Iona Preparatory School

Joseph Blanco is the director of technology at Iona Preparatory School. Having worked in and out of the classroom in many roles he now supports a team of dedicated K-12 educators in the adoption and implementation of technology across two campuses.

It’s striking at times how much school hasn’t changed from the models established in the early industrial era. Students still move through grades defined by age, everyone in a class follows the same curriculum and assessing learning employs a handful of static tools like essays, exams, etcetera. Even as technology entered the classroom in meaningful ways, the basic structure and framework of education didn’t change. A classroom in 2020 was more similar to a classroom from 1920 than it was different.

Until 2022, and little did we know that by the end of that calendar year education systems would undergo a most significant change, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). With it came the problem of students having a resource that could answer most of the common questions and assessments of the industrial era and the promise of individualized instructional paths, a resource to help a teacher reach each of her students. Since Nov. 30, 2022, the launch day of ChatGPT, educational institutions have struggled to manage how, when and why to use AI in the classrooms.

Prior to the arrival of AI, the field of education has undergone incremental changes that needed to be managed in a way that integrated them into the classroom with minimal disruptions. The introduction of technological tools like Smartboards, personal computing devices and the internet forced a certain amount of change. Ultimately these changes could be said to have optimized education rather than transformed it. Just writing an essay on a chromebook is not so far from writing on paper. But the lessons learned from implementing those changes still have value in managing this latest transition caused by AI.

“Change can't be mandated. Top-down approaches consistently yield poor results.”

Before we discuss what those lessons are, let's take a moment to consider how past changes were implemented. A new tool was developed and it was vetted by school or district administration or a procurement committee. They in turn would handle the acquisition and deployment of the tool. Prior to and during its implementation, there was some form of professional development provided and then follow up to verify use in the classroom.

What did we learn from these repeated processes? One thing that became clear is that the most successful integrations of new tools or technology into the classroom were built on three pillars: collaborative work by the faculty and administration before, during and after the introduction of new technology, leveraging the school’s mission and values to define the implementation and an atmosphere that encourages and celebrates experimentation. This led to a familiar pattern of adoption identified by Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory. The challenge was how to lower the entry bar to a level that the reluctant teacher would be willing to give the new tool a try.

We learned that Fullan’s educational change theory was correct, change can’t be mandated. Top-down approaches consistently yield poor results. You need a process that builds shared meaning among faculty and administration for the new initiative. People need space to build capacity with the new tools while we also provide opportunities for teachers to collaborate and compare notes on what is working and what isn't.

It is also clear that administrative use of technology with teachers, such as for lesson planning or evaluations, supports the development of a culture that accepts and utilizes edtech. When the administration works with technology instead of just looking for technology in the classroom, we model the innovative behavior we would like to see.

Richard DuFour and others showed us that to grow as educators through any innovation core values and principles must guide our development. What is our philosophy of education? What are the school's mission statement and values? We use these and other guiding lights, like learning outcomes, to define guardrails around the adoption of a new technology. Between those guardrails, we allow the freedom to choose methods and strategies and to fail and grow.

These same lessons are the ones that will allow us to successfully navigate the current and future educational revolutions. With AI, no central office had time to plan the procurement. Professional Development wasn’t available until students and teachers alike had already been using AI for a significant amount of time. Despite this and many other challenges, the best way for schools to successfully integrate AI into their particular settings is to apply the lessons learned from earlier successful edtech integrations.