Massena Central School Board members Paul A. Haggett, Joyce Giroux and Robert M. LeBlanc were among the attendees at the event.
"We had our picture taken with the keynote speaker from day one. That was Sophia, the AI robot. Sophia was interviewed by Executive Director Bob Schneider and she talked about a number of topics in education related to artificial intelligence," Haggett said.
Sophia is a humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics that can mimic human expressions and interact with people.
Haggett said AI was a topic of discussion throughout the convention.
"The day two keynote speaker was education author and researcher Dan Fitzpatrick from Great Britain, who took us through a lot of the very quickly involving thinking on artificial intelligence," he said. "One of the things that I kind of took away as far as the message was concerned is that it's true that AI scares a lot of people. It's sort of a wild west, a great unknown in a lot of ways. But, his message was that as human beings we have a need for interaction with other humans. So, it's very unlikely that AI is going to completely take over the world."
Giroux said she mainly attended workshops regarding AI "because I was afraid of it as well and the impact on education and I wanted to learn more about it."
"Dan Fitzpatrick said that if we were to stop using AI tomorrow, if there was a ban, it's done. We're done. That's it. It would take 20 years to unpack it at this point. The problem that they really have, because it's growing so quickly, is that there isn't enough energy being produced to support it. So, that has to improve, too," she said.
Giroux said there were positives to using AI.
"We need to embrace it. We need to approach it with intent. There's a lot of good to it in terms of education with teachers and students. Teachers can create lesson plans. They can do IEP (individualized Education Plan) scheduling of students," she said. "He said AI should be looked at as being a calculator for words. I thought that was very interesting, a calculator for words."
Giroux said AI has additional benefits. She said it can be used for personalized learning, including "more student engagement, data collection, attendance trends in terms of administration."
"How about a second language for students using the translators? AI tools for students with disabilities, professional development. It's mind-blowing actually," she said. "So, there's a lot that can be done. We shouldn't be afraid, but there's a lot to learn about it for sure and I'm really curious about it."
She said Fitzpatrick spoke about a tool called SchoolAI.
"It's a tool for teachers and students. Students can chat with historical figures. Wouldn't that be interesting?" Giroux said.
Nicole L. Charleson, the district's assistant superintendent for instruction, had told board members at a previous meeting that SchoolAI was now being used in the district.
"After meeting with a few companies, we did decide on SchoolAI," she said. "There are a lot of staff tools that those who have started using it are pretty excited about."
SchoolAI is an AI-powered writing tool designed specifically for schools and teachers. It helps save time by providing powerful AI-generated emails, marking, lesson plans, ideas, quizzes, brainstorms, reports and more. SchoolAI offers features such as personalization, email/letter mode, mark and grade mode, lesson plan mode, resource from lesson plan mode, quiz mode, brainstorm mode, and a time saved counter.
"The premise is to interact with AI, to learn about AI, but to also use it to enhance our instructional spaces," Charleson said.
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