EduCon 2027

In many ways our students live in an oral world again. Video, voice notes, livestreams, and podcasts shape how they learn and argue. Meanwhile, generative AI has made polished writing almost effortless to produce. Walter Ong called this "secondary orality," and it raises hard questions for schools built around the written word. If a machine can draft the essay, where does the evidence of a student's thinking live? This year at South Bronx Community, our mid-year PBATs used discussion-based protocols as the anchor for assessment. Students showed what they knew by building on, challenging, and pulling together each other's ideas in real time. Several teachers also paired these discussions with written performance tasks. [Insert a real observation, e.g., which students surprised you in discussion versus on paper, and what writing still did that talk couldn't.] In this conversation, SBC leaders and teachers will share student work and the protocols behind it. Then we'll open the floor to the questions we're still working through. What does speaking reveal that writing hides, and the reverse? Should an oral defense count for more when writing can be outsourced? How do we keep writing a tool for thinking, not just a product? The kids the world will need can think out loud with others and write with clarity and voice. Let's work out together how to assess both.