About this episode
Indiana University didn't wait for the AI debate to settle. It rolled ChatGPT out across the entire campus, students and faculty alike, on the bet that people build judgment about a technology by using it, not by being kept away from it. Jason sits down with Anne Leftwich, who has helped lead that work, to talk through what an institution-wide rollout looks like once you get past the press release.
Anne's case is blunt: refuse to touch AI and you forfeit your seat at the table where it gets shaped. So IU built a GenAI 101 baseline for everyone, treated access as the starting line instead of the finish, and leaned on a simple idea, that an educator who won't use the tools can't guide students through them. Along the way she and Jason get into why K-12 bans tend to fail the same way abstinence-only programs do, and what shifts when a school decides the adults need reps too.
What you'll hear
- Why AI holdouts forfeit their seat at the table where the technology gets shaped
- What a real campus-wide ChatGPT rollout takes, beyond the announcement
- GenAI 101: making baseline AI literacy something everyone gets, not just the early adopters
- Why K-12 bans tend to fail like abstinence-only everything
- Treating access as the starting line, and what educators owe students once the buttons aren't greyed out
The guest
Anne Leftwich
Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education Technology and professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University Bloomington, where she also works in learning-technologies leadership. Her research centers on preparing teachers and the wider K-12 community to handle computing, computer science, and AI.
Go deeper
If this one hit a nerve, read the companion Field Note, The Greyed-Out Button. Same fault line, closer to home: 600 educators at a summit spent the day learning AI tools their own students aren't allowed to touch.