Understanding proper implementation and utilization of Gen AI in school through the use of examples of other schools that have implemented Gen AI
GenAI in the learning environment is currently frowned upon. When we think of AI in school, our brains immediately connect it to plagiarism, copy pasting, and essays completely generated by AI. While there have been many cases of this, this does not have to be the case. This aid is so much more than just a copy paste tool, it can generate themes and ideas, give our students another point of view on reading materials, and even make them more creative then they were before. This article will tackle the proper implementation and use of AI in the school system.
First of all, we should tackle how AI can benefit the students and the education sector. It is a strong tool that is able to benefit teachers. It can help revise curriculums via meaningful feedback, generate useful comments to give students, automate checking, create personal tasks that caters to specific student types, and it prepares our teachers for the future as well. Not only does it benefit the teachers, it also benefits the students as well. AI can aid with feedback, collaborative learning, creating ideas, adaptive learning, and content creation. It gives students lots of freedom, and another beneficial tool which will give them inspiration, and new ideas. The integration of AI will also prepare students, teachers, and the institutions for the future. In a world where we continue to shift to AI and technology, it is better to teach everyone early. Get the jump on AI teaching so that we can utilize it and eventually be able to maximize it once it is integrated in our world and work force.
Though good for us, integrating AI might become a bad thing for us as it teaches technological dependence. It might cause the people to learn to only use AI, stopping them from thinking for themselves and losing the creative flow of ideas. While this may be true, the benefits of integration still vast outway the restrictions and cons of it.
Now, we must tackle the proper integration of it. Proper integration of AI is just as important as its implementation. While there are many concerns present for the use of AI, the main two are plagiarism and ethics.
The first concern on the board is plagiarism. Plagiarism is the act of using another’s ideas and thoughts as your own in an academic scenario. Imagine a time where you told your friend the answer to a teacher’s question is 4, and they raised their hand and recited even though you raised your hand. Your classmate didn’t tell your teacher that it was your answer. They used it as their own, and that is basically what plagiarism is.That’s a crude way of explaining it, but that’s the gist of it. Now, how does this work with AI? Plagiarism in AI is copying and pasting the information, taking it as your own. Like the example, you stole the idea, passed it off as your own, and even benefited from it. Educators can combat this by teaching the students to ask the AI the right questions. Instead of asking it to write the entire thing for the student, they should be taught to ask the AI questions that will give them ideas and inspiration, instead of the direct answer. This in turn makes it so that the student, instead of copy and pasting, will learn to merely garner inspiration from the AI. To sum it up, the concern of plagiarism can be defeated by teaching the students how to properly utilize and use AI as a learning tool, rather than an answer generator.
The next concern schools have with AI is ethics, or rather the lack thereof. Connected to the plagiarism concerns, most AI generated statements are an amalgamation of the works of others, so the citing of the sources can be messy or unclear. If not used properly, the sources wont be generated, and it’ll be quite inconsistent and messy, which again doesn’t give the creator their due respect and credit. To counter this, teachers must teach their students how to properly cite the AI. Chat GPT itself says that “Therefore, if you use text generated by ChatGPT in an academic or professional context, it's crucial to properly cite the source of the information, which would be OpenAI and the specific model (e.g., GPT-3.5). This is similar to how you would cite any other source, such as a book or an article.” If you find any information from any AI source, you should always cite it, and if you can, ask the AI for the link of their information. This way, you are able to give the author of the information their due credits and respect. What i'm saying in general is that, if we teach the students the proper way to cite AI, then we get rid of the ethical concerns of it.
By all means is this not a step by step guide on how to implement it. There are many ways to properly implement AI in a learning environment, but these two concerns are the main two that each school should really tackle. Tthe proper implementation of AI is a crucial stepping stone in our curriculums. It is a game changing tool that when implemented correctly, can give our students an edge in their education and their critical thinking. Our world continues to evolve and progress, with AI being at the forefront of this progress. To utilize this tool is to become a student who evolves, adapts, and is resourceful with the tools given to them.