Advice about AI to Pre-Service Teachers

In October I had the privilege of speaking to a group of pre-service teachers in their first semester of credential preparation. I met their instructor while she was the university supervisor for my previous student teacher. She wanted me to tell her students about AI in education. We only had 90 minutes together, so after our class meeting she invited them to share additional questions. Some of those questions resulted in these answers.

1. What AI tools are you using in your teaching this semester?

Currently, I am using a lot of Magic School, especially their student room feature that lets me give my students access to instant AI feedback. I also use Writable, which has AI assisted grading and feedback. For general writing tasks I like Claude.ai for generating ideas. All tools now have some level of AI integration. Quizizz, Formative, Newsela, have all added AI supports. And a new one on my favorites list is The Writing Pathway. 

2. What tools have you used in the past that you do not use now?

I hesitate to name tools I no longer use, partly because I don't want anyone to assume that my not using a tool is some kind of un-endorsement. There are certainly tools I've tried that I didn't find that useful, or thought they were not yet fully developed enough. Often I circle back to those tools again in 6-12 months and find they have gotten better, or added a feature I find helpful now. There are, of course, tools that have just gone away, Flipgrid being one of the most recent examples of that, but tools come and go all the time. 

3. Would it be safe to assign assignments involving AI to high school students?

Making sure students are learning to use AI in a safe way is really important. To do that you want to make sure that you are choosing tools that are COPPA and FERPA compliant, and, especially as a new teacher, vetted by your district. That means not asking students under 18 to use ChatGPT or another online chatbot that requires them to create an account. MagicSchool, Brisk Boost, and SchoolAI all offer chatbot options that are student safe. Adobe Express has cool projects students can do with AI image generation. But again, check with your own instructional technology department first. Then, yes, ask students to work with AI to produce a result and then reflect on the process. Ask them to get advice from AI about a project they are planning. Suggest they ask an AI for feedback. Make the AI one of their team members. You'll find lots of powerful and transformative ways to add AI into your learning flow.

4. As a potential assignment, could an instructor have students debate the ethics of AI?

Absolutely, and there are lots of directions to take that. 

5. Would having students try to compare the difference between doing homework with or without AI be an effective way for students to learn about the pros and cons of using AI?

Maybe, it might depend on what the homework assignment was and how you're asking them to reflect on it. If I were going to try something like this I think I would make it an in class experiment. Give the same task to each half of the class and allow one half to use an AI tool. If I had to guess, I would say that the class will see the AI as very pro, and struggle to find any cons about using the AI to help them. Be prepared for that possibility. 

6. Do you think that AI will take over teachers’ jobs in the future?

I think AI will do a lot to help teachers and it may help us serve larger numbers of students. We already have a teacher shortage, and that's not going to change anytime soon. I don't think AI will take teacher's jobs, but I do think AI will be part of the solution to fill the gap when we can't find enough teachers. Education changes really slowly. It's part of the tradition of our culture, and families like to carry on traditions. Plus humans are still social creatures and school is a social place. We have a huge investment in the infrastructure of schools, more so even than the infrastructure of work. Post pandemic many white collar jobs are still being done remotely, lots of office space sits empty, but schools are mostly back at full capacity. 

7. How often should educators use AI grading software? Does it create a disconnect between teachers and their students when educators overuse AI?

You could ask, how often should educators use multiple choice tests? Did scantron machines create a disconnect between teachers and students? They probably did, but I don't recall anyone ever asking that question. AI grading for writing is really a polarizing topic, but I'm pretty sure the folks most worried about it have never actually tried it. I wrote about AI grading here. AI assisted grading is not a black box. It still requires a teacher to evaluate the student work, approve the scores, edit the feedback, and make the final decisions. There is still plenty of student work I grade without AI, but I try to use AI whenever I can because it means my students get their scores and feedback sooner. The relationships I build with my students come from our conversations in class or in the hallway, the laughter we share, the problems we tackle together, the experiences we have while learning. Going home, reading 70+ analytical paragraphs and pointing out places they could be stronger is not contributing to my relationships with my students. 

8. Should AI grading be used exclusively or in addition to hand grading as a self-checking system?

I'm not sure there is a way to use AI grading exclusively, at least not in my world. Remember all AI grading tools still require input and approval from the teacher. Also, only one system available to me currently has AI assisted grading, Writable. I also grade things in Canvas, through Google Forms, and Google Assignments. I grade group answer sessions where students collaborate on Wipebooks. If I wanted to I could grade answers from Peardeck, Formative and Newsela. There is usually more than one way student work makes it to my eyeballs, and many of those sources of data do not have an AI grading component. Never let an AI grade a student's work without looking at that work yourself and verifying the score is accurate. Also, always be clear to students that you are using an AI assisted grading tool. Invite them to speak with you if they ever have a concern about a grade. 

The rest of their questions were about AI detectors and those questions inspired this article I wrote for Edutopia. What ELA Teachers Should Know About AI Detectors.