1About the Author¶
Dr. Ernesto Lee is a professor of information technology and applied artificial intelligence at Miami Dade College. He lives at the intersection of technology and learning — not as a technologist who wandered into education, but as an educator who takes technology seriously enough to ask hard questions about it. His work begins from a simple conviction: tools only matter in the hands of people who understand why they’re teaching in the first place. Everything else is noise.
His approach to AI education is deliberately grounded. Where many in the field focus on what’s possible, Dr. Lee focuses on what’s useful — and more importantly, what’s true. The seventeen learning theories that anchor this book are not decorative. They are the framework through which he insists AI be understood: not as a subject to be added to the curriculum, but as a condition the classroom has to reckon with, whether anyone decides to or not. His course, CAI1001C: AI Thinking for Educators, was designed for K-12 teachers precisely because the people most affected by AI in education are rarely the ones writing about it. He wrote this book to change that.
This work carries a personal weight that goes beyond professional interest. Dr. Lee’s grandmother, Thelma Elaine Eason, taught first grade for thirty and a half years. She never needed a smartboard to make a child feel seen. She understood, at a bone-deep level, that teaching is not the delivery of information — it is the deliberate act of reaching another human being. That legacy sits at the heart of this book. In an era when machines are learning to do more, Dr. Lee holds firm to the conviction that the human teacher remains irreducible. Not because of sentiment, but because of what teaching actually is.
Miami Dade College
Dr. Ernesto Lee teaches at Miami Dade College.
AI Thinking for Educators — CAI1001C