BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Artificial intelligence is a part of our world.
Should it be a part of education?
How can it be a part of education?
Christina Cornwell, the coordinator of professional development for the Bradford County School District, believes the answer to the first question is, “Yes.”
Answering the second question is a work in progress, with the work having started this school year as the Bradford district, with the financial help of the Bradford County Education Foundation, purchased the SchoolAI program.
Some may have a kneejerk reaction to hearing about the use of AI in schools, fearing that it will take the place of teachers and/or that students will use it to do their work for them.
That, of course, is certainly not the intent. Cornwell said AI can be a tool to assist teachers and save them time. She added that since AI is a part of our world, students should be taught about how to use it ethically and not as a way of doing everything for them.
“Education doesn’t necessarily always want to be in the forefront of these things,” Cornwell said, adding, “But we can’t wait and see with AI. It’s here. What are we going to do with it? How are we going to use it responsibly?”
Cornwell said it’ll benefit students to learn about AI, noting that through research, she learned that approximately 70 percent of businesses are using AI in some way.
“If we don’t teach our kids about it, and we’re sending them into a world that’s using artificial intelligence, then we’re not setting them up for success.”
AI as a helpful tool
Cornwell said AI programs can basically act as idea generators for teachers. As an example, she said AI can be used to help a teacher prepare an IEP (individualized educational plan) for a student. Input something like, “Student has difficulty taking notes,” and a teacher can be presented with scenarios of possible steps to help that student improve in note taking.
The teacher ultimately creates the IEP — not the AI program.
“Now, that teacher doesn’t have to come up with all of that by themselves,” Cornwell said. “They have a brainstorming partner who is there next to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”
Cornwell also used an example of how a teacher can use AI to focus on a certain area, like writing. She said a teacher can enter a rubric, or set of guidelines, into the AI program. Any notes teachers have presented to the students prior to the assignment can be included, as can PowerPoint presentations the teachers may have used.
Students, as they’re working on their assignments, can receive feedback from the AI program, which reminds them of the criteria the teacher has established.
“The AI can say, “Refer back to page 3 of your notes to add more about this.’ The more detail the teacher puts in there, the more detail the kids get,” Cornwell said.
Such detail ensures that students turn in what’s expected of them.
“The kids are in this iterative process of going back and rewriting and rewriting until they get a complete answer, whereas before, they may have submitted something that was incomplete,” Cornwell said.
It’s as if a teacher is able to devote one-on-one time to each student as they work on an assignment — something teachers simply don’t have the time to do.
“Now, (every student) is getting that support, and it is teacher support because the teacher told the computer what support to give,” Cornwell said. “The teacher is still part of that (process).”
Considering teacher retention leads to a deeper look at AI
The impetus for looking at how AI can be used began with considering how to keep teachers in the classroom.
Cornwell is working toward her doctorate. When considering what she was going to research, she decided to explore teacher retention.
“It’s a big problem. It’s worldwide,” Cornwell said. “What can we do here in small Bradford County to keep our teachers in our classrooms?”
Cornwell said teachers don’t leave the job at the door when they go home, noting that they spend hours of time planning and grading. The question that occurred to her was, “Can artificial intelligence help with any of that?”
She dove into the world of AI to learn more. Cornwell attended conferences and participated in online learning forums.
The University of Florida Lastinger Learning Center put out a call for proposals for the Leadership for Professional Learning Symposium hosted by Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso in July in Santiago, Chile. Seeing it as an opportunity to possibly learn more about AI and education, Cornwell submitted a proposal on using AI for teachers and students. It was accepted.
She experienced different reactions to AI’s use in education while at the symposium. Cornwell described some educators as “gung-ho” about the prospect, while others were completely against its use.
Cornwell said it was beneficial to hear the varying perspectives, especially those of people against AI.
“When somebody pushes back (against the idea of AI use), how can I bring them back into the conversation without alienating them or disqualifying their beliefs? Because their beliefs are real, and they need to be heard and acknowledged,” Cornwell said. “Yet we can’t leave our kids without AI because then we’re really doing them a disservice. We think about the ethical use of AI, but I think it’s unethical not to teach our kids how to use AI because they’re going to be expected to use AI in the workforce.”
Cornwell also did a presentation on AI closer to home as part of a Northeast Florida Educational Consortium event that was attended by more than 100 people.
“We talked about how districts initiate AI,” Cornwell said. “You have to have a map. IT has to be involved. What are your guidelines for use for your teachers? What are your guidelines for use for your students?
“All that kind of needs to be laid out before you implement it.”
The Bradford district held three voluntary training sessions for teachers this summer to talk about AI. Cornwell said 60 of the district’s approximately 210 teachers participated.
“If the feedback that I got from those 60 teachers was that this is evil, this is awful, we don’t want it, well, then I would’ve put the brakes on it,” Cornwell said.
That wasn’t the case, though.
“The overwhelming response was that it is a timesaver and that (teachers) felt it was like having a personal mentor that they could go to anytime of the day, no matter what.
“That’s what impressed me. That’s what told me we needed to follow up on it.”
Cornwell said AI is being used by some teachers and some students in schools all over, whether administrators and leaders want to believe it or not, so it makes sense to accept it and create a district-approved plan for its use.
To Cornwell’s knowledge, the only schools in the area that are devising such plans are Gainesville’s P.K. Yonge and St. Augustine’s Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.
“Bradford is kind of leading the way in artificial intelligence in northeast Florida because we’re choosing to educate our teachers and our students and make it part of the learning process,” Cornwell said. “Not a whole lot of districts are doing that yet.”
Cornwell expressed her thanks to the district’s information-technology department for its support and to district-level leadership for “allowing us to run with this.”
It’s a part of adapting to the times, which schools have had to do with the advances made in technology.
“We had to pivot when the internet came, and we need to pivot now, now that artificial intelligence is here,” Cornwell said.
