Aaron Baughman is the assistant superintendent of instructional services in the district and leading the process of immersing students, teachers and administrators in the use of AI as an educational tool.
The district implemented multiple AI tools and programs this school year and made it available to every teacher in every grade level and program.
“It is the third week of school and my tech coach is meeting with people every single day looking for tools for their classrooms,” said Baughman. “I’ve got 400 teachers and I know I have got at least 250 of them to use at least one tool, so that is a pretty good number for the first year of full implementation.”
By using AI programs such as Diffit, MagicSchool, Curipod, School AI and others, teachers can create assignments, personalize lesson plans and guide students through specific tasks.
Administrators can use AI tools for teacher evaluations. Special education teachers can create Individualized Education Programs and speech therapy teachers can create audio assistants.
All data and interactions with students are secure within the tools created by teachers and vetted by Baughman. Inappropriate student use within the program is flagged and the teacher immediately notified.
“I do not think it is an overstatement to say that Northville is the furthest ahead on this (AI) in the state. We are really trying to spearhead this movement of adopting AI as an instructional tool,” said Baughman. “I believe this has the power to revolutionize the educational model all together.”
GETTING ON BOARD
Baughman began looking to bring AI into Northville classrooms in November 2023.
Over the next three months he learned how to create customized tools and immersed himself in how to incorporate AI tools into a district with over 7,000 students.
“It was not daunting and maybe it was because I was so passionate about it and so I bought into it,” said Baughman. “I couldn’t imagine why anyone else would not buy into it.”
He brought in instructors from the Michigan Virtual Learning and Research Institute for preliminary sessions with teachers and administrators and joined county and state AI groups. Last spring he made presentations on the technology to the school board and Jen Lawson, the tech coach, hosted orientation classes for district teachers during the summer.
“Everyone was blown away at the possibilities AI provided them,” said Lawson. “I only had eight teachers in my first class … by the end there were over 30 wanting to learn what these tools could do.”
Along with showing the teachers how AI tools could work, she also stressed the importance of what the tools could mean long term.
“Teachers are not going away. None of this is going to work without the educators. The teachers are the facilitators,” said Lawson. “My philosophy is, ‘I don’t want the tool to drive instruction; I want instruction to drive the tool.’ It is not replacing anyone, it is making education better.”
Baughman narrowed the recommended list of AI tools to nine prominent programs including Gemini, Brisk and Canva.
“What we have right now are tools that have some overlap, but do something unique,” he said. “All of these tools are designed not to give answers, but to give support and help. We did not put products into kids’ hands that we had not 100 percent vetted.”
Since the start of school, Baughman has seen the tools increasingly used throughout the district.
“I joke with teachers, if you give me an hour I can make you a wizard,” he said. “I am getting emails every day asking how to use the tools, which tells me they are using it or they wouldn’t be asking for my help.”
The district created one class with the new technology last spring.
Northville High School teacher Nancy Smith taught a test group of students in a study skills class using MagicSchool.
There are several AI tools within MagicSchool, like a conceptual understanding generator, science lab generator, student work feedback tool, academic content generator and more.
“I opened up a room for them to access study tools that would be beneficial for them in any area they were looking for help in,” said Smith. “It was the perfect type of class to try this out. It was a really good tool for them and I think they really enjoyed it.”
HOW IT IS BEING USED
Lawson may be the busiest employee in the Northville school district. Her official title is instructional technology coach.
Teachers from kindergarten through high school go to her to find out how to put AI tools to use in their classrooms.
Lawson, a Math teacher for 25 years before shifting to her new role, has seen what AI tools can produce firsthand.
Her 14-year-old daughter Molly input an essay on Science Fiction into a School AI bot program looking for feedback.
“It didn’t edit and rewrite it for her, it gave her suggestions on transitions and kids get real time feedback that a teacher would give,” said Lawson. “It showed her things to improve on that even I missed when I read it.”
Lawson said a teacher can install a bot program where a student at any grade level can have a conversation with George Washington about what it was like to be the first president or talk to Frederick Douglass about his work on civil rights in the 1800’s. Students can then use that information to help with assignments or tasks created by the teacher within the program.
“It is increasing the problem solving, it is improving students’ capacity to learn, it is not just spitting out facts and answers,” said Lawson. “I know it is making our kids better learners. This is going to be an exponentially positive thing for our students.”
Baughman said teachers can use a tool to input a link to a YouTube video and make it interactive by creating stopping points for questions, producing a text summary or asking it to create multiple choice questions for students to answer.
AI tools can save teachers time in a multitude of ways.
“I can go to Diffit and type in what my objectives are, what I want to do, what I want the students to do and I just hit create and it all takes 10 minutes and I have 15 or 20 activities that perfectly match what I wanted to do,” said Lawson. “Now I have better materials and exactly what I want in a fraction of the time.”
Baughman said having AI tools in classrooms is like having a virtual assistant at every desk.
“An english teacher can have 30 kids in a class and while they are helping one student the other 29 do not sit quietly and wait, they can be helped and prompted through problems and questions by the bot,” he said. “It is like every kid in the room has a personal support assistant, but the teacher still maintains control of the environment.”
Teachers can use an AI tool called Sparkle where kids explain their work on video and receive audio feedback. Teachers can then go back and watch the interaction between the student and the bot afterward.
Brisk is a Google Chrome extension that integrates time-saving AI directly into the platforms where teachers spend the most time, like Google Docs, slides, articles, YouTube videos and PDFs.
Curipod is an interactive presentation tool for making lessons. A teacher can create their own lessons or use the AI generator to create interactive lessons and activities.
“The teachers create the virtual rooms and the students go into those rooms. The teacher controls the environment, can go back and look at chat logs, is flagged when the bot is asked inappropriate questions and can see the progress of every student,” said Baughman.
Lawson said AI tools also help the teachers save time in moving classes forward when they are splintered by different learning paces.
A bot program can generate material and assignments customized for students in a single classroom that are falling behind, learning at normal pace or already have advanced knowledge of the subject.
“The teachers in our district are really seeing the importance of this and how it can make their jobs better,” said Lawson. “They really have embraced it.”
PROGRESS AND REACTION
So far the reaction within the district has been overwhelmingly positive.
“I was really blown away by the capabilities that he (Baughman) was showing us in these tools,” said Northville school board president Lindsey Wilson. “I am 100 percent in favor of teaching and enabling our students to take advantage of these tools and harness the power of these AI technologies.”
Wilson has two children in the district and was impressed with what he saw during a demonstration to the board last spring.
He said his daughter was reading “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck at the time and went into the School AI bot program to see what it was capable of presenting.
“Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors and you could talk to an AI version of John Steinbeck about the book,” said Wilson. “I got to talk to him about writing ‘Of Mice and Men’ and some of the choices he made and some of the things that really troubled my daughter about it. It really blew me away with the insights it brought.”
Nancy Smith was the tech coach when she started in the district 24 years ago and was showing staff how to use the Internet on their computers.
Now she uses AI in her personal life and in her web design and accounting classes at the high school.
“I love it. I use it almost every day,” she said. “I use it to get a new lesson, to help in writing my own evaluation of myself and to write letters of recommendation. I can’t get enough of it.”
Wilson and Lawson both stressed that AI bot programs are just the newest tools to be used by educators and not something that would make teachers obsolete.
“The Internet didn’t stop teachers, the calculator did not stop math teachers and the iPhone did not stop technology,” said Lawson. “AI is just an aid or a tool. It is not replacing anyone, it is making education better.”
“This is no different than search engines, word processors or even just a fold out map,” said Wilson. “They just enabled us to go to another level. This is just the next tool or technology in the human evolutionary list of educational tools.”
Baughman said he has received nothing but positive feedback in the opening three weeks of the school year and knows what AI will mean for the future of education.
“I don’t think people understand nor have they grasped the value and vastness of what is going to be possible,” he said. “I think it is amazing to see what this is going to bring to education. It is going to take a while for people to adapt to this, but once the spark is lit, I do think we are going to see a huge shift happen pretty quickly, I just don’t know where that tipping point is.”
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