How are students using AI in your classrooms?
I've spent the past quarter mapping the development of what I've begun calling "AI-adaptive agency" in K-12 classrooms, and I need to share something profound: we've been thinking about AI integration in education all wrong. The most transformative classrooms I've studied aren't simply teaching students to use AI responsibly - they're systematically developing students' capacity to design their own AI-enhanced learning ecosystems. This distinction is critical for understanding genuine educational transformation in the age of generative AI. Let me share a pattern I observed across multiple high-performing environments: In these spaces, the focus shifts from content mastery to learning architecture. Students don't just use AI to complete tasks; they actively construct frameworks for AI-assisted knowledge acquisition, evaluation, and application. One student I interviewed described it perfectly: "Before, I was just using AI to write essays faster. Now I'm designing AI dialogues that help me truly understand complex ideas and connect them to other knowledge." What's fascinating is how this capacity develops across three distinct dimensions: AI-contextual navigation - students learn to design effective AI interactions that extend their thinking Strategic co-creation - they develop personalized systems for AI-enhanced knowledge construction Reflective partnership - they continuously evaluate and refine how AI fits into their learning ecology Each dimension builds upon the others in a recursive cycle. As students develop these capabilities, something remarkable happens: AI becomes simultaneously more powerful and more properly contextualized. The false dichotomy between AI dependence and AI avoidance dissolves. This suggests we need to reimagine our concept of AI scaffolding. Perhaps effective AI integration isn't about restricting access, but about progressively transferring design authority to the learner in structured ways. The implications for educational AI policy are significant. Our most pressing challenge isn't controlling what AI students can access, but engineering environments where students develop the capacity to navigate AI-enhanced knowledge landscapes with increasing sophistication. These early discoveries challenge us to think beyond basic AI literacy toward something more fundamental: the systematic development of AI learning agency. #AILearningDesign #StudentAgency #EducationalAI #CognitivePartnership #FutureOfLearning Aco Momcilovic Mark Laurence Jason Gulya Thom Markham, Ph.D. Phillip Alcock Mike Kentz David H. Jessica Maddry, M.EdLT