For decades, artificial intelligence has been a field of its own, commanding the attention of researchers, scientists and companies wanting to be at the vanguard of the next big thing.
Alan Turing, an Englishman who is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science, was among the first people to seriously investigate whether machines could be taught to think. In 1956, two years after Turing died, the field of “artificial intelligence research” was founded as an academic discipline when a small group of scientists gathered for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.
With the arrival of the 1980s, billions of dollars began to flow into AI research, but it wasn’t until the early 2020s that the world was introduced to large language models, which is a type of AI that uses algorithms to process and understand vast amounts of text data, paving the way for it to complete an astonishing array of tasks. One example is ChatGPT.
The explosion in AI technology has created a host of questions for school districts, as administrators and educators struggle to determine how AI can be used to improve student outcomes and whether to allow all students to use it or only students in certain grades – if they are given permission to use it at all.
To learn how school districts are navigating these questions and others, we reached out to three educators who have spent a great deal of time thinking about artificial intelligence: Dr. Peter J. Hughes, superintendent of Cresskill Public Schools in Bergen County; Dr. Carmelita Graham, director of vocational education and career and technical education at Egg Harbor Township School District in Atlantic County; and Gregg Festa, principal of Robert Erskine Elementary School, which is part of Ringwood School District in Passaic County, as well as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University, clinical supervisor of teacher field experiences at Ramapo College of New Jersey and president of the New Jersey Educational Computing Cooperative, which is not-for-profit organization with over 100 member K-12 school districts throughout New Jersey.
When did your school district start talking about the use of artificial intelligence in schools, and how have your thoughts about it evolved over time?
Hughes: We started right around the time that OpenAI released ChatGPT. I was trying it on the first day to see how this new technology might impact what we do in education. From my initial exposure to my understanding now, I’ve learned a great deal. Initially, it was seen as more of an extension from a Google search. I now see it as a tool that goes well beyond my initial understanding.
Initially, I saw it as a tool for personal efficiency and something that our students may need to learn about for their own personal efficiency. Now, I see it as a tool that can help evaluate student products and think in new ways about their learning. For example, instead of having the AI do the work for them, they can ask it to analyze their writing and bring up five things that were not considered.
Graham: Our school district began speaking about the use of artificial intelligence in June 2023 after learning about AI and the possible impact on the education sector at the ISTE 2023 conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Festa: We have been talking about AI since the first launch of ChatGPT in late November 2022. Initially, our district had a similar reaction to the middle school students’ use of this new tool as many other districts, which was to block it – but then we started to see how it could help our staff become more efficient at daily tasks, such as curriculum, instruction and assessment planning. So, we decided to lift the restriction for teachers only. One example of how teachers used ChatGPT in the first few months of its debut was to help solve a problem we were having getting students desensitized to the question formats included in the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments. We wanted our English language arts and math teachers to create and assign an NJSLS aligned question every day in the format they would experience on the NJSLA, but this would take some time to research and create – time they didn’t have. So, we tested ChatGPT … and after homing in on the right prompt, we were able to get the result we were looking for. It was clearly a transformative moment for our staff to experience AI in a way that made them more productive in supporting their students and proved to be a tipping point as they then became eager to continue to find ways to use this new tool to their advantage and to improve student learning.
What are your primary concerns about the use of artificial intelligence by students and/or staff?
Hughes: My biggest concern is that school staff resist this and don’t prepare kids for a future that is inevitable. My second largest concern is that students use it to avoid critical thinking rather than enhance it. These tools are powerful but require even more critical thinking to evaluate if they are correct.
Graham: The primary concern with using artificial intelligence was staff members not being aware of what artificial intelligence is and students who are able to use it not using it the correct way. We understand that it can be used as a tool that supports plagiarism if students are not educated about how to properly use it.
Festa: Our primary concerns for students using AI include but are not limited to the use of AI tools to generate inauthentic and inappropriate content about fellow students for the use of harassment, intimidation and bullying. While we trust staff to use AI professionally to help them become more efficient at their craft and focus less on mundane tasks, so they can do what they do best – teach – we are nevertheless concerned that they may accept AI without fact checking or doing any sort of review for accuracy and appropriateness of the content it generates for them.
What are some of the best ways that AI can be used in a classroom setting to help promote the education and achievement of students?
Hughes: One of the best ways is for students to upload work and ask for additional suggestions or guiding questions to help them get to the next level in their own work. While this isn’t a default for a 13-year-old doing homework, knowing how to use the tool to explore deeper is a skill they will need.
Additionally, it can be used to translate for students if they are English language learners, and help teachers plan lessons and activities for all sorts of learning styles and learning challenges. Finally, the AI can give informal feedback on things that teachers upload. In this way, they can use the AI as a secondary teacher, especially when students can’t get the attention of the teacher or they aren’t available.
Graham: There are many resources that can be created with AI. One example includes the debating feature of AI. Students can go back and forth with AI prompts to give their views on a topic and receive counter-responses. They can also get practice problems and sets generated with AI that will explain how the system arrived at the answer. AI can be a 24-hour tutor without the added cost.
Festa: We are beginning to use AI tools such as ChatGPT to analyze student learning data and then make specific recommendations for targeted remedial instruction for individual learners while also suggesting revisions to the scope and sequence of the learning units outlined in our curriculum.
Does your school have any AI policy detailing how it should and should not be used by staff and/or students? If so, how did you devise the policy, who was involved, and what recommendations would you have for other school districts trying to tackle this issue and craft or hone a policy of their own?
Hughes: I did develop a fairly original policy using a draft policy from another superintendent. We did it two summers ago and probably had one of the first policies in New Jersey. It was developed with my policy committee in Cresskill. I am blessed to have really smart board members who were able to help craft a forward-leaning policy that also puts some guardrails on it to help identify the reasons AI should be used and how it should not be used. We are now updating our policy, and we have decided to start with the language of our original policy rather than shift to some of the other guiding policies being proposed by Strauss-Esmay. I think that as long as you have a forward-leaning board, crafting your own policy will help you have deep conversations and give you the ability to craft your vision.
Graham: Yes, our school has an AI policy in place. Over the 2023-2024 school year, our superintendent formed a district innovation team that was responsible for researching AI, learning about the use of AI tools, and contributing to a policy that would be needed to support appropriate use. The committee worked in groups to research and develop draft policy, an AI tools list, and a teaching and learning guide using AI for staff.
Festa: We are still working with our administrative team and board of education to finalize our integration of AI policy into our overall technology acceptable use policy. We are also hoping to align that policy with other districts and the state policy that was recently shared with districts.
Do you personally use AI to help with certain school district related tasks? Please explain.
Hughes: I use it more and more. Below are some examples:
- Crafting a new district vision and mission: In one workshop with my board, we collected sentiments from all nine board members about the important aspects they want to see represented in an updated vision. Instead of wordsmithing it ourselves, the AI did the arduous first draft based on their statements. That draft then was changed in public session, and we arrived at a new mission and vision that everyone in the session agreed was a final version.
- Crisis Communication: When dealing with tough situations like an emergency notification, the AI can pull additional resources and help.
- Policy Bot: I just completed work on an AI bot that will only reference our district policies. This will be shared with my administrative team and board, so that they can ask complex questions of our policy manual and get answers that are then referenced back to the original policy. For example, what is the voting process for a new board president? What is the process for hiring new staff members? Are parents allowed to be hired as coaches by the district? What do we do if we suspect a student is under the influence? It will make administrative decision-making faster, as they will no longer have to read through various policies.
- Speeches: I used it last year to help me craft a speech for eighth-grade graduation using youth lingo. I wound up delivering a speech on “How to exemplify Sigma” – apparently a good thing. I still had to check everything and make sure that everything was decoded positively, but my students fully understood and appreciated the advice I was giving them.
- Travel plans: It is great at catering specific ideas and parameters into a travel itinerary. Last year, I visited Madeira, Portugal. ChatGPT was my guide as I did so, providing me with tips, timetables and recommendations based on everything it scraped from the Internet previously. It was a great trip!
Graham: AI has many great tools including Claude, that can be used to quickly analyze data. Our district is very data driven and having access to tools to support data analysis is always a plus. Claude is also great for providing formulas and explanations of how formulas are working to analyze your data set.
Festa: Of course. All school leaders should be aware of and adept at using AI to complete everyday tasks, such as observations (NotebookLM), student learning data analysis and recommendations for staff (ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot), newsletters and memo writing and design (Canva), curriculum writing (ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot), budgeting (ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot) and professional development (Notebook LM).
How can AI help board members do their job?
Hughes: I think that generative AI can be incredibly helpful if they learn how to use it effectively. Sharing a policy bot with them will be empowering. They can simply ask questions of the bot based on only our policies. I can’t wait to see how this works for them. Additionally, the example of using AI to generate mission statements and even strategic plans cannot be understated. It can make the work of the board much more efficient.
Graham: Our entire school community can benefit from the use of AI in one form or another relevant to their job functions. Once stakeholders are educated about the benefits and ethical considerations of using AI, different groups can research how they may use it to improve their work processes.
Festa: Board of education members can use AI in some of the same ways that school administrators use it but more specifically in policy review and writing (ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot).
What steps, if any, have you taken to educate and train your staff on using artificial intelligence?
Hughes: In Cresskill, we continue to deal with financial challenges. So, much of our training has been happening in-house and through guided discovery with staff and students. We have presented AI workshops to all high school staff and for all administrators. This has included training on the policy and how they should or should not use AI. It is important that everyone understands the utility of AI and also its negatives (not always being trustworthy for the information it generates, being subject to the will of the user (giving answers the user wants to see), and the limits of the research and bias from programming. Asking AI to generate a picture of “beautiful people” for example, may return photos of people who are only white and thin. Or an image of “Iraqi Toys” may only produce photos of weaponized toys in the desert. The AI was trained using photos from the media, not photos of real toys in Iraq. This is a serious downside – its inability to think. It only associates.
Graham: Our district, through our innovation team, has offered multiple workshops for staff in the area of artificial intelligence. The sessions were tailored for specific grade level bands and novice to intermediate knowledge AI learners. We offered exploration rooms where the staff were given 10-15 minute mini lessons on an AI tool and 45 minutes to explore the tool.
Festa: We have sent staff to the NJECC.org AI for Educators Certification program, which is a six class, hands-on, project-based learning experience with an AI in education expert trainer. We have since had the staff who received their certification turnkey what they have learned and applied in their practice with other educators in our district. We plan on sending more staff to this valuable program in the spring. I also share AI tools of the week with staff and model the use of NotebookLM by having it produce a weekly professional development podcast on a relevant topic of timely general interest to them, such as dealing with defiant students or managing a class during a holiday week.
Are you collaborating with any institutions of higher learning, vendors or partners to help students and staff understand the opportunities and risks associated with AI?
Hughes: We had a summer institute last year for students. It was in collaboration with graduates of Stanford and MIT, paid for by the participants of the program. The kids had to explore a policy question for AI and use real data sets to train a model. Our kids explored automatic driving and health care issues in AI.
Graham: To date, our district has partnered with the SRI-ETTC of Stockton University to learn more about artificial intelligence. During the 2023-2024 school year, the innovation team participated in a data science workshop by a visiting professor at Stockton University where many conversations around AI took place. Currently, members of our school community are registered to participate in SRI-ETTC workshops that will be held during the 2024-2025 school year for targeted content areas.
Festa: Yes. We have partnered with NJECC.org for professional development and are partnering with Montclair State University on a grant that will help develop and train teachers on the use of AI tools for teaching and learning.
Looking specifically at the special education community and English language learners, are there ways that you think AI can help these segments now or in the future?
Hughes: This is an area where AI will continue to benefit our kids. AI translators have come a long way and are now able to hear and translate in a way that is increasingly good. Imagine a student in class using headphones to translate everything being heard, worksheets that are printed in the student’s own language, and having access to a Chrome search engine that already translates full websites into whatever the student wants. AI chatbots that will help kids practice real-world conversations without the fear of messing up. These things are already happening.
In special education, imagine a system that watches a student’s learning, sees mistakes in real time, and provides targeted instruction (during the learning) to help correct the student’s work without judgment. Again, this is already happening.
Imagine teachers that have created targeted chatbots to help answer student questions or reinforce learning for specific lessons. As teachers become more experienced with such tools, they will be able to refine their use for better instruction. Right now, the limits are on the human minds catching up and learning how to use these tools. The tools already exist.
Graham: Yes, artificial intelligence tools help to differentiate assignments. One tool that our district has embraced, Brisk, assists with breaking content down to different grade levels or different languages that would support multiple learners needing support in these areas. The tool also provides the content in various formats, including presentations, Google Form assessments and documents. If content needs to be broken down for better understanding by students, you can do so by product, grade level and language.
Festa: I truly see a lot of power in current in emerging AI tools that can help improve how we can more easily differentiate and personalize learning for our exceptional learners. Simply by saving teachers the time needed to differentiate instruction and focus on working more directly with their students in need demonstrates how much of a game changer AI will be in education – especially as it evolves.
Looking to the future, where do you see the potential for AI to enhance student achievement and improve school governnance?
Hughes: For me, it gets me away from some menial work. Instead of poring over data for three to four hours from a survey, I can ask for the data to be organized and synthesized into a report. Instead of spending three hours on a letter to the community about the importance of giving thanks during the holidays, I can go visit classrooms and finish the letter in one hour. I can spend more of my time on relationships than alone at a computer.
As for the things not yet apparent, I think that AI will shift the world of education rapidly. Those districts that embrace learning around it and using it as a positive tool will help their students the most.
Graham: What AI technology can do for schools is limitless. AI has the potential to propel our schools to a level that we can’t imagine right now. Student support has been a known limitation for schools but having technology that can provide remedial or advanced resources to students who need it, with just a quick click of a button, will be an added benefit to the wealth of resources our school already offers. Work productivity will be improved with the assistance of AI tools to complete standard tasks, including data analysis, scheduling, lesson planning and more.
Festa: I see AI transforming education in a way previous technologies were unable to do as it evolves to become every teacher’s assistant and every student’s personal tutor. This will not only make schools more efficient but also more effective at educating students.
Thomas A. Parmalee is NJSBA’s manager of communications and publications.
