Integrating AI Through the Creation of a Dedicated Tech Tool Committee
With so many AI tools and services available, it can be hard to keep with it all. In the educational space, AI tools can handle any number of processes. Knowing which are best suited to your needs can become an overwhelming prospect. However, having a dedicated team to help assess AI tools can make all the difference.
Here we speak with Greg Reichelt, Instructional Technology Specialist at Maine Township High School District 207 in Illinois, about integrating AI policy with existing tech and security policies and focusing AI to help handle tedious tasks and provide teachers with more time to deal with other classroom challenges.
Reichelt was recently recognized as Most Innovative Technology Director at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.
An Unbiased Look at AI
For Reichelt, having a dedicated AI committee was essential to understanding what AI was, how it could be used in the educational space, and what sorts of tools would work best for learning. Nearly 35 teachers, administrators, and other district leaders (separate from the existing Technology Advisory Board) came together for this task. Reichelt also recruited less tech-savvy educators as well as folks who were generally reluctant to change, as he wanted a full array of viewpoints to provide the most objective perspective (not unlike Abraham Lincoln ‘s “Team of Rivals”). They started by brainstorming ideas, frustrations, and challenges, and then discussed all these with the group to build guidance.
“We wanted to specifically look at AI,” says Reichelt. “This is when ChatGPT was just getting announced. We wanted to take an agnostic approach to looking at it and not make any preconceived decisions, one way or the other.”
This might not be new for some districts, but having an extreme reaction to AI tools is common. Many schools either outright ban its use, while others welcome different kinds of AI tools without much regulation. Reichelt chose a very proactive approach to incorporating AI into his schools.
“The committee of 35 people, we got them every AI tool imaginable for us to try so we had an opportunity to see what [those tools] were capable of,” says Reichelt, who also made sure that no student data was involved. “As we were doing that, we had a lot of policy conversations about what we can do to shape guidance on what AI does. We ended up drafting our own policy.”
The policy was pieced together based on what Reichelt and his team found through research, what they agreed should be added to the policy, and what already existed in tech and security policy already in play. This allowed for a comprehensive set of guidelines that felt familiar but also incorporated the best bits of policy that existed at the time.
Policy in Place…Now What?
With the AI policy set, all that was left was to figure out what tools, apps, and platforms would be useful to consider adding to an educational environment. In addition to bringing in outside experts to help steer the process, Reichelt’s team opted for a teacher-friendly approach.
“Once we had a policy in place, we thought about what we could do to get into the heads of teachers to help meet the needs of our staff and students,” said Reichelt. “We specifically wanted to focus on staff at first, not students, just to give staff an opportunity to see what AI could do for them.”
Encouraging teachers to try AI is not always about how to use it with their students. AI tools can help handle other tasks that present as being tedious or otherwise time-consuming.
“Teacher burnout was a huge thing,” said Reichelt. “So we thought about how we can take a new tool on the market and have it help with something contributing to teacher burnout. Too many emails coming in. You have to write too many communications. Here are some tools that can help you with that process.”
The tools that Reichelt gravitated toward were pretty popular programs, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, but they also found use in other programs too. Claude AI, for instance, was a huge help in data processing and analytics.
Ultimately, this approach went a long way to a successful adoption of AI tools. It also encouraged other educators in the district to get involved in the process.
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