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SoftBank Group, in collaboration with SoftBank Robotics America, brings the humanoid robot, Pepper, to students in the San Francisco Unified School District.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to make advances and is becoming integrated into more aspects of society, such as education.
Marshalltown Community School District officials are considering ways to incorporate the technology wisely into the education of the students. How prevalent the usage of AI is already in student work is not easy to determine.
Director of Technology Amy Harmsen said she wanted to clear up assumptions of the presence of AI on the district devices, such as the Chromebooks.
“We monitor and filter student devices the district owns,” she said. “We can’t monitor or filter student devices personally owned, such as their phones. There’s no way we could ever 100 percent prevent students from using AI. I don’t know prevention would be what we want to do. We’re trying to pursue a meaningful global future. We want to make sure they can be global citizens.”
The district uses a system called GoGuardian to filter Chromebooks. Harmsen said they do not allow the generative AI category on the devices. However, since the depth of the internet is so broad, she said even the algorithm of GoGuardian cannot block everything.
“I can’t tell you with 100 percent certainty we have blocked everything,” Harmsen said. “Our intention is not to block everything. It is to first give teachers guidelines with certain tools we have vetted before we actively start asking them to use it.”
While a lot of the focus has been placed on the negative aspects of AI, she said it is important for MCSD to focus on safety, privacy and data protection for the students.
“I don’t think we are quite ready to roll out specific guidelines,” Harmsen said. “We want to make sure we are telling and we are following FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] guidelines.”
As a result, she is not telling people certain websites are approved yet because of the large number. The websites need to be accessible to all students, is accurate, unbiased, reliable and it can be monitored and safeguarded.
Director of Instruction Shauna Smith said it is important for MCSD students to learn the appropriate use of the technology.
“For example, if an assignment prompted students in social studies about the Civil War, and the student copied the prompt into AI and then they copied and pasted the response from AI into the assignment – that would be an inappropriate use of AI,” she said. “They are essentially using it to gather facts and not using cognitive depth of knowledge. There is a higher order of thinking that can be used in AI. If you compose a structure for an essay and you want AI to support you with additional details or find specific grammatical errors, AI can provide more sophistication in assignments.”
There is a high-quality computer science opportunity for MCSD students starting in kindergarten, Smith said. District personnel are looking into a program which combines coding with AI. That will give students the knowledge of how AI and coding work together, she said.
“I don’t think there’s another school in the entire state of Iowa that is looking into something like that,” Smith said. “We’re in development stages in trying to think of how it can work for our upper elementary kids.”
There is also an advanced early literacy AI program called EPS Reading Assistance, with positive evidence-based results. The state of Iowa purchased the program and made it available to all school districts. Smith said they are learning more about it.
“It uses AI to adapt to student’s fluency rates when they read aloud, and can correct it,” she said. “Then it can answer and converse about the comprehension of the text.”
With AI bearing the power to completely change potential career paths of students, she said they are trying to stay progressive “to prepare students to adapt to whatever future career.”
In light of conversations around the appropriate usage of AI, Harmsen said there are ways to determine whether or not a student has used the technology. In some of the buildings, staff are using an anti-plagiarism tool to detect AI. Harmsen said while they are vetting tools to add to the district, the teachers and the relationships with the students are the most valuable deterrent.
“Our teachers care to know our students, so they know their writing style,” she said. “They know a lot about the depth of knowledge of each student. So, a lot of it is asking the teachers to do what they have done for years with plagiarism and thinking does this student really know this and write this in this way.”
The teachers then fact check to ensure the student is learning the material. Harmsen said the policy of the district declares that if a student goes against AI expectations, discipline will be pursued.
According to Smith, the discipline is determined by the building principals.
“AI is growing and we are continually having internal conversations on how we will proceed,” she said.
Educators are grappling with the proper next step, Smith said, because the technology has become global and cannot be stopped.
“I would encourage parents and students to give us some grace as we are continuously learning how to navigate artificial intelligence,” she said. “It’s here. We know it’s here and I think it can be an excellent learning tool if applied correctly.”
Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.