Editor’s Note: This is a sidebar to our feature story: “Ahead of the Games, Miles to Go – Virginia Public Education and AI“

Having taught writing in high school and at the university level, the opportunity to see how AI is being used to help students build both thinking and writing skills provided me an opportunity to confront my own concerns about AI in the learning environment. The session marked the first time that I had used generative AI to complete a lesson.

The exercise, using a Gem built by two high school English teachers in Stafford County, was designed with four goals:

• Demonstrate a “Human-in-the-Loop” learning experience that ensures students remain the architects of their own work.
• Applies the “Traffic Light System,” which categorizes writing tasks into Red (Human), Yellow (Collaborator), and Green (Integrated) levels.
• Enhances Digital Literacy by way of helping students navigate generative AI ethics by moving them from brainstorming to final synthesis without plagiarism.
• Fosters Future-Ready Skills by equipping students with critical thinking as well as responsible AI collaboration skills needed for professional environments.

How successful was the experience?

Two facts became clear:

1. For someone who before this session had never used generative AI, it was surprising how little time was required to become comfortable with the Gem work with it. 
2. The promise of customized education was fully on display; so, too, the fact that there is nothing preventing students from misusing it to shortcut the hard work of learning.

The Assignment

Session participants were asked to use the Gem to craft a five sentence hook about ambition in Macbeth.

We were encouraged to do this toggling between the three settings – Red, Yellow, and Green. 

Red, which instructs the Gem to not provide solutions, and Green, which will generate drafts and analyze data, were useful but less interesting than setting the Gem to Yellow. At this setting, the Gem acts as a writing coach.

Teachers are frequently told to “differentiate” their instruction to meet the varying needs of students in their classes. Even accomplished teachers will struggle for the simple reason that they are outnumbered in the classroom. It is difficult to provide individual instruction when there are 25 to 30 students in the room. The Gem balances the equation, providing individual guidance to each student in the room.

Setting the Gem to Yellow, I asked it to help me craft the hook.

It began by asking me what I felt the main theme of Macbeth is. 

“The dangers of unchecked power,” I responded. 

The Gem encouraged that idea and asked me to write a lead sentence that expresses that idea, but doesn’t reference Macbeth.

I crafted a sentence that stressed the American Founders were concerned about unchecked power.

The Gem then asked me to then tie that sentence to Macbeth.

Noting that some of the Founders were aware of Macbeth, I suggested that this play may have informed their thinking about the dangers of consolidating power in one individual’s hands.

Asked to craft a sentence that explained how, I said that the Founders, fearing unchecked power, baked term limits into the Constitution.

The Gem liked that idea and proceeded with the exercise. It failed to capture the error in the statement – term limits were not part of the Founders’ vision. 

It did better catching other errors. Such as when I tried to interject Juliet as a character in Macbeth. It caught that error, informed me who Juliet is and which play she appeared in, and encouraged me to give it another shot.

Learnings

• Helpful prompting: I was impressed with the way the Gem moved me from sentence to sentence, often asking leading questions not unlike those I would ask students when standing behind them as they drafted content.

• Factual missteps: While the Gem caught glaring errors – Juliet never appeared in Macbeth – more nuanced errors slipped through. Term limits are in the Constitution, but as an amendment for the office of president only, and it was approved long after the Founders had passed. 

• It’s Fun, and efficient: The Gem moved participants through the exercise at a pace that worked for each of them. I was able to complete the full five sentences in less than 10 minutes, while others around me who weren’t writers took longer. But talking with people afterwards, they felt engaged with the tool, which lowered their frustration.
• The temptation is real: I asked one of the teachers leading the exercise, “How do you prevent students from cheating?” The truth, she said, is that while students are required to affirm that they followed the rules and the work is their own, there is no way to guarantee that students won’t cheat on the assignment.

The Bottomline

I entered the room having never used generative AI, and over a relatively brief half-hour became comfortable with the tool and walked away impressed with the potential for the Gem to offer individualized guidance that is rarely possible in a classroom setting.

The challenges were equally apparent. Students who don’t appreciate the value of learning or understand the importance of why it is important to wrestle with increasingly complex ideas will likely lean on AI more than they should. 

Cheating, however, is as old as education itself, and the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. 

There’s great upside to generative AI as a learning tool, so long as teachers keep a firm hand on the wheel, and they don’t fall in the trap of offloading the hard work of critical thinking onto an AI tool.