Sipping from a Fire Hydrant: AI in K-12

Danielle Purdy, General Manager, Learning Technologies at Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS)

On a recent trip to visit schools in Japan, I was fortunate to be traveling with edtech system leaders from Asia-Pacific countries. Courtesy of the AI applications in our phones and internet connectivity, we discussed many things. Unsurprisingly, it emerged that once we got past the devices, strategies, and policies, we are all working towards a fundamental shared vision – how do we utilize data creation and tech-powered teaching to improve student learning?

The Profession Is Listening and Learning

As many education systems are currently doing, the learning technologies team at Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools in Australia closely interrogates AI - what it is, how it already has, and how it will continue to transform education. Fundamentally, we are AI-friendly. We understand it is here to stay, and we want to use it for good. We have encouraged our teachers to engage with AI since January, and we have been learning and experimenting alongside them.

In June, we brought students from primary and secondary schools together to discuss the safe and responsible use of technologies as part of a policy review. We also hosted digital learning leaders from our secondary schools at a data-enabled forum to discuss and explore the constructive use of AI for assessment, teacher administration, and what safe and responsible use looks like in an education system of 300 schools with over 114,000 students. All these events produced rich data sources and usable insights that will contribute to shaping policy, practice, and professional learning.

We learned our teachers are deeply invested in student safety and professional responsibility – they want to know how to use AI for learning purposes. We also learned that our teachers see connections across schools as an essential tool for collaborative success, with technology developing faster than anything we have ever seen or promoted as a learning tool. Students and teachers alike want to know what it can do and what they should do.

Gen AI: Knowledge, but Not as We Know It

Compared to life before the internet, students’ lives today are drenched in information. What is genuinely incredible to adults is largely unappreciated by many children and teenagers who have only known life as supported through technology. What knowledge is, how it is created and transferred through time from human to human is changing, and some say, with varying evidence, not necessarily for the better. Young people must be deeply critical consumers and actively aware participants in a digital world. As teachers, we see our colleagues, friends, and family members experimenting with gen AI and discussing it in staffrooms, classrooms, and workplaces. Our curriculum's capabilities, skills, and knowledge designed to develop active citizens have never been more important.

"Digital confidence, through knowledge and a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework, is needed to ensure system learning and data technologies in schools that will carry us towards our strategies and hopes to improve learning."

The ChatGPT for Teachers Facebook group is a fascinating insight into the potential uses - and misuses - possible with gen AI. Clear and professionally aligned system responses are needed that enable agile policymaking with evolving protections for guiding safe and responsible use by teachers as builders of knowledge. Recently released by the Federal Education Minister, the draft National AI in Schools Framework is a good first step.

Many Reports but Not Much Expertise Yet

The last six months have seen an explosion in the range of publicly available applications embedding or expanding AI and ML options in their products. For education, AI is less new. Considerable research and development have been underway for many years in K-12, and substantial progress in ethical use and advice is provided to guide policymakers by the United Nations, the OECD, professional education associations, and academics. We currently lack the experience of executives in understanding and endorsing these intelligent system technologies for learning that have known and unknown data-security risks. This will change as the implications become apparent and leadership and systems make and embrace decisions about what its students can use, what teachers should do, and what all must not do.

Shaping Safe and Responsible Use through Rich Human Dialogue

Like many other countries, Australia has a regulated teaching profession and many standards and frameworks to ensure education delivers on public investment. Our early assessment indicates teachers, before using AI, would need to be professionally knowledgeable about the implications ofa) Victorian Child Safety Standards, b) Australian Privacy Principles, c) Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership standards, d) Victorian Institute of Teaching Code of Conduct, e) draft National AI in Schools Framework, f) Copyright Agency Group Education Statutory Licence, g) research into practical use, h) system policies and procedures, h) eSafe use and assessment of tools and i) prompt craft – the art of generating usable content.

For teachers, many are starting at the bottom of this list. However, systems are responsible for providing contextualized policy, advice, guidance, and training. Condensing accountability and marrying this to rapidly advancing tools to get high-quality user experiences will take time and, more importantly, human dialogue. Our forum indicates teachers are deeply interested in participating in system shifts to embrace AI and ML for powerful purposes.

Next Steps

Like many other systems entering new digital transformation phases, we are re-examining our learning and school management architecture. Optionality and autonomy, valued by schools, is now an obstacle to scalable innovation, and we are going back to the drawing board with our stakeholders to reimagine how we create, communicate, collaborate, curate, and confer about cutting-edge pedagogies and effective data-informed practices that serve our students and families. Some of our lessons in the last decade must be unlearned or dropped.

Digital confidence, through knowledge and a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework, is needed to ensure system learning and data technologies in schools that will carry us toward our strategies and hopes to improve learning. While not new, they are now widely available and must be understood. In giving teachers time and guidance to engage with and experience AI, systems have recognized the unique contexts in which teachers work and learn, which research tells us is unlike most other professions. Intelligent systems are not going away, and laws will come to shape how we use them. The time is now for schools and systems to lean in and learn with and from our teachers and students who already use them.

AI

EdTech

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Digital Transformation