Aaron Makelky

Two takeaways

AI is your admin intern. Give it the work a supervising principal hands an intern: lots of busywork, no privacy concerns, and sources you can check. Go deep on one job, like a Gemini Notebook loaded with your district policy and student handbook. Use a tool your district has a data privacy agreement for.

Adopt the WDE AI integration levels as your building's shared language. AI Free, AI Assisted, AI Enhanced, AI Empowered. AI detectors are a never-ending arms race, and they destroy trust between students and teachers. The levels move staff from AI police to asking students to be transparent about their AI use. Do this Monday: take the scale to the AI scouts in your building and have them pilot it for a quarter or trimester. Collect examples and lessons learned, then roll it out to the whole staff at semester or next school year.

Which AI tools should you and your staff use?

Use the one your district already has. If you are a Microsoft school, you have Copilot. If you are a Google school, you have Gemini. ChatGPT for Teachers and Claude for Teachers are free for verified U.S. K-12 staff and aren't for students.

What to ask your IT director

Which AI tools can staff use, and which can students use?

Do we have a signed data privacy agreement for each one?

Can staff sign in with their school account, and can we block personal accounts on our network?

What student information, if any, can staff put into these tools?

Who sets up the district account, so teachers don't each sign up on their own?

How do we handle academic honesty with the WDE levels instead of AI detectors?

Glossary

The terms I used in the session, in plain words.

Admin intern: How I want you to think about AI: it works under you and does the reading, searching and first drafts. You still make the decisions, and it can't supervise a homecoming dance or observe a classroom.

"Give me the link": What to ask AI every time it tells you something. Click the link and check the source before you act on the answer.

School account: Sign in to AI tools with your school email, not a personal one. You wouldn't email a parent about discipline from your personal email, so don't put school work into a personal AI account either.

Data privacy agreement: A signed agreement between your district and a company about how it handles staff and student data. Use the AI tools your district has one for.

Under-the-desk AI: Staff pasting school work into personal AI accounts that aren't connected to the school. They're often free plans that can train on whatever gets pasted in.

Gemini and Copilot: The AI assistants built into Google and Microsoft school accounts. If you are a Google school, you have Gemini, and if you are a Microsoft school, you have Copilot.

Gemini Notebook: Google's notebook tool, formerly NotebookLM. Load your board policy and student handbook, ask it a question, and it answers with citations back to the page.

ChatGPT for Teachers and Claude for Teachers: Free plans from OpenAI and Anthropic for verified U.S. K-12 educators. They're for staff, not students.

AI Cops: Staff focused on catching students who cheat with AI, usually with an AI detector.

AI Scouts: Staff who try new things with AI and figure out what works. Start with them.

AI Doomers: Staff who say the robots are going to take all our jobs.

AI detector: Software that claims to tell whether AI wrote something. It's an endless arms race that destroys trust between students and teachers, and one student ran a detector on their teacher's assignments and posted the scores online.

WDE AI integration levels: The Wyoming Department of Education's four levels for how students can use AI on an assignment, from its 2024 Guidance for AI Policy Development. Every assignment gets a level, and students say how they used AI.

AI Free: No AI at all, usually done by hand in class. That means no Google search, no spell check and no Grammarly, because most of those run on AI now.

AI Assisted: Students brainstorm and get feedback from AI, but every word of the final work is theirs, and they share the chat link. An assignment labeled "No AI" usually means this level.

AI Enhanced: Students use AI the whole way through. They question it, check its claims against the textbook, revise with it, and link the chats.

AI Empowered: Students use AI to make something new, like an interview with a Parisian in 1789 or an interactive timeline. They check every fact.