The biggest conversation around artificial intelligence takes place inside the classroom, focused on students. However, at Llano ISD in Texas, an effort was made to use ai as a way to help teachers relieve some of the burden of their tasks so that they had more time to focus on the teaching itself.
Llano ISD Network Administrator Maurie Beasley talks about how ai has been used to assist teachers in their daily tasks to help save time and improve relationships between students and teachers. Beasley was recently honored by tech & Learning during a recent Regional Leadership Summit with a Innovative Leader Award for Innovative Systems Administrator.
<h2 id="how-the-ai-integration-began-3″>How ai integration began
One of the biggest booms in recent technological memory has been the incorporation of ai into almost everything we use today. Once ai became popular, the possibilities for its use were endless.
“Our CTO has been here for 20 years and actually has a background in computer engineering. Full disclosure: he's my husband. He stays up to date with the latest (technological developments),” Beasley says. “Maybe a little over two years ago, when OpenAI first released ai to the world, they got to work right away. I was in the pilot program. I would play with him, ask him questions, and really delve into the technical aspects of what he was capable of doing. “I knew it would change the rules of the game.”
How did you start using ai for the district?
“It started building an internal onboarding, similar to a chatbot, using ai,” Beasley says. “He had already started creating a chatbot before ai became a thing, so we started looking into incorporating it.”
The number of daily administrative tasks a teacher has, such as placing a work order, not only affects their interaction with their students but can also take time away from what is really important. And from this obstacle and a deep curiosity about ai, Agnes was born.
Ask Ines
Agnes is a chatbot that, by incorporating ai, has become a reliable way for teachers to offload some of the time-consuming administrative work in a day, giving them more time to focus on other tasks that ai cannot perform. .
“We were trying to get the teachers to (ask Agnes) what their schedules were, if they had homework in class, what the phone number of the person who does payroll is,” Beasley says. “Especially for our new teachers, because our turnover rate in education is so high now that we really thought this would be great for new staff. “That's where it all started.”
While helping teachers had its own benefits, moving the Agnes chatbot to the administrative level helped solve a new range of problems. Preparing documents that were time-consuming to complete or had to be outsourced (which increased the budget) was exactly why Agnes was created. And as more administrators have understood its purpose, more schools have been ready and willing to adopt it into their environment.
Beasley says integrating ai into district operations has saved several hours of troubleshooting while helping to offset limited resources in a smaller district. As with any ai tool, there are concerns about safety, but Beasley notes that existing regulations covered ai in its use and regulation.
<h2 id="how-ai-can-help-your-school-at-higher-levels-3″>How ai can help your school at higher levels
Beasley says the best way to introduce ai into a school, whether at the classroom or administrative level, is by prioritizing the integration of educators. Ensuring that teachers and administrators know how to use ai tools can go a long way in introducing them into the classroom while also helping to address tasks that take up too much of educators' time on a daily basis. For example, there are ai tools that can help teachers create lesson plans, such as difficulty and EduaideAIor those who can help with multiple tasks, such as magic school.
Another way to help integrate ai into a school or district can be through specific curriculum. Beasley notes that starting ai education is important due to the medium's continued popularity and rapid adoption in the educational space. To calm fears surrounding ai use, Beasley suggests following the district's existing technology use guidelines and ensuring ai is used within closed systems to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
