Denver – In the senior civic course of Zach Kennelly, students build personalized chatbots with artificial intelligence.
A student works on a chatbot that better organizes the recommendations of films and television programs based on the history of the recent watch of a spectator.
Another creates a chatbot which – a little ironically – helps members of generation Z as it practices their communication skills, for example by offering beginners of conversation.
The other students, according to Kennelly’s co-teaching, Gianna Geraffo, blur chatbots that could support mental health, improve financial literacy and provide resources to immigrants.
Soon, the students will refine their ideas, and finally, the class will select one to become an application.
It is a trajectory similar to that of Kennelly and Geraffo followed the last semester, when their students finally built and launched Coloradoan application that Help people Register to vote and also help break the various candidates and measures on the ballot.
“Quite early, we thought it was going to be a massive failure,” said Kennelly of the project of the last semester. “But it became a huge success. The students loved it. They were like: “I ran in the second period to build this thing.” »»
The class project was then – and is still part now – in an effort to help students understand and apply AI practically in school and in their lives.
“It is not at all led by AI. It is deposited in AI, ”clarifies Kennelly. “It is motivated by our students, by their expertise, by their passion.”
Kennelly and Geraffo are part of a small team from their school in Denver, DSST: College View High School, which participates in the Collaborative AI school teamsA one -year pilot initiative in which more than 80 educators from 19 public schools and traditional charter across the country are experimenting and evaluate teaching compatible with improving teaching and learning.
The objective is that some of the first adopters of AI in education come together, share ideas and eventually help open the way to what they and their colleagues in the United States could do with emerging technology.
“Advanced instruction” with AI
The collaboration, co-directed by two national non-profit organizations, the leading educators and the learning accelerator, began in October, with a gathering in person of the various school teams here in Denver.
Non -profit organizations – which are both more focused on “the advancement of education” than on the promotion without discrimination of AI, notes Jin -SO Huh, partner of the learning accelerator – designed the idea after seeing that the generative AI was rippling in education from its first days.
Many teachers are already looking for means to use AI to create lessons and improve students’ comments, Huh says: “We know that this happens. We know that, whether this year or next year, more and more teachers will seek these examples. »»
Huh adds: “We wanted to identify:” Who are the teachers who are already doing an incredible job with AI? “Can we raise promising practices?”
Since their launch event last fall last fall, participants have met practically to discuss the projects they work on, the lessons they learn and what excited them and their students on technology.
Traci Griffith, executive director of the Eliot K-8 Innovation School, which is one of the public schools in Boston, found the invigorating cross-collaboration.
Barely a few weeks ago, she said, during a collaborative AI school team meeting, her school team of four people was in an escape room with another California team. Everyone left the buzzing call for excitement on what their colleagues did from the other coast.
“This shows you the power to bring together educators,” explains Griffith, whose school team uses Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, to give pre and post-evaluation comments to college students on their writing assignments. (Part of the challenge, known as Griffith, is that teachers must first learn to train Claude, to adjust guidelines and to refine the choices of words, before Claude could give beneficial comments to the students.)
The collaboration is “intentionally agnostic on the platform”, explains Alex Magiera, principal director of innovation among leading educators, which means that group leaders did not influence educators in the direction of, Dis, Chatgpt, on Claude or Gemini.
In Denver, students use a platform called Playlab, which describes themselves as a “safe sandbox to learn, adapt and create an educational AI for your context”, to build their chatbots. Playlab allows students to easily switch between different models of AI, because each spits a different result.
Until now, students from the Kennelly class these semester are not yet impressed by the potential of AI, he concedes.
“They are everywhere on the board,” he notes. “They are afraid. They are excited. They are confused.
But it’s still early.
Géraffo, his co-institator, remembers that students in the last semester experienced a major change from start to finish at the end of their mandate, “de”, I am someone to know: “I am someone who drives AI”.
This kind of empowerment is critical, believes Kennelly, because AI is already there, and it is practically inevitable that this becomes part of the career and the life of its students.
“People who do not understand this technology,” he adds, “are the most likely to be exploited by this.”
A pragmatic approach
Collaboration is in a way based on a certain pragmatism about AI, says Huh – a bit like, well, it’s here. He is likely to stay. So what are we going to do with it and about it?
“We are not saying here that AI is the solution and the end, everything,” he says. “I think there is a healthy skepticism in our group.”
All those involved have a certain level of excitement and hunger around the understanding and use of AI, but they undertake to integrate it into their “responsible and efficiently” schools and classrooms, “adds Huh.
“This group sees the potential and the possibility with AI,” said Magiera, “and also recognizes that in the past, technology has overvalued and undernourished.”
Collaboration creates a community where people can share victories and dead ends, express enthusiasm and concern, ask questions and help answer them.
For the moment, the group is expected to succeed during the summer, after the school year ends. But already, Magiera can consider that the teams continue their conversations and operate far beyond that moment.
“It’s certainly not the end,” she says. “These schools say,” Is there a 2.0? ” They want to continue the momentum.
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