Welcome to the World of Artificial Intelligence

This week we have dived into the complex world of Artificial Intelligence! AI tools are entering our classrooms at a rapid pace, and it is so important that as educators we learn how to use them productively ourselves and teach our students effectively as well.

There are many ways we as teachers can use AI to help with daily tasks. I have seen teachers use AI to help generate report card comments, write letters to families, respond to emails, and give feedback on student work. Even though the teacher must modify all the AI responses to make them more personal or reflect their writing style, the amount of time saved is worth noting. In the video, Dr. Couros references that AI allows people to use the time saved to spend with family and other things that are important to them. As an administrator, I see how busy teachers are so using AI is a great tool to ease their workload and spend their time in other areas.

Aside from using AI to assist in administrative tasks, I have seen it used in ways to enhance student learning. Personally, the two AI tools I use most in my teachings are Diffit and SchoolAI. Diffit allows me to take any text and modify it to any grade level to meet the diverse needs of my students. SchoolAI has a sidekick feature that allows teachers to assign a personal AI assistant to the students. I can set the parameters for the sidekick such as “help them brainstorm ideas on a Social Justice issue, but do not write the paragraph for them” Then using a code, students enter and can ask the AI questions relating to the assignment. On the teacher dashboard, teachers can see everything the student has asked, and the AI provides a summary of their learning as well. I have found this extremely beneficial in providing feedback on essays as I do not have time to get to 30-plus students during the writing process, so this allows them to get some controlled feedback using AI as I can assign specifically what I want to give them feedback on.

The capabilities of AI are endless as we seen in the presentation by Dr. Couros, and it makes it so tempting for students to have it do their work for them. Because of this, it is so important to teach kids how to use it accurately and effectively. Furthermore, time must be spent discussing and analyzing how one can use AI and when it is considered cheating will students define the lines.  I hope that by exposing students to it in their middle years and teaching them how to use it to enhance their work, they will be less likely to use it inappropriately in the future. I strongly agree with Dr. Couros’ statement “Outsource your workload, not your thinking”. By using AI in the classroom early, we can show them the capabilities of AI and teach them the necessary skills needed to do exactly that- reduce your work but not your thinking! As a result, I feel students will be less inclined to cheat. Another profound takeaway was when Dr. Couros shared how biased AI can be. He provided examples of professors, who were portrayed as older white men. In contrast, when asking AI to show images of social services, images were quite the opposite. This can be used as a teachable moment in the classroom and requires educators to reflect on our own biases as well.

Our (Meagan and I) course prototype is not one where students would be able to use AI to complete it because they need to create a soundscape. However, they could use AI to brainstorm ideas to help them create the mood and tone they are going for. When creating lessons, it is important to try to add a personal component because that is what AI is lacking. AI responses are usually very formal, have a lot of transitions, and lack personal connections, so at times it can be easy to spot when students have used AI to complete the task. Now, this may become a lot harder to detect as students get older but speaking to my current population of 12-14-year-olds, I can usually spot AI use.

To be quite honest, given the sophisticated capabilities of AI, there are very few assignments that cannot be completed with AI in some way. Teachers need to always consider this and like I said earlier, try to add some personal connection to make the assignment more unique to the student. In addition, conversations about AI need to happen in the classroom creating safe and open conversations about cheating, and plagiarism. I can’t help but think back to when many educators thought using spell check was cheating and look where we are today! AI is only going to get more advanced as we have already seen how much it has improved in the last few years, and blocking the sites is not an option. Therefore, providing AI education is going to be crucial moving forward as it is going to have a huge impact on both teaching and learning in the years to come.