Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a way to enhance the student learning experience and to help support teachers in their work. We're talking about using artificial intelligence in the classroom.

On this episode of the Supercast, learn about a pilot program which has Jordan School District partnering with a local company to support the responsible use of artificial intelligence in our schools. And hear from teachers who say AI will help them become better at their craft and more connected with students in the classroom.

We're here with Jared Covili from our Teaching and Learning department. He's an administrator that works with digital learning. Jared, thanks for joining us.

Jared Covili:
It's great to be here, thanks.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell us a little bit about School AI. I've been really excited about this.

Jared Covili:
School AI is a program that we piloted over the summer to help our students and teachers use artificial intelligence in a way that works for us, kind of in a guarded system so that they don't get out on the internet with everything. It helps the kids and the teachers prepare lessons, it helps them prepare, potentially, assignments for kids to work on with a peer tutor that's kind of a chatbot.

Anthony Godfrey:
And the chatbot is an interactive way to help coach students through learning activities and actually offer learning activities that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

Jared Covili:
Right, the way I like to describe it is for a teacher, it's like having a teaching assistant. So it'll give you ideas about things you can do with lesson plans or activities. For a student, it's kind of like a peer tutor. So it can give you ideas of how to write something or how to think about maybe something that's going on in class. It can give you some, just some guidance as you move through that process.

Anthony Godfrey:
And what school AI has been able to do is first of all, kind of create a fenced-in area, a safe playground within which we're able to work and learn and experiment and be creative without worrying about being out on the broader web and using maybe versions of AI that aren't exactly tailored to teachers. And the other thing is these prompts that teachers can use to really get the most out of artificial intelligence, getting accurate information, and getting helpful information.

Jared Covili:
That's been a big deal with our pilot this summer because a lot of times our pilot group was really instrumental in helping School AI to think about what prompts, what things do teachers need to do most often, most regularly, so they don't have to hunt and peck or learn how to prompt engineer those things. They provide a lot of those on their website now - like the, "If I only have three minutes and I need to do something, what's one of those prompts?"Our group provided a lot of that information to the company and it kind of customized the interface to help us get more out of it.

Anthony Godfrey:
So in a lot of ways, school AI is customized to Jordan School District because the hundred teachers that were so eager to be part of things over the summer have really helped shape the way that it operates.

Jared Covili:
There's no question about that and I would say, yo