Intention Meets Practice
Civics of Technology Announcements
Annual Conference: We are holding our 5th Annual Conference on August 6th-7th, 2026! Our keynotes this year are Dr. Meredith Broussard (data journalist & author of More than a Glitch among other books) and Natasha Singer (NYT edtech reporter & author of the forthcoming book, "Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools”). Learn more here, register here, and submit proposals here ← Last week to get your proposal in!
Book Club in June: Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser. Join us on Wednesday, June 24th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time.Register here.
Aaron R. Gierhart, Ed.D.is an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, teaching coursework in educational technology, educational foundations, and educational sustainability. He hosts and produces a seasonal podcast called Journeys of Teaching, and his research interests include pedagogy, teacher education, and narratives of teaching. Dr. Gierhart worked as an elementary classroom teacher in Illinois for 11 years and has been a teacher educator since 2018. His book, Narratives of Pedagogical Development and Navigation of Educational Contexts, was published by IGI Global in 2025. Dr. Gierhart has also edited two books and published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and presented at prominent national conferences, including ISTE, SITE, ITEEA, ITLC-Lilly, and NSTA.
We have very sandy soil in Central Wisconsin, requiring constant watering to keep a green lawn in the spring and summer months. I tried to prime my sprinkler pump yesterday to begin twice daily watering, but the pipe plug cap was rusted shut:
I consulted Microsoft Copilot, as my regular 8-inch wrench and WD-40 couldn't get the plug to budge. Through several hours of intermittent dialogue with Copilot, I was able to accomplish the following
Learn that I needed to use a proper pipe wrench that had better "teeth" grip
Identify the replacement part I needed and that it would not rust like the current one if I bought a brass version
Locate the aisle and bay number for this part at Menard's
After successfully watering my lawn, I engaged in further dialogue with Copilot about two sprinkler heads in need of replacement due to rotor malfunctioning, ordered them from Menard's, and exported a PDF of installation instructions to my email inbox.
I wouldn't classify my use of AI in this case as "cheating" or an overuse of technology, because...
I avoided a costly service call to a technician (after having an unexpected large car repair bill the week prior).
I saved time researching, shopping, and struggling and still had time in my day to attend my daughter's swim lesson, make dinner, and watch half of an episode of Kids Baking Championship with my family.
My use of GenAI was purpose-driven. The research and diagnosis of the lawn sprinkler system issues were not my primary objective--fixing them quickly and in a cost-efficient manner was.
In short, I had a clear, intentional path for my use of GenAI in this instance. My intent was not to develop the knowledge and skills of a master plumber. If that was the case, I would need to complete a multi-year apprenticeship, pass a journeyman plumber exam, gain additional on-the-job experience, and eventually pass a master plumber exam.
However, GenAI may be taken up by educational professionals and students with limited consideration for broader pedagogical and ethical consequences. Developing and maintaining a critical, intentional mindset is essential to prevent GenAI uses that undermine critical thinking, data security, ethical benchmarks, and authenticity. As educators integrate GenAI into their own workflows and foster students’ AI literacy, intentional practice becomes increasingly important. I believe that our intentionality should guide our efforts as we strive for effective, innovative uses and implementations of contemporary technologies in the education sector.
In my undergraduate educational technology course, I work with a variety of teacher education majors, including Early Childhood Education, Special Education, Elementary Education, World Language Education, Science Education, and History/Social Studies Education. These teaching candidates will go on to work with students of varying ages, from newborns and toddlers to high school seniors. Therefore, conceptualizing technology integration, particularly GenAI, requires considerations of age appropriateness and disciplinary “fit.”
The challenge of teaching this educational technology course is supporting each student in critically evaluating the affordances and constraints of technology integration with the age group and within content area(s) that they will teach upon graduation. Rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all ethos for technology integration across such a span of grade levels and content areas, I work to foster digital pedagogy – the evaluation and integration of technologies - from the foundation of intention.
Merriam-Webster defines intention as “a determination to act in a certain way.” From a pedagogical perspective, we can adapt this and define intention as “a determination to integrate technologies in a certain way as a means of meeting learning targets with integrity.”
If it sounds like this modified definition is approaching matters of academic integrity, that is intentional (pun intended). GenAI and other contemporary technologies have disrupted traditional means of teaching and learning with no clear means of ever going back. Discussing large language model capabilities and “deep research” functionality on many GenAI platforms, my History Education majors and I often quip, “Is the essay a dead assessment format now?”
Fostering Intentional Practice in Teacher Education Coursework
My students design three lesson plans across the semester of my course, aligning grade level/content area standards with the Wisconsin Standards for Information and Technology Literacy (adapted from the ISTE Standards for Students). They are required to write the lesson plan with the premise that they will integrate technologies in some way, preferably in a manner that involves student-centered uses and applications of technologies.
At the end of the lesson plan template, the students are required to self-evaluate the impact and level of pedagogical transformation of their technology integration using Ruben Puentadura’s SAMR Model:
The purpose of this self-evaluation is for the students to consider the plausible outcomes of their thinking around technology integration and student uses of technologies, forming an intentional stance around integrating technologies into their instructional design with purpose:
Am I just reproducing what my students and I could have accomplished through analog means?
Is the screen time exposure for my students worth what they will be getting out it this experience with technology?
Are there affordances my students are missing out on?
Could I leverage this technology (or other technologies) to more effectively transform teaching and learning outcomes in ways that are aligned to these state learning standards?
Given the disruptive nature of GenAI in educational contexts, I have designed a series of hands-on, AI-focused assignments to explore the capabilities of evolving GenAI tools and their implications on 21st century teaching and learning. I never presume that students have extensive experience working with GenAI, so I always begin by teaching them effective prompt design practices, using approaches such as the CREATE Framework for teacher-oriented prompting and the CLEAR Framework for scaffolding student prompting.
From there, we consider current policies and laws around AI. The students learn about FERPA and COPPA and compare the purported compliance of mainstream GenAI tools with these federal laws; they learn that the "buck” of responsibility for ensuring FERPA and COPPA compliance is often passed to schools, teachers, or students’ guardians, as most GenAI companies have no reliable means of confirming a user’s age.
The students also consider AI policy from an academic integrity standpoint, describing what academic integrity looks like within the content area(s) they plan to teach in field-based settings. For example, in mathematics, there are established norms that students will be accurate and apply content knowledge and skills towards greater problem solving, justifying solutions through conceptual understanding and rationale. In fine arts, we place an emphasis on originality and creative expression as well as the authenticity of performance, artistic process, and aesthetic appreciation.
I ask my students to assume the role of one of their future students (or a future student’s parent/guardian if their intended grade level would be too young to use AI) and attempt to generate content that clearly violates academic integrity values (e.g., generating an entire essay, solving a math problem set, etc.). The students reflect on this experience and design guidelines for their future classroom or school AI policy in alignment with the International Center for Academic Integrity’s fundamental values of academic integrity: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.
In another assignment, students generate a product of learning indicative of a specific academic discipline they would teach in the future. They consider how they would foster AI literacy with their future students in discipline-specific ways and how their students would critique AI-generated content through disciplinary lenses and norms (Warr et al., 2026). For example, a teaching candidate in my course who planned to teach English language arts could generate a short literary passage or mentor text for a lesson. Then, they could critique the generated text through content-specific means:
Are the voice and tone of this passage consistent and authentic?
Are the characters and their experiences represented in a meaningful, non-stereotypical manner?
Is the language of a rigorous and age-appropriate quality?
Is this text valuable enough to use for reading and teaching purposes?
Student Voice: Constructing Meaning and Intention
Following each phase of hands-on AI Assignments, students get together in small groups to record audio podcasts of roundtable discussions in which they debrief from these experiences and discuss insights, lingering questions and concerns, and intentions for field-based applications. At the end of the semester, groups have the option to publish these podcasts for a wider audience on my Journeys of Teaching podcast feed:
Students in my course have expressed how much they value the social learning involved in these group podcasting assignments:
[It was] helpful to be able to talk and think about the inconsistencies [between GenAI tools] that we noticed.
Dialogue is one of the most important parts of the podcast —constructive conversations surrounding [what] we’ve learned in class.
My group, there [were] just differing opinions across the board; one person was very ‘anti’ and one was really for [GenAI]. It was really interesting just to hear all of the different viewpoints
It was nice to know that other people had the same struggles and issues that we were all running into.
Towards the end of the semester, students engage in a literature review research assignment around a topic of interest from the semester. Many students extend their ongoing grappling with AI in the education sector, posing specific questions related to AI implications within their specific teaching contexts. Students can choose to publish their final research reports from this assignment in a student journal published twice annually through the Minds@UW scholarship repository called Digital Touchpoints.
In Issue #4, which was published following the Spring 2026 semester, several students posed questions that remain unanswered. For example, Hadley Walters asked, “How can teachers integrate technology and AI into math education to support student learning while maintaining academic integrity?” Based on her review of current literature, she concludes as follows:
Teachers can effectively integrate AI and technology into mathematics instruction by using AI tools to enhance learning rather than replace student thinking. Maintaining academic integrity requires teachers to be properly trained so they can explicitly teach students how to use AI responsibly and safely. Teachers need to set clear expectations and design tasks that emphasize understanding and reasoning.
Assignments such as this special interest research project, hands-on technology exploration, and group podcasting can support students as they evaluate and implement technologies, developing an pedagogical stance grounded in intentional pedagogy. The public-facing nature of several of these assignments also allows the students to begin participating in the wider professional discourse of the teaching profession in which they are finding their place.
Challenging Systems and Power
Each summer, I revisit my educational technology course design and revamp assignments to best reflect contemporary educational contexts, research, and practices, always grounding the work my students and I do together in intentional pedagogy.
At this stage of their professional journeys, most of my students evaluate technologies and technologically mediated teaching and learning practices from a more immediate perspective of their current practicum placements (i.e., How will this work for the students in my field placement this semester?) and future classrooms (i.e., Will my future students’ families be accepting of their high school sophomores using GenAI for assignments in my future classroom?).
Yet, I have always felt that those of us in the education sector are obligated to advocate for policies and practices that forge equity and just outcomes for students, practitioners, and communities. As we evaluate technologically mediated teaching and learning approaches in my course, I always remind my students that choosing to not use technology can sometimes be optimal if the affordances do not outweigh the constraints in a given educational scenario.
In many ways, contemporary technologies, including GenAI, can sometimes feel inevitable. Calls for building up the technological competencies and AI literacy of the next generation and growing ubiquity of AI integration in nearly every platform we use online from social media to web searching to online banking...this creates pressure for teachers to increase their uptake of technologies in their classrooms.
Intention will only take in-service and pre-service teachers so far. I aim to better support my teaching candidates in moving beyond their immediate, micro-level concerns about how technology integration affects their students, classrooms, and teaching practices. I must push them to consider the broader ethical consequences of contemporary technologies and challenge injustices perpetuated by the educational technology industry.
For example, there are 53 operational data centers in Wisconsin with more being proposed. A prospective data center in Wisconsin Rapids, WI, here in Central Wisconsin is under further evaluation and review due to sustainability concerns and public scrutiny. We must continue to question the uptake and integration of AI in relation to the socioeconomic, environmental, and ethical challenges posed by this expanding technology.
We must also challenge the mainstream platforms and suites of apps we have come to readily accept and adopt in educational settings. For example, my children attend a “Google district” (i.e., a district that subscribes to Google Workspace for Education, provides a one-to-one ChromeBook device implementation for students, etc.). Future teachers should also question the market foothold of companies like Google when it comes to user profiling and data scraping as well as murky tensions that exist with parent/guardian consent for how student information is collected?
Policy and regulation should continue to be reevaluated. Students, teachers, and school leaders must continue to be championed as well as advocate for themselves.
Ultimately, educators can redefine our own professional practices and design equitable, just, and meaningful learning experiences for our students. Through critical pedagogy and professional decision-making, we can lead from a foundation of ethical intention as we evaluate and implement contemporary technologies - when and how they are used, and when they are not - to transform educational outcomes.