Pondering AI Tools With Afterschool Program Staff

This semester, I am taking EDLD 5305, where we are focusing on our Innovation Plans, and my plan centers around introducing AI in schools as a partner for success. I wanted to explore how AI tools, like ChatGPT, could enhance our teaching processes and support educators in our school. To start, I soft-launched this idea by sharing ChatGPT with a small group of my staff members. I was eager to see how they would respond to this new technology, and this week, they’ve come to me either very excited or very confused about what they’ve learned. One staff member came up to me, enthusiastic, telling me he had started developing quite a few lesson plans using ChatGPT and was eager to know if I'd taken a look. I had to gently break the news to him that ChatGPT is not a collaborative space, and the lesson plans he created on his computer would not be automatically visible to me. I explained that, while the tool was fantastic for generating ideas, he would need to move his work into a shared Google document in our Google Drive.

This interaction made me realize the need to not only introduce AI tools but also provide clear guidance on how these tools integrate into the existing structures we have in place. It also highlighted the importance of helping our staff, especially those who might be hesitant or unfamiliar with AI, understand how to use these technologies in a way that’s beneficial to both their teaching practices and their students. To help bridge this gap, it’s important to introduce AI in a way that is accessible, and there are a few strategies I found that can help guide the older generation of teachers toward embracing this innovation. The strategy I'll be focusing on is the use of professional development opportunities to introduce and imbed AI into our systems.

Offering ongoing professional development sessions focused on how AI tools can support classroom management, lesson creation, and student engagement is vital. I'd like to focus on on the technical aspects of AI tools and also on how teachers can integrate these tools into their teaching style and curriculum. As an article from ViewSonic suggests, AI can “enhance communication” and “optimize lesson plans” in a way that complements the teacher’s style, not replaces it (ViewSonic, 2024). By encouraging teachers to experiment and explore AI tools in a supportive, low-pressure setting, we can ease their transition into more tech-integrated teaching practices.

ViewSonic. (2022, November 17). Ai in education: 5 ways it can assist teachers. ViewSonic. https://www.viewsonic.com/library/education/ai-in-education-5-ways-it-can-assist-teachers/