This is an article about process versus product, something which I’m more than familiar with as a teacher of writing. But it’s also a conversation that crosses over into every discipline at every level of education from primary to tertiary.
Lesson planning is a process, an action, a verb. But technology companies, from big players like Microsoft and Google to new kids on the block like Magic School, insist on treating it as a noun, a thing, a product.
Take a look at these screenshots from Google’s latest offering for educators:
What do you notice? The first thing I notice is my sense of overwhelm at the rows upon rows of buttons, and a disappointing feeling of familiarity with the way technology has been presented to teachers for the past couple of decades.
My second reaction is to question the purpose of these dozens of buttons, since they are, by and large, intended to create products and not support processes.
Now compare it to some of Microsoft’s earlier attempts to woo educators with generative AI, or with similar platforms from providers like Magic School, which is essentially a shiny website parked on top of OpenAI’s language model.
The Problem with AI as Software
On one level, I get it. Generative artificial intelligence is weird software – software that talks back, software that doesn’t really have a clear purpose, software that sort of shambles around stuck somewhere between Siri, a customer service chatbot, and a geeky code completion tool. Generative AI doesn’t know what it is.
Educators, by and large, don’t know what it is either.
And so companies like Google and Microsoft give us buttons to click: do this, make that, build this. These are attempts, well-meaning perhaps, to give some structure to the wobbling, amorphous blob that is generative AI, but it’s the wrong kind of structure. There’s no button for good teaching.
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The Deeper Problem
Distilling the vast array of potential uses of generative AI into a few dozen buttons reflects an attitude towards education which I find deeply problematic. It’s an attitude commonly held by those outside of education – in the media, in politically driven think tanks, and in public opinion.
It’s an attitude that says: “We know that teachers keep telling us they’re overworked. We empathise, we really do. And here’s the solution: a button to click that does all of that pesky administrative work for you.”
Time and time again, these external voices look at education, skim the surface of whatever it is teachers do all day, and offer solutions like providing lesson plans, worksheets, and other “burdensome” documentation.
I’m positive that some of these efforts are informed by teachers, though I would argue that much of the research carried out by companies like Google happens in the US, where the context for teachers is significantly different – the pressures, performance management processes, and documentation practices not comparable to the Australian education system.
But globally, there are certainly pressures which push teachers to treat lesson plans as products – something to be documented and uploaded to a Learning Management System or government platform so that somebody can tick a box, hold a teacher accountable, and prove that they’re doing the right thing.
Let’s be clear though: that’s not lesson planning, that’s compliance.
Lesson Planning is a Verb
When I studied my postgraduate certificate in education almost 20 years ago, we spent a lot of time learning how to design effective lessons. This wasn’t a turgid exercise in theory filled with discussions of effect sizes or PowerPoint slides of dials showing what effective learning looks like. These were conversations with qualified and thoughtful educators, accompanied by quality mentoring and applied in the classroom through practical placements.
It was a lengthy and sometimes tedious process. It involved a lot of back and forth and a lot of conversations about why certain things worked and certain things absolutely didn’t. And as you can imagine, as a trainee teacher walking into schools in Stoke-on-Trent (which have all been closed down by the government in the years since) in one of the country’s most notoriously difficult education authorities, I had plenty of failures.
Lesson planning, through the model of instruction I received at Keele University in the early 2000s, was, in short, one hell of a process.
When I say that lesson planning is a verb, I’m not just being a facetious English teacher pedantically correcting grammar.
Jump to Recipe
Most of us will have searched up recipes online in cooking blogs. If you’re anything like me, your first click is the “jump to recipe” button that scrolls past all of the lengthy discussions of how the writer arrives at their famous recipe to get to the point – the thing that I’m looking for, the recipe itself.
I’m sure some of these blog posts contain beautiful descriptions of process. I’m equally sure that most of them contain hundreds of words of copy designed to improve search engine optimisation (SEO).
Recently, I posted something about Google and Microsoft’s clicky buttons for lesson planning, and somebody wondered whether they’re not just an education equivalent of the “jump to recipe” button – a way to quickly skim past some of the unnecessary parts.
But when I visit a cooking website looking for recipes, the SEO keyword waffle before the recipe isn’t really the process. The recipe itself is the process. I still have to follow it, adjust it, contextualise it based on the ingredients that I have on hand, and sometimes smush together three or four different recipes to end up with something that suits my taste, or more importantly, my children’s taste.
The “generate lesson” button is not the same as the “jump to recipe” button. It doesn’t just circumvent the preamble – it bypasses the entire process, recipe and all.
What Educators Really Want
So what do educators really want from technology companies? Or more importantly, what do educators need from the broader system that can be facilitated by the technologies we have access to?
As I said, I’m sure that in some jurisdictions, Google and Microsoft survey teachers and hear that what teachers want is a quick way to generate lesson plans. But why is that the case? What are those lesson plans being used for? Who is reading them? Are they being used for teaching and learning, or for compliance?
And what are the risks of the “Generate Lesson Plan” button in the hands of an inexperienced trainee teacher, an early career teacher, or somebody teaching out of field? I’ve been in all three of those positions, and I’ve had people hand me ready-made lesson plans, PowerPoints, and worksheets.
It never ends well.
When I work with teachers – and in the past few years, I’ve worked with thousands of teachers – they tell me what they want. They want more time to work together in faculty groups. They want adequate support and mentoring. They want access to quality resources and the time to curate and adapt them.
They almost categorically do not want someone, whether it’s a technology platform or the Grattan Institute or any other external body, to hand them a piece of paper and say, “Teach this.”
Better Uses of AI Technology
Ironically, Google’s Gemini offerings include technologies which absolutely could support these practices. ChatGPT could support these practices. Copilot could even support these practices, if Microsoft ever releases anything that actually works.
For example, Google’s NotebookLM is a fantastic use case of Gemini, and I have seen it used to great effect for things like administering professional learning communities and collating resources for a teacher’s action research project.
Hands on with Google NotebookLM
Google’s AI Studio, Anthropic’s Claude, and ChatGPT are all excellent at making interactive simulations and miniaturised apps that students and teachers can interact with as part of daily instruction.
In a recent post, I explored half a dozen ways that generative AI technologies can be used to support teacher professionalism and autonomy, working individually and with their colleagues.
The Real Challenge
The problem is, every one of these applications relies on time, resources, and technological expertise. There are no shortcuts. There is no button that can replace these processes. And while I have the privilege of working with dozens of schools closely and supporting AI task forces and pilot programmes, there are only a handful of people like me who have the time and the resources to support schools like this. And of course, not every school has the time or the opportunity to bring in that kind of extra support.
We don’t need technology companies to give us buttons that attempt to shortcut these processes and churn out meaningless products – from lesson plans to rubrics to worksheets. We need to find ways to scale up quality professional development.
Technology is Not Inevitable
I disagree that generative AI in its current form is inevitable. I think inevitability suggests that we’re about to roll over and hand the reins of education to the technology companies. I’m sure they would love that. They’ve been trying for years to replace teachers with electronic tutors, and now they’re undermining professional autonomy further, particularly of the next generation of teachers, for whom time pressures and the lack of mentoring and support would likely mean they start to rely on these technologies even more.
The technology is not inevitable, even if it is ubiquitous. We need to find ways to work together, to value the process of lesson planning, and hold on to the best parts of education.
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Cover image: Kathryn Conrad / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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