Is AI in Class Good for My Kid?

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Welcome to AI, a podcast on the future of AI in Canadian education. My name is Ryan Oliver, the CEO of Ampere and Canada Learning Code. And I'm Melissa Sariffodeen, the co-founder of Canada Learning Code. Our guest today is Anjali Joshi, an educator, curriculum developer, and instructional leader with experience across public and private education systems in Ontario.

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Unknown
She just left the Ministry of Education here in Ontario and is now the Director of Teaching and Learning at Durham College. She is also a children's book author. You can find her work and her books at the website. Author Anjali joshi.com, which we will include in the show notes. Anjali has written at least five books but then they all deal.

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They are targeted at younger kids, their picture books and they deal with Stem and they combine culture, her own culture with Stem learning opportunities. And so that's where we started this conversation, with that idea around how children's books can help kids learn about technology.

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Great. Well, thank you for joining us. Why don't you just give us a bit of your background? Tell us a bit about yourself. Yeah, sure. My name is Anjali Joshi. I, was an elementary school teacher for a good part of my career, then moved to secondary school. So my area of expertise is Stem education.

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I've worked a little bit in the private sector as well, and private education in San Francisco for a couple of years. And then moved to the Ministry of Education as an education officer and was, involved in the development of many of our Stem curriculum in Ontario. Well, I, this is a question, and we're kind of diving into it a little bit before.

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But I'm curious, like in your experience working with so many youth, in K to 12 and being an author, children's books, which are great. I'm excited to get my daughter, who's five, all of them. What? Like, what do you think there's something about technology that maybe kids or science, Stem, etc. that kids understand that we as adults don't yet.

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I think they're more open to learning about it. I think I think kids bring the sense of authentic inquiry about being sponges and learning about the world that I think as adults, probably as a consequence of our educational experience, sometimes have decided we're not good at or that, you know, I'm not a math person, I'm not a science person and have kind of put ourselves in this fabricated box or label, if you will.

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And I think that's the real superpower that, you know, kids bring to the table is that they haven't, you know, they don't have these predefined notions of what what they are, who they are yet, and they're developing them. And I think that's, that's, something that's really special and something we could learn from as adults. But also, I think it also speaks to how, how impactful strong Stem education can be, because if we tell kids that, you know, everyone's a scientist and everyone's a math person, then they really will keep that idea of that identity with, throughout their lives.

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And I think that's where we're seeing a shift. I think it was, you know, acceptable for people to say, I'm not a math person, even teacher saying I'm not really that good at math in a classroom full of students, but that now, you know, as something I teach in the faculty of education, at Ontario Tech University. And I say that is the most dangerous thing that you could say, because you now told 20 kids in front of you that it's okay not to be a math person, and that math is something that you're either good at or not good at.

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Do you remember from your own youth or from your growing up like we ever placed in a box like that? What if what was your box? Oh, I can tell you all about my box. Yeah, absolutely. So I, you know, very early on I identified as a science and math person. It came to a came very naturally to me.

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And, it was something I was curious about and I was good at. And so, you know, as many kids do, that achievement kind of feeds like, oh, this is this is my place in the world. Right. And I went on and secondary, my great I want to thank my grade 12, timetable three math, three science and English like that was that was and because I had placed myself by that time in grade 12, had already placed myself in that stem box and, you know, it's our our education system, particularly in secondary, is quite siloed.

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Right. You have to choose a path, which is difficult for a lot of students. And it wasn't until it wasn't until I, had my first child. That I dabbled into the creative side. And that's where the pictures book came to be. And that's where I. I realized that there was this gray area between, you know, the Stem world and, and literature and creative aspects.

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And so I think I spent the last about 13 years now bridging that Stem and storytelling. And so that's been a very rewarding experience to live in the in between and see how those two worlds actually can coexist. That's really neat. There's, so you are a children's author, you have a bunch of books that people should look and do, like combine Stem and science and all those pieces into children's books.

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How can storytelling like that be used to simplify complex, abstract concepts, like something like I or other Stem topics that you touch touch based on? Yeah, I think like, children's books are an incredible way to make those complex and sometimes or abstract topics really accessible to young readers. And so, the kinds of storytelling we'll find in the picture book is a great way as like an entry or safe place to start, but it can also go beyond that.

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So, for my most latest book, Built Like a Bug, it was released in the spring. It's a middle grade nonfiction book, so it's like, you know how you would say, like a book, has facts in it, right? It's not a storybook with a character and that kind of thing, but it's a nonfiction book. It's, all about incredible inventions that are inspired by the anatomy and the physiology and the behavior of bugs and some of the innovations when I was doing the research for the book are quite complex.

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Like, really, there's one aspect that talks about like a medical needle, tips that are inspired by the biscuits or the mouth of a mosquito. Or we talk about sustainable architecture designs that are inspired by, like, the natural ventilation of a termite mound. And so, like, I had to go through some peer reviewed journals and look at some of these really like, innovative technologies and simplify that.

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And I think people who write for children have this superpower. And I'll say the teachers also have this superpower of being able to distill these, complex concepts to make them simple and accessible to a variety of learners. And we can use illustrations to do that. Right. The visuals are really helpful. So if I'm explaining like AI concepts to, younger learners, I might, you know, when I talk about scripting data, I might talk about like an excavator shoveling through the dirt and that image of that abstract concepts sticks with young readers.

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You can use like, analogies, like if I'm talking about cognitive offloading and with I, I might, think about or use the analogy of working out at the gym. And, you know, if you offload the the practice or training for a sport, then you're not going to build those muscles and you're not going to be able to grow those cognitive thinking muscles.

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Right. And so I think these are the ways that through illustrative texts or picture books, were able to simplify the complex abstract concepts into digestible, accessible nuggets. Beyond even kids, that's a useful tool for teaching, adults, too. Probably about complex topics like this. Absolutely. And I always say, like, I have taught as young as grade three and up to, you know, secondary and all kids love to be read to, you know, and they're in big bodies in high school, but they're they're still kids.

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They love to be read, too. And I think what you just said about, you know, if a teacher is feeling intimidated or uncomfortable with some of these topics, grab a middle grade nonfiction textbook. You know, they're designed to make the concepts that are complex or abstract into easily accessible, topics.

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In this next section, we asked Anjali a bit about her varied background, one of those roles being in the Ministry of Education focused on curriculum and curriculum design. As you know, Ryan and I both spent a lot of time focused in the past on shifting curriculum to include coding. So we needed to ask about AI and integration of coding in AI in the Ontario curriculum, specifically.

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I think, you know, I guess fast forwarding a little bit, I, I have, ideas and, thoughts about what AI learning and AI literacy learning looks like in the K-12 space. But, in terms of like that integrated approach to AI literacy across the curriculum areas, I think great. Like, I know grades 1 to 9, Stem curricula over the last six years, during my tenure as an educational officer at the ministry, I had hands on every single one of those curriculum areas.

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So science and tech, elementary grade nine, science, tech at grade nine, ten, and most recently the kindergarten curriculum, which, as you know, also has foundational coding concepts in it. So have, you know, I know that space very well. And that's why I feel confident in saying that, teachers can already integrate that AI literacy across a number of subject areas.

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Our expectations are open enough to allow for that. So what that looks like, for example, is like in grade seven, we have, language expectation eight, 2.3 and other stuff like the back of my hand is, that expectations all about evaluating accuracy, credibility bias, ethical consideration in the research process. What a great way to, you know, have students look at AI outputs, a think and talk about accuracy, hallucinations, bias, ethical considerations, environmental impacts.

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That's in the elementary science curriculum. In A2, we have students can explore the impacts of the AI system. It's already in the curriculum. Right. We have similar related learning in our tech ed secondary curriculum. We have in our history geography curriculum. So Ontario is already ahead of most of their jurisdictions with this like integrated approach to AI literacy.

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But here's where we're really struggling is we and this is what I've seen both from the side of, Faculty of Education instructor and as a curriculum developer, we can put whatever we want in the curriculum. If we don't train the teachers, it won't be taught in schools. We saw that with coding, right? We did, we saw it across the province in coding.

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If teachers themselves, they don't have that basic level of AI literacy, how can we expect them to weave it throughout this work? You have to have that foundational knowledge and skills yourself. So, they need time. They need time for that professional development and learning. Things are moving so fast. You know, Canada learning code does incredible resources.

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Ampere has incredible resources, for for AI literacy development. But, you know, as a teacher, I've got seven students with an IEP. I have 14 parents I need to email back. I am running three extracurriculars, and I'm also running the winter concert. And that's on top of my regular lesson planning and my teaching my if all day of teaching.

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So I think that's the reason, you know, that the intentional weaving of AI literacy isn't happening. Teachers aren't given that protected time and space and training, to learn about it, to develop the skills themselves, to have that intentional, weaving of interdisciplinary disciplinary learning about AI. I'm curious how we get teachers that time. Is it is it that right now, the PD days, there are so many competing interests that you have to think it's hard to fit AI literacy into that?

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Is it that it's not a priority for the government? And I was just curious if you were the Minister of Education tomorrow, what what what do you do to enable teachers to get that time? Because it feels like the one thing that will never, ceases like the demands on a teacher's time. So, I'm curious how you how you do make that a priority.

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I would say the vast majority of teachers are wanting to learn. Right. And unfortunately, the opportunities for professional development, opportunities for them to step out of the classroom are limited. There's a number of reasons why, I can say, in my, as I'm put my parent hat on for a minute, and I know that at my local school board, all professional development activities last year were canceled for a good chunk of the year because they did not have enough supply.

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Teachers. So if a teacher cannot step out of the classroom for any professional development, if they've got no one to fill in for them, right. So that's that's such a small thing, right? When you think about supply teachers. But the cascading effect of that was, the teachers had to cover each of each other off whenever there was any extra curricular, any additional pieces were canceled, like extracurriculars that were not able to be covered off by their, colleagues was canceled, like, so, it's it has to do with funding.

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You know, you need funding for supply teachers. It has to do with, teacher training. There's a lot of pieces that are interconnected here, but I can say that there is a huge willingness in the sector to get that training. They would jump on those opportunities. But it's not always possible. Yeah. There. There's the other criticism I've heard in Ontario is that there's such a patchwork of AI policies in schools, that, you know what you experience in one jurisdiction may be different than another.

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I'm curious, have you seen across any jurisdictions like AI in school policies done right? And is there a common thread in the ones that are working right now? My response to that would be what policy? Black. So like across the province, I think like you said, it is a patchwork. It's a bit of a mixed bag. And school boards each have taken their own approach.

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So, generally what I'm seeing is school boards are taking a very hands off approach. You know, there's typically like a guidance policy that's developed and disseminated throughout schools. And schools are left to figure out the implementation piece on their own. So not only is it varying board to board, but it's also varying school to school within the same board.

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But even within the schools, like you'll have teachers who, are taking different approaches within the same school. So some teachers are giving very clear guidance to students when they can and can't use AI. Other schools are choosing not to address it at all. Some teachers are moving entirely to paper and pencil for an in-class only assessment, and other teachers are redesigning their assessments, entirely.

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And with that kind of variance, there is a desperate need for a clear guidance for schools. And guidance. That's policy, public policy, that evidence informed and that isn't, you know, the government of the days whim, but rather something that's backed by research.

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In this last section, we dig into the darker side of AI in the classroom, talk a lot about the cognitive offloading side of this and how Angeles sees us being able to, make this something we can teach kids and if we even should in the first place.

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Yeah. I spoke previously about, like, some of the curriculum work that I've, you know, been really privileged to be a part of. And one of the things that I really appreciated about that curriculum development process was how evidence informed it was, like we used data, intentional design, evidence based approach, looking at children's development with scaffolded learning from K all the way through grade nine.

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And you've done, you know, a ton of work around that, too, in, in, in kind of looking at what that learning progression looks like. Right. And it's backed by research. So to me right now as I look at the future, we're in this space where jurisdictions all around the world are trying to develop AI policies around an education, but they're doing it without a real understanding or any reliable longitudinal data on the impact that AI is having on our kids.

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And so if you ask me, like, what's the main consideration that we should be that should be guiding this work, it's students. Duh. All right. Student learning and student well-being and how it's use is impacting, you know, for example, their cognitive development. I came across something just a couple of days ago. And it really caught my attention because, Gemini for education, it's already found its way in schools across the province.

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Right. Because so many schools are Google apps, schools, and very recently, Michael Rodriguez, he is a former Google research scientist. And, he said, and I have this quote right here, here, we're doing this experiment on an entire generation on cognitive development with no control group. And it's uncertain that uncertain what that's going to lead in terms of learning like that, to me, is like as a parent, as an educator, I don't want my kid part of this experiment.

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I don't know about you. Right. And so it's wild that we're letting educational technology company decide what our kids are exposed to. But that's what happens in the absence of strong policies. Right. So public policy should be designed in the best interest of our students. It should be backed by research and evidence, because private companies don't always have our best interests in mind.

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Yeah. So I can speak to student achievement a little bit too. We recently had Pisa 2025 data out, and, I guess I should just, pieces this large comparative educational study. It assesses everything from reading, science, math, huge data set, over 750,000 students. And it's, great, 10 or 15 year olds across, like, over 90 countries.

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So huge data set, scores are lowest than they've been in 25 years. That's including post pandemic scores, right? This should alert this shit. Like like anyone who's involved in education policy should be paying attention to this. And what's particularly what's incredibly relevant to this particular conversation is that when they looked at I, you so there was part of the survey that says, you know, how frequently do you use AI for the students?

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They found that science scores were, on average, 20 points lower for students who, used or claim that they use AI compared to those that said they never used AI. So 20 points to give you some kind of, scale is approximately a grade level on Pisa scores. So the cognitive offloading is happening and kids are not learning those critical thinking skills or not learning those problem solving skills.

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So some serious red flags for policymakers. So you know, think about these things. Understand the research understand the data that's in front of us. As you develop policy on I use in schools and in education. Yeah. I had this, experience earlier this week. I took most of this week off just to focus on writing, which I really like to do.

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And realized as I got started on the Monday, it was like reactivating an old muscle because I have been offloading so much of, you know, the data analysis and the research pieces of my job, to to I, in the last year, I wrote a few of my colleagues and was like, you know, I can, this is hard for me.

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It took me about five, six hours of kind of using my brain again to get back into that. I cannot imagine for the kids that are never going to have that initial experience. It's it's the part I think that scares me the most of this whole thing. Exactly. And that's Ryan. That's you. After a lifetime of critical thinking and and engaging in this hard work.

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Right? This productive struggle that makes us the smart beings that we are, right? A kid who's never had a chance to develop those muscles, who hasn't had the practice. It's terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, let's go back to your roots. F sorry, not roots, but, your your your current one of your current, jobs as a children's book author.

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If you're putting together, you know, the accessible kids book version of, of the, the AI world right now, how what's what are the topics you focus on how you know, you're not, I'm assuming, going to write a book about prompt engineering? Not what what? That would be fun, that I would buy it just because, let's sell the robot the right way.

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But, I'm curious that, like, what does what does a, a children's book need to make sure, you know, and really, this is a question like, how do we talk to kids about AI? How what in your opinion, how do you how do you take that approach? I think exactly the way that I talk to adults.

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So we make it accessible. But I don't think that we should skirt around the big issues. I don't think we should skirt around the issues of cognitive offloading. I don't think we should, you know, just not talk about the social attachment issues that we're seeing. Right? We I don't think I think we should talk about environmental impacts. Right.

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We can, we can. I think especially for kids, when there is an easy way to do something, they will take the path of least resistance. So if you want to stand any hope of helping them understand why the path of least resistance is not always the best path, you've got to explain to them why, right? And so I think that's the piece, right?

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Yes. We're talking about how AI works, where where, you know, looking quote unquote under the hood. Right. So they can really understand what it is that there isn't a somebody that's super smart on the other side answering their prompts, but rather that it's a predictive system. Right. And so and what the data is that informs or it's trained on.

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Right. So we're talking about that, but we're also talking about everything else. Right. And I think for a children's book, it cannot be about the what it has to be about the why and the how and all of those pieces that are going to stand the test of time. Right. I think that we're in a space that's changing every month.

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It seems like. Right. And so we can't just be talking about the technology and what it can do, but we need to talk about all of these other things. Yeah. Well said. I was just I'm just like all this. The stories are unwritten, right. Like my question and you know, for any of you, for those specific ones. But, you know, we hear a lot around the sort of productive struggle and tension and, and, which I think is, is really important and I'm sort of like trying to make sense of in my own life with my own five year old as well.

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But it also feels like really increasingly doom and gloom and like, uncertain. Right. Like what? What is what gives you hope? What's the happy ending? And there's like unwritten story, right? Like, what are you like or, you know, whether it's, you know, students, you've seen your own experiences like I'm curious, yeah. What's the what's the what's the how does a story end?

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Maybe in the most optimistic you know you're not wrong. Right. It that it does feel And I do find I think if you speak to people who are deep in this work, it's, you can spiral a bit bright. It can, it can be. It can be a little bit overwhelming. So and this happens to me quite a bit because not only because I'm doing the research, I'm, I mean, the kids education space, I have kids of my own.

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And you think about like, what's the what's the world going to look like in ten years from my child and not knowing that. But I think, you know, building that public awareness is really, really big. It's something that I am trying my best to do in every little way possible. You know, just two days ago, I did, small parent engagement session at my local elementary school.

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Popped in for half an hour, talked about exactly this, talked about, you know, what what the data is showing what kids are doing with AI. So it's not just for schoolwork, it's for, you know, 1 in 5 high schoolers have had a romantic relationship with an AI. That's data from last year. So it's probably more than that now.

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Right. So jaws drop when I share this information with parents, but these are their kids, right. And so like that awareness piece is so huge because the future is not foregone. We shape the future. Right. And I think that's what we do. That's the message that we need to at least, you know, shout at the top of these buildings because it's us.

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You know, if we all say no, we need to make sure that those guardrails are place or no, I don't think I has a place in my kids elementary education when if enough of us say it, it'll happen, right? Like it's not a foregone conclusion that this is going to happen in this way. I think that that's that's my hope.

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Right. And I think the work that you're doing. Right, right here, sitting in this room talking about it, this is that building public awareness, understanding what the technology is, understanding its impacts on the earth, our brains, on everything around us, on our social interactions. Right. So, this is the work, right? We have to, have to engage everyone in it because I think the people who are in it know it really, really well.

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And the people who aren't in it don't know it at all. So there's this huge divide, right? And so I think just having these conversations, building public awareness, having those random did you know, I think it's really helpful. So true. I do feel like in the last little while, I don't know if it was what incident or what prompted it, but I do feel like that conversation is definitely shifting and more people are, especially parents in my own network, or at least are are asking the questions, right?

00;28;23;02 - 00;28;40;03
Like, I've been in this ecosystem for a long time. So a lot of people I know, we like to talk about these issues, but my non-tech friends do not. But it's it's shifting. It's shifting whether it's, you know, the hugging face incident or not. But like I, I think that to your point, we just need more conversations and more, you know?

00;28;40;03 - 00;29;03;17
Yeah, more awareness to this as well and recognize it's not just training in motion. So I appreciate that too. Yeah. Brian. No, just on that. I mean, we try to and a lot of our conversations with, with throwing back to you just if there's one question you could leave, for parents and educators, like, one thing that people should be thinking about, or asking in those conversations, what would it be?

00;29;03;19 - 00;29;22;26
The one question I ask myself as a parent is, is this good for my kid? And I think that, that forces me to look at, you know, I am a scientist. I want to look at data. Right. So I'm going to go and see what the data is. I'm going to see what the impacts of, of it is on children mental health and well-being.

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I'm going to see what the impacts of it is on cognitive development. So if it's not good for my kid, then why why are we doing this? We don't have to do this right. And I think that we need to do it in a very intentional way. That's developmental appropriate. Now, if we have a conversation about AI use in post-secondary education or even in grade 1112 senior secondary education, it's a totally different conversation, right?

00;29;49;14 - 00;30;12;12
Like now, a kids have had 16 years of developing these critical thinking skills. They're, you know, they've been able to do this work. And now can we intentionally, intentionally integrate that learning and, and have them use it in a strategic way that, you know, offload some tasks but still maintains their thinking and other tasks? Yes. Right.

00;30;12;12 - 00;30;31;05
The absolutely. Does my eight year old need to do it? No. Right. I think that this is right. And and I think that's the thing. So ask the question like what is this doing for my kid? I think that's that's what teachers should be asking. That's what a parent should be asking. So like what's in it for them?

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Because at the end of the day it's always, always about the kids. Yeah. Well son, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. This is a great conversation. Lots of takeaways and even like what is it good for us. Like what? How do we want to be interacting? It's something I think everyone can take away.

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Eh I is a proud Canadian podcast of the Pinnguaq Foundation and Canada Learning Code, I am your host, Ryan Oliver, joined by Melissa Sariffodeen. The show was produced by Zac Miller and edited by Zac Miller and Kyle Gordon. If you want to support the work we are doing and please consider a donation to the Pinnguaq Foundation.

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