The guide breaks down four categories of how to effectively incorporate artificial intelligence into Delaware classrooms. (Photo by Jirsak/Deposit Photos)
With artificial intelligence seemingly affecting every field, the Department of Education has released a guide for how to navigate that technology in classrooms.
The guidance is broken down into four categories: understanding AI, implementing generative AI in Delaware districts and charters, integrating generative AI into the classroom, and professional learning.
“Artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving, and, quite honestly, our students sometimes are ahead of us in this realm,” said Mark Holidick, the state’s secretary of education. “We aim to support our educators with information on what AI is and how it can be safely and ethically integrated into the classroom to support education as well as strategies for addressing academic dishonesty.”
Generative AI is a specific type of artificial intelligence that generates text, images, videos or other data using different models that are usually in response to prompts.
Popular platforms of this type include ChatGPT, DALL-E, Gemini and plenty of others.
Different programs lean on a certain purpose – ChatGPT is typically for written text and DALL-E is primarily for artificial images.
A student could type in a prompt such as “write a five-paragraph essay about the advancement of technology through the Civil War” or “create an image of George Washington riding a dinosaur with a beret,” and the AI programs would spew an essay or an image.
These forms of AI have advanced drastically in recent years, to the point where there’s now fake videos that can be generated. It’s created a problem in schools, especially colleges, which seem to have decided it’s here to stay and have adopted rules just like the Delaware DOE.
There are some tricks to identify the fakes, although they’re not fool-proof.
AI images, for example, can have inconsistent lighting and shadows, and they’re notorious for messing up the way human hands look, specifically by adding extra fingers, unnatural abundance of joints or veins and sometimes blending the figures together.
They also can lack texture and make people’s faces look too smooth.
Artificial writing is somewhat harder to identify, but experts state that it can lack fluency and contain overly-repetitive language or ideas.
Here’s what each section of the education department’s guide explains, which can be helpful to teachers, administrators, parents or anyone else interested in the future of AI in schools:
Understanding AI: definitions of artificial intelligence, what is and what is not AI, predictive versus generative AI and the advantages and cautions of generative AI.
Implementing generative AI in Delaware districts and charters: best practices for implementation strategies, specifically tips for protecting student data, ensuring ethical AI use, promoting equity and enhancing learning. This section also details how to manage generative AI platforms.
Integrating generative AI into the classroom: protecting student data with generative AI classroom integration, ensuring ethical AI use with AI classroom integration, promoting equity with generative AI classroom integration, enhancing learning with generative AI classroom integration, generative AI and student learning and more.
This section also describes the risks, benefits and risk mitigation of using AI.
Some of the problems are plagiarism, information bias and academic integrity.
Professional learning: professional learning programs available to incorporate AI into classrooms, delivery methods and examples of content delivery resources.
The guidance is the culmination of an eight month-long effort with the state’s Council on Educational Technology and its Generative AI Subcommittee.
The report states that school districts and charter schools are positioned to leverage generative AI as a transformative tool within an established framework that prioritizes student safety, educational integrity, and evidence-based instructional methodologies.
It also says the integration of generative AI may not necessitate the creation of new policies but rather the extension of existing policies to address emerging concerns.
“We encourage districts and charter schools to develop local policies to address AI use in their schools,” Holodick said.
Raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Jarek earned a B.A. in journalism and a B.A. in political science from Temple University in 2021. After running CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s YouTube channel, Jarek became a reporter for the Bucks County Herald before joining Delaware LIVE News.
