These past couple years, AI has been forcing teachers and students alike to adjust to a new dimension of education. However, this begs a couple questions: Is AI really that bad? Or is it as big a threat as it has been made out to be?
According to some, AI is a useful tool that can help with questions the teacher may be too busy to answer.
“It is probably something that is a tool that we can use to work smarter, not harder,” said Shannon Alberts, the AP Language and Composition teacher at Sage Creek, about AI.
George Porter, another AP Language and Composition, agrees. “AI is going to help some of those students that are the most disadvantaged,” He believes.
“If you’re an English language learner, if you are a slow processor, AI will allow you to access content and material more clearly,” said Porter.
However, AI is not without its issues.
According to Alberts, AI is often misused when students make it do all the thinking.
She said, “If they’re sometimes overloaded or they’re overwhelmed by their workload, they might use it to do that thinking for them.”
Porter has similar views, but is still apprehensive. He says he often sees students “just plugging in the prompt or the question and letting ChatGPT spit out an answer, and then either copying and pasting that into their document or rewriting it in their own words”.
“I know that some that don’t need to use it will use it for not illegitimate purposes, but for purposes they shouldn’t be using it for,” said Porter. “To make their lives easier, but not to get the best, most meaningful experience out of their education. So I’ve got mixed feelings. I’m ambivalent about AI and education.”
However, Sage Creek Junior Colin McGoldrick’s opinions differ.
“I usually use it in making my paragraphs longer so it can reach word counts,” said McGoldrick on the topic of AI. He believes it could be “helpful for finding more variety in words,”
In this, McGoldrick is not alone. According to the Digital Education Council, 86% of students use AI tools for their school studies.
But he still shares some similar views to Alberts and Porter. A common misuse of AI, he said, is letting it write “paragraphs for you, not actually putting in effort.”
Despite this, the Digital Education Council found 24% of students use AI to write a first draft. Although this number is in the minority of students, teachers must still adapt.
AI should be “something that polishes our thinking and helps us to move to the next step, instead of a crutch where it does all of the thinking and heavy lifting for us,” said Alberts. “That’s something that we would like to teach students how to do. We just need some time to do that.”
Porter shares this view. “It can be an invaluable tool for the types of things that you would do with a friend or a teacher,” he said.
“Those questions that you might ask of a peer or of your teacher, or they might say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or might give you suggestions without just stepping in and rewriting it for you,” Porter said. He believes this is the best use of AI.
Overall, AI is quite the mixed bag. Will it become yet another method for students to cheat? Or will it give a new way to learn for those who need it? Only time will tell.
