Kevin Hudson, a history and psychology teacher at New Milford High School in Connecticut, says AI is a tool that can be helpful when used in ways that foster creativity rather than replace thinking. His school uses Class Companion, an AI tutor that he says has helped improve certain student assignments but, of course, has limitations.
“For something simple, like teaching students to write a complete sentence, it’s perfect,” Hudson says. “But for more complex summative assessments, I don’t think AI is ready.”
AI And The Power of Instant Feedback
Hudson has used AI to give students immediate summative feedback on a short response to an article about the Silk Road. Hudson sets up Class Companion to look for specific elements in each student’s response. This takes some time on the front end but can really provide students with immediate and detailed feedback that he’s not normally able to because of time constraints.
“Kids are frustrated with it sometimes because I’m probably more forgiving than AI would be on some of these things,” he says.
But the beauty of this exercise is that it gives students the opportunity to revise their response based on the AI’s feedback. This encourages them to improve their writing and reasoning in real time. It can also help catch little spelling and grammar errors on larger assignments.
Overall, using these tools has led to better quality submissions, enabling the type of one-to-one instruction that is logistically impossible for most teachers, Hudson says. “AI improved their essay as if I were right there helping them with it,” he adds.
Drawbacks To Be Aware Of
Despite his positive experiences, Hudson agrees with those who point out drawbacks to the technology. “I have colleagues who will say we should never let them use it because it’ll just encourage them to use it as a crutch on everything. And I totally get that,” he says.
He compares it to trying to teach kids to wash dishes in a world with dishwashers. “They assume the dishwasher will always be there,” he says. “At the end of the day, the students didn’t learn how to wash dishes, but they got the dishes clean, so what’s the problem? The problem is not all dishes go in the dishwasher.”
He adds, “The other thing is we teachers are cognizant of are the medical and social dangers of too much screen time. Using AI as an occasional assistant may be okay, but delivering an education on a screen is not.”
Of course, educators and society are still learning to navigate all this. “We as teachers have to figure out where is it useful, and where is it harmful,” Hudson says.
AI Teaching Advice
For teachers who have not yet dipped their toes into the AI world, Hudson’s advice is to start. ”Find ways to use it. Get to know it very well, because your students already know it,” he says. Students might also be using it in less productive ways and teachers can help guide this usage to support more effective and ethical practices.
Ultimately, Hudson has seen from his own experience that AI tools can be positive in the classroom and can help with differentiation if used in the right way. He hopes to continue to find productive ways to use AI and to guide his students against unethical and counterproductive AI uses.
“If we can teach students to use it, or to be at least critical of their use of it, then we’ll be doing them a real service, but if we ignore it, we’re not doing a service,” he says.