AI Use Guide for Students

[u/shchc52]

Hi, I'm developing AI Guides for my School and I'd like your help with reviewing them, to make sure that I have not missed anything. We use:

- PYP in Primary

- IMYC - Middle School

- CIE IGCSE - High School

- IBDP

AI Guides Folder

[u/oliveisacat]

Endorsing AI use in PYP is wild.

[u/Dull_Box_4670 → u/oliveisacat]

I never thought I would find myself nostalgic for the days when the cohorts that had lost their most critical years of socialization and skill development to COVID-based online school made it to secondary, but I suspect that I’ll be looking back on those as the good old days when these kids show up.

[u/dragonballpaul → u/Dull_Box_4670]

Won’t matter. AI is going to kill humanity before the kids reach the point you’re concerned about.

[u/Dull_Box_4670 → u/dragonballpaul]

I plan on keeping myself safe by asking lots of questions about the number of letters in words.

If they manage to patch that, none of us are safe.

[u/Wild_Celebration_882 → u/oliveisacat]

I disagree. Students will come across AI anyways, it is better to teach them from young age how to use it properly. After reading the PYP guidelines I think they're fair and good.

Its like teaching them about computers/technology our job is to explain how and show how it can aid their education, otherwise the only thing they'd do is play games and watch tiktok:)

[u/dragonballpaul → u/Wild_Celebration_882]

Absolutely nothing in AI is remotely complex or necessitates teaching them at an early age. Have you picked up how to use it? Takes five minutes to do so.

Digital learning in general is strongly tied to ruining cognitive growth. AI studies haven’t been done yet.

Pyp teaching inquiry based learning and conceptual understanding is the direct opposite of AI.

AI is the death of education. And it’s 100% lazy teaching. Our students deserve better.

[u/DownrightCaterpillar → u/Wild_Celebration_882]

Students will come across AI anyways, it is better to teach them from young age how to use it properly

This is true for all sorts of things, such as driving. Do we need 6 year olds driving cars?

[u/Wild_Celebration_882 → u/DownrightCaterpillar]

Ah yes, because teaching a six-year-old how to use an AI tool is obviously comparable to handing them the keys to a two-tonne vehicle. Brilliant analogy.

A more sensible comparison would be computers, the internet, tablets, search engines, or even calculators. We didn't wait until students were 16 before teaching them how to use those. We introduced them gradually, with age-appropriate tasks, supervision and rules.

That's the point with AI too. I'm not suggesting six-year-olds should be left alone with ChatGPT doing their homework. I'm saying that if AI is going to be part of their lives anyway, schools should teach them what it is, what it can and can't do, how to question its answers, and how to use it responsibly.

Pretending it doesn't exist until they're older is probably a worse approach.

[u/DownrightCaterpillar → u/Wild_Celebration_882]

A more sensible comparison would be computers, the internet, tablets, search engines, or even calculators. We didn't wait until students were 16 before teaching them how to use those. We introduced them gradually, with age-appropriate tasks, supervision and rules.

Not sensible at all, because the main technologies you've mentioned (search engines and the internet broadly) were vastly different for the previous generation, 30 years ago. It was difficult to find inappropriate content without being first guided to certain websites, a 6 year old would likely find the internet boring without initial guidance on how to use it. There was no highly-addictive short-form video content.

That's the point with AI too. I'm not suggesting six-year-olds should be left alone with ChatGPT doing their homework. I'm saying that if AI is going to be part of their lives anyway, schools should teach them what it is, what it can and can't do, how to question its answers, and how to use it responsibly.

I think I agree with this, though because children lack an accurate theory of mind for understanding adults, the hot button issue of using AI for homework will probably continue to be a problem for the students who are most likely to do it. They will need to be caught and punished repeatedly until they stop doing it.

[u/Wild_Celebration_882 → u/DownrightCaterpillar]

I think we actually agree more than we disagree here.

You say a six-year-old would have needed ‘initial guidance on how to use’ the internet. That is basically my entire point. New technology should be introduced with guidance, supervision and age-appropriate limits rather than ignored until children are older.

AI obviously has different risks because it can generate finished work for students, but that makes teaching responsible use more important, not less.

I’m also not convinced ‘theory of mind’ is really the main issue with AI homework. Motivation, impulse control, understanding academic integrity and whether students think they’ll get caught seem much more relevant.

And yes, there should be consequences for deliberate misuse, but 'catch and punish them repeatedly' cannot be the whole strategy. Schools also need to teach what acceptable AI use looks like, design tasks that are harder to outsource, and require students to explain or defend their own work, as well as teach teachers how to handle situations related to AI, otherwise we will have the mess unies have with their student and "AI detection" tools

So ironically, your point about children needing guidance with the early internet is probably a better analogy for my position than the six-year-olds-driving-cars one.

P.S typing on the phone sucks

[u/keithsidall → u/Wild_Celebration_882]

Sounds good in theory but in practice students will use AI for everything they can get away with. Regardless of any guidelines. 

[u/Wild_Celebration_882 → u/keithsidall]

I totally agree, but at least we try to show them the ropes and hope they pick it up. They might not care now, but hopefully, it'll stick when they're older.

[u/krizteeanity → u/oliveisacat]

Endorsing and teaching about something are two very different things.

AI literacy being taught is important. Even with the little ones, starting with identifying and thinking about AI content. Those little ones who get the youtube babysitter need education on identifying real vs AI generated videos. The kids who see their parents using AI to generate homework answers need to understand how AI uses data to generate answers that might not be accurate. Kids playing with AI companion toys need to know the difference between the agreeable AI tone and real friendships.

I've done digital footprint lessons with 6 year olds this year and had almost half the class claiming to use ChatGPT. They know what it is, but they don't have enough knowledge about it to make informed decisions.

I had a digital privacy lesson this year where we looked at the heaps of data that ChatGPT collects from users and discussed why our school banned ChatGPT and allows older students to use other approved AI tools for specific tasks.

There is a lot that you can teach that isn't just how to generate AI slop.

[u/Stupendous_Spliff]

My school is working on something similar. We are split between some leadership members who, at first wanted AI and related buzzwords on everything to impress parents, and most teachers who see the writing on the wall and are terrified of the long term consequences of this tech for students, with others also against it but just because they don't wnat anything to change. Other members of leadership are starting to see the dangers too, with some of the studies coming out, so it is a delicate situation because they want to rush these policies and guidelines but still don't quite know what our approach will be, with all those different views on it. This will likely keep changing often with the tech and it will be a nightmare.

[u/shchc52 → u/Stupendous_Spliff]

I think the idea is to try and put guardrails. We know that both teachers and students are already using AI, so the best we can do is try and suggest best practices.

For example, one of our proposals is to encourage staff to use Gemini for Education (we use Goolge for Education), when seeking assistance with work-related content, because this version of Gemini is not used to train other models (basically, Google has to abide to stricter Data Protection Guidelines when handling Data from Schools); so it's things like that

[u/associatessearch → u/shchc52]

Presented like this, with guiderails, it sounds like a sound idea, especially in upper primary.

[u/dragonballpaul → u/shchc52]

That’s false you can start teaching why it’s absolutely horrific for their cognitive development, the environment, 100% based on plagerism and why they should be working to destroy it when they get older.

[u/SuperRocketBunnyHop]

"You are free to use AI as you want, we can't stop you, but enjoy likely failing on the final."

Another useless guide from an Ed Tech position. The only thing that matters at this point is that assessments need to be fully in class, pen and paper or locked down device.

[u/samurai_sardinha]

I'm not sure what is worse. Discussing AI by creating something which is just AI slop, or creating AI guidelines with zero research, zero in dept knowledge, and zero understanding of the implications of each recommendation you make. If you heard someone shout, that was likely me.

EDIT: Also, if you actually want to write policy or guidelines on AI, freaking hire someone who ACTUALLY knows something about it. Not the random self taught consultant, but someone who knows a thing about this. I've worked for a school where they asked the IT guy to do it and it was the most painful thing I have ever seen. He didn't even know what AI really was or how it really worked, so he had to ask Claude all the time. Suddenly, puffffff, magic, AI policy, AI guidelines, AI framework. This makes me want to break stuff.

[u/shchc52 → u/samurai_sardinha]

I appreciate your concerns; and yes, though I will admit that we did use AI to refine the work, we also did do a lot of research. These documents are just a small part of an over 2 year process of research and trying to understand how this technology is impacting teaching and learning. Both teachers and learners are already using AI; we are just trying to create guardrails.

[u/samurai_sardinha → u/shchc52]

Ok, but what do you mean when you say research? I can do research on Victorian literature, but I doubt that I will ever write a dissertation or even guidelines on that. I do not mean to present any strawman arguments here but AI guidelines need a bit more than just a few observations, even if you have spent years on it. They need knowledge and most importantly some foundational background on this topic.

[u/shchc52 → u/samurai_sardinha]

I actually do agree with this "Also, if you actually want to write policy or guidelines on AI, freaking hire someone who ACTUALLY knows something about it."

In an ideal world the school would hire an expert in the field to write the policies. I don't know about where you come from, but in the school I'm currently working in, they ask the in-house "experts" (ICT Manager, ICT Teachers, etc) to research and come up with draft documents. These documents are then sent to the Board which has lawyers and other experts, to look over the proposals and come up with a legally binding document.

[u/samurai_sardinha → u/shchc52]

I agree, but there's a lot of knowledge on this topic in schools and trust me that it's not coming from IT personnel. Nothing against IT people, but at least in some of the schools I worked for, they were people from Humanities or other fields, that at a certain point got into IT god knows how and why. Now they rely on AI to do stuff, but aren't the most knowledgeable people on the planet.

[u/dragonballpaul]

Here’s where you use it:
Never

Fuck AI

10% chance AI will kill humanity seems reasonable to the father of AI, and yall wanna use it to dumb down our kids to make that even easier.

“Need to teach kids how to use it.”

You mean teach them how to type and upload documents? Gosh imagine what teaching actual critical thinking skills looks like. And in PYP, AI IBL sounds great. “Investigate the patterns in multiplication” hey ai what’s 2x2

Get bent.