How teachers are navigating the Wild West of AI

Editor’s note: As students in metro Atlanta return to school this week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is publishing several guest opinion columns about how artificial intelligence is reshaping education. Here is the latest of these essays.

Every teacher in the nation has an assistant now. Its name? AI. At least that’s what many educational AI platforms are touting.

Grade the papers. Make a worksheet. Form a rubric. Create the slide show. Generate topical daily lesson plans with engaging hands-on activities.

Although AI is becoming more prevalent among teachers and students, there is no federal policy for AI use in schools. School administrators, superintendents and leaders are having to go it alone and looking for help. Sixty percent of educators say they “somewhat” or “completely” disagree that their district has made clear its AI policies, Education Week reports. Many AI policies in schools are directed at students’ usage, having little instruction on helpful standards and practices for teachers’ use of AI.

We are still in the Wild West of AI, and educators are on the front lines.

Beth Collums. Contributed.

When I started researching this topic, I thought I’d find dozens of different teacher resources, from K-12 to higher ed. What I found on education websites, app stores and teacher message boards was staggering. There are thousands of AI apps and tools for teachers. The diversity and sheer quantity of AI educator focused content is staggering. And they’re not just defensive tools to catch a sneaky copy and paste thief.

AI can assist teachers in everything from what you could expect like using Canva Magic Write for creating slideshow graphics to what you might not quickly guess such as, OtterAI for recording and emailing transcripts of parent-teacher conferences and staff meetings. If you can think of a subject for educators, there is an AI tool for it.

It seems as if the question of AI in education has long passed ‘if’ and moved on to ‘what, how and when.’

The opinions on educators using AI is not unlike many other areas of AI adoption, often falling into expected generational divides with younger teachers being more open and willing to incorporate new tools into their everyday teaching methods.

We recently asked educators to tell us about their classroom experiences with AI. One commented: “It helps me supplement the textbook by finding me other sources and helping me with keywords to do my own PubMed searches.” (Little longitudinal research has been done on teaching with AI assistance, how it impacts teachers, students, the classroom environment or educational outcomes.)

Another AJC reader and educator commented: “I use AI to modify district-provided lessons to meet the needs of the actual students in front of me. I have also used it by feeding it the lesson and allowing it to create the first draft of any instructional slides I may need. I use it to generate worksheets that I can’t find anywhere else. The list goes on! It saves time that I can spend in other ways, such as advocating for students and staff.”

How do educators categorize sensitive student data and ensure privacy? What are the hazards of teachers using AI in administrative activities such as meetings, emails and grading? Right now we have more questions than answers. One thing that people seem to agree on is that AI tools have the ability to make the difficult job of teaching a little easier.

Although there will always be skeptics as one AJC reader warned, “If teachers insist on using (Large language models) to generate content for their courses, I hope they will at least carefully proofread and fact check everything. If you don’t know enough about the subject to effectively fact check the chatbot, please don’t use it — instead do real research with real sources.”