From AI Anxiety to Agency: Using Ecocycle Planning to Build a Human-Centered AI Culture
Schools are under pressure to respond to AI quickly. Yet the hardest questions are not about how the tools work; they are about how schools protect learner thinking, redesign assessment, support teachers and develop shared, responsible practices.
- How can a school ensure that AI strengthens learner thinking rather than replaces it?
- Which current practices should be sustained, redesigned, expanded or stopped?
- How can teachers, leaders, librarians, IT teams, learners and families develop a shared and responsible approach?
This interactive Think Tank uses Ecocycle Planning, a Liberating Structures method, to help participants map their school’s current AI-related activities. Participants will examine areas including learner agency, assessment, educator professional learning, privacy and safeguarding, policy, stakeholder communication and digital citizenship.
Drawing on the emerging work of the Bishops AI Committee in Cape Town, South Africa, the session offers a practical, non-tool-specific way to move beyond AI anxiety and fragmented experimentation. Participants will identify where initiatives may be stuck determine what requires investment or redesign and leave with one practical next step for their own context.
This is not a session about adopting a particular platform or imposing a universal policy. It is a structured opportunity for educators and leaders to make sense of their present reality, use collective judgement and develop a human-centered pathway for responsible AI practice.
Facilitated By
Bronwyn Desjardins
Digital Learning and ICT Integrator, Bishops Diocesan College
Bronwyn Desjardins is the Digital Learning & ICT Integrator at Bishops Diocesan College in Cape Town, South Africa, where she chairs the school’s AI Committee. She works with teachers and leaders to ensure that technology and AI strengthen learning, critical thinking, creativity and student agency; not simply digitize existing practice.
As the Apple Professional Learning Lead for South Africa and an Apple Distinguished Educator, Bronwyn has extensive experience in educational technology integration, teacher professional learning, digital citizenship and online safety. She is a Mindjoy Frontier Class member, exploring human-centered uses of AI that scaffold learner thinking and confidence. She also co-founded and leads the Western Cape ISASA Digivation Cluster, connecting independent-school educators around intentional digital pedagogy and innovation.
Through Bloop Training, Bronwyn has worked with schools and communities in South Africa and Mauritius on digital literacy, AI, online safety and meaningful technology use. A regular conference speaker, she brings a practical South African and Global South perspective to questions of responsible AI, assessment and educational change.”
