Since its introduction, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the world, and its impact on schools has not gone unnoticed by schools. AI tools, like ChatGPT, have been used more and more by students and teachers alike, with the intention of aiding learning. With this in mind, Virginia Beach City Public Schools recently decided to integrate AI tools into the classroom, creating policies and guidelines “that guide digital literacy and internet safety for students and staff,” according to the VBCPS website.
According to Stephen Delaney, PA’s Instructional Technology Specialist, leaders downtown were responsible for creating training materials that all Virginia Beach technology specialists were trained with over the summer. They were tasked with instructing the teachers across three separate training sessions and then teaching the students a similar training. “[The school board] wanted to be sure that all of the teachers and students and the whole school system was given exactly the same training,” he said. “They wanted consistency across the board.”
After testing various AI models, schools adopted Gemini AI, the AI tool built into Google, as their classroom-friendly AI resource. On its website, Gemini AI describes itself as “purpose-built for teaching and learning” with guidelines in mind for protecting the safety of its students. For students under 18, Gemini AI identifies inappropriate content and prevents inappropriate responses. The data is not reviewed or used to train other AI models, and it has the same protections as other Google apps, like Google Docs and Gmail. Gemini AI is also free of charge to students and teachers, unlike ChatGPT, which places its best AI models, ChatGPT Plus, behind a paywall.
The school system has certain restrictions in place to guide students towards using AI responsibly. It is up to the discretion of teachers to decide when and where AI should be used, and all AI usage must be approved by the teacher. Gemini AI and other AI resources are only available during the school day, from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., only on school-issued devices.
On the VBCPS website, it designates different levels of AI usage meant to be implemented in the classroom, resembling a stoplight diagram. Level zero, or a red light, is entirely the student’s work. All knowledge should come from the students, and using AI would be considered cheating. Level one, or a yellow light, means that students can use AI in small steps of the process, like brainstorming. Only AI-approved tools can be used, and only when the teacher allows it. Finally, level two, or a green light, allows students to use AI for more complex help, like outlining ideas, analyzing ideas, or creating examples. They work with AI more directly, but they are also responsible for fact-checking its responses.
One of the growing concerns by teachers and the school board is the use of AI for plagiarizing and cheating, regardless of the regulations in place during school hours. Delaney says that his main concern with AI is cheating, a problem he feels can be helped with more guidance and instruction. “We want to teach the students how to use it as a tool and create ideas, to enhance critical and creative thinking,” he explained. “What we don’t want is students using it as a crutch.”
English teacher Kelly Boyd agreed, adding, “I worry that students will make school completely irrelevant by bypassing the process of learning.” She, along with Delaney, wants students to retain their critical thinking skills while learning how to use AI responsibly.
AP Psychology teacher Amanda Augustine has been working to integrate more AI strategies and opportunities into her everyday lessons and teaching. She explained that as her students continue to use AI, she has learned that students need to be more distinct with their prompts. “I’m learning to tell my students in the future to be really specific with their prompts, or once they put in a prompt, they need to give it prompts back,” she described. “It is up to the students to tailor it to what they need through giving it prompts back.”
As teachers continue to integrate AI into the classroom, it is becoming increasingly harder to distinguish when and where it is being used. Boyd described how her students sometimes unintentionally use AI software in programs like Grammarly and Microsoft. “It’s been seamlessly integrated; we really weren’t given a choice about that,” she said. AI has been built into the software to improve workflow and create more productivity, but often, students don’t even know that AI is built into these programs.
“If students aren’t careful, they can become too reliant on these technologies embedded into their writing resources, ” Boyd stated. She pointed out that standardized tests don’t allow for AI to be used in any form. “Since standardized tests don’t allow any kind of grammar or spelling help, it is best to be able to develop these skills on our own.”
Although these schools’ enforced restrictions can’t completely eliminate the dangers of AI technologies, they do provide students with the tools they need to learn how to use AI responsibly. AI will not replace the role of teachers, but the goal of AI’s integration into VBCPS classrooms is to prepare students to use AI in ways that are safe, ethical, and purposeful, according to the VBCPS website.
One of the many problems, according to Augustine, is that students’ mastery of AI has already outpaced some, but not all, teachers’ understanding of AI. She wondered how teachers could teach students how to use AI when they already know more about it, but she explained, “Just because students use it a lot and know more about it doesn’t mean they are using it correctly. I think that this is the powerful role that teachers are going to play. Students may have more familiarity with it, but they could still use the teacher as a guide for how to use it the right way.”
Boyd also warns that AI can’t be a replacement for learning. “Learning must be done,” she said. “It takes a lot of time, and when people conflate that, it becomes a problem.”
