As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, it is becoming common to use in schools. At DGN, teachers have been learning to adapt to and explore AI tools like Chat GPT and Gemini. Some teachers find that AI can be used to enhance teaching methods, while others are more hesitant to use it due to how they view its impact on students and their learning.
“When used appropriately, there are ways that we are seeing teachers use AI to help accelerate learning,” Superintendent Dr. Hank Thiele said. “However, some students are using AI on their own, and itis stunting their learning, and that’s when the teacher’s frustration comes in.”
When it comes to using AI on assignments and in class, teachers have mentioned concern about its educational limitations. Regarding true and accurate information and how AI overall affects students’ creativity. English teacher Matt Greaney has experimented with how ChatGPT answers prompts and questions.
“It’s not very good in precision. You have to know what you’re working with well,” Greaney said. “It’s not good for accuracy either, and lowers students’ problem-solving skills.”
When AI is used, some students may rely on it as a crutch, assuming all of their information and questions can be answered without truly fact-checking. This has raised the concern of many teachers, including English department chairperson Katie Wood.
“Overreliance on AI to assist with assignments may prevents students from fully developing the skills they need to be successful readers, writers, thinkers, and communicators,” Wood said.
While not all of the teacher’s opinions of AI are positive in regards to how they can use it in their classrooms, some teachers do see parts of AI as a useful tool to help develop students’ learning.
“It’s a good jumping-off point,” Thiele said. “If you ask a group of students, I’m really stuck and staring at a blank page, they may say you can go to Gemini for an idea to start with.”
AI has been a conversation topic not only in the English department but also in the science and math departments. Science teacher Jeff Grant has worked with AI to help plan labs and generate responses to questions to try to find what students can utilize this tool for.
“Anything that I have seen students or teachers use AI for looks very robotic to me, it doesn’t flow right,” Grant said. “I’ve used it to experiment what it would give me and it didn’t point me in a positive direction.”
Some worries have been circulating online and in the education world, as to whether AI could ever replace traditional learning and even teachers themselves. Thiele brings up the importance of human relationships between a teacher and their students.
“Teaching is a connection, there is no technology out there that replaces a person,” Thiele said. “AI can’t replace
a teacher because they are always thinking about adapting to everyone’s needs. Only a good human teacher can do that.”
How it will shape the future of education is still uncertain. For now, teachers are working to find ways to use technology while still keeping traditional teaching habits. Whether it’s seen as a helpful assistant or a potential issue, AI is creating conversations between teachers, students, and administrators.