EduCon 2027Who Owns the Question? AI, Curiosity, and Student Agency
We are entering a time when answers are increasingly easy to generate. But if AI can answer almost anything, perhaps the more important educational question is: Who owns the question?
I’ll begin with a personal story about a moment when someone else’s words shaped what I believed I could do, and how, decades later, listening to the stories behind our experiences helped me reclaim my own voice and sense of possibility.
From there, we’ll explore what this means for students growing up with AI. What happens when we shift from giving students questions to helping them discover questions worth pursuing?
How might stories, lived experiences, interests, images, and AI become pathways for students to uncover their own “Spark Points” as the moments that reveal what makes them curious, what they value, and what they want to explore?
The focus isn't on using AI to replace thinking. It is on using AI as a mirror, a thinking partner, and a pathway for exploration while keeping human curiosity, judgment, choice, and agency at the center.
Together, we'll wrestle with the possibilities and tensions:
How do we create learning environments where AI expands agency rather than quietly taking it away?
What should remain deeply human?
How might we help students become authors and architects of their learning rather than simply consumers of answers?
Conversational Practice
I will begin with a short personal story and one question: “Who owns the question?”
Participants will first have a few moments of individual reflection before turning to a partner or small group to explore their responses.
We will then use a shared Google Doc as a collective thinking space. Participants will add questions, tensions, examples, and possibilities under three headings:
- What should AI help us discover?
- What should remain deeply human?
- How do we protect and grow student agency?
Rather than presenting a prescribed framework, I will use the stories and ideas in the room to shape the conversation. I’ll periodically pause to surface patterns, contradictions, and questions emerging from the group. We will use another Google Doc or a Padlet to collect any stories and ideas from participants.
We will close by returning to the opening question: “Who owns the question?” and ask participants to identify one shift they might make in their own learning environment.
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