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Future Vision: Every 4th Grader in Defiance County as Published Authors?

It could happen with the help of AI.




Earlier this month, I was invited to attend the 2025 Jacket Summit at Defiance College. The Summit is designed to complement DC’s unique career readiness program called Jacket Journey. In Jacket Journey, the college requires students to spend four years developing the “language of employability.” To ensure this occurs, Defiance College invited local leaders and employers to hear about the state of the region, along with inviting them to give feedback on what critical skills are missing when they are hiring recent graduates.


I went there, expecting to hear a lot of what I hear when I am visiting local and regional companies. Kids these days don’t know how to communicate, they all want to work from home or not work at all, they are not engaged in the community, etc. But what I heard was profound.


Defiance College welcomed Tom Bush, the founder of Actual Reality Technologies, to discuss the importance of embracing Artificial Intelligence. He emphasized that rather than fearing a future dominated by robots, we should recognize the benefits and opportunities AI presents.


He posed the question: What if you could say that every 4th grader in your community was a published author? Would that attract people to your schools and communities? For me, the answer was an immediate and resounding "YES."


He mentioned that he organized an event called EmpoweredAI’s Publishers Party in Toledo, where forty students had the opportunity to publish their own books. They used AI as a tool to enhance their storylines and creativity. This program, the first of its kind in the nation, provided these young authors with the confidence to write a book and boosted their self-assurance as individuals.


How about we implement something similar in Defiance County? Imagine offering courses on AP Prompt Engineering. You might be wondering, what is that? It's the skill of providing clear instructions to generate specific, high-quality outputs using AI models.


While it might sound intimidating or even like cheating, Bush pointed out in the meeting that if a tool can help you complete a work document in 5 minutes instead of two hours, it's not cheating—it's streamlining the business process.


So, what are your thoughts about integrating AI? Your insights are invaluable as we navigate the integration of this transformative technology into our community. How do you envision our local schools and businesses leveraging AI? I invite you to share your thoughts and recommendations by emailing me at Erika@DefianceCountyED.com. I also invite you to visit Tom Bush’s websites: www.actualreality.tech and www.empoweredai.org.


(Column Written by Erika Willitzer, Executive Director of Defiance County Economic Development)

For business expansion and/or workforce resources, email Erika@DefianceCountyED.com.


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Office Phone: 419-784-4471

Defiance County Economic Development

1300 E. Second St., Suite 201

Defiance, Ohio 43512

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