Sept. 2023 | Vol. 9 Iss. 09
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WHY AI SHOULD BE IN THE CLASSROOM By Jet Burnham | j.burnham@mycityjournals.com
Editor’s note: this is the first in an ongoing series about artificial intelligence in schools. re kids using AI to complete their school assignments? West Jordan Middle School Principal Eric Price hopes they are. “A lot of educators are trying to figure out the best way to use AI because we really have to teach like it exists,” Price said. “It's definitely going to change what we do, and we have to be able to look at it and teach the kids how it works, so they understand the strengths and the limitations.” Price has been an avid proponent of the benefits of technology in education. “When ChatGPT came out, it was like my mind was just blown,” he said. “I thought ‘If this doesn't change how we do things and education, nothing is going to change what we're doing in education.’” Price believes that because of the direction new technologies are heading, educators need to ask themselves what the end goal of education is. “Are we trying to get students to memorize every fact or every item on the periodic table? No, we're trying to teach them skills so that they can acquire that information when they need it,” he said. “We're trying to teach them skills. We want them to be problem solvers. We want them to be collaborative.” He said these are the skillsets students need for future jobs, which unlike in the school environment where sharing information is called cheating, coworkers are encouraged to collaborate. “When you have a question or you don't know how to do something, you use your tools, because you have to solve those problems,” Price said. “And so we want kids to think critically, to problem solve, to analyze, to be able to take what they have, their tools, and be able to use them to the best of their abilities. That's the direction education is going.”
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Principal Eric Price experiments with AI tools. (Jet Burnham/City Journals)
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Real world problem solving
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Continued page 10
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