She’s looking at artificial intelligence as a tool they can use to personalize lessons.
“I’m interested to see how it can help,” Jordan said.
Lacoochee is exploring whether to become part of the Pasco County school district’s new AI initiative being offered to 30 campuses in the fall. It’s a test run that two groups — Scholar Educationand Khanmigo — have offered the district free of charge to see whether the schools find a longer-term fit for their classes.
Scholar, a state-funded startup that made its debut last year at Pepin Academy and Dayspring Academy, will go into selected elementary schools. Khanmigo, a national model recently highlighted on 60 Minutes, is set for use in some middle and high schools.
“Schools ultimately will decide how they want to use it,” said Monica Ilse, deputy superintendent for academics. “I want to get feedback from teachers and leaders for the future.”
Ilse said she expected the programs might free teachers from some of the more mundane aspects of their jobs, so they can pay closer attention to their students. A recent Gallup poll found teachers who regularly use AI said it saves them about six hours of work weekly, in areas such as writing quizzes and completing paperwork.
Marlee Strawn, cofounder of Scholar Education, introduced her system to the principals of 19 schools during a June 30 video call. The model is tied to Florida’s academic standards, Strawn said, and includes dozens of lessons that teachers can use.
It also allows teachers to craft their own assignments, tapping into the growing body of material being uploaded. The more specific the request, the more fine-tuned the exercises can be. If a student has a strong interest in baseball or ballet, for instance, the AI programming can help develop standards-based tasks on those subjects, she explained.
Perhaps most useful, Strawn told the principals, is the system’s ability to support teachers as they analyze student performance data. It identifies such things as the types of questions students asked and the items they struggled with, and can make suggestions about how to respond.
“The data analytics has been the most helpful for our teachers so far,” she said.
She stressed that Scholar Education protects student data privacy, a common concern among parents and educators, noting the system got a top rating from Common Sense.
School board member Jessica Wright brought up criticisms that AI has proven notoriously error-prone in math.
Strawn said the system has proven helpful when teachers seek to provide real-life examples for math concepts. She did not delve into details about the reliability of AI in calculations and formulas.
Lacoochee principal Jordan wanted to know how well the AI system would interface with other technologies, such as iReady, that schools already use.
“If it works with some of our current systems, that’s an easier way to ease into it, so for teachers it doesn’t become one more thing that you have to do,” Jordan said.
Strawn said the automated bot is a supplement that teachers can integrate with data from other tools to help them identify classroom needs and create the types of differentiated instruction that Jordan and others are looking for.
The middle and high school model, Khanmigo, will focus more on student tutoring, Ilse wrote in an email to principals. It’s designed to “guide students to a deeper understanding of the content and skills mastery,” she explained in the email. As with Scholar, teachers can monitor students’ interactions and step in with one-on-one support as needed, in addition to developing lesson plans and standards-aligned quizzes.
Superintendent John Legg said teachers and schools would not be required to use AI. Legg said he simply wanted to provide options that might help teachers in their jobs. After a year, the district will evaluate whether to continue, most likely with paid services.
While an administrator at Dayspring Academy before his election, Legg wrote a letter of support for Scholar Education’s bid for a $1 million state startup grant, and he also received campaign contributions from some of the group’s leaders. He said he had no personal stake in the organization and was backing a project that might improve education, just as he previously supported Algebra Nation, the University of Florida’s online math tutoring program launched in 2013.
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