Artificial intelligence has been improving rapidly over the past few years, and nowhere is that more evident than in education. AI can create a podcast to help you learn more about a subject, brainstorm an essay for you, give you feedback on writing. It can also, more dangerously, do your homework.
Scores of programs have popped up in the last few years that promise to provide the benefits of AI to teachers and students, but with guardrails. And school districts are signing up. Educators say they want to make sure students understand the new technology because it will be an ever-growing part of their future.
AI with guardrails
Bend-La Pine Schools has been using Magic School.AI for two years. It boasts dozens of tools for both teachers and students, including a rubric generator, lesson plan generator and gives writing feedback.
Tracy Howk, with the district’s educational technology department, led trainings last year with administrators on the basics of AI, responsible use, best practices and the environmental impacts of the technology. The group also talked about the limitations of AI. Howk also spoke with students and brought that feedback to administrators before school started this fall.
“The district views AI as a teaching and learning tool,” she said. “It is never a replacement for our own thoughts, critical thinking skills, learning.”
The district has an AI policy, a statement in class syllabi, and an acceptable use agreement that allows teachers to dictate how much AI use will be allowed on an assignment.
“AI is here,” said Howk. “Students will be using it in their futures. They’re using it now, they’re going to be using it in college and careers. And we want to equip them with what they need to succeed now and in the future.”
Joel Clements, literature teacher at Mountain View High, started using Magic School.AI in classes last year. He’s made it clear to his students that AI is wrong 20% of the time, and wants to be transparent with students to analyze how the tech works. He cited an example where AI said that actor Matthew Fox was dead, simply because it was getting the information from a headline calling him an actor from “Lost.”
“The thing that really struck me a while back was the ethical obligation, not talking about cheating, but beyond school: This is how people are going to be researching. Students use AI for searching the internet more than they use Google. And so that comes with a whole set of … responsibility for teachers,” Clements said.
Clements asks his students to analyze the information Magic School.AI provides and tasks the to figure out if it is useful or not. The platform is the only AI program students can access, and it comes with guardrails. When given certain prompts, AI may tell students it cannot do something. One of the tools allows students to talk to a character from literature, and can be set with restrictions so the character can only talk about certain topics.
Clements, who has taught at Mountain View High for 22 years, uses Magic School.AI to generate examples of thesis statements, and he can pick out the ones that work best for the assignment. He’s also created lists of instructions, and had AI rewrite them for different reading levels.
Mahlia Crooks, 17, said she wasn’t very interested in using AI before last year because how easy it was for other students to cheat with it.
“Last year we did use it as a tool and I found it pretty helpful because it allowed you to kind of explore ideas that you wouldn’t have thought about before in different ways to see the topic that you were researching,” she said.
After using it in class, she said she’s become more careful about doing additional research to make sure she’s getting accurate information.
Different levels of AI use
Cascades Academy, a private school teaching pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade near Tumalo, has an AI usage framework in place for students. It includes different levels of AI use, from no use to AI as a co-creator. This shows students how to use AI responsibly, and learn different scenarios for times when AI is helpful and when they should use their own knowledge and skills.
“We definitely don’t see AI as all good or all bad,” said Kelly Fast, director of academic and experiential programs. “Our philosophy is that we want students to understand where and when it can be useful and where it cannot replace authentic learning.”
Depending on the assignment, students may use AI to help gather ideas, help edit writing or to create graphs. Teachers might also set up assignments allowing students to use AI to create part of it. Overall, the goal is to teach responsible use.
“It’s really much more about the teacher thinking about what are the outcomes, what are we trying to teach, what is this assignment trying to do, instead of simply saying, here’s an assignment, you cannot use it,” Fast said.
Cascades Academy has also started a media literacy course for eighth graders this year, which includes traditional media literacy such as understanding bias and AI-specific skills. Teachers are also using AI to cut time-consuming tasks out of their days.
“I think to be a teacher currently planning an assignment with AI in mind, really thinking about when it helps to elevate an assignment and when it can undermine the learning in an assignment is something they have to keep in mind,” said Fast. “And so really hoping to provide supervised experimentation with AI while continuing to emphasize thinking and writing without the use of technology, to balance those two things.”
Waiting and learning
Crook County Schools is holding off on letting students use AI on assignments and has started an AI steering committee that meets every other week to hash out professional development and a district policy. The tentative plan is to have a solid policy and professional development for educators this academic year. For now, ChatGPT and other AI programs are blocked on district devices for students.
“I think AI can have that same negative impact if it’s not rolled out the right way and communicated and trained and taught the right way,” said Eric Ryan, director of technology for the district.
Teachers and staff are able to use AI tools, and computer science teacher Jason Mumm is crafting an AI unit for his classes to put into place this year. He’s interested in scaffolding how kids learn about AI: starting with how it works and building up to how to use it responsibly.
“This is a tool that’s powerful that can increase your knowledge and take you places that you couldn’t go before it, but at the same time let’s use it the right way,” Mumm said. “Let’s learn how it works. Let’s figure out what to do to help supplement our physical learning in the classroom … I want it to help me be a better educator and I want it to help my students grow in that field.”
