New resources for teachers and student teachers: AI Dilemmas
Civics of Technology Announcements
Next Tech Talk: The next Tech Talk will be held on October 7 at 8:00 Eastern Time. Register here or on our events page. Come join our community in an informal discussion about tech, education, the world, whatever is on your mind!
October Book Club: Erin Anderson is leading a book club of Culpability by Bruce Holsinger. Join us to discuss at 8pm EST on Tuesday, October 14th, 2025. Be sure to register on our events page!
November Book Club: Charles Logan is leading a book club of I'm leading a discussion of Digital Degrowth: Radically Rethinking Our Digital Futures by Neil Selwyn. Join us to discuss at 8pm EST on Tuesday, November 11th, 2025.
Latest Book Review: The Mechanic and the Luddite, by Jathan Sadowski (2025).
By Adriana Szili & Neil Selwyn
Teachers need time to have proper conversations around the pros and cons of using AI in their work
Teachers are under increasing pressure to make use of AI tools to support their work – from using general tools such as ChatGPT to produce lesson plans and draft emails through to specialist software such as MagicSchool.AI that claim to assist with dozens of different teacher tasks.
While IT industry and policymakers like to talk about AI saving teachers “up to six weeks of work a year”, most teachers know that there is no such thing as a quick fix. Educators are finding that using AI tools takes a lot of time and thought. Most importantly, using AI tools in educational contexts raises a bunch of critical issues, concerns and compromises that need to be talked about more often.
With AI-related professional learning now a hot topic in schools and university teacher education courses, we have produced a set of resources that can be used to support some wide-ranging conversations and reflective sessions on the wins and losses associated with AI use.
These resources present various real-life accounts of AI use from our ongoing ARC-funded research on Australian high school teachers’ experiences with the technology. These vignettes are presented in a deliberately open-ended manner – meaning that there is plenty of scope to explore the nuances of teachers’ decision-making. These are resources that are hopefully going to engage even the most AI-sceptic and AI-enthusiastic teachers.
We are in the process of disseminating these materials to anyone and everyone who might be interested – please pass them onto colleagues as well as making use of them yourselves!
You can access all of the materials from this webpage. We have high-spec A3 colour posters that can be printed out and displayed in staff rooms, by the photocopier, water-cooler or coffee machine. We also have a set of A4 handouts and PowerPoint slide (editable) if you wanted to run a session (can be done in 45 mins to 2 hours).
We hope these are useful and spark some interesting dialogue beyond vague notions of AI as a ‘time-saver’ and way of ‘working smarter’!