All districts — Like many in attendance at the Kent ISD AI Summit, Jodi Noakes, a third-grade teacher at Rockford’s Belmont Elementary School, was looking for ways to be able to integrate artificial intelligence programs into her classroom.
“I honestly did not realize that I was using AI,” Noakes said as presenters asked attendees if they had ever used mapping apps or asked Apple’s Siri a question. “I just wanted to learn more about what I can use AI for, and how I might be able to incorporate it more into my classroom.”
Noakes’ comments reflected what many of the more than 100 education leaders were hoping to gain out of the spring AI Summit, which was designed for attendees to explore and discuss the benefits and challenges by networking and learning from others, said Sarah Wood, Kent ISD educational technology consultant, who helped organize the event.
That was the reason for the spring AI Summit, which served as a kick-off to Kent ISD Education and Technology’s plans for various AI workshops and programs throughout the 2024-25 school year.
“We did the AI Summit at a time of the year when we recognized that teachers may be losing momentum,” Wood said.
‘After a while, AI-powered interactions will become so ubiquitous that we’ll hardly notice them. … Similarly, AI chat and intelligent assistants will be seamlessly woven into every aspect of our daily lives, from our homes and cars to our workplaces and public spaces.’
— Ron Houtman, Kent ISD director of strategic planning and organization initiatives
Wood said they purposely selected several people outside Kent ISD to help provide a broader perspective. Topics included working with AI in the classroom, classroom strategies, ethics and privacy, and education-focused AI programs such as Magic School AI.
The goal was to create knowledge of the capacity and potential of AI, Wood said, adding that it’s important for educators to be modeling the best practices along with ethics and privacy.
“AI is changing the landscape of how we do things,” she said. “It is built into a lot of things that we use. It’s not going away, and you can’t get away from it.”
Based on a pre-summit survey, two-thirds of participants were more “excited than scared” when it came to using the technology, which demonstrates increasing interest among educators in using AI to make their tasks more efficient, lessons more engaging and materials more accessible to their students.
About 60% of attendees were already using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, with some starting to try teaching and learning AI programs like Magic School Bus AI and School AI.
From Clippy to ChatGPT
AI is not new, said Ron Houtman, Kent ISD director of strategic planning and organization initiatives and director of REMC. By definition, AI is a broad category of systems that can learn patterns from data and produce original outputs.
“When we think about the historical side of this, I want to say it’s at least 20 years in the development of these predictive texts or predictive models that will listen to text in various ways,” Houtman said. “Right now, the verbal way is really new but the text input way is pretty old.”
Houtman referenced the animated Microsoft character Clippy, which appeared in the early 2000s. As a person typed, Clippy would appear and ask if they needed help with their writing, he said.
While Clippy only lasted a few years, the technology continued to grow, leading to other responsive technology such as Grammarly, which could suggest words or corrections, or Alexa and Siri, digital voice assistants that can respond to questions by doing online searches.
AI chat bots such as ChatGPT are based on large language models, where the machine has analyzed large amounts of data and information so it can recognize, generate, translate, predict and summarize text and other content.
Houtman said there is a “fear cycle” when it comes to anything new. For example, calculators were widely available by 1975, but students often were not allowed to use the devices in school. Today, a graphing calculator is a requirement for certain math classes and students have been able to use calculators on the SAT exams, he said.
“After a while, AI-powered interactions will become so ubiquitous that we’ll hardly notice them. It’s like fish in water: they don’t consciously think about the water they’re swimming in because it’s their constant environment. Similarly, AI chat and intelligent assistants will be seamlessly woven into every aspect of our daily lives, from our homes and cars to our workplaces and public spaces. We’ll be surrounded by these AI interfaces, interacting with them so naturally and frequently that it’ll just feel like a normal part of our world.”
‘It is not that the technology hasn’t been around, it’s now become accessible to the mass public.’
— Sarah Wood, Kent ISD education and technology consultant
He said AI assistants will eventually go far beyond simple tasks like telling time or checking the weather, and could become capable of handling complex, multi-step processes while understanding the context of a person’s needs based on their personal data and past interactions.
His example: “Imagine asking your AI assistant to book a trip for you. It would access your calendar to determine when you need to arrive at your destination, check your email for any relevant travel information and recall your preferences from past bookings. The AI could then book a flight that suits your preferred travel times, reserve a rental car in your favorite model and secure a hotel room that meets your usual criteria — all without you needing to specify these details.”
Houtman continued: “This level of service goes well beyond today’s simple voice commands. These future AI assistants will engage in more nuanced, context-aware interactions, providing detailed explanations and adapting to the specific topics and needs of each user.”
Understanding AI & Its Potential
Wood said as the technology has become accessible to the public and has been integrated into a variety of everyday activities, from health platforms to TVs, it becomes increasingly important for school districts to provide students with lessons in digital citizenship, a way to navigate those environments that is safe, responsible and respectful.
This means teaching educators about digital citizenship along with available resources and networking with each other on practices, Wood said.
Throughout the summer, the Education and Technology Department hosted in-house AI Lunch & Learns at Kent ISD, with AI workshops scheduled for the fall and winter and an Ed Tech Cheer program focused on AI in November and December. Wood said consultants also are working on AI programs with school districts such as East Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids Public Schools and Kent City.
To learn more about upcoming offerings from Kent ISD Educational Technology, visit its website or the I AM EdTech site.
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