Literacy for AI-Ready Humans

Two months ago, Bron Stuckey tagged me in a comment posted on LinkedIn. It was the first time I got a look at Richard Culatta's Profile of an AI-Ready Graduate. I was gobsmacked by the thoughtful simplicity and well-considered universal skills identified in this document. It's a standout framework in a sea of attempts to schoolify AI or simply try and explain what is not yet fully understood.

Culatta's framework breaks through the noise. It acknowledges how AI is different and provides a map for educators to understand how we need to evolve if we are going to keep learning relevant for our students.

Profile of an AI-Ready Graduate is eloquent in its simplicity and clarity, mapping six skills that any teacher can start working on today. It's a framework that will help us move past our cheating and testing angst. It will support us in calmly looking forward so we can create lessons that will actually support student learning. It will require us, as teachers, to join our students on this evolving learning journey, but the map makes that a little less scary and much more doable.

I was inspired by the design of Culatta's framework. I set myself a personal challenge to create a complementary framework for citizenship in an AI-shaped world, one that would be just as clear and eloquent. I'm no stranger to identifying and teaching literacy skills for emerging technologies, but AI presents unique challenges we haven’t seen before. To get this right, I knew I’d have to enlist AI’s help. It is, after all, the first emerging technology I have worked with that is capable of assisting me in designing its own curriculum.

I gave ChatGPT-4o my brief, and we started figuring out what literacy skills would be essential for the framework to be universally applicable, eloquently simple and absolutely fit for purpose. We spent a month brainstorming and interrogating each idea, putting them aside, moving on and then circling back. We finally recognised the same skills returning to centre. We spent the following month painstakingly examining each phrase and word until we felt it had met the brief.

It’s been the most "hard fun" I’ve had in a long time. It also feels like we have been working on it for ages. Early on, I sought Anne Collier’s advice, which was invaluable! I couldn’t have done this without her knowledge and wisdom. Subsequently, I invited (begged) her to contribute as both an editor and a writer. Thankfully, she agreed! As ChatGPT-4o put it, the three of us became a very unique collaboration between one curious educator, one digital ethicist, and one AI sidekick. You can read more about that from ChatGPT-4o’s perspective in the blog post it wrote as a guest contributor: "What I Learned About Being Human."

Fast forward. This will never be, nor should it be, a static or complete document. That being said, Anne and I feel we were ready to share it. So we give you our map to help humans and, according to ChatGPT-4o, digital machines navigate new and uncharted territory.

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Literacies for AI-Ready Humans - malmstrom_collier.pdf

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What did I learn from this collaboration?

I learned heaps! I will save unpacking those lessons for another day, but will leave you with one fun tidbit.

Anne and I leaned heavily into our own lived experience to create this framework. However, AI’s unique ability to draw from the depth of human knowledge and the breadth of machine logic was critical in co-creating it. Although we didn't set out to do it intentionally, in hindsight we acknowledge that all six skills of Culatta’s framework were engaged in the development of this document.

Mic drop.