That answer will have to come from the local school districts, according to Regional Office of Education 11 Superintendent Kyle Thompson.
"I would assume the conversations are being had right now for sure. If they're not, they need to be," he said. ROE 11 encompasses the seven-county region of Clark, Coles, Cumberland, Douglas, Edgar, Moultrie and Shelby.
"I think you'll have districts that are more progressive and get out in the forefront of it and encourage it and use it and I think you'll have some school districts that are a little more cautious and protective of privacy. I think there will be some schools that will just kind of be in a wait and see what happens here," he said.
Thompson points out a similar situation occurred when Chromebook 1-to1 technology emerged 10 years ago.
"Now you have just about everybody 1 to 1," he said. "I think this is just kind of the next step. Now, it's AI. Well, how do we navigate this in schools? Just like the cellphones and just like the computer, it's not going away."
Thompson believes the hardest adjustment may be for mid-career teachers. A first-year teacher right out of college will probably be a lot more familiar with AI, he said. For a mid-career or end-of-career teacher, though, it's going to be a lot more challenging, he added.
Thompson is neutral when it comes to being a proponent or opponent of AI in the classroom. However, he does see possible benefits of AI that may make tasks easier for teachers, such as creating a lesson plan on the Boston Massacre or help with grading.
Just as there are benefits, Thompson sees limitations such as cheating and unequal access to it. But he notes as AI becomes mainstream, especially in the workforce, it's something everybody is going to have to learn to live with.
"If AI generates a draft of a paper, is that cheating? I say, yes, instantly. I want students to generate a rough draft not AI. But in the workplace, I have AI generate drafts of templates of memos and letters all the time. It's just what are we going to allow our students to do?" he said.
Sarah Hill uses AI in her job as director of library services for Lake Land College.
"I use it for brainstorming quite often in my own work, then I can edit and add my own voice to the text," she said.
She notes that same technique can be helpful to students. If they have to come up with a topic for a paper, for example, an AI tool like ChatGPT can help them narrow down what their paper topic should be about.
Hill said generative AI also is a helpful tool when she's putting together her presentations, as she did recently for superintendents.
"I had 30 minutes. So, I came up with my own objectives. I kind of outlined what I was going to talk about but then I also put the prompt into Google Bard, which is the one I tend to use," she said.
Hill asked what her three objectives should be when speaking to a room full of K-12 administrators about generative AI in education. The results, she said, were pretty much the same ones she had already thought of. Hill used it to verify the structure she had already created.
Hill compares generative AI to when the calculator and graphing calculators first came out, then the internet.
"Anytime a new tool comes out, it's a little scary at first. So, we just need to learn how to use it and how to integrate it into the classroom," she said.
Like Thompson, Hill believes educators need to learn to use it and integrate it into education so that they're preparing students for the workforce.
While Hill said a generative AI like ChatGPT is a helpful tool for students, it's not a substitute for developing one's own information literacy skills, which as a librarian she stresses.
"Users should always critically evaluate the information that they obtain from any source including ChatGPT," she warned.
She said users need to seek multiple perspectives to form their own research-based conclusions, because tools like ChatGPT use the internet.
"We all know the internet is full of misinformation, biased information, some of it's not accurate. Therefore, that's why we need to use those information literacy skills to evaluate the product that we get back anytime we use generative AI," she said.
One way to do that is through the CRAAP (Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) test, which predates the internet.
Currency, Hill said, is how old the information is. She said students need to ask: Is the date listed on the source, is it relevant?
Authority, Hill said, is big today because you need to know where the information is coming from — is it biased, are they qualified to write about the topic? She said you can find that information on the internet fairly quickly.
For accuracy, she said if there are misspellings on the website then you know for sure it's not going to be a good source. Another question to ask is do they quote their sources?
Purpose pertains to the reason why the source exists.
"So when I talk to students, it's things like what is the purpose of that information being out there? Is it to inform? Is it to teach us? To entertain? And nowadays with the internet, is it to sell something, is it to get clicks? Those are things we talk about when we talk about evaluating information," she said.
Hill's interest in AI stems from her desire to learn about new technologies and tools. Since last year, she has been attending webinars from various library organizations and sessions at conferences about generative AI.
She and fellow LLC librarian Andy Cougill are currently developing a workshop series on the tool.
"One of them is going to be through the ROE in Charleston for teachers but then we're planning some AI and digital literacy classes that are going to be offered through Lake Land's community education department," she said.
Hill said information about the classes will be available to the general public soon.
© 2023 the Effingham Daily News (Effingham, Ill.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
