Generative AI tools could be used by students to cheat or cut corners, sure. But the potential implications of the technology on education go much further.
Rennie Greenfield, a librarian and instructional technologist at Hawken School, compared the concerns about artificial intelligence in education to the panic caused by the introduction of internet search engines in the ’90s – and, much earlier, by the publication of the first encyclopedias.
“I think we’re at another one of those inflection points,” he says. “This is just another new technology that is going to completely disrupt things, just like the internet did. And it’s going to disrupt things in a huge, huge way. We have to learn to teach them to use it as a tool, so that it does not drive a wedge between us and our students.”
The state of Ohio doesn’t have a set policy for AI use in schools. An email from a spokesperson noted that the Department of Education and Workforce is considering putting together guidance, but policies will be left to local districts.
In the Chagrin Falls Schools, instructional technology coach Molly Klodor has been running short training sessions on different AI tools for teachers and going into classrooms to help. One of the main benefits to AI is that it can serve as a “guide on the side,” Klodor says, offering tutoring-type services so students can check their work and understanding. AI allows students to find explanations for different concepts at their grade level, which can be tougher to do when searching for help on an internet search engine.
Corey Hoynacke, director of curriculum at the Summit Educational Service Center, which works to support local school districts through services like professional development, says the goal is to show students when to use AI and how to use it ethically. Students shouldn’t just be asking chatbots to write their essays for them. Hoynacke questions the value of assignments that can be completed by AI these days. “We are at this really amazing point in education where kids don’t need to know the answers anymore; they need to know how to evaluate them,” he says.
One way teachers have been doing this is having students show their work and the process they used, Hoynacke says.
Eric Curts, technology integration specialist at the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium, says he’s encouraging teachers to have their students cite any use of AI in their work, whether that’s a formal MLA citation or just a link to the chat they had with a tool. The transparency is important. AI use isn’t something to hide, he says, it just needs to be within a class’s guidelines of appropriate use.
It’s also important for students to understand what AI can’t do. It “hallucinates” all the time, Klodor adds, so students need to double-check any answers they receive. It’s biased, based on whatever inputs it receives, so students need to read answers critically. And students shouldn’t skip learning “the basics.”
“It’s about using AI as a tool to assist you and not as a tool to cut a corner,” she says. For teachers, AI can help with time-consuming tasks like writing emails or even creating the wrong answers for a multiple choice quiz. Freeing up their time for more productive uses.
And they can use it to help them better differentiate education for each student.
Hoynacke shared an example. A teacher had been looking for a version of an assessment for a student who had recently come to the U.S. and primarily spoke Spanish. Hoynacke helped the teacher put some of the assessment questions into an AI chatbot to be translated. Those questions were then checked by a teacher who could read Spanish and fed back into the chatbot to adjust the reading level. The process took minutes, instead of hours.
“This, I think, will essentially put a personalized tutor in the hands of every kid,” Hoynacke says.
Tips for parents:
For parents looking to help their children navigate the new world of AI, some research is required.
Klodor suggests if parents are helping with homework, it could be useful to walk through using an AI chat tool for support. Talk about what you’re asking the chatbot and why you’re asking it the way you are. After it gives an answer, talk about whether that answer makes sense to the student and why or why not.
Finding reputable and ethical AI tools is also important. Greenfield suggests looking into the technology companies behind the tools and learning about their mission statements, “guardrails” for output and policies on things like data use.
It’s also important to just have the “hard” conversations about how the internet —and the tools that use it — is flawed and biased, Klodor says. And talk to children about how to sift through information and find the right answers.
