Coeur d’Alene is the latest in a handful of Idaho districts to roll out artificial intelligence tools for teachers and consider guiding students to use the technology responsibly.
At a school board workshop last week, Seth Deniston, deputy superintendent of operations, said he understood the initial instinct to block AI tools from school computers and discourage student use. Many in education said “Let’s block it right now” when ChatGBT released its’ public generative AI beta in 2022, Deniston noted.
“I think that’s kind of a mistake,” Deniston said. “The ethics of AI is one of the things I want to most impart to our students.”
The Idaho School Boards Association rolled out a model policy on AI usage in schools just last month, which could lead to a wave of districts addressing the issue in the coming months.
State of AI in Idaho schools
Coeur d’Alene begun rolling out Magic School, a school-focused generative AI program, subscription to teachers this fall and is in the early stages of writing an AI policy to guide use in the district.
Deniston along with Ryan Gravette, the director of technology from the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance, put together a list of where other districts are regarding AI.
West Ada has already rolled out Magic School for staff and students and addressed AI in district policies. Pocatello has Magic School for staff only.
Boise has AI policies in place and allows use on school devices along with licensing two programs, Brisk and Diffit, for staff and students. Blaine uses Power Buddy and Gemini and has written AI into its strategic plan.
Lewiston, Nampa, Caldwell, Idaho Falls and Twin Falls have all considered addressing AI in some form but have yet to make a decision on how to do so, Gravette said.
Coeur d’Alene plans Magic School roll out
Coeur d’Alene is in the early phases of implementing Magic School for teachers in the district. Technology leaders at the district selected Magic School because of the company’s focus on education and privacy protections that align with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Teachers in CDA already started using the free version of Magic School with 175 registered users and over 3,000 AI generations in November alone.
The district began rolling out a paid version of the program this week to teachers already using the platform with professional developments planned throughout the spring.
Last week Michelle Stanford, instructional software support staff in Coeur d’Alene, demonstrated some of the 80 tools Magic School has for teachers.
“You’re not searching when you use AI you’re prompting,” Stanford said. “What Magic School has done, has put a pretty face in front of that prompting.”
She used a lesson on volcanoes as an example. She copy and pasted the article that was the basis of her lesson into Magic School then generated a word wall, based on grade level. She created a worksheet, exit ticket quiz, and other materials in less than 5 minutes.
“You can keep going,” Stanford said. “It’s endless.”
Stanford said they encourage teachers to use the 80-20 rule when using AI to create lessons and activities.
“Let AI do 80% but you as a teacher, you know your classroom, you know your curriculum, you know your kids, so you need to come in and do that 20%,” Stanford said.
With a district-wide subscription to Magic School, which will run the district $38,000 for one year, the district can upload its’ standards and objectives to Magic School, which allows the AI to consider those guidelines when creating assignments.
Teachers can also share resources with each other directly through the system. Stanford envisions Magic School playing a large role in professional learning communities.
The time saving value for teachers is huge, Deniston and Stanford said.
Educators then have more time to spend directly with students or providing individual student feedback, they argued.
The cost to use the platform would increase if rolled out to students at about $4 annually per student, Deniston said.
Teachers fans of Magic School in West Ada
West Ada rolled out the Magic School platform districtwide in August. Teachers were provided resources not only on how to use the platform but also how to address appropriate and ethical use of AI with students, said Aimee Larsen, administrator of instructional technology.
While students in grades 3-12 have access to the program, it can only be used with teacher direction in “rooms” set up by their instructor. Other AI platforms that are not district-adopted like ChatGPT are blocked on district devices for elementary and middle school students. For equity purposes, high schoolers have access.
Teachers have shown to be fans of the program with over 2,000 teachers signed up and an average of 14,500 to 17,000 generations a month.
It has been a challenge for Larsen’s department to meet the training requests they receive for the platform.
“We have offered AI specific training on all four of our district-PD days and it is the first session to fill each time,” Larsen wrote in an email.
Students are also using it widely with 13,622 student sessions completed since the start of the year.
Larsen said they haven’t seen an increase in reports of plagiarism from teachers since the Magic School roll out but have seen an increase in educators addressing AI in the classroom and discussing amongst themselves how best to educate students in this new environment.
“We have had an increase in the number of conversations around the realities of the impact AI is having in the classroom,” Larsen wrote. “ Conversations and district-provided guidance has been focused on how to approach instructional planning and assessment through the lens of PROCESS over PRODUCT.”
What is Generative AI?
Artificial intelligence or AI has been around for decades.
The newest innovation is Generative AI, which, has seen a huge explosion in recent years. Generative AI creates new data versus more common prior forms of AI that made predictions based on data.
Generative AI works based on prompts so a user can prompt an AI tool, like Chat GBT, to search the internet for answers to a question based on the context you give the AI model.
