Today was my first opportunity to help support the Applied IT degree programs at UNSW College in Sydney.
I recorded a series of about 20 introduction videos for each stage of the Cyber Security Operations & Practical Data Science courses.
It was a pleasure to work with Alan Hatem (UNSW College Program Lead, Applied Programs – STEM) and his team.
It was a privilege to spend a full day at Clonard College in Geelong yesterday, working alongside the amazing Matt Esterman to support the school’s thinking around the safe and effective use of AI in education.
The day was designed as a whole-community exploration of Generative AI and its implications for teaching, learning and school policy.
In the morning, we ran a series of student focus groups involving representatives from every year level. Each group participated in a Design Sprint, where students worked collaboratively to design resources their school could use to promote safe, ethical and creative use of Generative AI.
The ideas students generated were thoughtful and insightful, ranging from student-friendly guides and posters to peer workshops and digital resources that could help their community better understand how to use AI responsibly.
Throughout the day we also met with the school leadership team to explore how emerging insights from students and teachers could help shape future school policy and guidelines around AI use.
In the afternoon, we ran professional learning sessions for the teaching staff, split into two streams:
– An AI foundations session for teachers beginning their journey with AI.
– An advanced workshop designed to help experienced teachers move to the next level in their use of AI to support teaching, learning and assessment.
The evening concluded with a parent information session, where we discussed many of the questions and concerns families currently have about AI from academic integrity and learning impacts to how students can develop the human skills that matter most in an AI-enabled world.
What stood out most during the day was the thoughtfulness of the students and the openness of the school community to engage with these important questions.
Clonard College are showing that the best way to approach AI is not through fear or avoidance, but through dialogue, experimentation and community involvement.
A big thank you to the Clonard team for their leadership in this space and to Matt Esterman for a fantastic collaboration.
If your school is looking for a similar experience, don’t hesitate to reach out via – https://timkitchen.net/ctl/
As published in LinkedIn on 11 March, 2026
There is a growing concern among educators that generative AI may be contributing to a decline in key skills the have been taught in school for decades such as writing, problem-solving, critical thinking, and even basic persistence.
When students can generate essays, summaries, code, images and even video content in seconds using a range of generative AI tools, it’s natural to ask an important question:
What happens to the skills we used to teach explicitly?
Some educators worry that students may begin outsourcing their thinking rather than developing it. Others are concerned that AI may create shortcuts that bypass learning rather than supporting it. There is also a fear that foundational skills could be skipped instead of strengthened.
However, it is worth acknowledging that many of these challenges existed long before generative AI appeared.
Students were already:
Research into student learning has long suggested that traditional task design can sometimes prioritise completion over thinking (Hattie, 2009; Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). In many ways, generative AI has not created these issues, it has simply made them more visible.
So perhaps instead of trying to stop students from using AI, we should be asking:
What skills matter most in an AI-rich world?
Because the most important skills going forward are not the ones AI can easily replicate. They are the distinctly human capabilities that technology struggles to replace.
To thrive in a world shaped by AI, students will need to develop a range of higher-order capabilities including:
Critical thinking
They must generate original ideas, explore possibilities, and make connections across disciplines.
Judgement
Students need to know when AI tools are helpful, when they are misleading, and when independent thinking is required.
Ethical reasoning
Issues of authorship, responsibility, bias, and academic integrity are becoming increasingly important.
Communication
Explaining ideas clearly, persuasively, and authentically remains a core human capability.
Meta-cognition
Perhaps most importantly, students need to learn how to learn and develop the ability to adapt as tools, contexts, and problems change.
Research consistently shows that these skills are central to effective learning and long-term success (OECD, 2019; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012).
Rather than disappearing because of AI, these capabilities are becoming more important.
For nearly a decade, the World Economic Forum has been tracking how work is changing through its Future of Jobs reports. These reports survey hundreds of global employers across industries to identify which skills are becoming most important in the workforce.
Across multiple reports spanning almost ten years, creativity remains one of the top five most important transferable skills for the future workforce (World Economic Forum, 2016; 2020; 2023).
Importantly, creativity in this context does not simply mean artistic expression.
It refers to the ability to:
In other words, creativity reflects the type of thinking required in a complex and uncertain world. And in a world increasingly shaped by automation and generative AI, the value of these human capabilities is rising.
As machines become more capable of routine tasks such as writing, calculating, summarising and predicting, the human ability to interpret, question, and create meaning becomes more valuable.
AI can generate outputs. But it cannot decide what matters to humans
If creativity and critical thinking are essential future skills, they cannot be treated as optional extras. They cannot exist only in electives, enrichment programs, or occasional projects.
Instead, they need to be developed across the curriculum in science, mathematics, humanities, technology, and the arts.
This does not mean abandoning curriculum standards or content knowledge. Rather, it means designing learning experiences that:
Research on deeper learning highlights that meaningful learning occurs when students engage in complex thinking, problem-solving, and authentic tasks (Fullan, Quinn & McEachen, 2018).
Creativity is not about lowering expectations. It is about raising the quality of thinking we ask students to do.
Generative AI does not necessarily mean the loss of important skills. But it does force us to be more intentional about the capabilities we prioritise.
The role of educators is not to compete with AI. It is to cultivate the human capabilities that give learning meaning. Because in the future, the most valuable skill may not be knowing the answer. It may be knowing:
Most of the content in this article is covered in more depth as part of The Human Advantage course (Part 1), now available via Leon Furze site – https://practicalaistrategies.com/
Please share this course with your colleagues and school leaders.
With more than three decades in education, including 23 years in the classroom and 13 years as Adobe’s Senior Education Specialist for Australia, New Zealand & South East Asia, Tim now runs CTL – Creative Teaching & Learning, an education consultancy supporting schools to implement safe, ethical, and creative AI practices that strengthen teaching and learning.
You can book a teacher &/or student workshop session (online or in-person) with Tim via – https://timkitchen.net/book-tim/
On Friday, 6 March 2026, I had the pleasure of running a workshop with the teaching staff at Prospect North Primary School in Adelaide. Our focus for the session was the safe and effective use of Generative AI in education.
This school is located in the inner-northern suburb of Prospect, about 5 km from the centre of Adelaide, South Australia. The school serves a diverse and multicultural community, with many students coming from a range of cultural and language backgrounds. With around 380 students enrolled, the school emphasises student agency, inquiry learning, and real-world problem solving, helping students develop skills such as communication, collaboration, digital literacy, and resilience.
Throughout the workshop, teachers were encouraged to capture their key takeaways and reflections by creating a digital portfolio using Adobe Express which has been provided to them centrally by the South Australian Department for Education. It was a great way to document their learning as we went.
I also showed them how to use some of the AI features within Adobe Express to make short animated video content.
We explored the difference between AI and Generative AI, unpacking what these terms actually mean in practice. From there, we had some really thoughtful discussions about the opportunities AI presents in a primary school setting, as well as some of the challenges and considerations that come with using these tools responsibly.
We worked through a Gen AI use survey to help understand gen AI use by the teaching staff over the past 6 months and compared some of the results with the national study I did earlier this year.
We looked at
I introduced the teachers to a range of resources such as:
I would like to congratulate and thank Principal Russell Barwell for organising this event for his staff.
If your school would like to book a similar experience for your teachers and/or students, click here.
Leon Furze and I have collaborated on this new course that responds to the growing anxiety among educators that generative AI tools may replace creative thinking, originality, and student effort. Rather than positioning AI as a threat, the course re-frames creativity as the essential human capability that gives learning meaning, relevance, and integrity in an AI-rich world.
This course is now available to purchase for AUD $80 via Leon’s site …
Share the course with your colleagues, discuss the ideas in faculty meetings, and use it as a springboard for deeper reflection about what truly makes learning human. In a time of rapid change, collective wisdom is powerful and this is a chance to lead it.
Enterprise rates are available for schools wanting groups of staff to do the course.
I also run a 1-hour after-school in-person version of the course which is often part of an (whole day or half-day) incursion with students focused on safe & ethical AI use.
Email me (t.kitchen@me.com) or use my booking form to find our more.
It seem like just about every week there’s a new tool, a new headline and a new promise about how AI will transform learning & teaching.
In most places I visit, whether I’m working with primary teachers, secondary school, TAFE/Uni educators, school leaders or students, I hear the same questions:
This is why I created Generative AI Tools Used by Teachers, a free practical, educator-focused web resource designed to bring clarity to a rapidly changing landscape.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked closely with schools across Australia and New Zealand supporting safe and ethical AI integration. What’s become clear is this:
Teachers don’t need more noise.
They need trustworthy information.
They need to know:
This resource was built with those needs front and centre.
The site features a growing collection of generative AI tools that are already being used in schools.
When you click on any tool, you’ll see:
No hype.
No exaggerated claims.
No fear-based messaging.
Just clarity.
One of the key features of the resource is the inclusion of ST4S (Safer Technologies 4 Schools) status where relevant.
For many schools, especially within government systems, ST4S badging is a crucial part of decision-making. It helps leaders evaluate privacy, security and data compliance in a structured way.
By including this information upfront, the aim is to remove uncertainty and save schools time in their due diligence process.
Please contact me if your school is looking for some extra support in this area.
As published on LinkedIn on 13 February, 2026
Creativity isn’t just about making something that looks impressive. It’s not reserved for artists, designers or musicians. At its heart, creativity is deeply human. It’s our ability to make meaning, notice patterns, connect ideas, ask better questions, imagine alternatives and respond thoughtfully to what’s happening around us.
Generative AI (gen AI) can absolutely support creative work. But it doesn’t have creativity. It can produce outputs that look creative. It can remix, recombine and generate at astonishing speed. But true creativity itself? That’s still a human capability.
In Chapter 2 of my book, The Best Way to Learn is to Make – Creativity in a Gen AI World (available through Amazon), I explore a range of definitions from world-leading experts and classroom teachers. One of those experts is Dr Ellis Paul Torrance from the University of Georgia. He describes creativity as including uniqueness, fluency, flexibility, elaboration, humour and the avoidance of premature closure. He also talks about creativity as becoming sensitive to problems, gaps in knowledge, missing elements and disharmonies.
I really like that definition. Partly because it includes humour. And partly because it highlights persistence. In my years as a classroom teacher (and now in workshops and keynotes) I’ve seen how humour helps people relax even if my jokes don’t quite land (which of course is very rare 😉). When people feel safe and relaxed, they’re more willing to try, to experiment, to risk being wrong and be more open to the learning process (Edmondson, 2018).
I’m also drawn to that idea of avoiding premature closure. Real creativity isn’t about rushing to the first acceptable answer. It’s about staying with the problem. Sitting in the uncertainty. Letting ideas evolve. That takes effort. It takes resilience. It takes time.
Sir Ken Robinson framed creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. I love the clarity of that. Creativity isn’t just originality for its own sake. It has to matter. It has to connect. It has to be useful, meaningful, or transformative in some way.
Sir Ken consistently argued that creativity isn’t a niche talent reserved for the arts. It’s a universal human capacity. In his famous 2006 TED Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity?, he challenged schools for prioritising standardisation and conformity over imagination. His point wasn’t that schools are the enemy. It was that systems can unintentionally narrow human potential if we’re not careful.
In his 2009 book The Element, he explored how people flourish when passion intersects with opportunity. And in Creative Schools (2015), he called for learning environments that nurture curiosity, innovation and human potential more intentionally.
The thread running through all of his work is simple: creativity is human. It’s rooted in imagination, judgement and meaning-making. And when you unpack it, creativity usually involves things like:
Now compare that with generative AI.
Generative AI doesn’t intend anything. It analyses enormous datasets of human work. It learns statistical patterns across language, images, sound or code. It produces outputs by predicting what is most likely to come next.
It’s very good at mimicry. It’s very good at variation. It’s very good at speed. It’s very good at filling in gaps. But it doesn’t care if something matters. It doesn’t understand truth, beauty or value. It doesn’t experience curiosity, doubt or emotion. It doesn’t know why an idea is worth pursuing.
When gen AI “creates”, it isn’t expressing insight. It’s executing probability. That doesn’t make it useless. Far from it. Gen AI lowers the friction of making. It helps people get started. It handles drafts and variations. It removes some technical barriers. It can expand what students feel capable of trying. It can solve that intimidating “blank page” problem that so many learners struggle with.
But deciding what matters? Judging quality? Revising with purpose? Connecting ideas to lived experience? That’s still human work.
Real creativity is messy. It involves uncertainty, false starts, failure, emotional judgement and context. It’s shaped by who we are and what we care about. A scientist forming a new hypothesis. A teacher redesigning a lesson because students are disengaged. A student finding a new way to explain an idea when the first attempt doesn’t land.
That’s creativity.
Gen AI can generate amazing looking images, it can write poems, generate songs and remix ideas at lightning speed. But it doesn’t care, it doesn’t understand meaning, it doesn’t feel tension, curiosity, or purpose. It doesn’t wrestle with doubt or make value-based decisions. AI predicts patterns, humans make judgements.
Gen AI can assist creativity. It can amplify it. It can spark it. But it can’t own it.
That’s why creativity matters more than ever in education. Not as an optional extra. But as a core human capability embedded across the curriculum.
The future won’t belong to those who produce the fastest answer. It will belong to those who can frame better problems, question assumptions, adapt when things change and bring human insight into complex situations.
Those are creative acts. And they are deeply human.
Creativity isn’t disappearing because of AI. If anything, it’s being clarified. It’s not about competing with machines. It’s about doing what machines can’t.
And that feels like something worth protecting and designing learning around.
Invite Dr Tim Kitchen to your school …
With more than three decades in education, including 23 years in the classroom and 13 years as Adobe’s Senior Education Specialist for Australia, New Zealand & South East Asia, Tim now runs CTL – Creative Teaching & Learning, an education consultancy supporting schools to implement safe, ethical, and creative AI practices that strengthen teaching and learning.
Find out more via – https://timkitchen.net/ctl/
Contact Tim via – t.kitchen@me.com
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Floridi, L., & Chiriatti, M. (2020). GPT-3: Its nature, scope, limits, and consequences. Minds and Machines, 30, 681–694. Online available (Feb 2026 – https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-020-09548-1)
Kitchen, T. (2024). The Best Way to Learn is to Make – Creativity in a Gen AI World, Mammoth Learning (available through Amazon see – https://timkitchen.net/book1/
Robinson, K. (2006, February). Do schools kill creativity? [Video]. TED Conferences, Online available February 2026 at https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity
Robinson, K. (2009). The element: How finding your passion changes everything. Viking.
Robinson, K. (2015). Creative schools: The grassroots revolution that’s transforming education. Viking.
I have a new book out but it’s not about EdTech. It’s called An Australian Manufacturing & Mission Success Story and it’s about the gradual rise of a successful manufacturing business that had it’s origins during the 1850s Gold Rush in Victoria. It also traces the growth of evangelical Christianity in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and lots more.
At its heart, the book is about people. It’s about faith that lasts, love that’s handed down, a commitment to serving others, and the quiet strength of family across generations.
4 min video below
More information about the book can be found on this site.
Here is a 4 min version of the promotional video with more information about the book.
Click here to see the results of my recent gen AI in K-12 education survey.
Around 200 K–12 teachers from across Australia and New Zealand shared how they’re actually using generative AI in their day-to-day work. It makes for some genuinely interesting reading.
You’ll discover which generative AI tools they’re using most, how they’re using them, whether they’re saving time, the level of support they’re getting, and plenty more besides.
If you would like me to run a similar survey for your school as well as some practical workshops, feel free to contact me via – https://timkitchen.net/ctl/
I recently finished reading The Next Word – AI & Learners, Dr Nick Jackson & Matt Esterman’s new book featuring the thoughts of student Amy Wallace on the effective use of gen AI tools in education.
The Next Word – AI & Learners challenges educators to stop asking whether AI should be allowed in schools and start asking what kind of learning really matters in a world where intelligent tools are everywhere. Drawing on research, classroom realities, and powerful student voice, the book re-frames AI not as a cheating threat or a passing trend, but as a learning partner that exposes long-standing cracks in assessment, curriculum design, and school structures.
One of favourite quotes from Amy …
So, here’s the challenge: instead of trying to catch students out, what if schools asked harder questions about the value of their assessments? What’s core and what’s fluff? What’s essential and what’s just tradition?
The book argues that AI hasn’t broken education, it has simply revealed how much schooling has prioritised compliance, performance, and busy work over deep thinking, creativity, and genuine understanding. For teachers and leaders, this is a call to shift focus from controlling learning to understanding how students learn, reflect, collaborate, and grow.
What makes this book especially compelling is its strong ethical lens and its inclusion of student perspectives, particularly through contributions from Amy. The book tackles hard questions around equity, bias, well-being, environmental impact, and the growing cultural disconnect between how students live and how schools operate. It urges schools to move beyond bans and surveillance, and instead prepare young people to use AI wisely, critically, and creatively as thinkers, problem-solvers, and ethical humans.
The Next Word – AI & Learners is not a “how-to” manual for tools; it is a deeply human guide for educators navigating the biggest shift in learning since the internet, reminding us that while AI may be the smartest presence in the room, wisdom, compassion, and courage still belong to us.
Dr Tim Kitchen 