AI in classrooms

Too often the conversations around students and generative artificial intelligence (genAI) revolve solely around cheating or academic dishonesty. As any veteran educator can attest to, setting expectations low and solely focusing on one element, make the focus of the students and provide no incentive to reach a higher level or expectation. Staying within this low level view of student genAI is doing a disservice to any student in such a classroom, school, or district. We must assemble teams of rightsholders to craft guidelines and provide recommendations of use, software, and curriculum to provide students with a well-rounded genAI education with hands-on, experiential learning.

Make Up of the Team

As you begin to think about the team that will lead your genAI work, please think about all those rightsholders that could be affected by a lack of knowledge or skills. Example members could include, but not be limited to, students, guardians, teachers, building leaders, district leaders, community members, and school board members. If it isn’t possible to include all of these members throughout the process, it is critical that they are included at milestone moments to provide feedback and help craft the final product(s). Being part of the process can provide a modicum of ownership and buy-in for the eventual implementation.

Artifacts to Create

This team doesn’t have an easy or small task to accomplish by any means. The ever-evolving nature of genAI ensures that this team’s work must continue past initial guidelines, professional development, etc. This team should meet at least east semester, after the initial more frequent meetings, to ensure valuable guidance artifacts remain as up-to-date as possible. Some of these creations are listed below but every school and district is different, just like our students, so your team should evaluate and create based on your unique needs.

Initial Needs:

Resource curation
AI plan that includes informing & training all stakeholders, guidelines for responsible use of genAI differentiated by school level, curriculum review & creation, tool evaluation and approval for use

Ongoing Needs:

Examination of education community needs and corresponding tools
Resource Curation
Document updates based on new capabilities, tools, etc.
Review of tools for privacy, security, and age-appropriateness for potential approval for use
Differentiated professional development
Empowerment opportunities for each group of rightsholders

Curriculum for Students

Now that your genAI team has a plan and guidelines in place, a key element of implementation must be creating or selecting a curriculum to educate students. It is likely that your team will need to customize curated curriculum resources to create a tailored experience aligned to the needs of your students. Some valuable resources to aid you in this process are listed below. Utilize the comments section and/or social media to share others you find during your important work to prepare students for the future world they’ll enter.

Tools for Students

Throughout your curriculum, you will have included numerous tools and/or uses of tools that give your students a well rounded and experiential learning experience with genAI. Some of the best tools available for schools have a cost associated with them or are what I call “freemium” tools that provide a certain level or amount of use before hitting a paywall. As you complete your initial work in the space of selecting genAI tools for student use, or look to expand your current plan’s resource bank, consider the tools below and add your own through comments or social media.

Free and No-Login

Free

Freemium/Paid

Examples of Student Use

Though many of the most popular tools are not rated for students to use, especially without parental permission, the tools in the prior section provide safe avenues to hands-on learning opportunities. After identifying the tools that will be available to use, it is critical to follow tenets of meaningful technology integration (SAMR, TPACK, PICRAT, EdTech Triangle, VATT) to ensure use isn’t simply to play with the shiny new tool. Educational technology use should enhance what has been done before or create new opportunities that didn’t exist before. It should never be used just to be used nor should it come before the learning objective in the planning process. Some examples of student genAI use and learning are below. What will you and your team design for students?

Conclusion

Though genAI is the elephant in nearly every educational room right now, it is critically important to keep our focus on what education should always be about… what is best for students. Some zealous genAI advocates claim it to be the magical tool to fix all things in education, but this is simply not true. No one tool or educator can be the thing that makes education amazing for every student. Relationships and teamwork throughout an educational community are what make the student journey both memorable and full of growth. Throughout the not so distant past in education this community has evolved through innovations of this magnitude before (i.e. the internet) and it will again. The key is to keep our focus on human connection, important learning targets, and, only then, on the technologies that can enhance or make new opportunities possible.

More resources for Getting Started with Responsible AI for Students can be found in the linked slide deck.

The World Above the Low Expectation of Students Cheating with AI