MCSD officials consider ways to incorporate AI | News, Sports, Jobs

SoftBank Group, in partnership with SoftBank Robotics America, is delivering a humanoid robot named Pepper to students in the San Francisco Unified School District.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is constantly developing and integrating with more and more areas of social life, e.g. education.

Marshalltown Community School District is considering ways to wisely incorporate technology into student learning. How widespread AI use in student work is already is not easy to gauge.

Chief Technology Officer Amy Harmsen said she wants to clear up allegations about the presence of artificial intelligence on district devices such as Chromebooks.

“We monitor and filter student devices that are owned by the district,” she said. “We can’t monitor or filter student devices that are personally owned, like their phones. There’s no way we can 100 percent prevent students from using AI. I don’t know that we want to prevent. We’re trying to work toward a meaningful global future. We want to make sure they can be citizens of the world.”

The district uses a system called GoGuardian to filter Chromebooks. Harmsen said they don’t allow generative AI on the devices. But because the depth of the internet is so vast, she said even GoGuardian’s algorithm can’t block everything.

“I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that we’ve blocked everything,” Harmsen said. “Our intention is not to block everything. We want to first give teachers guidance on certain tools that we’ve reviewed before we actively ask them to use them.”

While there has been a lot of attention paid to the negative aspects of AI, she said it was important for MCSD to focus on student safety, privacy and data protection.

“I don’t think we’re ready to put in place specific guidelines,” Harmsen said. “We want to make sure we’re talking and acting in accordance with FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) guidelines.”

As a result, it does not tell people that some websites are still approved because of their large number. Websites must be accessible to all students, accurate, unbiased, reliable, and can be monitored and protected.

Director of Instruction Shauna Smith said it is important for MCSD students to learn how to use technology appropriately.

“For example, if an assignment asked social studies students to discuss the Civil War, and the student copied the instruction to the AI, and then copied and pasted the answer from the AI ​​into the assignment — that would be a misuse of AI,” she said. “They’re basically using it to gather facts, not to use the depth of cognitive knowledge. There’s a higher level of thinking that can be used in AI. If you’re structuring an essay and you want the AI ​​to support you with additional details or find specific grammatical errors, the AI ​​can provide more sophistication in the assignments.”

Smith said MCSD students have the opportunity to learn high-quality computer science starting in kindergarten. District staff are considering a program that combines coding with AI. That would give students insight into how AI and coding work together.

“I don’t think there’s another school in the state of Iowa that’s considering something like this,” Smith said. “We’re in the development phase, trying to figure out how this can work for our kids in the upper elementary grades.”

There is also an advanced early literacy AI program called EPS Reading Assistance, with positive evidence-based results. Iowa State has purchased the program and made it available to all school districts. Smith said they are learning more about it.

“It uses AI to adjust to the pace of students’ reading aloud fluency and can improve that,” she said. “Then it can respond and talk about their comprehension.”

She added that since AI has the power to completely change students’ potential career paths, they are trying to stay progressive “to prepare students to adapt to any future career.”

In light of the conversations about the appropriate use of AI, Harmsen said there are ways to determine if a student has used the technology. In some buildings, staff use an anti-plagiarism tool to detect AI. Harmsen said that while they are reviewing tools to be added to the district, teachers and relationships with students are the most valuable deterrent.

“Our teachers make a point of getting to know our students, so they know their writing style,” she said. “They know a lot about the depth of knowledge of each student. So a lot of this is asking teachers to do what they’ve done for years with plagiarism and figure out if this student really knows this and writes it this way.”

Teachers check the facts to make sure a student is learning the material. Harmsen said the district’s policy states that if a student goes against AI’s expectations, punishment will be applied.

According to Smith, this discipline is established by school principals.

“Artificial intelligence is evolving, and we are constantly having internal conversations about how we will proceed,” she said.

Educators are struggling to choose the right next step, Smith said, because the technology has become global and unstoppable.

“I would encourage parents and students to be a little more understanding because we’re still learning how to navigate AI,” she said. “It’s here. We know it’s here, and I think it can be a great educational tool if it’s used correctly.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or [email protected].