The Vintage Radio and Communications Museum of Connecticut invites one to “take a walk through history from Morse Code transmitters to radio and television to personal computers, and everything in between.” 

The museum, located in Windsor, is a reminder that technology evolves — whether we humans want it to or not — and offered a perfect field trip for those gathered June 15–17 at Loomis Chaffee for a symposium on Artificial Intelligence (AI).  

The symposium leaders were Loomis’ Writing Initiatives Director John Morrell and Director of Educational and Administrative AI Initiatives Matt Johnson. The three-day event was described by John and Matt as bringing together educators from secondary and post-secondary institutions to talk with and learn from one another about AI, the challenges and opportunities it presents to teachers and students; to think about the place of writing in education now and in the future; and to imagine what it will mean to be a learner and an educator in the coming decades. The symposium looked at foundational papers in the philosophy of technology and computation, led by faculty from St John's College in Annapolis, Md.; explored writing-based teaching practices with faculty affiliates from the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College; and took a laboratory approach to AI as participants considered this technology as an object of study. 

  
Helga Zambrano, one of the participants and a teacher at The Webb Schools in Claremont, Calif., said she appreciated how much the trip to the museum was a “physical and tactile experience.” 

“There is that element now of things just happening digitally in a way that feels, ‘Where is the human in all of this?’” Ms. Zambrano said in an interview before one of the day’s sessions.  “Whereas at this museum, there is the tour guide who was so knowledgeable and shared all these stories and personal passions, and there was the manual element of playing with these machines. It was like being a kid in a toy shop. It felt like an experience and was so memorable. ... One thing with AI is where is the human, where is the experience, and are we even needed anymore?” 

One reason these educators came together: To keep the word “human” in the conversation.  

“I feel if the right people are getting in front of [AI], like educators, to consider the benefits of it, to consider what kind of practices we can use with it, what are its limitations, we can create something that is more holistically sound in terms of our goals as educators,” Ms. Zambrano said. “If we're not going to do it, folks outside of education are going to do it, and that is going to be problematic. They might not have the same mission or values.” 

The symposium opened with a welcome from Head of School Jody Reilly Soja. She mentioned recently reading Brené Brown’s book Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit, in which the author writes about “steering into the slide when you’re driving on ice, and your car is out of control, how you have to embrace the uncertainty and steer into the slide. That makes me think of this work — embracing the uncertainty of AI’s role in education.”   

Jody talked about thinking about where we want to engage, where we don’t, and not just resisting what is coming our way. 

When Maureen Burgess Chalfen, a faculty associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College and a former longtime teacher and head of school, has mixed feelings about AI. 

“I’m of two minds about it,” Ms. Chalfen said. “It is very much about the kind of choices we as humans want to make. And, unfortunately, if you look at the state of the planet, climate change, the state of the economy, wars, there is the side of me that worries very much that the profit motive will trump any kind of concern for human welfare and jobs. On the other hand, I see genuine possibilities, not only in advances in medical care, robotics, those sorts of things that already are very beneficial. I personally use AI for research. I'm a writer. I do not use it to write for me. I'm a writing teacher.”   

Ms. Chalfen said the temptation for students to use AI for writing, especially when they're really busy, is not good. “Yet [AI] is exciting,” she said, “and we are at an inflection point.” 

It’s another in a long list of inflection points when it comes to technology. Embrace the uncertainty, yet watch out for that slippery slope. 

Ms. Chalfen was struck by what she saw first in the museum — a player piano. 

“I was thinking did pianists react in the same way at the time — people who were paid to play in venues?” she said. “Were there similar reactions or worries when it became possible they could be replaced, similar to how people are now worried about being replaced by AI? And that is the question as you go through the museum and see the technology. Each technology is both an improvement on and sometimes a replacement.” 

After the symposium had concluded, both Matt and John said they were satisfied that the three days were inspiring and invigorating. The group read, wrote, shared, and took time for personal reflections.  

“I feel really proud of what the group was able to do in just three days: form a strong community, think aloud through big ideas and challenges, and foster a strong connection to some of the core aspects of this work that brought us all into teaching to begin with,” Matt said. “I hope that this is the first of many of this kind.” 

“Sometimes,” John said, “when you bring community together in dialogue, what results is more than the sum of its parts, and I think that happened here. Everyone walked away with new ideas and questions to consider, and to my mind, that’s a mark of a successful gathering.” 

“One topic that is still circling for me,” John continued, “is the question of which analogies are most apt for thinking about AI in education. For instance, is this moment analogous to the advent of the calculator in the mathematics classroom, or is it more continuous with social media?” 

Peter Nilsson, a former head of school, administrator, teacher, and the founder of Athena Lab, a technology platform for teachers to share practices, wrote in a reflection as part of the symposium about the power of people coming together and gaining a “deeper understanding of a text or a subject” and “developing new, shared thought.”  

Another of his reflections: “What AI or technology produces only has value insofar as we take time to make meaning of it. We can have all the books, but if we do not read them, they are decorations. We can produce writing with AI, but if we do not engage it through close reading followed by discussions or writing, then it is shallow and without meaning. But we can learn with AI if we make meaning by reading it, evaluating it, and integrating what value it produces in our lives, just as we integrate other parts of our lived experiences through reflection and engagement.”