As educators, we have experienced numerous waves of innovation, but none are as powerful as Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many focus on how AI can personalize instruction or raise concerns about cheating, but the reality is that AI changes everything. It challenges not only what we teach but also how we teach and prepare students for the future. To keep up with this significant shift, we need to rethink our approach to education.
Through countless generations, education has revolved around helping students find the right answers. Standardized tests, worksheets, and grading have all reinforced this idea: success meant finding the correct solution. However, in the era of AI, which can provide answers instantly, the true skill lies in knowing how to ask the right question, rather than simply knowing the answer.
For years, coding was considered the key to future job security, leading schools to heavily invest in coding initiatives. However, AI can now perform coding tasks faster than most humans. Consequently, the essential skill has shifted from coding to asking the right questions and crafting effective prompts. AI relies on user input, and students must learn how to guide these systems thoughtfully to generate refined and specific outputs. The ability to iterate, prompt, refine, and curate AI’s output is now crucial.
Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy humorously illustrates this concept with the answer to the ultimate question of life being “42”—but, as the story reveals, it’s meaningless without understanding the right question. Similarly, for AI, without targeted questions, even the most powerful systems can produce irrelevant or shallow responses.
Schools must draw inspiration from fields that prioritize critical thinking and editing skills. Journalism courses, once thought to be declining, are crucial in this new AI world. They teach students to curate information, sift through vast amounts of content, ask thought-provoking questions, and piece together meaningful stories. These skills directly apply to engaging with AI—students must act like editors, shaping the information AI provides rather than passively accepting it.
Being able to refine AI-generated outputs is a skill in itself. Students must not only evaluate what AI produces but also learn to add their own creative touch. A great example comes from fashion design, where designers elevate basic concepts into something glamorous, distinctive, and groundbreaking. Similarly, students need to take AI outputs and transform them—whether essays, images, or datasets—into something that reflects their own vision.
In this way, fashion designers teach us how to enhance a simple AI-generated product, making it beautiful and compelling. The lesson here is clear: AI can provide the base, but the final product needs a human touch to make it truly unique.
Odyssey of the Mind (OM) is an international creative problem-solving competition that challenges students to tackle open-ended problems, emphasizing critical skills such as teamwork, innovation, and critical thinking—skills increasingly important in the age of AI.
While AI can assist with generating ideas and performing technical tasks, creativity, voice, and the ability to refine outputs are uniquely human. OM participants develop these skills as they learn to think outside the box, collaborate with peers, and present their own unique solutions. These experiences prepare students to interact effectively with AI, teaching them how to shape and improve AI-generated content and add their own creative flair—something AI, for all its capabilities, cannot replicate.
In a world dominated by AI-generated content, it’s crucial that learners are empowered to find their unique voice. Socratic Seminars, rooted in dialogue, encourage students to develop their voices, ask probing questions, and engage in deep, thoughtful discourse. While AI can produce surface-level answers, the value of student voice—their ability to seek deeper meaning—becomes more important.
Additionally, we can look to pre-existing art forms as examples of how to conduct and curate AI. We might benefit by using AI more like sampling or collage than full-fledged composition. Allowing students to combine disparate elements of images, audio, video, and more helps them build skills as an editor and curator to find and hone their unique ways. Projects like these teach students how to refine and improve AI outputs by continuing to prompt and modify the system’s output, adding personal, cultural, or musical touches that make the final product truly their own.
AI is a transformative force, and to prepare students for the future, we should focus on teaching them to become curators, editors, and innovators. Whether through Socratic Seminars, journalism courses, fashion design, Odyssey of the Mind, or even HIP-HOP production, we must help students refine AI outputs, ask the right questions, and develop their unique voices.
The future of education lies not in what students can do better than machines but in what they can do with them. By teaching students to prompt, refine, and transform AI outputs, we empower them to thrive in a world where human creativity and perspective set us apart.
As we integrate AI into education, it’s crucial to recognize that these tools, while powerful, are only as effective as the minds that guide them. By equipping students with the skills to critically engage with AI—whether through refining outputs, curating content, or adding their voice and style—we empower them to take ownership of their learning and creativity. The next generation of learners will not only need to master AI but also transcend it by applying uniquely human insights, empathy, and originality to tomorrow’s challenges.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world. In this way, the partnership between human and machine becomes a vehicle for deeper understanding, innovation, and artistic expression.
Dr. Amy Swann is the Chief of Strategy and Compliance at Matchbook Learning, with over 20 years of experience innovating and improving schools across the U.S. Her work in change management and personalized learning has been featured in various publications, including the Harvard Letter and PBS News Hour. Connect with her on LinkedIn: Amy Swann.