EdTech and the 'Wrong Work'

Image credit: Beckett LeClair / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I had this moment the other day that's been sitting with me, refusing to let go. I was doom-scrolling through LinkedIn (I know, I know) when I saw yet another post celebrating how AI can now generate lesson plans in seconds. The company rep posting about this new feature seemed so proud of the fact that you can get rid of the 'busy work' and spend more time on "what really matters."

And I found myself staring at the screen thinking: but lesson planning is what really matters to me. It's one of the bits I've always loved about teaching.

So here's what I've been thinking about. We keep hearing that AI and often even just EdTech as a whole are going to "free us from work" so we can do the important stuff. But I'm starting to wonder if we're making some pretty big assumptions about what counts as work versus what counts as joy, creativity, or purpose.

When the Wrong Things Get Automated

In my past decade of EdTech-ing, I've always been clear about what good technology should do in education. It should reduce workload, support wellbeing, or improve student outcomes. Having each of those as priority comes both from personal experience (hello, six month burnout working in a coffee shop because I didn't realise that you can't be a perfect teacher and still be, you know, a functioning human) but, maybe more importantly, they're backed by research showing that workload is one of the biggest factors affecting teacher retention and wellbeing.

For me, the difficult teacher workload was always the endless forms, the data entry, the repetitive administrative tasks. It was parent emails that could be templated, attendance tracking that felt like it should've been way more seamless, and reports that felt like they were never going to be read. I never really thought about lesson planning as part of 'the work.' It was the fun part I got to do once I'd done the hard stuff.

So when AI tools started appearing with promises to "reduce teacher workload," I was genuinely excited. Finally, I thought, something that might tackle the bits that drain your energy without adding value.

But then I started seeing what these tools actually do. They generate lesson plans. They create resources. They write learning objectives.

And I'm sitting there thinking: hang on, you're taking away my art and leaving me with the dishes?

This picture was all over the internet for a while, but yeah... turns out we're there already.

Because here's the thing: lesson planning wasn't ever my workload. It was the second most enjoyable part of my job, right after being in the classroom with students. Those Sunday afternoons spent crafting a sequence that might help Year 9 finally understand why the Treaty of Versailles mattered? That's not drudgery to me. That's where I feel most creative, most purposeful, most me as an educator. And even now, when I'm training teachers more often than I'm in the classroom with students, planning those training sessions is still the most enjoyable part for me.

An Unexpected Connection

The other day my husband and I were sitting in our reading chairs after our nightly chess game (I know, I know). I'm currently on a Vonnegut binge whilst he's working his way through everything George Orwell ever touched. Currently, he's on The Road to Wigan Pier.

At one point he turns to me - over the chess board that showed my absolute shame at having still never won a game against him - and he says, "this really links to what you've been saying about AI."

And he reads:

"How often have we not heard it, that glutinously uplifting stuff about 'the machines, our new race of slaves, which will set humanity free', etc., etc., etc."

I laughed - I'm not that dramatic about AI. But then he kept going, and what Orwell said next made me feel a little, tiny, weeny bit sick...

"The function of the machine is to save work. In a fully mechanized world all the dull drudgery will be done by machinery, leaving us free for more interesting pursuits. So expressed, this sounds splendid. It makes one sick to see half a dozen men sweating their guts out to dig a trench for a water-pipe, when some easily devised machine would scoop the earth out in a couple of minutes. Why not let the machine do the work and the men go and do something else. But presently the question arises, what else are they to do? Supposedly they are set free from 'work' in order that they may do something which is not 'work'. But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them. The labourer set free from digging may want to spend his leisure, or part of it, in playing the piano, while the professional pianist may be only too glad to get out and dig at the potato patch."

And there it was. The question I'd been circling around but couldn't quite articulate: what is work and what is not work?

The Joy We're Automating Away

When /insert unnamed AI tool here shhhh/ celebrates its lesson plan generator, what are we really saying? That planning lessons is busywork? That the joy some of us find in crafting learning experiences doesn't matter because it's not "efficient"?

I used to spend hours creating resources for my classes. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Some of my happiest professional moments were spent deep in History Teacher Twitter (RIP), sharing resources and ideas, discovering someone else's brilliant take on teaching the Industrial Revolution, or seeing a resource I'd made being adapted and improved by colleagues.

That sharing, that creative collaboration - that was never work to me. That was play.

But now there are tools that generate resources automatically. The implicit message? That creating teaching materials isn't valuable use of our time.

What I'm learning is that we've created a hierarchy of educational tasks without really asking teachers what they value. We've decided that some activities are "worth" a teacher's time and others aren't, often based on efficiency rather than meaning.

Where This Gets Complicated

Orwell goes on a little more, and gets a little more unsettling, as he talks more about the impact of what he calls the machine-civilization:

"And now consider again those half-dozen men who were digging the trench for the water-pipe. A machine has set them free from digging, and they are going to amuse themselves with something else—carpentering, for instance. But whatever they want to do, they will find that another machine has set them free from that. For in a fully mechanized world there would be no more need to carpenter, to cook, to mend motor bicycles, etc., than there would be to dig.  … Mechanize the world as fully as it might be mechanized, and whichever way you turn there will be some machine cutting you off from the chance of working—that is, of living."

I know he sounds dramatic, but I've started seeing this pattern in schools. First, we get tools that create resources. Then platforms that deliver content. Then systems that track engagement and generate reports. At what point do we automate away the very things that drew people to teaching in the first place?

What This Means for Us

Here's where it gets interesting for me. We have to be more careful about assumptions. When we celebrate tools that "free teachers from lesson planning," we're assuming that lesson planning is something teachers want to be freed from. When we automate resource creation, we're deciding that the craft of teaching materials isn't valuable.

But what if we flipped the question? Instead of asking "How can we make teaching more efficient?" what if we asked "How can we support teachers in doing more of what they find meaningful?"

For some teachers, that might mean automating lesson plans so they can focus on student relationships. For others, it might mean streamlining administrative tasks so they have more time for creative planning. The key is choice.

I've been wondering: what if we used AI and EdTech to create space for teachers to do the work that energises them, rather than deciding for them what counts as "real" work?

What would it look like if technology supported the full spectrum of what teachers value - not just what looks efficient from the outside?

Because ultimately, we have to remember that what feels like drudgery to one person might be the very thing that brings meaning and joy to another. And perhaps that's where our focus should be: not on automating away "work," but on creating space for each teacher to engage with their practice in ways that feel sustainable and fulfilling to them.