With so many ai tools and services available, it can be difficult to maintain everything. In the educational field, artificial intelligence tools can handle any number of processes. Knowing which ones best suit your needs can be a daunting prospect. However, having a dedicated team to help evaluate ai tools can make all the difference.
Here we speak with Greg Reichelt, educational technology specialist for Maine Township High School District 207 in Illinois, about integrating ai policy with existing technology and safety policies and how to focus ai to help handle tedious tasks and giving teachers more time to deal with other classroom challenges. .
Reichelt was recently recognized as Director of Most Innovative technology at tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with a Innovative Leader Award.
<h2 id="an-unbiased-look-at-ai-3″>An unbiased look at ai
For Reichelt, having a dedicated ai committee was essential to understanding what ai was, how it could be used in the educational space, and what types of tools would work best for learning. Nearly 35 teachers, administrators, and other district leaders (aside from the existing technology Advisory Council) came together for this task. Reichelt also recruited less tech-savvy educators, as well as people who were generally averse to change, as he wanted a full range of viewpoints to provide the most objective perspective (not unlike Abraham's “Team of Rivals”). Lincoln). They started by brainstorming ideas, frustrations, and challenges, and then discussed all of this with the group to generate direction.
“We wanted to focus specifically on ai,” says Reichelt. “That was when ChatGPT had just been announced. “We wanted to take an agnostic approach and not make preconceived decisions, one way or another.”
This may not be new for some districts, but it is common to have an extreme reaction to ai tools. Many schools outright prohibit their use, while others welcome different types of ai tools without much regulation. Reichelt took a very proactive approach to incorporating ai into its schools.
“We got the 35-person committee every ai tool imaginable to try out, so we had the opportunity to see what (those tools) were capable of,” says Reichelt, who also made sure no data from the students. “While we were doing that, we had a lot of policy conversations about what we can do to shape guidance on what ai does. “We ended up writing our own policy.”
The policy was built based on what Reichelt and his team found through research, what they agreed should be added to the policy, and what already existed in the technology and security policy that was already in play. This allowed for a comprehensive set of guidelines that were familiar but also incorporated the best policies that existed at the time.
Established policy… now what?
With the ai policy in place, all that was left was to figure out what tools, applications, and platforms would be useful to consider adding to an educational environment. In addition to bringing in outside experts to help lead the process, Reichelt's team opted for a teacher-friendly approach.
“Once we had a policy in place, we thought about what we could do to get inside teachers' heads and help meet the needs of our staff and students,” Reichelt said. “At first we wanted to focus specifically on staff, not students, just to give staff a chance to see what ai could do for them.”
Encouraging teachers to try ai isn't always about how to use it with their students. artificial intelligence tools can help handle other tasks that appear tedious or time-consuming.
“Teacher burnout was huge,” Reichelt said. “So we thought about how we can take a new tool on the market and make it help something that contributes to teacher burnout. Too many emails arrive. You have to write too many communications. Here are some tools that can help you with that process.”
The tools Reichelt gravitated toward were fairly popular programs, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, but they also found use in other programs. Claude ai, for example, was a great help in data processing and analysis.
Ultimately, this approach greatly contributed to a successful adoption of ai tools. He also encouraged other educators in the district to get involved in the process.
