The topic of AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is everywhere. Many have taken strong stances for or against, but there are some serious issues that come up for teachers. Older students, mostly 6th grade through college, have been using AI to complete assignments instead of completing them on their own. Some argue that the student still has to read and edit, allowing them to create along the way. Others, like myself, believe that this is taking away a huge chunk of student learning and assessments. Not only is this detrimental to student learning, they are actively going against the International Society for Technology Education standards, especially 1.3 Knowledge Constructor (ISTE, 2017). Students are missing out on getting better in their abilities to research, evaluate, and form conclusions. Unfortunately, I don’t see this going away any time soon. So what does this mean for elementary teachers (aka – teachers of students who have no use for AI in school)?
If you’re an elementary teacher, you may have attended a meeting (or many) in the past year about how great AI can be. As someone who is on many different district committees, I’ve lost count of how many meetings that I’ve been a part of where we are being asked to practice or use an AI tool for education. Looking past the fact that scientists and experts state that the immense usage of AI is harming our environment (which is a very important point), is AI really helping our teaching? Is it really making our lives easier?
Let’s take a look at the SAMR model, which is used to evaluate educational technology. It’s no secret that technology has been evolving over the years, and many educators are quick to adapt the newest and coolest. The SAMR model looks at whether the technology is being used to do the following…
- Substitute – simply replace something else being done
- Augment – enhances what is being done
- Modify – using tech to give opportunities that may not be available in the classroom
- Redefine – do something that can’t be done without technology
These definitions are discussed in a great article by Youki Terada, where he makes this meaningful statement – “It’s tempting to think of SAMR as a mountain to be summited. But good technology integration isn’t about living at the top of the SAMR model; it’s about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy—or strategies—for the lesson at hand.” (Terada, 2020). When teachers use an AI tool, what level of this model are they implementing? For example, an AI tool may be able to make a super cool video about one of your social studies topics. Ask yourself first: How is this making your job easier? Were you going to make this video before deciding to use AI? Is it replacing your teaching? Is it doing something you simply can’t do? The answer is mostly no. Many of the ways teachers are being told to use AI are simply for the sake of using it.
Some teachers are using AI to write lesson plans or come up with activity ideas. I understand this temptation, but why? I should point out that I am lucky to be in a district that doesn’t require submitted lesson plans and buys many resources for us to use in every subject. From my searches, there are plenty of websites, blogs, and Pinterest boards with tons of ideas, so relying on AI to create a lesson plan seems unnecessary and less likely to fit the exact needs of our students.
Where do ethics play a role? While AI is technically creating its own artifact, it pulls from what already exists on the internet, as well as puts out what you create for later use by its programs. It’s believed that a lot of the source material it is using is taken without creator consent, another ethical issue. So, if you put your students’ names in the program to create a word search, for example, now their names are out there in that world. We know that districts and tech experts claim that there are ways to not share your information outside of your account, but we are also seeing more and more how AI softwares have gone rogue, so who’s to say that it won’t “go rogue” with your information?
Let’s say you are using AI to write a behavior plan or IEP. The Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) protects student information from evaluations and personal identifying answers from surveys (Hagen, 2017), which are often used in these types of reports. So, to be able to write the report, you have to put in that student’s information into your “safe” AI chat and trust that the information won’t go anywhere. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but the public and even tech experts don’t know enough about AI to trust this aspect.
If we are going to teach students to be good digital citizens, per the ISTE Standard 1.2 (ISTE, 2017), then teachers should be modeling that behavior in and out of the classroom. If students see or hear teachers putting information into AI, then they will think that it’s okay. I want my students creating and learning from their own work, and that starts with me. Pulling from AI can, in some cases, be plagiarism. And many creators that the programs are pulling from did not give permission. What are we teaching our students about coming up with own ideas if we, as their teachers and role models, are actively not?
It is our ethical duty as teachers to limit our use of AI programs in and out of the classroom, for teachers and students.
References
International Society for Technology in Education. (2017). ISTE standards: Educators. ISTE
Terada, Y. (2020, May 4). A powerful model for understanding good tech integration. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/article/powerful-model-understanding-good-tech-integration/
Leave a Reply