Our Values and the Role of AI in Education
At Folio, our core values—putting people first, creating clarity, taking purposeful action, honoring reflection, and celebrating success—guide everything we do. When it comes to the integration of new technology like AI, these values are more important than ever.
The rise of AI in education has sparked a wide range of reactions, from excitement about its potential to skepticism about its risks. We recently launched the Folio Member Advisory Board where we discussed what role AI plays at their schools. It is clear our members are grappling with how to incorporate AI constructively, while accounting for concerns about student integrity, data privacy, and how to prepare students for what is to come.
School’s strengths lie in the fundamental human building blocks of relationships, conversation, and the learning process, and now is the time to lean into that key differentiator. Returning to the why of the work and grounding ourselves in our values will provide the path forward.
Three Guiding Principles for AI Integration
Principle 1: Honor Putting People First and Creating Clarity by ensuring our use of AI enhances collaboration and trust, not surveillance or compliance.
- Everyone should know how and why AI tools are being used. It should always be transparent when a summary comes from a machine rather than a trusted partner.
- Feedback, thoughtful suggestions for improvement, and celebrations such as spotlights should always come from school collaborators.
Principle 2: Support Reflection and a Culture of Celebration by focusing on the importance of the human elements that are part of the growth process.
- AI tools should reduce administrative tasks to create space for the meaningful human connections that build community and support great teachers.
- AI can be a "thought partner," however, it cannot replace the essential mentorship and relational aspects of teaching and learning that come from reflection and celebration.
- Soft skills will become even more critical in a world looking for technological shortcuts. Communities that lean into the power of reflection and celebration are investing time in each other's growth, creating environments where teachers and students can thrive.
Principle 3: Take Purposeful Action by utilizing a practical, solution-oriented approach to leveraging AI tools.
- The myFolio platform supports the connections and interactions between faculty and staff within a school community by streamlining process and documentation. This enables educators to focus on the hard work of professional growth and community building.
- AI can be used to support the implementation of myFolio by uncovering themes across departments, surfacing shared questions across conversations, and demonstrating collective wins across the school.
The Role of AI in myFolio
Getting teachers talking, learning from each other, and collaborating is essential to building better school cultures and to lifting up the work of teachers and students alike. At Folio we believe AI's role is not to replace human work but to augment it. AI will always play a secondary role to the human connections that are at the heart of our mission. The technological tools AI offers are opportunities to increase focus on relational work while reducing time spent on administrative tasks.
Moving Forward with Our Community
Our member schools are in the early stages of figuring out what AI means within the context of their communities, with some faculty embracing AI for tasks like lesson planning and syllabus work, while others are returning to more traditional methods like blue books for essay writing. While the uncertainty around finding the right approach can be unsettling, it does not mean we must stay in a perpetual state of playing catch-up to forces outside of our control.
We believe school and organizational values are key to charting the path forward around critical topics like student demonstrations of mastery and authentic feedback for teachers and staff.
The valuable insights from our Member Advisory Board reinforce that we're all in the same boat regarding AI—we're not behind, but have a unique opportunity to promote the human element that makes our schools special. We will continue to work with you and your teams to spark conversations, define professional growth paths, and develop the connections that matter, all while providing practical ways to leverage AI and other tools to create more space for this vital work.