AI Literacy and Guidelines for Students Waterford Public Schools
What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is a technology that helps machines act in smart ways, like making decisions, recognizing patterns, or completing tasks. It works by using data, rules, and learning methods to figure things out. For example, AI powers facial recognition on phones, virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, and the algorithms behind social media feeds. Generative AI (GenAI): GenAI is a type of AI that creates new content like text, images, and music by learning from examples. It’s a newer kind of AI that can help make creative and personalized materials, like educational tools or artistic designs.
What is AI’s Role in the Waterford Public School Classroom?
➡️ ➡️
➡️ ➡️
In Waterford Public Schools, we use a Human Inquiry AI Human Empowerment (H AI H) approach. That means AI should support—not replace—human thinking. AI is here to help students and teachers learn, explore, and grow together. AI is changing how we learn by making it easier to get feedback, personalize your learning, and stay engaged. Used responsibly, it can help you brainstorm, study, and create. It can still be wrong, miss the point, or show bias. But remember: AI doesn’t think like a person. That’s why it’s important to stay curious, ask questions, and work with your teacher when using it.
Protecting Your Privacy When Using AI
When using AI tools, it’s really important to protect your own privacy—and the privacy of others. Never enter personal details like names, addresses, phone numbers, or information about yourself, classmates or teachers into AI systems. Once that information goes into the tool, we can’t control where it goes or how it’s used. Only use GenAI tools that your school has approved. These tools are checked to make sure they follow Connecticut’s student data privacy laws. By following these rules, we can use AI in safe and responsible ways that protect everyone’s information.
Understanding the Risks of AI AI tools can be helpful, but they also come with risks you should understand. Privacy matters: Never share personal or private information about yourself or others. Once it’s entered into an AI tool, we can’t get it back or control how it’s used. AI can make things up: Sometimes AI gives wrong answers or made-up information. This is called a “hallucination.” Don’t assume everything it says is true and always double-check. Bias happens: AI is trained on lots of information from the internet, and that includes unfair or biased ideas. Be thoughtful and critical when using AI. Deep fakes are not okay: Deep fakes are fake videos, pictures, or audio that are made to look real. Creating deep fakes to bully, mislead, or cause harm is never allowed and will not be tolerated. Always use AI responsibly and respectfully. Think before you type and when in doubt, ask a teacher.