Interesting Reads This Week

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For anyone connected to higher education in the U.S., this has been a particularly difficult week. Amid all the chaos, it has been a challenge to sift through the news and find EdTech-specific updates, but I did my best. So, what did I read this week?

AI literate frameworks

These days, there’s a lot of talk about AI literacy—and for good reason. In a world where AI is becoming ubiquitous, it’s essential for everyone, especially students, to develop fluency and critical awareness in using these tools.

However, much of what I read on AI literacy feels uninspiring, failing to challenge my thinking or offer new ways to approach the issue. But this week, I came across a post by Carl Iacono that did both.

Iacono argues that instead of focusing on information acquisition, education should foster three foundational capabilities in students:

• Cognitive Agency – The ability to engage with AI intentionally and critically. This requires students to communicate effectively with AI, critically evaluate its outputs, and develop metacognitive awareness of their own AI use.

• Adaptive Entrepreneurship – The ability to identify opportunities created by AI and leverage available tools to create innovative solutions.

• Transformative Resilience – The capacity to continuously evolve in response to technological change.

Initially, I had a gut-level negative reaction to this last concept, partly because "transformative resilience" sounds like empty jargon. I also find the term resilience exhausting after its overuse and lack of critical examination during and after the pandemic.

But on a second reading, I came to appreciate Iacono’s perspective. As he defines it, transformative resilience is built on specific, actionable capabilities. Here’s what that looks like.

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