South Windsor High School embraces Artificial Intelligence in classrooms
Students in Ms. Quinn's senior English class at South Windsor High School are using artificial intelligence to help with their senior theses, and their school is encouraging it.
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'It's not necessarily doing any of the thinking for you,' senior Aiden Keegan explained. 'It's more taking your thinking and being like, 'Hey, here's an angle you might not have thought of. Here's another route to explore yourself.''
South Windsor is using an AI platform called Magic School designed to help students, but still let them do the critical thinking.
'I think it's helping them move out of the brainstorming phase faster,' teacher Cara Quinn said. 'It's helping them generate ideas faster. It's helping them get through the research faster.'
That research is the kind of thing that can take the longest for students working on a paper for class. There has been a lot of hand-wringing over students using AI to cheat, but with Magic School, teachers can review all the interactions between students and the AI to make sure the AI is helping, but not doing the work for them.
'I'm able to see what it is that they're asking,' Quinn said. 'I can see the script of the questions and the responses that they've gotten.'
Teachers can also look at the process students went through. That process of interacting with technology is what is driving South Windsor to use AI all the way from 12th grade down to kindergarten.
'That's what it's all about with AI is asking the right questions, and so you start with basic questions,' South Windsor Schools' Director of Technology Doug Couture said.
Those questions are just like the ones you would ask a teacher.
'It saved me so many hours of struggling over the computer when I can just use my own words and have it help me,' senior Isabella Giammarino said. 'It's like talking to my teacher. It literally is.'
However, the reality is, the teacher can only do so much.
'There's one of me and there are 25 of them,' Quinn said. 'So, when they are in a place where they need assistance, this is another group member, another brain that they can use to bounce ideas off of.'
And when today's students are out in the workforce, AI will be even more prevalent than it is now.
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