How Teachers Can Help Shape Educational Uses of AI in Their Schools

Three years ago, most educators had not heard of artificial intelligence (AI) outside of science-fiction movies. Today, it seems you can’t open an app or educational publication without AI taking center stage. If you’re one of the educators who are already researching it and using it with success, kudos. Still, there are still many educators who just wish it would go the way of last year’s bright and shiny new thing. That’s not uncommon with emerging technologies. However, like the calculator and the computer, AI probably isn’t going away anytime soon, so it’s on teachers to take on the challenge of shaping educational uses of AI and the policies that should govern its use.

For the Newbies

Start with exploring AI use with ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Add a few prompts, giving the chatbot a role, an assignment, and a goal. For example, try this:

“You are a teacher ensuring that the below constructed response questions get eighth-grade students applying real-world knowledge about Text XYZ [copy and paste text in the chat]. Make suggestions about my questions [paste them in] that will ensure that student answers require maximal critical thinking and real-life application. Please explain any changes.”

Or you can go with something simple like this: “Give me three bell ringer options for the following fifth-grade math lesson [paste in lesson].” After you feel comfortable with bots, explore apps like Canva and Diffit or even “Help me write” in Google or Gmail. Once you feel comfortable, it’s time to start gathering information from your students, your team, and even parents. Ensure that everyone understands that this isn’t a gotcha session. Let them know that their honest oral or survey answers will help shape AI policy for years to come. Once you have information on AI attitudes and usage from your class and professional learning community, work with other teacher teams to extract similar information from their groups. 

When you’ve gathered information, approach campus leaders with your findings. Are students using this emerging tech? Are parents reluctant to have students use yet another online tool? Are teachers firmly divided between “This is awesome” and “This will destroy learning”? Depending on where your school falls, it may be a topic you can cover with student conversations and a short addition to the integrity section of the school handbook. However, teachers will still want to continue to explore uses, so that as AI becomes more widely used, you’ll be ready. 

For the Reluctant User

At this point in time, the people with the most expertise on our campuses are likely our students. Leveraging student knowledge about AI is the best place to start learning and sharing knowledge. Have a few tech-savvy students design a 20- minute product development (PD) session on a predetermined use case, and deliver it to the staff. Have another student team record the PD and make shorts that can go out to staff or into the newsletter with permission. Meanwhile, assign grade-level or content cohorts to explore some of the more useful teacher tools, like Canva’s Magic Write, Diffit, or Curipod, and have them present to the staff and share resources during weekly PDs. 

While building capacity on your team, use circle time, homeroom, or advisory times to talk with students about AI use, its impact on learning and media, and academic integrity. Consider having student leaders put together a draft of AI dos and don’ts for your campus and maybe even put together a public service announcement for parents.

For the Power Users

You are a pro at letting learning be the star while tech plays a supporting role, and you’re excited about AI’s potential. You’ve been using AI to differentiate, suggest, correct, design, and generate learning materials both inside and outside of edtech apps. You’re also long past your AI cheating detector days, knowing that they don’t work and that they endanger teacher-student relationships because of their high fail rate. 

You may also be over trying to get your campus mates excited about the potential of AI in education, but your campus needs you. Start with your students and the kinds of conversations every teacher needs to have around academic integrity. Then, have conversations with them about why students want to cheat. Often, students view our assignments as irrelevant and not worth the time they take to complete. That’s AI adjacent information schools need to have.

Keep the conversations going with students and staff, then offer to help teammates learn about low-lift/high-yield tools. For example, any special education teacher or English language arts interventionist who explores Diffit will be immediately sold. Show your art teacher and K–2 teachers how to explore language development by creating art with AI prompts. Or show your admin team and office manager how to save time by using Canva to design newsletters. 

Also, when analyzing data, using a chatbot is an excellent way to get a second set of eyes to suggest interpretations. Just be sure not to feed any private or Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protected data into any chatbot, and teach your students the importance of this as well. You can also share knowledge through school social media platforms, newsletters, or QR codes in the workroom that open video shorts on getting started with AI. These can be designed by staff or students. If your district has a tech team, send these suggestions their way so that they can build a cache of resources. 

Whether you’re a new, reluctant, or power AI user, your commitment to learning how to use this emerging tech, and how to guide students in using these tools, is critical to teaching and learning success. Like the car, the plane, and assembly machines that have come before, technology is often rejected at first. But just like those tools, AI will be an integral part of your students’ lives, and it’s up to teachers to lead the charge in preparing our learners—and ourselves—for the future.