MESA, AZ — Ready or not, artificial intelligence is making its way into schools. Teachers at Westwood High School in Mesa are working to help children embrace it while making sure students don’t take full advantage for malicious reasons.
Teachers Kelly Owen and Shaun Reedy co-teach with a few other teachers in their pod at the high school. Their Innovative Academy does a lot more project-based learning as opposed to the traditional sense of school.
On Wednesday, students in their class used Microsoft’s AI program to create and design products they’ll show off later this month in a Shark Tank-style competition.
“They got to use descriptive details to tell me what was in their head and then create those products,” Owen said.
For instance, one student decided to create a product that had to do with pink and blue cleats, drawing inspiration from Nike shoes and being able to choose the fabric of the shoe.
After deciding what exactly they wanted, they pressed ‘create’ and in just seconds, the AI program would generate an image of what they were thinking.
“It makes researching a lot easier. It makes the whole brainstorming process and answering those questions so much easier,” said Camille Richins, a freshman student using AI.
The teachers gave ABC15 examples of using AI as an easier tool to use for research as opposed to Google. When students search on Google, they’ll be scrolling through pages on the search engine to find what they need and make sure it’s legitimate, Reedy explained. With AI, it can just generate their answers and give sources more quickly.
“It’s just a tool to help us just like a textbook is, or even Google is. It’s just an extension of that,” Reedy said. “The more we play with it and experience it and experiment with it, the more comfortable.”
Reedy said they have a list of about 26 AI platforms they’ve been using, trying to learn from them and then teach their students.
While some may have the concern of students taking advantage and doing less work, Reedy said they’re selective with it.
“We are very specific in how we use it. We make sure we’re using it just as [a] tool to research it and not write, not to solve equations. We’re asking students to always demonstrate work and learning,” he said.
The teachers using it feel it’s important to help kids embrace it for the future.
“It’s not going away, right? We’ve already seen in the last year how it’s affected jobs… How do we, as a next-generation, going into the job market, how can we utilize it to become entrepreneurs… whatever career path we go into, it can help us become sustainable, help us become employable,” Reedy said. “The more experience we have with it, the better skilled we’re going to be for the jobs we haven’t even thought of yet.”
With how innovative AI can be, it can also be used in a bad way, such as plagiarism. Mesa Public Schools said it has a guide to help educators, students and their families with AI and use it “responsibly and innovatively.”
The district also has a team in place to continue learning about the impact and growth of AI to help create more policies for its use. The district does have a program it uses to help educators find plagiarism, and it is advanced enough to detect AI-written content.
ABC15 also reached out to other school districts across the Valley about AI, and many said they’re working on learning more about AI and figuring out policies around it.