To view the animation, visit the link on youtube here.
As we look towards the future of education, there are many questions surrounding how AI and other technologies will change the way we learn. Currently, the Georgetown Initiative on the Pedagogical Uses of Artificial Intelligence (IPAI) is exploring this. To imagine the development of technology in educational contexts from the past to the future, I created a speculative animation to tell a story of how this may unfold. As a Visual Design and Storytelling Specialist at the Red House, I use visual mediums to tell stories about educational transformation.
Since this project considers the role of AI in learning, I wanted to collaborate with AI to generate images before editing them together into narrative form. I worked with AI to craft and iterate on prompts for each of the images. While working with the AI bot, I recognized some assumptions it made about people. In the initial images it created, the students were primarily white. Upon realizing this, I prompted AI to generate a more diverse representation. The biases and limitations of AI are important to recognize and understand as we continue to integrate this tool in all aspects of our lives including education. My exploration in creating this project became a conversation between myself and AI around our visions for the future.
The story starts in the past with students using only books and paper, sitting quietly, memorizing, and listening to the expert lecture in the front of the classroom. Then it moves into scenes of students using laptops, with electronics slowly becoming more integrated into education. Electronic devices, VR, and AI allow for learning to become more personalized while at the same time, they seem to become the central fixture of learning. It seems as though technology has taken over the student experience. At this point, the narrative shifts towards human-centered learning. Technologies like AI become integrated into education to support humans in connecting with each other, and with students having more agency over their learning process. This is a speculative story of how we learned and adapted to make education more meaningful and personal.
