Navigating AI’s Role in Modern Assessment Practices

This week, I did something I never imagined when I first stepped into a classroom nearly three decades ago.   I delivered my first international presentation, for AtomCamp Arabia, on Using AI to Transform Assessment.

Even as I type those words, it still feels surreal.

The Nerves That Came First

In the hours leading up to the presentation, my stomach did every acrobatic trick it could think of. It wasn’t stage fright, I present often, and I love it, but this felt different.

There was something about stepping into a global space that made me pause. I wondered:

Would my experiences resonate?
Would my examples make sense?
Would educators in other countries even be wrestling with the same questions I was raising?

It turns out the answer was a loud, resounding yes, but I didn’t know that yet.

The funny thing is that the moment I started talking, the nerves completely dissolved. The transition was almost physical. As soon as I reached my second slide, asking for audience participation, something clicked.

I wasn’t speaking to strangers across the world. I was speaking to educators. And educators, no matter where they are on the planet, understand one another in a way that is almost magical.

A Global Conversation About a Global Challenge

What surprised me most was how quickly the presentation turned into a conversation, not just a lecture. As participants added comments and questions, I could hear echoes of the same themes I hear every day from teachers in Iowa, across the U.S., and even from colleagues in my advisory and policy work.

Everyone, and I mean every educator everywhere, is trying to navigate this moment.

The educators in AtomCamp Arabia asked the same kinds of questions we are asking here:

• How do we use AI ethically?
  
• How do we maintain the teacher’s role as the final decision-maker?
  
• How do we transform assessment to actually measure thinking?
  
• How do we keep equity, access, and student learning at the center?
  

They asked about the same tensions including AI’s incredible abilities, the responsibility to do so with guardrails, transparency, and teacher authority.

We talked about the clerical load that crushes teachers everywhere. They nodded (virtually) when I reminded them that AI does not replace educators, it amplifies them.

We are much more alike than we are different I realized.  The struggle is the same, desire also the same, and the heart behind the work still beats deeply, the same.  

And that realization was deeply moving.

We Are Wrestling With the Same Thing—Together

Across languages, regions, and educational structures, we are all facing the same challenges.  How do we shift from policing to transforming?   From catching wrongdoing to designing learning that sparks curiosity, creativity, and deep thinking?

It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching in Iowa, Dubai, Morocco, or Jordan, AI is pushing us all to rethink assessment from the ground up. The very same themes from my presentation resonated everywhere:

• Moving from recall to critical creation
  
• Making assessment more formative by default
  
• Using AI to provide instant, actionable feedback
  
• Examining the data to uncover common misconceptions
  
• Supporting multilingual learners and diverse needs through multimodal tools
  
• Reclaiming time so teachers can focus on relationships and reasoning, not paperwork
  
• Keeping the human at the center with strong, transparent ethical guardrails
  

We are living through a global transformation, and somehow, this moment reminded me that we don’t have to figure it out alone.

The Moment That Stayed With Me

After we finished, someone commented that the focus on human-centered design, teachers as the ultimate evaluators, helped them see AI not as a threat, but as a partner.

That was the moment I knew this wasn’t just my first international presentation.  It was the beginning of an international community of practice.

I closed the session feeling grateful, energized, and connected in a way I didn’t expect.

A Final Reflection

We often talk about AI as if it’s a technology problem.  But in reality, it’s a human one.

This week reminded me that educators everywhere share the same hope, that with the right tools, the right ethics, and the right support, we can transform learning in ways we couldn’t imagine even five years ago.

And standing in that virtual room with educators from across the world, I realized something.  AI isn’t what connects us.  Our commitment to students does.

And that commitment is beautifully, powerfully universal.

Special thanks to atomcamp Arabia for allowing me to present on Using AI to Transform Assessment.