ALFAN SUBEKTI/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

 

Constance Logan was reading on her iPad during a well-deserved Thanksgiving break from teaching social studies and creative writing to eighth-grade students in Washington’s Snoqualmie Valley School District. She came across an article about a new artificial intelligence (AI) application that had just been released.

“It was serendipitous, I suppose,” Logan says of seeing the article on ChatGPT, the chatbot and virtual assistant released in November 2022. “Because we were on a break, I had some time and decided to try it out. Within a couple of minutes, I had it write a poem for me, and that was it. I was hooked. I started saying to everyone, ‘Look at what this thing can do!’”

For Logan, ChatGPT and other AI tools represent a new wave of possibilities and opportunities for both students and teachers. But as educators start to embrace this rapidly evolving technology — a process described by a colleague of Logan’s as “building the plane while flying it” — they also remain concerned about its potential risks and dangers.

“We are all grappling with this,” says Joy Barnes-Johnson, science supervisor for New Jersey’s Princeton Public Schools. “What people who are resisting it don’t understand is that AI is everywhere. We’re already using it. I think there’s something profound about developing in students the academic integrity to know what’s generated and what’s developed naturally and organically because of the work they do. The harm comes when people misalign AI’s uses and value.”

Located more than 2,800 miles from each other on opposite ends of the country, Princeton and Snoqualmie districts are embracing AI while taking a measured approach to its implementation. Over the past 18 months, many school districts nationwide have started offering training to teachers on AI, according to an April 2024 study by researchers at RAND. Many still have qualms about how the tools will be used in classrooms.

“AI is going to be a big part of all of our careers in all professions going forward, but it’s not going to replace teaching and learning,” says Ram Dutt Vedullapalli, a Snoqualmie Valley school board member who started his own technology company in 2009. “It’s a tool, and our students need to learn how to use tools properly. The question is how we embrace AI and in a structural and strategic way to show them how it can be used for their own growth.”

Early adopters

ChatGPT is an AI assistant designed to follow instructions in a prompt and then provide a detailed response in a matter of seconds. Through the prompt, it allows users to dictate the length, language, format, style, and degree of detail in the response.

Logan says this work, known as prompt engineering, requires students to have strong communications skills and innate curiosity about a topic. She said AI serves as a “background generator,” providing ways to explore different topics and helping to organize them.

“AI is great because it can take the germ of an idea and make something happen with it so quickly,” says Logan, whose students have used ChatGPT to help write and refine a marketing campaign and in developing ideas for essay writing as part of a Snoqualmie pilot program. “But you have to come up with the initial spark. Without it, nothing can happen.”

When Logan approached the district’s technology director about setting up the pilot program that started in the spring of 2023, Justin Talmadge was initially cautious.

“We weren’t all in right away,” Talmadge says. “I’m mindful that the latest and greatest newest shiny gadgets aren’t necessarily going to be the tried-and-true pedological practices that are going to work in the classroom. At the same time, our district prides itself on being a digital learning leader, so we had to be willing to think outside the box.”

The district’s developed a website explaining all the relevant information on ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. Parents were required to opt in their students for Logan’s pilot and other efforts at the high school level. Talmadge says it’s noteworthy that no one has declined. In preparing for the pilot, Logan worked with the district’s digital learning coach to structure the program so data could be collected on the pilot’s effectiveness.

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Snoqualmie Valley, which serves about 7,100 students in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, is a logical place for the early adoption of AI and other forms of technology. It’s located about 30 miles from Seattle, home to Microsoft and others, and many of the district’s residents work in some part of the region’s huge tech sector.

One challenge, Talmadge says, has been convincing teachers to embrace the technology despite their misgivings — an issue that is true nationwide. A fall 2023 Pew Research Center survey says 25% of K-12 teachers believe the tools do more harm than good, while fewer than 10% believe the opposite. The rest are still unsure, according to the survey.

The numbers were not quite as dire in Snoqualmie, which conducted its own staff survey in the fall of 2023, but Talmadge says the responses were a “pretty classic bell curve.”

“Some said it was ridiculous and were really skeptical, while you had some hard-charging early adopters who were quick to embrace it,” Talmadge says. “Then we had a large middle that was intrigued and interested in the possibilities, but they were quick to say, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know, and we need training.’ So that’s what we’ve tried to do.”

PRINCETON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS DISPLAY PROTOTYPES OF THE AI-POWERED ROBOTIC STUFFED ANIMAL THAT THEY DESIGNED TO PRESERVE AND TEACH MAM, A MAYAN LANGUAGE IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SAMSUNG SOLVE FOR TOMORROW

 

Brain trust

In Princeton, Barnes-Johnson says teachers have voiced similar concerns about AI, with some worried that it will make it easier for students to cheat on assignments. The district held its own AI summit over the summer to talk about how the technology should be used in the classroom.

“We do get into silos based on our comfort and experience,” Barnes-Johnson says. “AI is taking us to a completely different space because it is evolving on an almost-daily basis. If you think teaching and learning is going to remain the same, you’re going to be left behind.”

Barnes-Johnson’s approach is to remind teachers that AI is a tool that digitally captures information that “allows us to see things faster” and helps “children to stretch in their learning.” In this new world, she is urging teachers to “think about our why. Why don’t we want to allow new things. Why do we think a certain way?”

“If teachers think of AI as a tool for cheating, perhaps they need to look at the tasks they are teaching,” Barnes-Johnson says. “In some respects, AI levels the playing field. It’s bottom up instead of top down. It’s a brain trust rather than a brain dump.”

As an example, Barnes-Johnson points to a project that students at Princeton High School developed last year using AI, winning a $100,000 prize package in a Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition. The students developed a robotic stuffed animal that speaks the Mayan language, Mam.

Working with four teachers after school for several months, the students used recorded and translated phrases to build an AI speech recognizer and translator that uses Mam, which is widely spoken in parts of Mexico and Guatemala but is currently at risk of becoming extinct, according to UNESCO. The robot was trained in English, Spanish, and Mam to use the language for student tutorials.

“You had students who were interested in machine learning and students who are interested in solving problems around language and communication,” Barnes-Johnson says. “What’s so beautiful about this project is that these students would not have naturally interacted in the way they did. Working together, they eventually saw that this was bigger than they actually thought it would be and at the same time a really useful application of machine learning. “

Logan has seen the same benefits that AI can bring to her classroom and to her students.

“With AI, being nimble will become increasingly valuable,” she says. “I think of it as the rise of the generalist. For students and teachers, you have to be nimble on your feet and nimble in your thinking. AI knows the basic facts, but the person using it has personal experience. It’s a tool that prompts a creative spark. It’s not going to replace the ideas that lead to innovation.”

Strike a balance

Technology innovations over the past several decades—from calculators to smartphones to tablets and beyond—have proven the cork can’t be put back in the bottle despite educator misgivings. AI’s quick rise in conversations—from classrooms to boardrooms and in arenas that go far beyond K-12 education—means it’s something every district is dealing with or will be faced with in the near future.

Vedullapalli says he has agreed with Snoqualmie’s approach to the use of AI so far, calling it an “organized, restrictive, and controlled environment.” He envisions two pathways—one for teachers and one for students—and says additional collaboration will be necessary to be successful in implementing the tool.

“We are early adopters, but you have to take those precautions,” he says, citing the pilot program and the follow-up surveys with teachers and staff. “We have to empower our teachers to use AI, not just for their teaching, but for lesson plans and other ways to help them reduce their workload. At the same time, we have to understand where we can integrate it into different subjects across the curriculum, and I think you’ll see that develop a lot more over this next year.”

Talmadge says Snoqualmie’s ongoing task is determining how AI can be used throughout the district for specific tasks and across the curriculum. Over the summer, a consultant led staff workshops around the use of the technology and plans are to continue extensive training this year and beyond.

“We’re not trying to push this onto our teachers. It’s important to involve our staff, and a top-down approach is not the way to go if you’re going to have long-lasting change in education,” he says. “So we’re saying this is what we think on a district level. And we’re asking our teachers, ‘How can you become involved in changing what we do as a district with AI to meet the needs of our students going forward?’”

Talmadge says the district also is working to become “critical consumers of AI technologies” as companies try to capitalize “on the frenzy” around the technology.

“As with everything, you have to strike a balance. I want us to continue to take a slow and measured approach while at the same time embracing this opportunity for what it is,” he says. “And it is an opportunity to do something great for our staff and for our kids.”