By Jackie Gorski
Times-Union

WARSAW — If awarded a grant, students and teachers at Warsaw Community Schools will have access to an artifical intelligence tool next year.

James Davis, WCS technology and data instructional coach, gave a short history of artificial intelligence to the Warsaw School Board Monday.

AI started in the 1950s. The “first artificial intelligence was actually playing checkers,” where a loop was made and played back. Deep learning happened in the 1980s and that’s when networks connecting together and learning from each other began. The first generative model was made in 2014. It was a military model, which created a list of information. People are now able to use things like OpenAI and ChatGPT.

Davis showed the board several AI-generated photos. He said to generate something with AI, you have to have a prompt. One of the photos was Pope Francis in a coat. Davis said the prompt was to make the pope look cool. Another photo was of an older Princess Diana and the prompt was what would Princess Diana look like today if she was still alive.
With technology and AI, the mission is to create a learning experience that represents the best practice researched while recognizing the benefits and challenges with working with AI, he said.

Davis said AI is for everyone and some examples of AI Davis showed the board included text-to-speech apps, foreign language translation apps and mapping and navigation apps.

With that, there are a lot of pros and cons, Davis said.

Some of the potential risks of using AI in education include misinformation, errors and academic dishonesty; diminished student and teacher agency and accountability; compromised student privacy and unauthorized data collection; and overreliance and loss of critical thinking.

Some of the potential benefits of using AI in education includes tutoring and personalized learning assistance, aiding creativity and collaboration and operational and administrative efficiency.

Davis said he and Kyle Carter, chief technology and data analytics officer, started the conversation about AI. They met with a company named Skill Struck. Skill Struck is a filtering AI, where students and teachers have access to an AI that is fully secured. It gives the school administration alerts about things and a teacher portal.

Skill Struck allows each student to have a one-on-one tutor and helps bridge learning gaps, Davis said.

Carter said, with the teacher portal, teachers can check what prompts students are using when using AI for the classroom. Skill Struck also has a tutoring mode to help students progress in their learning. Skill Struck is also customizable for the school corporation.

Carter said WCS wanted to make sure if they’re opening the flood gate with AI usage, they do so responsibly.
Carter said grants were applied for and while the results of the grants won’t be announced until Friday, it does look good for WCS.

If WCS is awarded the grant, all WCS teachers and students will have access to the AI tool Skill Struck next year.