When Artificial Intelligence burst onto the scene in 2023, it sparked one of the biggest changes in education since the introduction of Google.
It was initially met with fear and skepticism by teachers, who worried that students would only use the technology to cheat, and excitement from students, who saw it as their free ticket to easy grades.
While it is sometimes used to cheat, a growing number of Tyrone students and teachers are using AI in positive ways to improve their writing, research, and communication skills.
In a recent unscientific Eagle Eye survey, students were asked to share their thoughts about AI. Of the 27 students who responded, 55% said they regularly use AI for schoolwork.
A majority said that they use it to assist with completing assignments. Others said they use it to help with studying or to use AI to check answers.
Tyrone Area High School English teacher Stephan Everhart has been following the technology closely and thinks that it should be used by teachers and students, but with responsibility.
“Last year, I started observing how some of the more tech-savvy students were using Perplexity AI in this way. This year I’m teaching all my students what they taught me last year, with encouraging results,” said Everhart.
Everhart teaches his students to use AI for help with word choice and writing feedback.
According to Everhart, the suggestions and feedback from AI become an interactive learning process, giving students a lead on what they can do better while not directly doing their assignments for them. Over time, this indirectly helps students learn by correcting mistakes and recognizing patterns while writing.
“Generative AI helps them to locate and identify reliable sources, summarize complex information, and support a thesis with college-level development,” Everthart said. “They really appreciate how easily AI tools can assist with formatting citations and works cited entries in a matter of seconds.”
But most importantly, according to Everhart, they are using AI as a writing coach for critiquing their drafts on the fly.
Everhart isn’t the only TAHS faculty member using AI.
Tenth-grade English teacher Jonathan Holmes has also recently taken advantage of AI, using it to design assignments, create quizzes, and create sample passages and essays to guide students.
“I think AI provides an amazing opportunity for students to develop and to better their skillsets; however, students have not been taught how to use AI this way. If students are taught how and when to use AI constructively, to develop and enhance their own thoughts, ideas, and projects, then I’m all for using it. If students only want to use AI for a quick and easy “A,” that’s another issue entirely.”
Last year, Holmes introduced Perplexity AI to a select group of students, and he plans to introduce another AI resource later this school year that will enhance peer grading.
“It takes some time to introduce the tools and teach students how to use them responsibly, but in the end, I think it’ll be worth it,” Holmes said.
It also helps students to think outside the box.
Journalism and yearbook adviser Todd Cammarata has his students use it to help prepare interview questions.
“If you give it a good detailed description of the person you are interviewing and the purpose of the story you are working on, AI will often suggest some great interview questions that students haven’t considered,” Cammarata said. “It can really improve the quality and depth of questions that students come up with before doing an interview.”
Students on his yearbook staff also used it to help narrow down their theme choices this year.
“We used AI to come up with pros and cons for several of their theme ideas, which helped the class to narrow down its choices and choose a theme,” Cammrata said.
When students were asked about AI’s impact on their learning, opinions were mixed.
Twenty percent of students felt it significantly improved their learning, 40% said it offered slight benefits, 30% believed it provided little to no help, and 10% thought it actually made learning worse.
“I believe it is a nice tool to help learn and add detail to our work, and allows us to learn new things. With homework, our teacher is not home to help us with it, so we can save ourselves from the frustration and use our resources,” senior Cadence Ball said.
Every day AI is becoming more prominent in people’s daily lives. Teachers are starting to take advantage of AI and have more freedom and more inspiration to teach students in new ways.
While AI is a very powerful tool, it can’t replicate the human connection that students still value and need.
“If you don’t want to be replaced by an AI machine, then you must know what the machine can do and learn how to do it better,” Everhart said.
