Ellen Roche
What are Ideal Learning Environments in the Age of AI?
Generative AI is rapidly transforming all of our lives. How will we raise young humans in this unprecedented new world? Ellen’s work bridges cognitive neuroscience and public policy, and she'll share science-backed strategies and tools for visioning and creating ideal learning environments for young children in this rapidly evolving age of AI. We’ll focus on what makes us human - our relationships and our emotions, which AI bots can mimic, but never replace. This session will blend the science of relational and emotional development with practical strategies to advance a humanist vision for child development. Session applicable to everyone.
AUDIO VERSION
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Ellen Roche
Ellen Roche is one of three co-directors of Trust for Learning, a US-based philanthropic partnership expanding ideal early learning environments for all children, pre-natal to age eight. While earning her Master’s of Education at Harvard University, Ellen studied the history of progressive education models in the U.S. and antiracist pedagogy. As a developmental affective neuroscientist, she is focused on bringing antiracist practice into research and led the development of Trust for Learning’s evidence brief. She spent two years working in the Early Learning Project lab at Georgetown University, and is now examining the relationship between adversity, language and socio-emotional development in preschoolers at the University of Maryland’s LEAD Lab. Her latest paper explores the evidence behind caregiver-child brain synchrony as a potential mechanism of early development.
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Great topic and excellent speaker.
Great to combine research with brain development and learn more about executive function.
Lots to follow up on and beware of AI influencing early childhood learning.
I like how you explained the rhythm of a parent to the rhythm of the child and I do agree that AI should not be for the younger children at all. I like how you very clearly explain some of the terminology and how you broke it down to the chart where you showed months of the child’s development, the youngest child’s development. Would you agree that AI I is beneficial to certain cases as in finding a quick question and answer worksheet or helping certain children articulate certain thoughts as in like bullet points etc
Thank you so much for attending!
Right now, AI use with young children is uncharted territory. We really don’t know how it will influence cognitive, social, or emotional development. From my perspective, there is no evidence that young children directly using AI is safe or beneficial. We have many decades of evidence suggesting it may actually be harmful and disruptive to healthy development. So for me, no, in these cases, AI might save time, but that time savings might shortchange the child’s work of researching or practicing articulating her thoughts in bullet points herself (a very helpful skill). If teacher are giving so much homework that children and parents feel pressured to speed up assignments, ideally we could address that issue more systemically (giving no/less homework depending on age!). You might be interested in the final of the 9 principles of ideal learning environments – “the time of childhood is valued.” http://www.ideallearning.org – thanks again for attending! Ellen