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With artificial intelligence tools making their way into classrooms, the Eagle County School District formed an AI Think Tank this year to better understand the benefits and pitfalls of the technology.
Led by the district’s ed-tech team, the Think Tank originally set out to create recommendations for AI-related policies and strategies. However, as the team got going, its members decided to lean into education and building AI literacy first.
This shift occurred as the group considered the rapidly changing nature of technology and AI tools. Any policy would likely “become obsolete” quickly after setting it, said Bri Chittenden, the district’s education technology manager.
So from January to March, the group focused on crafting strategies and guidelines for how to ensure the technology is used appropriately and safely.
Throughout the spring, hosting meetings up and down the valley, the Think Tank sought feedback first from teachers and administrators and then later from high school students and parents to help guide future strategies for the schools.
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By the end of the semester, the team created drafts of guiding principles for AI use as well as student and staff agreements for AI.
This doesn’t mean the district won’t ever make policy changes. Next year, it’s likely the Think Tank will make sure the district’s “current policies cover the gamut of all the technologies that may come out,” including AI, Chittenden said.
The Think Tank followed a “human in, human out” approach with all of its work, meaning that even while using technology, the human aspect is critical.
The drafted principles define the approach this way: “When partnering with AI, we maintain human oversight throughout the entire process. … AI tools can serve as a thought partner but do not replace the critical thinking responsibilities of students, teachers or administrators.”
How teachers can use AI
Starting in January, the group began its work by providing AI literacy to teachers.
“Generative AI was so new. We wanted to make sure that they understood how it works,” said Scott Hopkins, an education technology specialist for the district. “It’s not magic; it’s just math. And we also wanted to make sure that they knew and were aware of some of the inherent risks.”
The group put together an AI Literacy 101 presentation as well as various educational materials to establish baseline knowledge around what the technology can do and what the pitfalls can be.
This literacy is expected to continue in future school years, with the ed tech team already planning for some AI exploration sessions and workshops for educators in August and throughout the year.
Part of the group’s education and exploration as it moved forward included looking at how teachers could use AI for lesson planning and in the classroom. To aid teachers in finding ways to use AI, the group created what it called “AI exploration choice boards.”
“They offered entry-level, intermediate, and advanced options for teachers to dip their toes in AI depending on where they work,” Hopkins said. “Entry level might be something as simple as ‘I’ve got five ingredients in my pantry, Generate a recipe for me.’ Something more advanced might be, ‘How can I level texts for different reading levels?’”
Within this, the challenge is less about how to prompt the tool, but rather ensuring its accuracy and that there’s no bias. “Making sure that whatever it is you’re wanting students to read about is indeed what they’re going to read about,” Hopkins added, noting that this is part of the “human out.”
How students can use AI
Later on, the group worked through understanding what appropriate student use of AI would look like, something Chittenden said was the “topic that all teachers were interested in.”
“They were all very anxious and nervous about students utilizing AI inappropriately and using AI to do the work for them,” she said. “It’s a hard discussion to have with teachers.”
Chittenden said there was a “wide spectrum” of opinions ranging from staff that wanted to block AI entirely to those who wanted to allow free-range use for students. Similarly, the approach to handling artificial intelligence in classrooms has differed between education systems, schools and districts across the country.
“When generative AI first came out, it was literally block or allow; that’s what school districts and universities were doing. Then there came to be a traffic light model where it was red light is you can’t use it, green light, use it full on, and yellow is kind of somewhere in between but very muddy,” Chittenden said.
Leveraging research and looking at what others were doing — including a group of students from Vail Mountain School —the Eagle County School District group created its own version of something called an “AI integration scale.”
“It just gives some guidelines to teachers. We don’t expect this to be a student-facing resource. It’s more something for teachers to utilize and have discussions or conversations with their kids,” Chittenden said.
It creates four buckets of acceptable AI use for teachers, from no AI assistance allowed to AI collaborative creation. In between are buckets allowing AI to assist with brainstorming and allowing the technology to assist with editing. The idea is that assignment to assignment, teachers would set expectations for what acceptable AI use is.
There are two buckets of AI student platforms being used in education, Chittenden said.
“One is where students will do work and they’ll get feedback from the AI … so it’s basically helping to personalize or individualize the learning, helping with the tutoring specific students,” she said.
“The other route is helping students build prompting skills” through tools similar to Chat GPT where students can ask questions, Chittenden added.
As the school district moves forward in its AI journey, it is planning to pilot or purchase an AI platform for its schools. Having its platform would allow for a “safer environment” for student use as education-specific platforms can better protect student information and eliminate inappropriate content. It also would help prepare students for beyond high school.
“This is something that students are going to have to use when they graduate.
And we want to make sure that they know how to use it,” said Will Harris, an education technology specialist with the district.
