It seems like AI is suddenly everywhere, and that includes Kent County classrooms. Today on “Study Hall” from School News Network, educators Aaron Romoslawski of Forest Hills and Michael Kennedy of Grandville talk about how students are using AI tools to help them learn, not do their learning for them, and how teachers are employing AI to amplify their lessons while keeping cheating in check.
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Transcript:
Charles Honey: Hello everyone and welcome to study hall from school news network, your window into the public schools of Kent County, Michigan.Special welcome to our listeners at WGVU.We're here today to talk about AI, artificial intelligence, its positive uses and possible abuses in our schools.Most experts agree it offers powerful potential for teaching and learningas well as problematic pitfalls.Here to provide some perspective are two Kent County educators on the leading edge of integrating AI into our classrooms. Aaron Romoslawski is director of AI strategy and instructional innovation for Forest Hills Public Schools and has been in the forefront of helping his district incorporate AI into classrooms. Michael Kennedy is assistant principal at Granville High School and has played a key role in Granville Public Schools recent implementation of AI for all students and staff. and Michael, welcome to you both.
Both guests: Thank you. Thank you.
CH: I'm interested, Aaron, first of all, in why and how Forest Hills has incorporated into your classrooms. What did you see as the need to do this?
Aaron Romoslawski: The need was presented to us when CHAT GPT was released and the fact that it's going to transform society. The need has been sustained and reinforced through activities that our students were seeing at colleges as early as in the spring semester of 2023 that there were certain collegiate classes that were requiring students to use this and creating, you know,before completely unthinkable projects that students wouldn't have ever been able to achieve, that now they were expecting them to be able to achieve.And then the workforce changes that are happening, maintaining that education, that AI literacy is something that is essential now for hires. And there's even research that suggests businesses are more likely to hire someone who is AI literate and fluent over someone who has more experience at the position. And so if we're not teaching our students about this, we're setting them up to be a pretty big strategic disadvantage, not only in their college, but then in their workplace as well.
CH: So it was really uh students cannot really afford to graduate without these skills at this point.
AR: At this point, it's becoming essential that students have an awareness of the appropriate uses of AI.
CH: Michael, is that pretty uh that resonate with what you're seeing in Granville?
Micheel Kennedy: Yeah, I think it's right on hits the nail on the head.
CH: So. I think people are probably a little mystified unless they're in education as to how AI works in a classroom situation and situations where it might work well in a particular class or subject area. Mike at Granville High School there, can you give me a couple ideas, a couple examples of where you see this working well?
MK: Yeah, I can think of an English class in particular. This particular classroom has a number of multi-language learner students in it. And so when they are working on various assignments and projects, they use an AI translator to help them with some of the more nuanced words or parts of language. There's one student, I'm blanking on where, but it was a fairly oh lesser known language that maybe Spanish or Swahili or Bosnian, which we have a lot of speakers and was able to use that AI bot to kind of help navigate through and found themselves not falling behind, but able to keep up with, you know, people who had spoken English their whole lives. So really cool example to sort of bridge that gap for that student. I'm seeing it in other places where teachers are using the AI bots to help foster feedback for students on their work, whether it's writing or various other parts of their project. Because what it does then is it allows the teacher to take time with those students who most desperately need that one-on-one teacher experience versus the student who would maybe take up the teacher's time but cannot actually get that same quick feedback from the AI bot instead of the teacher themselves.So it allows the teacher to go deeper with the students who have the greatest needs.
CH: So do many of your teachers say this is kind of like having an assistant? That it does free them up in many ways uh todo other things that they need to do as a teacher.
MK: Yeah, I don't think they're quite ready to say that yet. I think they're starting to see though that this is exactly how AI can function best in schools as an assistant, whether it's helping craft a difficult email to a parent, whether it's designing a lesson where you've just kind of hit your creative wall and I can't think of a thing that's going to help move the needle for students. I think they're starting to see that through their own experiences. They have yet to use that term with me uh or amongst each other, but I think we're getting there.
CH: Yeah. So, I think in public perception and uh probably uh inmaybe among many of your teachers and parents,the possibility of using AI to cheat, to let AI do the learning for you, I think is a widespread concern. So what policies do you have in place to control this cheating factor? uh And how do the students themselves feel about it, Michael?
MK: So we wrote into our AI policy some very clear directives about what it is allowed for and what it is not allowed for. And one of the big not alloweds is it should not replace your thinking and learning. It is to come alongside. can be a research assistant. It could be something you're using to get feedback on something, but it is not to replace your learning. So we treat it just like any other academic dishonesty experience, right?Our student handbook has a very clear policy about that.We've actually doubled down. We have not only an academic integrity policy, but we also have an AI policy built into the student handbook that reiterates, if you're using this to think, there could be consequences for it, whether that'sat the classroom level or at the building level that could result in, you have to redo the assignment. It could be, you know, all the way up to some level of suspension, maybe even losing credit for a course if you continue to allow this to think for you instead of you thinking.
CH: Yeah, sort of like plagiarism,right? Back in the day.
MK: And I think that's that's mostly where we see it is in terms of plagiarism.
CH: Aaron, in Forest Hills, do you see any evidence of increased cheating because of AI?
AR:I think we're seeing more of what was already happening in different ways. um We've really encouraged staff to approach it as a citation issue. So if you use it in your paper and it's not cited, the same way that you would have talked to a student about citing Of Mice and Men, that you wouldn't take all of that essay or all that novel and plugged it into your essay before and you wouldn't have taken an essay from somebody's website and plugged it in as your own.You're not to do that with AI. And by approaching it as a citation issue that further reinforces that there's times and places that it is appropriate and there's ways that it's not appropriate. And then it creates a conversation with the student about what are we actually dealing with here and how can we move on from it? So when you know Charlie comes up to Aaron and says Aaron can you tell me about paragraph three and Aaron's eyes get really big and he can't tell you anything about paragraph three then there's a quick opportunity there to say all right Aaron how about you grab a seat out in the hall for a couple minutes I want you to rewrite this essay really quick or give me an outline or dox, y, or z that will show me that you have some mastery of this and if you don't it's a reteaching opportunity and so yes,much like Granville, we have an academic dishonesty policy. There's all sorts of steps and processes to that. We've woven in AI into that academic dishonesty policy by talking about it as citation.But the biggest piece that matters with each and every one of those instances is how are we teaching on the back?
CH: Well, it sounds like in both districts, you're using AI as an enhancement of teaching and learning,certainly not a replacement for, and it's a fast moving technology andit's good to see that you're on top of it in your respective districts.Thanks to you both for talking with us about this really important subject.Thanks to our listeners for joining us at WGVU.To hear the full version of this podcast, go to schoolnewsnetwork.org and click on podcasts,or you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.Thanks again and until next time, happy studying.
