This morning, I asked Google how/why teachers use Artificial Intelligence and got this AI-generated answer: “[It] essentially makes teaching more efficient and effective.” How? #1 on the accompanying list is Personalized Learning. The reason? Reportedly, AI analyzes student data, so teachers can then “tailor content and activities to individual learning styles and paces, ensuring each student receives targeted support.”
You buying it?
The rest of the AI-generated list:
- Automated grading
- Improved accessibility
- Data-driven insights
- Content creation
- Writing support
Throwing a bone to teachers, the post ends with, “AI should be used as a tool to enhance teaching, not replace the teacher’s role in the classroom…”
AI and the teacher’s role…
About that says Purdue University’s William Watson, “…When people think about a teacher that had an impact on them, it’s that human element—that teacher seeing them as a person that stays with them. And so that need will never go away. We can’t dehumanize the process of learning because learning shapes everything about us as humans… That human connection in our increasingly digital world is going to be more important. And so my hope is that, rather than replacing teachers, we’re freeing teachers to focus on the most important aspects of their work, which is that human connection around learning.”
He hopes…
In the meantime, a Center for Democracy and Technology survey of 1,000+ high schoolers, parents of secondary students found that:
- Between 2022 and 2024, the number of teachers using generative AI rose from 51% to 67%.
- Between 2022 and 2024, the number of high schoolers using AI rose from 58% to 70%.
- 66% of teachers said they’ve received no guidance on dealing with tech-related plagiarism.
- 39% of teachers said they regularly use AI-content detection to manage students’ AI use.
- 20% of respondents said they or someone they know had been accused of using AI to cheat—but actually hadn’t.
In that same survey, the special education teachers said that:
- 40% use AI when developing a student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP).
- 23% use AI to spot student progress trends.
- 19% use AI to summarize an IEP.
- 16% use AI to choose specific IEP accommodations.
- 12% use AI to write the narrative portion of the IEP.
- 8% use AI to completely write the IEPs.
Oh, yes, 23% of the teachers reported that their school had experienced at least on large-scale data breach.
And when an October ‘24 EdWeek Research Center survey asked teachers: “How much professional development have you received using artificial intelligence in the classroom?”
- 6% said they were getting ongoing training.
- 24% said they’d gotten just one training session.
- 13% said they’d gotten more than one training session.
- 58% answered, “None.”
As for “Which of the following best describes your current use of artificial intelligence-driven tools in your classroom,” said survey found that:
- 23% of the teachers said, “I have not used them and do not plan to start this school year but will in the future.”
- 9% said, “I have not used them but plan to start this school year.”
- 21% said, “I use them a little.”
- 9% said, “I use them some.”
- 12% said, “I use them a lot.”
- 36% said, “I have never used them and don’t plan to start.”
OF NOTE:
- The 2025 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will incorporate AI in its exam, including:
- “Performance tasks probing how students approach learning and solve problems.”
- Students possibly being able to use an AI chatbot, asking it questions about a topic, thus assessing their thinking ability, not just their background knowledge on the topic.
- Bullying has now evolved into what are known as “deep fakes, and, Education Week’s Olina Banerji reports that boys as young as 14 “use artificial intelligence to create fake, yet lifelike, pornographic images of their female classmates and share them on social media sites like Snapchat.”
- The Arizona Board for Charter schools has okayed Unbound Academy’s proposed completely AI-driven adaptive learning technology curriculum for grades 4 through 8 which “condenses academic instruction into a 2-hour window.” The rest of day? Workshops on such topics as critical thinking, problem solving, and financial literacy, too. Co-founder MacKenzie Price says that guides, not teachers, will monitor the students’ progress and act as “motivators and emotional support.”
Bottom line: AI didn’t just slink into our schools, it’s taken them by storm, and the fallout has just begun.
Be careful what you wish for…
~ With my thanks on this MLK day of service, Carol