SCHool Magazine Features

Demystifying AI in the Classroom

Fueling their unwavering curiosity, a cornerstone of SCH Academy's mission, this community is actively embracing innovation and exploring how AI can revolutionize the classroom experience.

Artificial intelligence has been in the country’s classrooms for several decades, from the PLATO program in the 1960s to writing-to-read programs in the 1980s, and parents have been familiar with newer AI technology for years with apps such as Seesaw, Google Classroom, Khan Academy, and Duolingo, which are ever evolving. While initial responses to ChatGPT and the rapid rise of AI as we know it were somewhat terrifying—Elon Musk warned it could cause “civilization destruction”—subsequent responses have been more positive, at least at SCH Academy. Having formed an AI committee in early 2023, members of this community have had an open mind to the possibilities of AI in Upper and Middle School classrooms and are committed to continuing to learn with it.

“We have a profound responsibility to prepare our students for a future where AI is not just a tool, but a fundamental reality." - Head of School Delvin Dinkins

DIVING IN

“We have a profound responsibility to prepare our students for a future where AI is not just a tool, but a fundamental reality,” says Head of School Delvin Dinkins. “To examine it thoughtfully is to unlock extraordinary possibilities. Personalized learning, adaptive feedback, even AI-powered tutors—these are not distractions, but potential allies in our mission to cultivate critical thinkers, innovative problem solvers, and empathetic communicators. Our AI committee, faculty, and other school leaders will continually assess our students’, teachers’, and non-teaching staff’s relationship to AI to seek the best path forward."

The SCH AI committee decided they could only come up with answers by using the technology themselves. Ignorance, it was immediately clear, was not the answer.

“We need to think about the meta-questions,” said Sarah McDowell, History Department chair, parent of three SCH graduates, and an original member of the committee. “You can’t think about the big questions if you don’t use AI yourself. Nobody has the answers, but here at SCH we’re thinking about the possibilities.”

The AI committee’s first set of recommendations came quickly. In short, they asked the community to embrace innovation. Teachers should be curiously exploring the new technology; they should learn as much as possible as early as possible to position students in the best way possible. The goal was that SCH educators be able to detect plagiarism and teach students to use their critical thinking skills to use AI for good. In addition, the academic honesty codes in Middle and Upper School were updated and detection software was installed by SCH’s tech team.

TOOL FOR SCHOOL

Another outgrowth of the committee was a partnership with Flint, an AI platform built for schools, which takes advantage of AI for the good of students and can “take the content of classes to the next level,” according to Ed Glassman, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) and a member of the AI committee. “The committee spent months reviewing the landscape and making recommendations. Now teachers are trained on a platform that gives them the power to use the incredible technology for good. We’re not going to say, ‘Go use Open AI and have fun,’ we’re talking about tailoring and using AI to meet our goals. We’re providing secure, private access to the latest, greatest AI tools.”

“Tech has the ability to make people more creative, more precise, and more efficient. If it’s making you lazier, sloppier, and slower, you’re not using it the right way.” -Juliet Fajardo, SCH Teacher of Architecture, 3D Modeling and Animation, Graphic Design, and Digital Fabrication 

Because Flint is built specifically for education, its goal is to help students learn the outlined material (and the outlined material only if the teacher so chooses). This means the AI doesn’t give away the answer (unless instructed to), gives personalized feedback, and pushes students to explain their answers and demonstrate their learning. It can also adapt to fit each student’s knowledge level and pace. It doesn’t prevent students from using Open AI outside of the program, but it teaches them how it can be used most effectively.

For example, Glassman has a dozen CEL students who are starting their own businesses in class. With Flint, he can prompt them to answer the most important questions (and follow-ups) about their ventures before his individual meetings with each student, enabling them to come to him fully prepared. And, going forward, the program allows them to “employ” a copyeditor, SEO content writer, and strategy consultant for their sole-run businesses, all tasks that would have been impossible to do simultaneously. And, if AI is the future of work then what better way to train these young entrepreneurs?

“Flint unlocks the power of virtually limitless personalized learning in an affirming, conversational medium, while still maintaining necessary transparency from the teacher/ administrators to make sure that the technology is not being abused,” says Scott Kirker, a coding and computer science CEL teacher at SCH who was instrumental in the partnership with Flint. “Teaching your kids about Stoicism? You can now create an assignment where you interview Marcus Aurelius. Running a lesson in persuasive speaking? See what an AI representation of Robert Cialdini thinks of your script. If there's a large body of content about a subject on the web— you can now engage with it conversationally.”

After several training sessions, teachers at SCH are using Flint more effectively and creatively. Teachers can set parameters or create bots so that students practice their French speaking skills at home on their level, debate with a character in history, or tailor quizzes based on a video. Part of educator training and student learning is recognizing how to spot misinformation.

Physics teacher Alissa Sperling wrote about the possibilities and limits of AI in physics education in an article that will be published in the April issue of The Physics Teacher. She writes: “Like most of the tools that we use in teaching, the AI is only as good as the person using it. We have found that many of these services (which are currently running off of GPT 4 or similar models) will unknowingly over-constrain a problem, making it either unsolvable or giving it multiple correct solutions. Buyer beware. Without a human proofreader who has a strong conceptual knowledge of what makes a physics problem legitimate, these services can create problems that look realistic but are actually not solvable.”

AI Sidebar

"I’ve spent a lot of time learning about AI. It’s capable, it’s the future, it’s not a flash in the pan. It’s something that’ll be a part of these kids’ worlds forever, and we have to help guide them through that.” - Sarah McDowell, History Department chair

DEMYSTIFYING AI

To further demystify AI, SCH invited speakers to an SCH Connex virtual talk and CEL invited several guest speakers to campus who are experts on the topic. Amit Gandhi, vice president and technical fellow at AirBnB, a professor of economics at Penn’s Wharton School of Business, and an SCH parent of two spoke to students about the history of AI and the fear that arose with the current revolution.

“One thing about this AI revolution is that it’s automating an activity that we humans hold near and dear to our hearts, which is the ability to create, the ability to write, to express, to visualize,” said Gandhi. “And it’s happening at an astonishingly fast rate.”

The threat to human creativity is real, but Juliet Fajardo, who teaches Architecture, 3D Modeling and Animation, Graphic Design, and Digital Fabrication courses at SCH, has a general rule to remind teachers and students to keep their use of technology in check: “Tech has the ability to make people more creative, more precise, and more efficient. If it’s making you lazier, sloppier, and slower, you’re not using it the right way.”

The Office of Educational Technology of the Department of Education released insights and recommendations on AI and the future of teaching and learning in May 2023. They note limits and also see the benefits of AI, from supporting educators through assistance to addressing variability in student learning. In the report, the department writes, “We envision a technology-enhanced future more like an electric bike and less like robot vacuums. On an electric bike, the human is fully aware and fully in control, but their burden is less, and their effort is multiplied by a complementary technological enhancement. Robot vacuums do their job, freeing the human from involvement or oversight.”

“Oversight is critical in this time of misinformation,” says McDowell, who notes that AI has limits and can inherit human bias. “We have to teach our students to continue to question and think critically. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about AI. It’s capable, it’s the future, it’s not a flash in the pan. It’s something that’ll be a part of these kids’ worlds forever, and we have to help guide them through that.”

Read the print edition of this article, here.

Explore Other Magazine Articles