LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – Artificial intelligence is entering classrooms. As it becomes more prevalent, the Louisiana Department of Education has released guidelines to help teachers and schools navigate the ever-advancing technology.
Kim LeBlanc, the Calcasieu Parish School Board Chief Technology Officer, says currently in Calcasieu Parish, AI is only being used by their teachers and staff.
“Now that the state has put out the guidelines, our next step is to put forth a guidance and get a big committee together and decide as a whole staff as to what we want to allow students to do as far as AI in the classroom,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said for the past two years in Calcasieu Parish, the school board has already been researching AI use and how it can help their students and staff. Over 200 teachers participated in their “Amazing Race AI Edition,” a course released in their learning management system.
“We utilize that course to bring awareness to teachers and staff in our district. With the course, they were able to find out what AI is all about. We show them some tools that are open to teachers and staff in our district and they also gave us feedback on the tools,” LeBlanc said.
Teachers currently have access to multiple AI tools that can help with lesson plan development, exit tickets, and creating multiple-choice assessments.
“We have to make sure that the tools we choose protect our student privacy, that none of our data goes anywhere, and it’s not storing the data. Basically, we just want to make sure it’s a safe and secure environment,” LeBlanc said.
But with anything, there are also some challenges with the use of AI in the classroom.
“Teachers are concerned with plagiarism, and we do understand that. There are many things that a teacher can do if they think that a piece of work has been plagiarized. There are AI detection tools out there such as Turnitin, SafeAssign, those are tools that have been around you know for quite a while,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said she feels confident that their teachers can recognize an AI-written paper over a student-written paper because teachers know the students in their classroom. She went on to say, anything they can do to give their teachers more instructional time, they’d like to do.
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