TikTok isn’t just for dances. Or maybe it never was. Two teachers are realizing that technology is driving the bus while educators hold on for dear life. Or fight it. One educator decided to stop fighting. Her students are getting real professional knowledge from short clips. Former teachers, some who left the profession in huff, are teaching new recruits online. So why pretend it doesn’t exist?
The social media reality check
Pre-service teachers aren’t just in lecture halls anymore. They’re scrolling. Watching reels. Building their pedagogical worldview on fifteen-second soundbites. Evi Wusk says ignoring this is useless. The data is already in their heads. Trying to erase it is impossible.
Better to help them question it. Critique the algorithm, if you will. Dismiss the source, but respect the impact. The information is shaping them. It is a done deal. The only question is how deep they let it sink.
The move is to help future teachers engage critically rather than dismiss.
When AI writes the grade
Then there’s Steven Swanson. High school engineering teacher. Built a fully automated grading bot. It was efficient. Scary efficient. Students got feedback he didn’t read. Didn’t see. Didn’t touch.
Until one student thanked him for specific words he never wrote.
Oof.
He had to rebuild it. Put himself back in the middle. Why? Because automation strips the human element. It’s not just about checking boxes. It’s about seeing who these kids are.
Some assignments work with AI. Sure. Speed is nice. But you miss things. Nuance. Personality. The weird kid who’s actually a genius. The quiet one who needs a nudge. A bot doesn’t notice. Swanson admits AI falls short where connection matters. He values efficiency but not at the cost of knowing his students.
What are we doing here?
So who’s really in charge? The tech or the teacher? It feels like the tool is winning. Judgement gets coded into scripts. Accountability becomes a glitch. We ask students to be present while our systems automate presence.
It makes you wonder what teaching is really for. If the feedback can come from a machine, is the teacher just a babysitter with a syllabus? Maybe not. But the line is blurrier than it used to be. And we haven’t fully mapped the consequences yet. Just listening to the feedback loop, hoping it doesn’t loop out on us entirely.
