Five things I heard students say about AI this week

AI Disclosure: all human, AI used only to spell and sense check in the writing of this article.

This week I had the privilege to be in classrooms in a variety of schools and my thanks especially to the entire Mathematics department of International School of Phnom Penh who invited me into their classrooms across a variety of age ranges. Inviting an observer into class is an exercise in trust and vulnerability, it incites curiosity in students, one of whom even asked “Sir, are you being audited?” which made me laugh out loud. Hilariously, as soon as I left the room they all googled me and thought I was famous because I had written a few textbooks and had lots of Amazon and LinkedIn entries. Causation and not correlation in this instance, kids!

The classes were timed extremely well as I have been digesting the 2026 UNESCO Youth Report “Lead with youth” to understand the leading role of youth and students in education decision-making around the world. This report conjoined with the class visit allows me to really take to heart how important it is for us to hear the student voice and perspective on all that we do for and with them in relation to AI and learning integrity.

“Nothing about us without us” is vital and a core belief of Eblana Learning, leading to virtually never-ending consultation with international schools. In my research and focus on Leaders and Teachers I need to make sure that I also remember the beneficiaries of all this work – our students in classrooms globally.

What are they saying to one another about AI? How do their jokes, off-handed remarks and honest questions reveal about how many of them are feeling about this extensive change to learning happening in real-time all around them – everywhere, all at once. So when I hear any oblique reference to AI or its effects on the learning, society, wellbeing or anything at all I make an immediate note and reflect deeply on it later. It may reveal a trend or a tendency, a personal preference or an indication of where the wind is blowing… As Chaucer says, many a true word is spoken in jest, so what can we take from these 5 micromoments in class?

The students were working collaboratively on a real-life application of probability in games. There was the usual competition and banter that you might hear and this is always a rich hunting ground for these informal indicators of AI sentiment for me.

It’s not the first time that I have heard AI being used as an insult or a derogatory comment and it shows us how and where they value human voice. Fascinating how it can be used as an indication of lack of quality and/or effort.

“🚨AI Alert”

I liked this one because it was accompanied by a klaxon or alarm sound – like a “whoooh” or “awooga” sound of a serious incident. Students were using it as a shorthand for displeasing AI generated text. I couldn’t judge if they were correct or incorrect or how well tuned their AI antennae were so focus on the shorthand they had already developed to discuss it.

It was reminiscent of the times when we first taught them digital literacy around trusting online sources – where some students showed a binary tendency to believe everything or nothing online. “Fake News” they would holler about practically everything and we began teaching them cautious trust. Moving them from a place of no discernment to considered judgment was our goal then, as now.

“Let’s quickly ask Gemini”

The students wanted to verify an answer, not a case of cognitive offloading here but as an efficiency driver. One learner recommended doing a sense check with Gemini. I noted that the teacher was in the room, moving around and available, as was I but they reached for AI for feedback. Perhaps because it was instant or came without questioning and guided inquiry I could not tell.

Noteworthy too was that students in secondary, middle and high school scenarios are now obviously not using AI as a blanket term. No longer is ChatGPT as the default term or location. Their vocabulary has expanded to reflect an understanding of the different models. This really resonates with the emphasis we place on model familiarity as an important skill in AI literacy to ensure students get the best use case out of different models and don’t get “stuck” or dependent on a specific LLM.

It also sits in direct opposition to the experience at Elementary and Primary school level, where every single use of technology will be described as AI by the younger students.

Photoshop? “That’s AI”,

CGI? “That’s AI”,

Computers? Algorithms? Coding? It is all one amorphous AI blob to the younger students. Listen and see if you observe this too.

“Miss, is this it? Is AI finally taking over?”

Edtech has made some wonderful additions to our classrooms but there is rarely a day where it doesn’t make something a little hard and this is especially true when you have an observer in class. This will be the perfect time for the screen to die, for connectivity to drop or the calculator charges to all be on empty.

In one class, the teacher had the lesson goals on a whiteboard and popups can be the bane of a teacher existence. Somehow the settings kept giving notifications of an AI Model plug-in that wanted to join in. A small pop-up saying “AI model” kept reappearing.The notifications caused text to jostle for space, the model buttons would appear and disappear.

To the teacher’s credit, she continued on with the lesson rather than let the tech dominate the teaching and learning – I would not have been as patient or unruffled. As it wasn’t an immediate threat to any work being done, she kept students on task and effectively learning. After a few minutes a few students became distracted by, and focussed on, the notification’s persistence and determination to be embedded. One of them cheekily asked:

“Miss, is this AI finally taking over?” – I thought that was interesting, both as a figure of fun, but also as a kind of constant undercurrent of perhaps low-level anxiety around AI. We make the same jokes as adults…. “When the robots rise up”… “When Alexa takes over….” .”I always say please and thank you to ChatGPT so it remembers me in the future when we are enslaved”. We seem to tacitly confirm that we are on the Terminator timeline of eventual AGI dominance so we may as well laugh about it.

“But if I should be doing it, why would I want AI to do it for me?”

Finally the hope and optimism I was reaching for was presented to me. I heard one student say this to another in response to a challenging question. It was said quietly so I don’t think it was performative or for my benefit but who knows? Even if it was, I was still happy to hear it.

“But if I should be doing it, why would I want AI to do it for me?”

It stuck out as I had vague recollections of another student saying similar words recently. It took me several days to retrieve the memory that it was in fact Ann Devitt, Head of the School of Education of Trinity College Dublin, who mentioned her own son felt this way about his learning. She shared at a recent session that his view was “Why would I want AI to do it when I am supposed to do it myself?”

From the kids’ mouths to our ears!

Some hope for us all "🥰