🤖 How AI is impacting student writing

💼 AI Meets Curriculum Leadership

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📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ Helping K-12 schools navigate the complex world of AI (via MIT News) — A new guidebook from the MIT Teaching Systems Lab supports educators and leaders in thinking critically about how to integrate AI meaningfully and ethically in schools.

2️⃣ Google tool makes AI cheating easier, teachers say (via CalMatters) — California educators report that the updated Google Lens tool makes it much harder to enforce academic integrity, raising concerns about student learning and assessment.

3️⃣ Our latest commitments in AI and learning (via Google Blog) — Google commits $30 million to new AI for learning initiatives, including partnerships and tools aimed at K-12 students and teachers.

📢 Your voice: Surprising AI stats

Last week’s poll: Which stat (from the poll below) catches your eye most?

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 74% of students believe that AI will play a significant role in their professional lives (6)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 46% of students think their schools adequately prepare them for AI (11)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 44% of students perceive their teachers as well prepared to work with AI applications (10)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 49% of students worry that AI could widen gaps in academic success among peers (17)

AI could widen gaps: It makes we wonder if some of these students are thinking that there will be a gap because students are cheating, or if they perceive that those who are able to learn how to use it effectively in school will be better prepared. If students are worrying about this, then I think this becomes a significant issue for schools. — N. DeGroot

Students think schools adequately prepare them for AI: Honestly I would never have rated this that high and I am surprised our students did. I know how when presenting to my school board it was the student reps that really asked the hard questions and saw the flaws in our programing. — A. Adizma

AI could widen gaps: I wonder if they are worried about other students using AI to get ahead, or if they are thinking more like some of us adults and worried about the potential for loss of critical thinking skills. Either option could feel scary to our students. Jena Smith, Garden Grove TOSA

Students think schools adequately prepare them for AI: My district is VERY behind when it comes to discussing AI with students and so the fact that there are students who think their schools are doing a decent job preparing them for AI means that more schools are talking about it in a way that simply isn't happening here. I'm shocked by this as it seems like many schools in my area are taking the same approach we are (not that I agree with it). — B. Payne

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🗳 Poll: AI-resistant schools

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

✍️ How AI is impacting student writing

Student writing is in the crosshairs of this AI revolution.

As AI tools like ChatGPT become more available and prevalent, they’re increasingly impacting the classroom — especially student writing.

It’s understandable. When teachers ask students to write, it’s hard. (I think we can agree that most writing assignments aren’t easy … and honestly, that’s the point.)

When students have an option to let AI do the thinking for them, it’s SOOOOOO tempting to just say, “OK, here you go.”

But the more I work with AI — and talk to educators and students using it — I see more and more potential for powerful learning. Lots of us in education have seen that, too … but it’s so hard to get past the cheating aspect. (And it takes time to learn how to use new tools.”

Can AI support the writing process for students?

I think the answer is a resounding “yes.”

Here are 6 things that still stick out in my mind from this AI writing workshop with teachers and students …

1️⃣ Writing has always been about more than writing. (And it still is.)

Teachers have LOVED writing for ages — and it’s not just because they want a final product they can read.

We have asked students to write for lots of reasons: to show what they’ve learned, to help them improve their writing skills, to know how to formulate a line of thinking … and much, much more.

Many of those skills are timeless. They’ll serve us as humans no matter where technology or AI or the workforce goes.

But the way that we develop them? That’s already changing — and it’s going to need to change more and more.

We need to stay focused on the mission — Why are we really, truly asking students to write? What do we want to get out of it?

If the final product of writing isn’t getting the job done, we can adjust the assignment to still accomplish the main reason we do it in the first place. (Assuming that we really know why we’re doing it in the first place …)

2️⃣ Use AI to support writing in small slices — and only when it makes sense.

There are a handful of ways people think that AI is used to write — if they haven’t learned otherwise …

• AI will write the whole thing so the human doesn’t have to think.

• AI will give feedback — correcting spelling, grammar, etc.

If we’re focused on the thinking that happens at all levels of the writing process, AI can support that in a variety of ways.

AI can support our thinking about writing without actually doing the writing for us.

An example: In our workshop, I encouraged participants to develop a persuasive essay about any topic they wanted …

… and I created pre-write brainstorming chatbots that would help them.

I wrote instructions for these chatbots to encourage thinking about topics and supporting details without doing the work for the students. (I made them in SchoolAI Spaces with custom instructions.)

And, to elevate the experience, I gave them big loud personalities for fun.

Try one if you’d like:

• Stanley, the curmudgeonly copy editor

• Captain Inkbeard, the salty sea captain

• Zorplax-9, the interstellar space guide

• … or a traditional, neutral (bland) brainstormer

You can create AI chatbot supports to any phase of the writing process — or the research process — or the discussion process of history — or the creative process of art. You just need to know what you want to provide and encourage when you write the instructions.

And — key point here! — no one said that you need AI in EVERY SINGLE PHASE of learning. The teacher is the instructional designer who decides where AI support would be helpful — and where to put it.

3️⃣ Students crave the adaptive, immediate support that AI provides.

I might never forget a comment one of our student participants made during the workshop.

We had shifted from “How can AI support the writing process?” to “What about academic integrity and cheating?”

She said: “I think these tools we’ve seen this morning might be the most powerful I’ve ever seen as a student.”

And why did she say that? Because these AI writing experiences gave her custom support just in time. They didn’t tell her the answer. They just gave her what she needed so she could confidently do the work herself.

She expressed frustration when she was working on something on her own and didn’t have anything or anyone who could help her out — but these AI activities could provide that support.

She also expressed frustration about how she was being held back from using these tools from teachers who were concerned about cheating. She didn’t want to cheat; she wanted to be empowered to do the work.

I get what she’s saying.

I also understand where her teachers are coming from. It’s hard when there’s new technology and, as a teacher, you don’t want to be taken advantage of.

Eventually — hopefully! — we’ll be able to meet her where she is.

4️⃣ Many times, students (and teachers!) just don’t know how AI can be used for learning.

This was a natural reflection on and reaction to that student conversation.

If TEACHERS don’t know any better, they’ll want to shut down AI use because students are using it to avoid thinking, working, and developing skills.

If STUDENTS don’t know any better, that’s all they’ll use it for.

The solution? We need to know better.

When TEACHERS know better, they can design AI interactions into learning where (and if — and only if!) they support student learning.

When STUDENTS know better, some of them will start using AI for the right reasons because they want to learn and grow — and they want to do right and be responsible, ethical learners (and people).

This won’t produce 100 percent compliance. Students will still abuse AI. (But let’s be honest … we’ve never had 100 percent compliance before AI, have we?)

5️⃣ If your school is resistant, there are ways to phase it in.

A teacher asked me during a break to address a question to the group that she had been thinking about …

What if your school is resistant? What if your department (or department head) is resistant? If you see the promise and potential, what can you do?

There are LOTS of answers to this question. Here’s what I told her …

Start small. My blog and book and flagship email newsletter are all called “Ditch That Textbook,” derived from my decision to quit using my textbooks as my primary instructional device. But I didn’t just quit my textbooks right away.

• Unknowingly, I was doing it little by little.

• I tried a new teaching practice and evaluated its effectiveness.

  • If it worked, I kept it.

  • If it didn’t, I scrapped it — or adjusted it — or learned from it.

• I gathered results that these new ideas were working.

• I slowly phased more and more new ones in over time.

• Eventually, I looked at my textbooks and thought, “Why do I have these things anyway?”

With AI? You might start with something teacher-driven … on the big screen in front of class. Use it as a discussion prompt — or something to evaluate. Maybe create some writing with AI and have students critique it.

Another teacher added: Start with something low-stakes. Maybe it’s a small activity — or one that isn’t a huge part of the grade or a key part of the curriculum. If it doesn’t go well, you have little to lose.

(Also: You might start at the end of the semester. That’s a great low-stakes time to try something. When other classes are showing Christmas movies on the last days before break, you could try something new. And if it flops, it’s still better than showing a movie!)

6️⃣ An important shift: From final product to process.

You hear LOTS of people talk about this concept in the “AI in education” circles. Here’s my personal twist on the concept:

When AI cheapens the final product, focus on the process.

Students covet the almighty points in the gradebook. For many of them, they’ll do whatever it takes to make the grade — and if it isn’t for points, they’re not interested in doing it.

Whether this is good or bad, it does say one thing about grade book points. For many students, they MOTIVATE.

What do we communicate when all of the points in the gradebook go toward the final product — the essay, the research paper, the test, the project — and none go toward the process?

It communicates that the process isn’t important — and the product is.

What, again, is AI really, really good at? Making final products.

I’ve talked to LOTS of teachers who are putting more emphasis — and points in the gradebook — toward tasks that demonstrate the process … and they’re de-emphasizing the end product.

Why? Because lots of the growth, the skill development, the thinking, the creative struggle — it happens during the process. The good solid learning happens during the process.

If we want to keep students from farming out their final products to AI, one thing we can do to help is to focus on the process — and put our grade book points where our mouth is.

This idea was received with lots of nodding heads at the workshop.

🤔 What else?

We talked about a LOT during this workshop: AI supporting the writing process, the implications of AI on cheating and academic integrity, how analyzing AI writing can make us better writers, how AI can help us create teaching materials, and how to prepare students for the future.

What else are you thinking about? How do we preserve the best and most important parts of writing in an AI age?

I’d love if you hit “reply” and told me what you are thinking.

(And yes, I really do read the replies … and I always do my best to respond to them ASAP!)