Everywhere you turn there is a subject staring back at you – AI/ Artificial Intelligence. AI is moving at warp speed and changing industries before our eyes, including education as it finds its way into classrooms and schools before educators are properly trained and ready for it. But this is not a post about what AI will do to education or even to writing (another subject near and dear to my heart). It’s a post about what AI will never be able to do…
- AI will never be able to give an in-person author visit.
- AI will never be able to stand in front of a group of children who are excited to meet a real author.
- AI will never be able to give the author visit I give, one that introduces the world of entrepreneurship to kids in a fun, interactive way and inspires kids to believe in their ideas.
- AI will never be able to answer the questions students ask me about my personal experience becoming an author or how I research and write nonfiction books or my thoughts on an idea they may have.
- AI will never be able to personalize a book for a child with his or her name, a message, and the author’s signature.
Hosting an in-person author visit is an experience that children do not forget. In many cases, it’s a once in a lifetime event.
In preparation, sometimes they’ve made welcome signs. Sometimes they have completed a unit around the book. Sometimes they’ve decorated the entire school around the subject of the book!
They hurry into the auditorium or the gym or the cafeteria SO excited about meeting a real author. The kids hurry into the author visit wondering, who is the person behind the book? What does the author look like and talk like? What will the author say to us? Will the author be nice or funny or smart? Sometimes kids get to do my introduction, which is the best!
I’ve had kids be surprised to learn (what I think are somewhat boring) facts about me, such as I’m a mom of three kids who are now in college and high school, or that my favorite subject in school was math, or that I played two sports in college, or that I lived near JK Rowling in Edinburgh, Scotland the year she wrote Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets! I’ve had students guess my age ranging from 25 to 75! And, I’ve had kids gasped out loud when they learn I travelled across the country to visit their school and talk to them.
The other day on NPR I heard a fact – 70% of the time we used to interact with friends, we are now on screens. In a world that is quickly going digital, people need in-person interactions like author visits. It makes them feel seen, heard, inspired, and special.
For me, I want kids to know that Walt Disney, Phil Knight, Ole Kirk Christiansen, and Ruth Handler were all regular kids in school once. But their ideas (which were all deemed bad at one point) changed the world! And these kids could, too. Entrepreneurship is key to changing the world and I am there to tell them how it’s done.
As an author watching how the publishing world will respond to AI, I recognize that AI will figure out how to write books that get published but AI will never, ever be able to give an in-person author visit – and I give a damn good one! So, whether it’s me or someone else, please bring a children’s author into your school this year!
