Like it or not, artificial intelligence has made its way into Vermont classrooms.
Some students use it to summarize class discussions, research an essay topic or troubleshoot homework. Yet the technology has its own set of risks. It can be used to cheat on assignments, create and spread misinformation, or produce deep-fake images.
Much of the discussion about AI in education involves so-called large language models such as ChatGPT. The programs are trained on massive amounts of text from the internet and, in response to questions or prompts, can spit out text or visuals that appear as if they were created by humans.
Schools in the state are starting to address the rapidly changing technology, but the response has been slow. As of last year, just three Vermont districts had some sort of AI policy, while 50 said they had none, according to a technology survey administered by the state Agency of Education.
Districts are trying to catch up. In interviews with Seven Days, educators who are thinking about AI said they are crafting classroom curricula that teach responsible use of the technology. With proper guidance, they believe, students can harness AI in ways that improve their ability to learn and retain information. Meanwhile, three entrepreneurs have launched a nonprofit, aiVermont, that aims to teach educators about the technology and provide them with ideas for using it in the classroom.
Artificial intelligence “is here and we have to deal with it,” said Peter Drescher, Essex Westford School District’s director of technology and innovation. “This is going to change teaching and learning, and [educators] do need to change.”
Essex Westford is one of the districts at the forefront of the conversation. While some schools block students from using large-language models or employ AI detection tools to try to catch cheating, Essex Westford is focused on teaching educators and students to use the tools effectively and ethically. For example, Drescher said, school staff protect student data by not entering names or other personal information when using AI-powered platforms. The programs typically collect and retain information, so it’s imperative to take precautions, he said.
Some teachers are also designing assignments to make cheating difficult. Rather than just grading a final draft of an essay, for example, they might require students to show their work and give more weight to the different stages of the writing process, Drescher said. Educators are also working to build trust and relationships with students to discourage cheating.
Last school year, the district added an AI section to its student handbook, acknowledging that the technology is “a potential learning and teaching tool.
“All users are expected to employ these tools solely for educational purposes, upholding values of respect, inclusivity, and academic integrity at all times,” the passage says. Using AI tools to impersonate others or for bullying, harassment or intimidation is prohibited.
Ryan Dudley, an Essex Westford tech teacher, leads a six-week class for all sixth graders about responsible use of technology, including artificial intelligence. Throughout the school year, he also delivers lessons to all middle schoolers specifically focused on AI. Dudley recalled a recent one in which he used ChatGPT to show students how they could generate 10 ideas for a narrative writing project in 30 seconds.
“Sixth [and] seventh graders, when it comes to narrative writing, staring at that blank screen with the cursor blinking can just be torture for them,” Dudley said.
He’s also shown them how AI-powered text-to-image models such as Canva and DALL-E can create compelling visuals of characters from their writing.
Teachers, too, are finding uses for AI, Dudley said. Educators can upload a PDF of a news article to a platform called Diffit and have it rewrite the piece in a simpler way to accommodate students with reading deficits, for instance. To communicate better with students who are learning English, Dudley has prompted ChatGPT to translate whatever it’s hearing into other languages, such as Spanish or Swahili.
Artificial intelligence, Dudley noted, is already embedded in tools people use daily, from virtual assistants Siri and Alexa to Google Maps.
“When we were first talking about this three years ago, we thought it was a cool, crazy new toy,” he said, “and now it’s morphed its way into so many different places.”
At Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, administrators recently surveyed teachers and students to get a sense of how they’re already using AI tools and what kind of training they’d find helpful. The district wants to create a set of guidelines for ethical use of the technology and to provide recommendations for teachers about ways to integrate it into the classroom.
District learning coordinator Stan Williams, who is leading the effort, said he sees great potential for AI to act as a “learning companion” for students — to help them work through homework problems when they get stuck, explain a difficult concept in simpler terms or act as a study partner to prepare for a test.
“It’s disingenuous to deny kids skills and access to services we use as adults.” Katie Mack
Katie Mack, a CVU librarian, is working with colleagues to create a progression of AI skills they want students to have as they advance through high school. In their own work, Mack and Williams said they use AI platforms regularly to evaluate teaching materials, brainstorm ideas and organize their thoughts.
“It’s really powerful as a feedback and reflection tool,” Mack said, arguing that “it’s disingenuous to deny kids skills and access to services we use as adults.”
Fifteen-year-old Torin Etheridge has fully embraced the new tech. The Montpelier High School sophomore said he became interested in artificial intelligence after taking a computer science class last school year. He started playing around with ChatGPT and another chatbot called Gemini. He was quickly hooked.
Now, Etheridge said, he uses AI regularly as a “productivity tool” for schoolwork — to research topics, summarize reading assignments and write bibliographies. But he acknowledges that’s not how everyone in his school is using it.
“I think definitely there’s a huge amount of kids just cheating and deferring to ChatGPT to do their work for them,” Etheridge said, “and I think there is a [smaller group] using it responsibly.”
This summer, spurred by the flooding in central Vermont, he launched his own startup called Eco Grow AI, a platform that uses machine learning to find ways to optimize crops to be more resilient. He recently started a new project, RDS AI, aimed at creating more reflective, humanlike artificial intelligence.
Teachers often think students only use AI to cheat, Etheridge said, though he’s seen that perception slowly change this school year. Other educational tools, such as laptops and calculators, also once sparked concerns about academic integrity, Etheridge said, but now they’re commonly accepted. AI “shouldn’t be any different,” he said.
Jaia Frank-Adams, a recent graduate of Harwood Union High School in Duxbury, has done a deep dive into the technology and holds a more nuanced view. As someone with dyslexia, the 18-year-old appreciates how ChatGPT can help teachers customize lessons for students with learning challenges and translate written language into speech. But she worries about how easy it is for the platforms to generate human-sounding essays.
She sees potential for using artificial intelligence to perform mundane tasks such as summarizing lectures. But she’s concerned with the ways in which AI can spread misinformation and create highly realistic fake images. Now taking a gap year, Frank-Adams plans to study computer science and public policy in college, with the intention of one day working to craft laws that make AI and other tech tools safer and more ethical, particularly for youths.
Because the tech is so new and ever evolving, many teachers don’t know how to guide students in using it. School districts such as Essex Westford and Champlain Valley, which have tech specialists on staff, are better equipped to introduce students to AI than smaller or more rural school districts without as many resources, said Lucie deLaBruere, a tech-education consultant in Vermont who spent most of her career teaching in the Northeast Kingdom. She leads tech-focused classes for educators and is in the process of designing one on artificial intelligence that will be offered at the University of Vermont.
aiVermont, the new nonprofit, is also working to get educators up to speed on the technology. Started earlier this year by Generator Makerspace cofounders Denise Shekerjian and Chris Thompson and New Jersey-based education consultant Marc Natanagara, the group held conferences in June and September for educators interested in learning more about the technology and ways to apply it.
Natanagara served as facilitator of the June conference, which was geared to middle and high school teachers.
“When there’s fear of something, we don’t make good decisions,” he told the 100 or so educators who gathered at Hula in Burlington for the event. He demonstrated a simple but impressive AI-powered online game called Quick, Draw! — in which a person draws an image generated by a Pictionary-type prompt and the program guesses what it is — to show how artificial intelligence is designed to mimic human intelligence.
The aiVermont founders have plans to host more summits for educators, bring in speakers on the topic, and launch an online platform that allows teachers to share ideas and ask questions. But just because they run an organization focused on AI, the founders said, doesn’t mean they want people to embrace the new technology unthinkingly.
“We’d be the last to say, ‘Close your eyes and jump,'” Shekerjian said.
But ultimately, the entrepreneurs said, students are going to inherit a complex world, and AI is part of it. They believe the job of educators is to prepare them for that future.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Risk and Reward | Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform education. But even proponents advise caution.”
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2024.
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