In our increasingly digital world, educators recognize the importance of integrating ai tools into the classroom. ai integration can address diverse learning needs, promote data-driven decision makingand stimulate class discussion. Leveraging ai in the classroom can improve teaching while preparing students for a future where ai is an integral part of the workforce. It is essential that educators take advantage of professional development (PD) opportunities to improve their understanding of how to use ai to improve the classroom experience.
ISTE U serves as a digital hub offering world-class professional learning courses designed to help educators develop critical skills for teaching and learning in a digital world. Recently, EdSurge spoke with Chelsey McClelland, a third-year social studies teacher at North Lawrence High School in Indianapolis who recently completed the ISTE U course artificial intelligence Explorations for Educators.
EdSurge: Why did you decide to take the ISTE U ai course? What were your goals?
McClelland: One of the things that piqued my interest in the ISTE U course was that I didn’t know much about the use of ai. I knew about ChatGPT from reading articles online, but I didn’t know how it worked. I was worried my students would use this to write all their essays! And at first our school blocked its use. I think all the educators were concerned.
I was at a crossroads; She didn’t want students to use it because she didn’t want academic dishonesty, but he also knew that this technology wouldn’t go away. I thought it was very important to take the course because if I don’t learn how to use it effectively and I don’t learn what it is, then I won’t be able to convey it to students. I’m not doing them any favors if I don’t learn about ai.
What elements of the course structure and content were particularly effective in facilitating your learning about ai?
The instructor was very supportive. The course seemed more focused on my results (on my learning and application of the material) than on meeting a deadline. I loved that the course was asynchronous and self-paced. As much as I love being a part of live PD and collaborating with other educators across the country, it’s very difficult to do it on a weekly basis.
In the ISTE U course, we could periodically chat with classmates through posts and responses. I could still connect with educators but without having to be on a (video conference), especially considering the different time zones and school start dates. My school started at the beginning of July, so I finished the course during the first few weeks of my school year. I appreciated having the flexibility to say: I’m super overwhelmed this first week back at school and I don’t have time in the afternoons; I’ll just sit down and do this on Sunday when I’m planning my lessons.
I really loved that each module opened with a fun way ai can be used – it’s not just ChatGPT writing an essay or MagicSchool ai making your lesson plan. One of my favorite activities was giving directions to different generative art ai robots, resulting in completely different designs. Even ai tools that are trained with the same information could give unique results! This later became a big point of discussion with my students.
Another great example from the course was an entire lesson on deepfakes, which involves creating audio or video of situations that never actually happened. As a professor of government and teaching about political elections, I am very excited to apply what I have learned in my classroom. This will help me educate students on how to detect deepfakes and discuss the possible implications.
The crux of what I learned from the course, which has helped me a lot in approaching ai and how to use it in the classroom, is that there are many things to learn. As educators, we often think that it is bad for students to use ChatGPT and that it will lead them to not learn anything. But we can’t criticize students for not knowing how to use it appropriately if we ourselves don’t know how to use it appropriately; We need to teach them in what context to use ai and how to do it in an academically honest way.
Can you share specific examples of how you integrated ai concepts or tools into your teaching practices as a result of taking this course?
I work in a school with an emerging multilingual population and ai has been very beneficial in helping me structure resources to make them more accessible to my students. Especially in a social studies classroom where I work with a lot of primary sources, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out how to break down that language so that English learners are still accessing the same content but without losing academic vocabulary.
The other day in government class, we used ai to gather general information about past political parties. Once the students understood the basics, we discussed how those parties may have merged into modern political parties.
I have also held class discussions about how ai works and how it is trained with information from the Internet. This leads to conversations about problems that might arise. I ask students, “Could ai be trained with misinformation?” What can we do about it?” We discuss how we cannot blindly trust ai; rather, we can use it as a basis for generating knowledge. I think of it as levels of taxonomy: ai can give us a basic understanding, but then students have to analyze and create from there.
What advice can you offer other educators who want to learn more about integrating ai into their classrooms?
Don’t be afraid of ai. There seems to be a fear that ai will replace teachers. ai can teach children content, but not how to apply it. That is our job as teachers. Our role is changing a little, but for the better. Now, we don’t necessarily need to spend as much time teaching the basic information. Instead, we can do more projects, engage in more class discussions, and help students apply that information.
I encourage teachers to find their communities online. I follow several edtech accounts that offer ideas on using ai in the classroom and adjust the ideas to my different classes. This doesn’t mean redoing everything in your lessons. Try to review a couple of lessons for each unit by integrating ai tools. It is not necessary to totally change what is done to expose students to ai.
ai will become a more integral part of the workforce. If we, as educators, are trying to prepare students for the college and career world, we must train them to use ai tools responsibly.
