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The best uses of AI in classrooms occur when teachers are knowledgeable about the technology and can create situations where they guide how students use it—as opposed to failing at attempts to prohibit use of AI entirely. A district’s policy for use of AI should have three main components: What can students do with AI? AI is already inexorably integrated into many dimensions of our lives. To prepare students for the world they increasingly inhabit, they must be taught best practices for how to use the technology. Appropriate student use is bounded by assignments, and teachers will reasonably have different expectations for distinct types of assignments and/or how students demonstrate learning and mastery.  What can students not do with AI? At the most basic level, students should not represent any work done by an AI as their own. Doing so is a form of cheating that, in a take-home (or other unmonitored) context, is already very hard to detect. What should guide educators’ use of AI? A recent U.S. Department of Education report and related materials laid out broad guidelines for use of AI in education, including the idea that humans are key to the appropriate use of AI in teaching and learning. Educators need to redesign some central tasks requiring critical thinking (e.g., research projects, essays, and analytic writing) as well as how they are assessed under the assumption that students have access to AI. Especially because AI creates more possibilities for misinformation (and current AI systems have documented biases that can be highly impactful in educational settings), use of AI in a democracy cannot be allowed to come at the cost of students’ critical thinking and reasoning skills. To reap the instructional benefits and avoid the worst consequences of unfettered use of AI, districts need to train teachers about the technology. Even while use of AI is becoming more widespread, a survey conducted by Education Week in April 2023 found that 14 percent of teachers didn’t “know what AI platforms are” and an additional 47 percent thought that AI will have a somewhat (31 percent) or very (16 percent) negative impact on teaching and learning. Basic training should help teachers understand: the principles of appropriate use of AI;  the capabilities, biases, and risks that AI brings; the kinds of assignments are most likely to incur use or abuse of AI (e.g., take-home essays, research, and homework); where the greatest risks of bias lie in using AI outputs to support decision-making; and ways that AI can help save time on varied and complex instructional tasks (e.g., formative assessment and personalized learning). For teachers of classes that typically rely heavily on take-home written assignments, additional training will likely be needed on how to draw boundaries around appropriate use of AI and accurately assess student knowledge and skills in this new context. Finally, districts need to secure the resources required to assign a team or an individual the role of following developments in AI based on these assumptions: (a) students have access to AI and will use it, and (b) with sufficient guidance and support for educators and students alike, AI can have benefits for education.

Teacher and parent attitudes about ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot that debuted in late 2022, are shifting slightly, according to new findings out today from the polling firm Impact Research. The survey is the latest in a series commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation, which is tracking the topic, as well as attitudes about STEM education more broadly. The researchers say Americans and teachers especially are beginning to see the potential of incorporating AI tools like ChatGPT into K-12 education — and that, in their experience, it’s already helping students learn.  The new findings come as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opens an investigation into OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator, probing whether it put personal reputations and data at risk. The FTC has warned that consumer protection laws apply to AI, even as the Biden administration and Congress push for new regulations on the field. RelatedThe Promise of Personalized Learning Never Delivered. Today’s AI Is Different OpenAI is also a defendant in several recent lawsuits filed by authors — including the comedian Sarah Silverman — who say the technology “ingested” their work, improperly appropriating their copyrighted books without the authors’ consent to train its AI program. The suits each seek nearly $1 billion in damages, the Los Angeles Times reported. The latest results are based on a national survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers, 1,002 students, ages 12-18; 802 voters and 916 parents. It was conducted by Impact Research between June 23 and July 6. The plus-or-minus margin of error is 3 percentage points for the teacher and student results, 3.5 percentage points for the voter results and 3.2 for the parent responses. Here are the top five findings: 1. Nearly everyone knows what ChatGPT is About seven months after it first debuted publicly, pretty much everyone knows what ChatGPT is. It’s broadly recognized by 80% of registered voters, according to the new survey, by 71% of parents and 73% of teachers. Meanwhile, slightly fewer students — just 67% — tell pollsters they know what it is. 2. Despite the doom-and-gloom headlines about AI taking over the world, lots of people view ChatGPT favorably Surprisingly, parents now view the chatbot more favorably than teachers: 61% of parents are fine with it, according to the new survey, compared with only 58% of teachers and just 54% of students. 3. Just a fraction of students say they’re using ChatGPT … but lots of teachers admit to using it In February, a previous survey found that 33% of students said they’d used ChatGPT for school. That figure is now creeping up to 42%. But their teachers are way ahead of them: 63% of teachers say they’ve used the chatbot on the job, up from February, when just 50% of teachers were taking advantage of the tool. Four in 10 (40%) teachers now report using it at least once a week. 4. Teachers … and parents … believe it’s legit Teachers who use ChatGPT overwhelmingly give it good reviews. Fully 84% say it has positively impacted their classes, with about 6 in 10 (61%) predicting it will have “legitimate educational uses that we cannot ignore.” Related‘This Changes Everything’: AI Is About to Upend Teaching and Learning Nearly two-thirds (64%) of parents think teachers and schools should allow the use of ChatGPT for schoolwork. That includes 28% who say they should not just tolerate but encourage its use. 5. It’s not just for cheating anymore While lots of headlines since last winter have touted ChatGPT’s superior ability to help students cheat on essays and the like, just 23% of teachers now believe cheating will be its likely sole use, down slightly from the spring (24%).

“The ability to create performance tasks aligned to rubrics and generate multiple examples for students to learn from will be a game changer for assessment.”