Stephen Fitzpatrick, a high school educator, with a substack on “Teaching in the Age of AI” shared a post on design thinking and teaching teachers on how to move forward with AI as designers:
When I first started using AI seriously, I was doing what most teachers do – asking questions, iterating on responses, but primarily generating text – converting ideas into polished plans and getting feedback and analysis on my own work. AI remains useful for all of those tasks. But agentic AI introduces something fundamentally different. I can now craft an interactive learning experience – deciding what it should do, how it should be organized, who would use it, and what problem it needs to solve. That’s a much different – and more involved – cognitive activity.
In this example, he presents a use case – one that could work for middle and high school teachers that have larger “projects” or “units”:
For years, I’ve run a Constitutional Convention simulation in my U.S. history class. It’s always been a favorite – students are assigned state delegates in attendance at the 1787 Philadelphia gathering, debate the structure of the new government, and vote on the major compromises that shaped the Constitution. I’ve run this activity for more than 20 years and refined it considerably.
Curious about what was possible, and off the success of several earlier builds using Claude Cowork, I set out to create a single, self-contained online module that would house everything for next year.
You can read more about his design process in the post or visit the site here.
AI remains a great way to get out of your head, have it assess choke points in workflow or comprehension, and do the grunt work of organizing. Couple those tasks with agentic AI to design an accessible webpage (or even offer how to steps for a free google site) and be ready to roll with your students.
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