AI in education can underdeliver without judgement skills

This month, Claricy’s team held three AI related sessions for education professionals in Tallinn.

The topics were:

1. Digital strategy and innovation in educational institutions: how to build a smart and sustainable digital culture

2. AI literacy for teachers: how to make smart choices when using AI

3. Critical thinking in the age of AI: source criticism and misinformation

At first glance, those may sound like totally separate themes, but they all point to the same underlying issue:

education does not need more excitement around AI. It needs better judgment around where AI belongs and how it should be used.

That is where many organisations get it wrong. They adopt tools before they define the real need or problem. They expect better outcomes from technology when the harder question is whether the organisation is ready to use that technology well. And these are one of the underlying issues that make almost 70% of digital transformation fail.

That is why we started with focusing on digital strategy and innovation in educational institutions. Kristjan Kalma, Claricy’s CPO, spoke about change management, resistance, and the practical realities of digital transformation. Resistance is often treated as a problem, but in practice, it should be taken as feedback. It shows where trust is weak, where communication has failed or where the workloads have made the work environment already stressful enough, causing huge resist to changes. Digital culture is built through consistency, clarity, and with implementation that people can actually work with.

The second session focused on AI literacy for teachers. This area is often misunderstood. In practice, strong AI literacy means understanding which tools fit the organisation’s goals, where they create risk, and how they affect the quality of work. Knowing how to open an AI tool and generate output is only a very small part of the picture.

Our CEO Johanna Stina Haar introduced Claricy’s Technology Suitability Assessment Framework, which helps organisations evaluate the strategic, operational, and external factors that shape whether a technology implementation is likely to succeed. That perspective matters because many technology decisions fail long before rollout.

The third session focused on critical thinking in the age of AI. That discussion covered source criticism, misinformation, AI slop, and the growing difficulty of identifying generated content across text, images, and video. We also looked at the differences between ChatGPT and Perplexity and how each can serve different educational purposes. One practical example was role based prompting. Asking AI to explain a topic like a friend (a scientist, a fifth grade teacher, a TED speaker… let your imagination fly!) can help learners approach the same concept from different angles and build stronger mental connections. Used well, AI can support understanding. Used carelessly, it will negatively affect our critical thinking and memory skills.

Digital strategy affects how technology is introduced across the organization. AI literacy helps teachers make better judgments about the tools they use. Critical thinking gives students a way to question polished outputs in an environment where slop is easy to produce.

It was encouraging to see how much interest there is among education professionals in using AI responsibly and with real educational intent.

If your organisation would benefit from similar sessions, feel free to reach out at info@claricy.ee