Three students curl around a computer in a classroom in Eric Graves Memorial Junior High in Dartmouth, NS, while David Waugh makes a gesture to an image generated by AI of a sweatshirt created for a CE task at home.
It is a relatively new scene in the classrooms of the Halifax area, since teachers like Waugh begin to adopt the growing technology while weighing the ethics of the use of chatbots and other AI tools to shape young minds.
“The problem is that in the future, it will be here anyway,” said Waugh. “So we need to discover how to adapt to him.”
To that end, the Regional Center for Education of Halifax has developed guidelines on the use of AI, artificial intelligence, in the classroom based on the contributions of teachers in the district.
Its declared objective is to “guarantee that IA technologies are integrated in education for students and teachers in an ethical, safe and inclusive way.”
That includes things like not putting personal information on AI tools, monitoring students so that they are not exposed to harmful content and reveal when artificial intelligence for school projects has been used.
A change of attitude
Waugh said that the guidelines arrive at a time when the perceptions of the use of the teachers are changing, noting that “attitudes have changed massively” in recent years.
Chatgpt pointed out, a generative chatbot with a seemingly endless list of functions, from imitating human conversations to writing emails to writing computer code. Waugh said that Chatgpt was once considered “the traps machine”, but educators have begun to see the advantages of using AI to verify or investigate facts, for example. In a Halifax classroom, AI was used to generate images based on students’ poetry.
Another factor in the adoption of AI has been the need to educate students about their responsible use in the midst of concerns about the loss of critical thinking skills, said Waugh.
Operai, the company behind Chatgpt, suggests on its website that students use the academic “grunt work” tool, such as formatting appointments in an essay, freeing time for the creative process.
Waugh students are adapting to change, using technology in their class work. James Hathaway, a 7 -grade student, said that using AI allows him to concentrate on his academic strengths.
“I find it very useful,” he said. “For example, I am not very good to draw, so having a generation of images is a great victory.”
He said that it is good that the limitations of technology, such as illegible words in the images, mean that it still has to be critical of what it produces.
School boards and universities around the world have had mixed reactions to the use of AI. While some encourage their use, others have considered prohibitions or have blocked AI applications in school devices for concern for plagiarism and erroneous information.
Chris Cook, a member of the Technology Integration Team for the Halifax School District, said that is not the way to follow.
“We cannot ignore that artificial intelligence is here. It is rapidly embedded within our society in general,” said Cook, whose team trains teachers on how to use AI in a responsibility. “We need to have these conversations with our students to be informed users.”
Necessary in a changing world
Johanathan Woodworth teaches about the integration of technology in the Faculty of Education of the Mount Saint Vincent University. He believes that the potential benefits of AI for education are very high, but so are the risks, even beyond the classroom.
“I’m afraid of atrophy skills we need to have,” he said, citing the fear that AI will replace some mental functions, such as the construction of relationships and emotional intelligence.
The best possible result of the use of AI in schools, said Woodworth, is to increase the productivity of students while allowing educators to highlight the human qualities that distinguish them from AI.
Taking advantage of technology should not come at the expense of the “human element” in the classroom, he said.
“Teachers have to be openly open about the integration of these tools, but teachers should also be taught how to integrate these tools, how to critically analyze these tools.”
He said the same goes for students.
“If we don’t, people are only going to take the easy way out,” he said.
