my talk, is included, with permission, below:

You can watch my keynote (synchronized to my slides) below.

Note: A couple of corrections. In the talk I showed a screenshot of an early version of my website and described it as being from 1996, it is actually from 1999. Also, the MSUrbanSTEM project worked with 125 STEM educators in Chicago, not 150.

It was great to meet up with some old friends, Ken Dirkin (one of the organizers of the conference), Matt Koehler, Kathryn Dirkin, Jon Good, Joe Freidhoff as well as a few graduates of the MAET program. Some photographs below:

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Squaring a circle on Pi day!

Squaring a circle on Pi day!

Pie upon reflection is nothing but 3.14!A new version of a design I had created a year ago.Original idea stolen from the Interwebs Since it is Pi(e) day, I thought it would be fun to share another design I had created a while ago in response to one of the...

The Innocent

I first read Ian McEwan many years ago (in the 80's I think) when he wrote grim and macabre novels and short stories, full of strange dark humor. I found him somewhat interesting but not enough to seek out his books. And then, years later, this past fall I read...

India Week @ Erickson Hall

The Indian community in the greater Lansing area celebrates India Week every year (more or less) around March. [More details here and here.] As a part of this event I (and other members of the College of Education) have been organizing an Indian themed breakfast and...

Henriksen & Mishra, one of popular articles of 2015

Our recent article in TCRecord on how exemplary teachers incorporate creativity in their teaching (Henriksen & Mishra, 2015) was listed as one of the most popular articles of 2015! You can access the article by clicking the link above and, for the record, see...

Things we hold on to (in a shifting world)

Things we hold on to (in a shifting world)

Title image created using Dall E 2, with input by Punya Mishra My colleague Jill Koyama shared an essay published in the Refugee Research Online journal, titled "It's all in the bag: Refugees and Materiality."...

Ambi-poetry: A mathematician reinterprets ambigrams

My friend Gaurav Bhatnagar (I had blogged about his new book, Get Smart: Math Concepts here), for some reason, known only to him, has decided to create a poetry-blog based around my ambigrams. Each posting consists of one ambigram (taken from my large collection of...

Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum

Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum

As we continue to grapple with the hype and transformative potential of generative AI in education, I find myself revisiting a point I've made before: the most significant impacts of this technology may not be within the classroom walls, but in the world that...

Seeing differently (veja du with video)

I am always looking for examples of looking at the world differently - of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. This is of course connected with the veja du assignments I give my students. I just came across a couple of very interesting video examples...

Speculative fiction and the future of learning

Speculative fiction and the future of learning

One of the most fun projects I have been part of was working with authors of speculative fiction around the futures of learning. This was the result of a collaboration with the Center for Science and the Imagination, Slate magazine and New America (supported by the...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *