A Voice in the Wilderness - Blog
AI, Imagination, and the Future of Learning
Like the rest of the world, Shawnigan has been working on ways to address the rapid changes that artificial intelligence large language models have been bringing in recent years. Dr. Brad Necyk came to Shawnigan this with experience in digital practices, media arts, and emerging technologies, and expertise in creative artificial intelligence, agentic workflows, and computational art. Among his many responsibilities at the School, Dr. Necyk is running the first 360 (co-curricular arts and activities) program dedicated to working with AI. In this post, Dr. Necyk discusses when, what, and how we can learn from AI.
We are living through a period of extraordinary technological change, and the world our students are preparing to enter is changing just as quickly. That makes it increasingly important that they develop not only technical skills, but the judgment to understand when and how these technologies should be used.
At Shawnigan, we have been thinking about this through three connected perspectives: when to learn without AI, when to learn with AI, and how to learn about AI.
Each one matters.
There are moments when students need to wrestle with a problem independently, develop foundational knowledge, and strengthen their own thinking. There are also moments when AI can become an extraordinary collaborator, helping students explore ideas, prototype, create, question, and build in ways that were previously difficult or inaccessible. And then there is the equally important task of learning about AI itself.
That means more than understanding how a large language model works. It means examining the cultural, ethical, creative, and social questions surrounding a technology that is developing faster than any curriculum possibly could.
One of the ideas that excites me most is that when new technologies emerge, we often do not yet possess an imagination adequate to understanding what they are ultimately for. We can already see remarkable possibilities in artificial intelligence, but I suspect we have barely begun to understand what it might allow us to create or understand, personally or collectively.
As an artist and educator, I find that incredibly exciting. Artists have always pushed and pulled at new technologies, experimented with them, broken conventions, and helped us discover possibilities that were not obvious at first. Our new AI Explorations in Creativity 360 is designed in that spirit. It is a space for tinkering, experimentation, divergent thinking, and creative risk-taking. Students can take their imaginations seriously and begin turning ideas into things that can actually be experienced, tested, and shared.
There is no fixed formula for teaching this moment because the technology itself is changing almost daily. New possibilities emerge, but so do new challenges. Our responsibility as educators is therefore to remain present, responsive, critical, and curious alongside our students.
I am an optimist. I believe deeply in positive and abundant futures, but those futures are not automatic. They will depend on the questions we ask, the things we choose to build, and the wisdom with which we use increasingly powerful tools.
That is what makes this work at Shawnigan so exciting. We are not simply preparing students for a rapidly changing world. We are giving them opportunities to imagine, question, and help shape the kind of world they want to inherit.
Author’s note: This reflection was shaped by Dr. Brad Necyk while hiking through the temperate forests and mountains of Vancouver Island with his dog, Leia, speaking into ChatGPT through his phone as a kind of portable intellectual and creative collaborator. Over several years, Necyk has brought into these conversations his personal writing, published and unpublished books and essays, his doctoral dissertation, ongoing research into art and imagination, and the philosophical and pedagogical questions that animate his practice. The resulting text is therefore not simply AI-generated writing, but part of a longer exchange in which Necyk has shaped the machine through what he has shared with it, while his own thinking, language, art, and teaching have also been shaped through sustained conversation with machine intelligence.
Dr. Brad Necyk teaches digital media and computer science at Shawnigan Lake School, and runs the AI Explorations in Creativity 360, and is the fifth person to serve as the School’s Bruce-Lockhart Fellow for Academic Excellence. He has 15 years of university teaching experience spanning digital practices, media arts, and emerging technologies. Dr. Necyk received his PhD in psychiatry from the University of Alberta, where his doctoral research was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal, and has done postdoctoral research at York University and the University of California Santa Cruz.
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Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 12 –18 on Canada’s beautiful Pacific Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
