Forest Park School District 91 is embracing artificial intelligence and incorporating it into their 8th-grade curriculum to prepare students for what a future with AI might look like.
Hoping to have their students be part of the conversation surrounding AI, Supt. Elizabeth Alvarez said the district will pilot the new curriculum with eighth graders at Forest Park Middle School at the start of the fourth quarter in March 2024. The recommended age for using AI is 13 and older.
Artificial intelligence, or AI as it is commonly called, is a branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that previously required human intelligence. This can include interpreting speech and identifying patterns, which is how AI systems “learn” and are able to produce answers and content.
With these advances in technology, educators are trying to figure out how much AI, if any, belongs in schools. Across the nation, school districts are finding themselves on opposite ends of the spectrum, some choosing to incorporate AI curriculum, while others don’t want to open that door.
District 91 will be joining others across the country who have already embraced AI.
In Georgia, a school district in Gwinnett County, an hour outside of Atlanta, is pioneering an AI-driven curriculum across all subject matters and closer to Forest Park, Naperville Community Unit School District 203 has given full access to ChatGPT across district devices to students in 8th to 12th grades.
On a national level, President Joe Biden signed an executive order in October, directing administration to create resources geared to help teachers implement educational tools that rely on AI, as well as instruct the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish guidance for content authentication and watermarking to flag AI-generated content. Biden also has called on Congress to pass legislation to protect data privacy, especially that belonging to children.
“We have some that are against it because they are nervous about plagiarism and about it being used in unethical ways,” Alvarez said. “Then we have others who are really into the tech, saying no, you have to embrace it. I was leaning towards that.”
Alvarez began speaking with James Edler, director of innovative instruction, to brainstorm a way to bring AI to the district and got in touch with Kate Moore, an education research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to develop a curriculum.
The program will be piloted by English teacher Rebecca Ciardullo. She could not be reached for comment.
AI Literacy curriculum, a four-week program, will include studying ethics in AI, AI core concepts, creativity in AI, what future careers might look like and biases in AI — because a large portion of the information created that AI pulls from is still dominated by white male voices, Alvarez said.
“We have to be very cautious about the bias that is in there because you don’t necessarily have voices of women, voices of people with special needs, and voices of people of color,” she said. “This is important for our children to understand that. If you are going to be part of this future of AI, your voices need to be part of it and whatever you are grabbing from AI, you still need to be skeptical.”
Cautionary stories are already popping up across the media. In the highly publicized Hollywood writers’ strike, a major battle was the use of AI in script writing as well as the use of AI to replace actors and background actors. According to an article on TechCrunch, when the strike ended in September 2023, the contract included that AI could not be used to write or rewrite scripts, AI generated writing cannot be considered source material, and companies cannot mandate writers to use certain AI tools among other negotiations.
“I want our children to understand, know your rights and know the consequences if you didn’t anticipate it,” Alvarez said. “You have to anticipate these consequences with it. That is all part of the curriculum.”
The incorporation of AI curriculum would continue to benefit programs D91 already has in place, including their “Rising Voices” program, where 8th graders would read to robots and then the robots would help primary students understand the books through coding responses to questions.
The district also had to develop a policy for AI over the summer, which was adopted in the fall, but D91 will be comparing their policy to the one from PRESS, Policy Reference Education Subscription Service, which is where many district’s policies come from, to see what overlaps and whether any changes should be made.
“That is something to consider,” Alvarez said. “Many districts didn’t have AI policy and I wanted to make sure we had one before we did our curriculum.”
However, not all school districts are on board.
According to BestColleges.com, as of May 2023, notable school districts including New York City Public Schools, Baltimore County Public Schools, Seattle Public Schools, and Milwaukee Public Schools have banned ChatGPT.
To Alvarez, AI is another one of those advances in technology that will play a significant role in the future, as were airplanes.
“People were saying ‘I don’t want to get on there, it is really dangerous,’ but now it is a way of life for traveling. If we are standing back seeing what happens, we are really missing out on being part of the development of it and being the trailblazers of it. Otherwise, we would just be followers.”
Alvarez said the district will be reviewing the curriculum in February and will lead discussions with district families before it’s fully implemented.
According to a poll by the National Parents Union, which was conducted in October 2023 and surveyed 1,515 parents of public-school students grades K-12, more than two thirds of parents agree that the potential benefits of AI in K-12 education either outweigh or are equal to the potential downside and only 16% believe the downsides outweigh the benefits.
About 49% of parents feel their child’s school is well prepared to use AI tools.
The introduction of AI into school curriculum is not completely out of the blue as the same survey found that 53% of parents say their child’s school is preparing them for a future where AI could affect jobs.
Once the program has been piloted, Alvarez said teacher training will be important to ensure the curriculum is properly implemented and so both students and teachers know what can and what should not be done with AI.