Artificial Intelligence has some very real promise. But in this week’s article and podcast, we explore the danger of the Astrodome Effect and focus, instead, on a blended approach to AI integration.

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Avoiding the Astrodome Effect

The Astrodome was a modern miracle, a Space Age wonder, with a glass dome, high-tech air-conditioning, and the world’s biggest scoreboard. When it opened in 1965, reporters dubbed it the “8^th Wonder of the World.” This was the future. No more bad weather or quirky dimensions or any other pesky variables that made baseball messy and unpredictable. With the largest JumboTron, the trendiest color choice and a modern, symmetrical design, it embodied the Space Age. It was the anti-Fenway (the oldest existing ballpark).

This was the ballpark of the future.

Until the first game.

Within minutes of the first pitch, people noticed a fatal flaw. A simple pop fly nearly blinded the players. It turns out it’s hard to see a high-speed baseball when you’re staring into the glare of giant windows. Simple solution. Just paint the ceiling tiles glass. But this, in turn, killed the grass, which led to the patented Astro Turf, a smooth, clean-looking, easy to manage artificial turf that added to the futuristic feel of the stadium. If you grew up in the 80’s, you probably remember the mint green carpet in over half of all the baseball stadiums. Unfortunately, this initial version of Astro Turf led to career-ending injuries for the players.

The Astrodome wasn’t designed for the players. It was future-focused, not player-focused or fan-focused or even baseball-focused. Within two decades, this “8^th Wonder of the World” became a concrete relic of the false promise of futurism. The design team had defined innovation as future-driven rather than purpose-driven. In the process, they created something flashy and novel rather than timeless and innovative.

By the mid-1980’s, nearly every Major League Baseball team had built their own massive modern stadium. But these multipurpose stadiums were a disaster for fans. With bland aesthetics, horrible sight lines, and way too many seats, these concrete donuts were concrete disappointments. But then everything changed in the late 1980’s with a bold new idea: Go vintage. Find inspiration in the ideas they had abandoned in the Astrodome Era. Oriole Park in Camden Yards would be quirky, creative, and connected to the community. It would be fan-focused rather than future-focused.

When the team’s owner pushed for a multi-purpose stadium, the team president, Larry Lucchino, pushed back. “Let’s look at the most successful baseball franchises out there. The Yankees in Yankee Stadium. The Cubs in Wrigley Field. The Red Sox in Fenway Park. And what did they have in common? They all played in a baseball-only facility, a facility that was designed for baseball and did not compromise architecturally for other sports.”

The architectural team chose to look backward to look forward. Their vision was a “an old-fashioned traditional baseball park with modern amenities.” They borrowed ideas from Ebbets Field, Shibe Park, the Polo Grounds, and other ballparks that had been demolished and replaced with concrete donuts.

Instead of building with a clean slate at the edge of the suburbs, they designed the ballpark in the heart of the city. Rather than bulldozing the enormous old B&O warehouse, they incorporated it into the design. Similarly, the oddly-shaped plot of land contributed to the quirky field dimensions and unique sightlines. In other words, they embraced limitations and treated barriers as design features.

In the end, they built a cozy ballpark with a view of the city skyline and an atmosphere that felt timeless. Decades later, Camden Yards has already lasted longer than the Astrodome. It’s still relevant. Camden Yards was a case of vintage innovation – incorporating old ideas and approaches into a new design in a way proves timeless rather than novel.

In other words, they choose a Vintage Innovation approach instead:

 

When I Fell for the Astrodome Effect

We live in an era of automation. Factories that once housed thousands of workers are now buzzing with rows of robots. With artificial intelligence, the robots are learning to communicate, iterate, and improve in their performance. Many school leaders are responding to this reality by purchasing high-tech fabrication equipment and designing state-of-the-art makerspaces. And, in the last two years, jumping full-scale into artificial intelligence training for teachers and students.

There’s nothing wrong with these things. I nerd out on technology. I teach educational technology courses. I regularly lead workshops and keynotes related to AI. However, in the rush to be high-tech, there’s a danger in the Astrodome Effect, where we embrace gadgetry and futurism only to find that the tools grow obsolete within a decade. While there’s certainly a benefit from using the newest available technology, there’s also a danger in abandoning all things analog.

I learned this lesson the hard way in my third year of teaching. Back in 2005, I decided to “go paperless” with my middle school social studies class. I spent the summer designing curriculum that would incorporate blogging, podcasts, shared documents (back when Google Docs was still Writely), and other cloud-based tools. No pen. No paper. No books. Just computers zipping along on Linux.

The school year launched with a rush of excitement. Students would show up before and after school. They rushed through the hallways to get to class early. This was the future. I had nailed it. But then something happened. I noticed that my students weren’t talking to each other as much before school. They were playing web-based games instead. Instead of creating content, they watched videos. As the weeks wore on, the novelty wore off. Students no longer showed up early, eager to use the new devices.

Finally, a student pulled me aside and said, “I miss last year.”

“What?” I asked defensively.

“I miss the debates we used to have. I miss the Socratic Seminars. Remember those?”

I nodded.

“Plus, some of this is boring. It took me three days to do a concept map but last year, we used yarn to connect the ideas. Remember that?” He was right. We had used different colored strings of yard to connect concepts from World War I by wrapping them around meter sticks and discussing the connections between ideas. It was frenetic, tactile, and collaborative.

“But you can go back and look at the concept map you made,” I pointed out.

“I guess so. But will I actually do that? I feel like I remembered it better when we used yarn.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted.

“We had a paper fight for the Civil War. Remember that?”

Remember it? How could I forget? I had spent my entire prep period picking up paper balls.

He continued, “You let us sketch out our notes instead of having to type them. Could we swap with another classroom? Just for a day or two?”

“You want to ditch the computers?” I asked.

“Yeah, not forever. Just for a few days,” he said.

This student was right. In my rush to create a paperless classroom, I had fallen into the trap of Techno-Futurism. At that moment, I brought back the vintage tools and resources we had used before. We didn’t abandon the computers. We continued to do podcasts, documentaries, and blogging. But we also used whiteboards and paper journals with sketchnotes. We swapped classrooms with other teachers so we could do physical simulations and games. We had regular discussions, debates, and Socratic Seminars. We also did analog and high-tech mashups like whiteboard videos and Socratic-style podcasts.

In other words, I chose to take a vintage innovation approach. A decade later, when I had my own STEM and Photojournalism makerspace, I deliberately chose to take a vintage innovation approach. This was over a decade ago, but I was already beginning to wonder about the dangers of excessive screen time. I could sense some of the FOMO that would later be explored in-depth in a book like The Anxious Generation. Fast forward to now and I can see why students are ready to embrace the tangible and lo-fi.

 

Students Are Ready to Embrace the Tangible

We have a game room downstairs and I’ve noticed something fascinating. The most popular aspects of the space are elements that are tangible and interactive and even Lo-Fi or old school. One day, it’s a group of college baseball players shooting pool. Often, they meander toward the map of baseball stadiums and look at the pins of places we’ve visited. This turns to impromptu storytelling. My son will share some of the dumb things his dad did on that one trip a few years ago. And trust me, I’ve done a lot of dumb things, so he has plenty of stories to tell!

On another day, it’s Mock Trial high school kids playing ping pong and throwing darts and then playing chess. One girl even said, “I sometimes feel like Mock Trial is like a cross between Theater and Chess” and I wish I had asked her what she meant by that. Or my son will organize a ping pong tournament and I’ll hear the ball bouncing incessantly followed by cheers and gasps as I wash the dishes in the kitchen above.

Sometimes, it’s high school freshmen sitting around talking while they pet the dogs or perusing the bookshelves asking who has read which graphic novel. Or my daughter might pull out some of the craft supplies from the cabinet and they’ll color pages from the adult coloring books or make an attempt at a complex origami creation reading the step-by-step instructions from an how-to book from the 80s.

In every case, no matter what the crowd or what the age may be, they all take their photos with the Polaroid camera and slap on the magnet then place it on the wall.

We might just need to buy a record player. I own both “August and Everything After” and “Rumours” on vinyl and I swear that both albums are perfect from start to finish. Fortunately, the TikTok generation somehow got into Fleetwood Mac but I doubt they’ll like Counting Crows. Who knows? Everything 90s is coming back, including those really wide JNCO jeans and XXL flannel shirts.

Don’t get me wrong. We have gaming consuls and, yes, they play games together, too. But even then, it’s social. It’s hands-on. It’s tangible. For all the talk of “kids these days” whose heads are stuck in their phones, I just haven’t seen that in my own life. I see lots and lots of kids who thirst for the tangible, for the retro, for the interactive, for the social, and for the face-to-face.

It’s almost like coming out of COVID, so many of them said, “Yeah, I can inhabit a space of ones and zeroes but I also want my feet planted firmly on the ground.”

In a world of mind-blowing compression, where we can listen to nearly every artist on demand, I see a desire, no, a thirst, for decompression. For slow. For tangible. For an album playing where you can’t choose to skip it even if you want to.

I see it in the number of youth I see at musicals (there were so many young people cosplaying the theatrical performance of Wicked we went to last year) or sporting events or book stores. Our local Barnes and Noble is so packed with Gen Z kids that I heard a woman say to her friend, “I haven’t been to a Barnes and Noble in years. I didn’t know. I just didn’t know so many of teenagers love to read. It makes my retired English teacher heart happy.”

Her friend nodded and whispered, “Look. He’s choosing Brave New World. Remember when we did that dystopian novel unit with Maze Runner and Hunger Games?”

We can talk about AI. It’s an amazing technological advancement. We can think about the future of virtual reality. But I also want to recognize that a generation of so-called “Digital Natives” are sometimes looking back at the Old World and asking, “What did we lose and how do we get that back?”

 

What Does This Mean in a World of Generative AI?

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1. We need a vintage innovation approach toward AI detection

A.J. Juliani has a great blog post that offers a “third way” of AI-detection. He describes the dangers of the Lock It and Block It approach of keeping generative AI completely outside the school setting. This includes strategies like in-class writing only (back to the blue books!), locked down browsers built on surveillance, and plagiarism detectors.

But then he offers a third option. Here’s how he describes it. I chose to go with Philadelphia Eagles green for his words (and it pains me, as a 49ers fan, to do so)

So, how do we teach kids to write like a human in a world of exponential technology?

Instead of saying “this is plagiarized” let’s use the technology as a teaching tool.

Imagine a “Write Like A Human” AI checker that worked like this.

• You or the learner: Enter a students writing sample, portfolio, or in class writing prompt in the moment.

• Then add the piece of writing you are checking. The “Write Like a Human” tool will see if it seems like a human wrote it, or AI.

• Student and teacher both get to see the tool’s feedback. It shares areas that seem AI generated and reasons why. It shares some suggestions and areas to make it more human.

• This leads to a discussion, editing, revising, and conferencing. Allow multiple submissions.

• Teacher can include a rubric or focus correction areas. Many options.

There is NO “gotcha” in this process. It is a conversation. It is how writing like a human has been and should be in an era of technology.

I love how this is focused on trust and transparency rather than algorithm-based surveillance. You still use generative AI to check for potential plagiarism but now it is a tool that leads to a human dialogue focused on how your writing can be more individual, original, and human. It could potentially help students find their unique voice in a world of derivative, cliche writing.

I use the comparison of vanilla as a way to describe how we can teach students to modify the bland and boring to make it unique:

For a deeper dive into what this blended approach might look like, check out this piece describing how students might use a human/AI vintage innovation approach to writing.

 

2. We need to embrace a Vintage Innovation approach to project-based learning.

When ChatGPT was first released, A.J. Juliani and I had a hard conversation about what this would mean for our Boost PBL curriculum. Did we want it to be AI-resistant or did we want to create some kind of an AI chatbot that could function as a thought partner? We ultimately landed on something that would be hands-on and tactile, where teachers would print physical pages of student Boost Books and have options for doing research with printed informational texts. We included ideas like sketchnote designs and ideation with sticky notes or whiteboards and markers. We offered suggestions for prototyping that used inexpensive and upcycled materials.

But . .  .

We also included opportunities for technology. We have slideshows students can access. We are, at the moment, working on audio versions of our informational texts as well. And now that we are seeing improved AI tools that are both developmentally appropriate and COPPA compliant, we are going to be adding some potential ideas for AI integration into the curriculum. Ultimately, we are trusting in the expertise of the teachers and the individual schools to decide what ethical AI integration looks like. But here’s a quick example of what this vintage approach might look like.

• Generating additional questions: Toward the beginning of a project, a student might start with a list of research questions they have. They can then go to AI to get a list of additional questions. Or they could use AI to refine their questions to be more specific. If they’re asking interview questions, tehy could ask the AI to refine their questions to be more open-ended or convey more critical thinking. Notice how they’re not outsourcing the inquiry but they are using AI as a tool.
• Clarifying misconceptions during research: Sometimes students struggle with conceptual understanding. AI can function in a similar way to Wikipedia, in that it’s not the best source but it is a great starting place when students are trying to develop a schema.
• Restating research in simpler terms: If students are doing text-based research, they might see a website with great research. They’ve looked at the reliability of the source and explored the bias. Unfortunately, the source contains technical language and dense grammatical structures. Students can use AI to simplify the language.
• Navigating ideas: After students have engaged in a deep dive brainstorm, they can go to AI and ask for additional ideas. Students can then analyze these ideas and incorporate them into their design.
• Generating project plans: Generative AI is really good at taking a larger task and breaking it down into smaller tasks. After they have navigated ideas, students can use AI as a starting place for a project plan with dates and deadlines. They can then modify this based on their skill level, group dynamics, etc.
• Prototyping: If students are writing code, they might start with AI and then modify the code to make it better. They could mash up two examples. In this way, the AI functions like an exemplar within a project. The critical idea is that it should occur after students have engaged in ideation.
• Coming up with group roles: Students can use AI as a starting place for group roles and then modify them to fit the group. Afterward, they can negotiate norms and consequences for breaking norms. The group can then use AI to create group contracts with norms, roles, and consequences.
• Project management: Students can take the tasks and the progress they’ve made and use AI to help them determine what to do next and what they might need to change to stay on schedule.
• Receiving feedback: I’ve been surprised at how well AI does in giving quality feedback. While peer feedback should remain a student-to-student endeavor, groups sometimes fall victim to groupthink. AI is a great tool for helping avoid the groupthink.

These are just a few ideas and they’re based largely on how I might use AI within PBL. Notice that this approach human centered but AI informed.

 

3. We need to focus on collaborative personalized learning rather than just isolated adaptive learning.

When I was a kid, a teacher pulled us up to the front of the classroom and showed us a giant golden disc. “This is the future of education,” he said. He then explained how laser discs would offer individualized, on-demand instruction. That was over thirty years ago. I’ve seen the same thing promised with one-to-one devices and computer programs. Now I see it with AI. But I actually think this approach is less about personalized learning as it is adaptive learning. Here’s what I mean:

The line between personalized learning and adaptive learning is blurry. In some contexts, people use these terms interchangeably. In other contexts, people view adaptive learning as a part of personalized learning. Still others view adaptive learning as a part of customized learning. For me, personalized learning is human-centered and adaptive learning is machine-centered. I realize this will annoy certain folks in educational technology but these are the two terms I use.

I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of personalized learning should center on the messy human elements of communication, collaboration, and creativity. Learning is about more than just content delivery. It’s about constructing meaning. Which is ultimately going to be messy. And in a world of predictable algorithms, it will be this originality and unpredictability to helps students thrive.

 

What Does this Mean for the Future?

This vintage innovation approach will often toggle between going high-tech and low-tech. So, it might mean a field trip or an outdoor school activity with device-free discussions but then students podcast about what they learned. It might mean sketchnotes for note-taking but then a question and answer session with a chatbot. It might mean ten minutes in front of an adaptive learning program to do some individualized skill practice followed by a face-to-face Socratic Seminar.

Next week, I’ll be sharing four models for how we can approach AI integration in a way that’s ethical and intentional. But a Vintage Innovation approach recognizes that being future ready doesn’t mean you are only looking forward with the hopes of transforming education. It also means embracing the physical and tactile while also getting excited about new tech. It means listening to some classic ideas and sticking to some of the best practices while also exploring next practices. It’s the recognition that in spaces that are often so polarized, we can choose to be thoughtful and nuanced as we take a both/and approach.