Let’s drive Education forward using AI!
As a Principal, I often use AI to proofread or draft letters that I am sending out to staff or families. It’s something that I’ve done sporadically in the past and would often think of doing after I had drafted the letter. This fall I drafted the letter to our families about the Anxious Generation book and after completing it, realized I could have saved myself quite a bit of time. Luckily though, I was able to ChatGPT a letter and make a better version between the two copies.
As a History teacher I have been using zerogpt.com to combat the use of AI in my classroom. It is far too easy for my students to cheat using AI so I am constantly having to copy and paste their work into the website to see what percentage comes back as AI. For every assignment with a class of 25 students, 2-3 students are caught with a 90% AI generated assignment. We’ve attempted to combat it by having students handwrite their assignments, but that then makes it more difficult to check and they are simply rewriting the info from the screen. Additionally, I’ve used AI to learn about historical events, organize information, create slides, develop assessments, and enrich my lessons.
As a volleyball coach I’ve been able to plan practices and analyze our statistics using AI. It’s provided me additional ideas for practice plans when I hit the mid-season slump and have run out of ideas. Its analysis of our data has been helpful to determine where to place athletes on the court and identify areas of success or challenge.
Outside of cheating and plagiarism, I see a massive number of benefits of AI in the educator sector. The instantaneous ability to provide feedback to both multiple choice, but also written prompts is impressive. The opportunity to become so much more efficient is something every teacher and administrator needs to strive to become highly functioning in. AI can develop schedules, create assessments, correct those assessments, provide feedback, and engage students. The future of AI is exciting, even if there are a few unknowns, because teachers can’t be replaced, but they can be inspired and provide ample opportunities to improve and become more efficient. AI is the first thing introduced during my 12 years as a teacher that has the potential to increase learning outcomes.
Additionally, the area which excites me the most are the virtual tutor programs that exist. I see students and my own children utilizing these as they get older for additional support and extra practice. The instant feedback will go a long way with our new generation of youth who thrive on instant gratification.
Lastly, I see the future of AI as a tool which is embedded in our everyday lives. I hope to see AI improve email efficiency and see us transition away from email to a more chat based system. Like all technologies, I believe the changes over the next decade will be a rapid acceleration before we have moved on to the next technology or made most of the advances we can make. We’ve seen this with the iPhone where each new version does not have any significant innovative upgrades over the previous version. During the first few versions the upgrades were mind bending for users and were impressive considering a couple years prior we were using T9 or ABC texting and taking photos on a flip phone that were so grainy you couldn’t make out who was in the photo.
I hope to see AI improve education and reverse our current trend of making things easier for students. I find I’m constantly needing to reduce the amount or quality of work I expect from previous students. With AI being used effectively, I see schools prioritizing hands-on learning in robotics, play hall, and makerspace courses. AI makes obtaining and accessing information easier than ever. Now, it’s about developing creativity and problem solving skills using our hands and AI. Let’s drive education forward with the use of AI.
I’ve included below an IT Tool handouts from Prairie South School Division. It provided a great overview of the most impactful and relevant AI programs for education.
3 thoughts on “Let’s drive Education forward using AI!”
Good day Mitch. First off, great presentation the other night. You guys provided a ton of valuable information for us to explore. Your post also did a great job of that as well. Your use of zerogpt sounds like an interesting strategy. Another thing that caught my eye was the use of virtual tutors. This could be a great help for certain students and I will definitely be exploring this as a future resource. I have dabbled in AI a little bit but your uses such as for proofreading are things I would never thought about. Thank you for sharing the AI Tool Handouts as well. I will be advising my staff to look into them as well.
Hey Mitch!
I must admit that I never would have thought of using AI as a proofreader before sending an email or letters to families, that is a great idea! Aside from cheating the power of AI is truly amazing and I am excited for the future of Generative AI in education.
Thanks for your post!
Hi Mitch! Let me say your group did an excellent on the presentation and thank you for the AI tools handout. What I appreciated about the presentation and the blog the most was that the jargon used was not technical. I comprehended the information to the very end, which motivated me to do more research. Additionally, thank you for sharing how AI can be used for academic and non-academic purposes. Until now, I have never given thought to what purpose a principal could have for AI, far less a coach. My perception and understanding of AI have changed positively and openly. Keep up the good work.