doug — off the record

Every day, I see educators in my network commenting on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their classroom. Their comments are all over the map from banning it totally to embracing it and changing their ways of teaching.

Coupled with it are requests for the “best” plagiarism tool that’s available. 

I saw this advice from Danika Tipping and I laughed real tears when I read it.

A great deal of the time, people are bemoaning the fact that their district doesn’t have a policy to deal with it. It’s like the definitive word should come from the board office. 

I remember a conversation with my former superintendent who asked me when we were talking about policies “When was the last time you obeyed board policy?”. He had a good point but there are times that it would be nice to hang your hat on a policy for whatever reason.

Not all districts and schools have turned their head.

Lance Eaton popped into my reading this morning. Lance has been collecting policies and, in fact, if you do have a policy, you can send it to him.

He’s made his collection available to the world in a Google Spreadsheet.

When I stepped in and looked around, there were 110 policies in place here. They range a wide area from Arts to Writing. There were a few for Business and Computer Science that got my biggest attention.

The uploaders, it seems, come largely from universities and colleges but there are some high school submissions as well. The policy content range from very restrictive to very liberal in its use. 

If nothing else, it shows that we collectively haven’t got our heads around this. Will we ever? Will a formal policy help? Or does it just put more workload on the teacher?

The irony that some won’t be able to access this document because it’s stored as a Google document and some districts have banned that for whatever policy reason they may have.

So, if you’re in that boat, you may have to access it at home. That, in itself, is a lesson to be learned. Block it at school and students may just have to turn to their home account or the public library.

Does that inform your thoughts about its use in your classroom?