After almost two decades of publishing Wandering Educators, I can usually tell by the second paragraph whether a submission was written by a person or created by a machine.
It is rarely one big thing that stands out to me. It’s a series of smaller things, stacked up and causing unease in my brain: the rhythm, tidy paragraphs, sentences that all land at the same length, like fence posts. There is a complete absence of anything you could point at.
After almost two decades of publishing Wandering Educators, I greet every new travel planning tool the same way: with curiosity, and with my suitcase-tested skepticism close at hand.
The question filling my inbox this year?
My answer?
The world of online education is changing faster than most of us can keep up with. Not long ago, being an online educator just meant knowing how to use a webcam and a basic slide deck. Now, it feels like we’re standing on the edge of a massive shift. Artificial intelligence isn’t just a futuristic concept or something reserved for data scientists anymore. It’s right here, and it’s fundamentally changing how we teach, how students learn, and how we manage our daily workloads.
I spend my days juggling human prose and machine-made copy, so I’ve learned to sniff out robotic fingerprints almost on sight. If you’re a writer, student, or content creator who leans on large language models, whether for speed, inspiration, or the occasional all-nighter, you probably worry that your draft will scream “ChatGPT wrote me!” to editors, professors, or search-engine bots. Below, I’ll walk you through the most obvious giveaways I see in 2025 and the practical cures I reach for when a paragraph feels more silicon than soul.
As an educator and/or parent, you're probably wondering HOW to teach and work with AI. It isn't easy. The field is constantly changing, and student, parents, and educators don't know where to even start to learn about, utilize, and think about AI.
We all know that students will consider using AI to do their school work this year. And, if they do hit the ‘easy’ button, they’ll most likely be accepting mediocre content. Authentic, human-generated and creative content is becoming a luxury good. Teachers can tell the difference.
There’s no denying that during elementary school, children learn fundamental skills including writing, math, critical thinking, and problem-solving. The introduction of artificial intelligence may hinder their ability to think for themselves and stifle their creativity.
So, what is the solution? Until a child is literate, can read and comprehend what they are reading, write clearly and convincingly, and compute through basic algebra using only their own brainpower, do not introduce artificial intelligence into the elementary classroom.
As we increasingly move towards an artificial-intelligence driven society, many work roles will change. AI will automate a lot of tasks across industries, so finding jobs may come down to tech literacy.
That’s why computer programming is perhaps the greatest skill you could learn for the future.