This post was originally written on my personal blog in 2003. It has been revised and reposted each year since then. It feels like just yesterday. I had moved into my dorm at Douglass College just days earlier. As I sat in the dining hall with my best friend Erin chatting about our schedules on that beautiful morning, I remember hearing the morning radio show on the overhead speakers talking about the Twin Towers.

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show …

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show …

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show what teachers have long known: students spend too much time on screens and not enough time reading, writing, and thinking. This generation was handed a Chromebook in kindergarten and a cell phone before the end of elementary school, and now we are giving them unfettered access to generative AI.

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s ge…

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s generative AI tool.   My 9th-grade students had just completed a comparative literary analysis essay after reading The Tempest and a contemporary book discussed in their book clubs. 

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s generative AI tool.   My 9th-grade students had just completed a comparative literary analysis essay after reading The Tempest and a contemporary book discussed in their book clubs. 

It's hard to figure out what's going on right now but this is not what's going on right now.

Discussions of cognitive offloading often miss a critical distinction: What AI does to a 45-year-old's brain is categorically different from what it does to a 14-year-old's.

Women’s “ick” for AI isn’t technophobia or a gap to close. It’s wisdom to act on.