Building a Safe AI Environment for Students at Home | Part 3 with Christian Jackson

Navigating AI Safely: Tips for Students and Parents

In the final episode of Sage Studio's three-part AI series, Tiffiny Webster and guest Christian Jackson delve into essential considerations for students using AI, emphasizing the importance of accuracy, avoiding plagiarism, managing dependence, and ensuring privacy. They also explore how parents can support their children in using AI responsibly, covering the need for parental education on AI, setting ground rules, encouraging critical thinking, and fostering balanced and ethical use of technology. Throughout the conversation, practical advice and strategies are offered to help students and parents navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of AI in education and beyond.

00:00 Welcome & Series Recap
00:32 AI Cautions for Students & Parental Support
01:43 ChatGPT's Advice on Safe AI Usage
02:05 Addressing AI Challenges: Accuracy, Plagiarism, and Dependence
05:03 Privacy Concerns and Ethical Use of AI
14:05 Encouraging Critical Thinking and Varied Learning Sources
14:13 Parental Guidance on AI: Education, Monitoring, and Security
26:02 Concluding Thoughts on AI in Education

For more information, visit the Sage Oak website at www.sageoak.education.

Thank you for listening to the Sage Studio podcast presented by Sage Oak Charter Schools and hosted by Tiffiny Webster, M.A.Ed. We invite you to follow the show and leave your review below. Sage Oak Charter Schools is an independent study nonclassroom based TK-12 personalized learning public charter school serving students in Southern California. Visit sageoak.education for more information.

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Transcript

0:14

Welcome to another episode of Sage Studio. I'm Tiffiny Webster and we are back with Christian Jackson for part three of three of our AI series. So Christian, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me back. I'm excited for part three. Me too. Okay. So to wrap up our AI series today, what we're going to be talking about is ways that students need to be cautious when using AI, just a few things that they need to be considerate of, and then also how parents can support their kids in effectively and safely using AI. Just a refresher, our first episode that we did in this series was all about implementation by teachers and bringing AI safely into the classroom. And Sage Oak is doing a great job making sure that there are safeguards around the way that our teachers are utilizing AI and our students are interacting with AI. And then in part two of our series, we really talked about some of the ways that students can really use AI to dive deeper into their education and into their creativity with some of the project uses and study skill uses, things like that to support them as students. So today we just want to make sure that we're covering our bases and making sure that our students are safe and our parents are feeling comfortable. So you ready to get into it? More than ready. This is a very important conversation around the the parent child use. So I'm excited for it. And once again, we went to the source. I asked ChatGPT to generate a list of some ways that students can safely use AI and also to what are some things that they need to be cautious about. So we are going to see what ChatGPT says, and then I want to get your thoughts on on this and any additional comments that you have to add based on your expertise in this area. All right. So first of all ChatGPT wants our students to be aware that they need to be reviewing the information for accuracy. Where have you seen this come up with student use of AI? I it's just, that's just base level, right? and we talked, we touched on this in episode 2, just knowing where information comes from, and then if you're ever going to put your name on something that you helped or you worked on, you better be sure that the information in there is correct and accurate. And you can't 100% Confirm that AI is going to be right. 100 percent of the context is different. You might have different uses for acronyms, so on and so forth. So just always double checking the work is of critical importance. Yes, agreed for sure. Okay. Now that kind of goes into number two, which ChatGPT says, be wary of plagiarism that directly copying and pasting of responses from AI without properly attributing where they came from or modifying. So how can students make sure that they are not plagiarizing if they're using AI? We need to ensure that there's a culture of transparency at the end of the day. Whether that's starting with teachers or administrators and trickles down. Students need to make sure that if they're using AI to help write or source any parts of their papers or say that you used it. And I think this comes down to just the way that you would use any other resources if you were using a book or an article that you either need to cite the article, cite the book that you found the information, or you need to put it into your own words to really make it your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own opinion in order to make sure that you are not plagiarizing, that again, you're either giving that credit where credit is due, or you're changing it enough that it really truly does become your own work. Okay, number three, dependence, being overly reliant on AI tools and maybe forgetting some of those good practices of just being a student without relying on AI. What are your thoughts on that? So how do we just make sure that these tools aren't used as shortcuts and they become crutches. And then they become just, if I just got the work done, I don't have to think about it anymore. It really comes down to, in the education space, I'd say, at least, you have to just build the coursework and lessons around it so that you're still forcing students to think critically and creatively, even with these tools being in existence. Because when you get into the real world, like you and I are in, you can use these tools all the time. I use them every single day, and I don't think we've got any worse at critically thinking. I use them all the time, too. Okay. But I agree. I think it's a tool. It is not what I use to do my job, but it's just another tool I use to do my job better. And yeah, I think that's an important thing is that we want students to realize that this is a tool to help them become better thinkers, better students, better communicators. And we touched a lot on that in episode two, which I think was really good. So I agree. Just something that students need to be aware of. Don't use this to replace the old noggin up top, right? Okay, privacy concerns. This was something that we touched on as well. If students are using ChatGPT, should they say something like my name is I'm this old? How could help me to create XYZ? Should they be using that personal information when they're prompting ChatGPT or other AI software? A quick brief answer is no. I have conversations all the time with teachers about what data, what information can you be sharing with these tools? There's no need for the student to let them know. My name is, and I go to this school, No need to provide names, address, socials, no need to do any of that extra additional work. But it also comes down to we as the adults, how are we instructing them to be able to use and interact with these tools? Yeah, good point. And I think you're exactly right. Like sometimes having some context of what would be some great resources for a fourth grade project on is helpful because it does put ChatGPT or these AI tools at the right level, but you don't have to say your name, who your teacher is, what school you go to, those kinds of things. How about lack of context or understanding? What if AI may not understand what it is that you're asking it to do. How can students be cautious about that? That's the most common misuse. So my recommendation is always try to provide as much context and information as possible because that's the only way you're going to get the result that you want. And I think we touched on this in episode one and episode two. We did. Using these tools is really just like a good managerial and communication honing skill. One of the things I've been doing a lot recently is I just turn out my microphone on my computer and just talk to it, like free flow of thought. Because I find when I type, I always structure my sentences and it takes a little longer. Oh, I love that. That's a good hack. I like that. Our students might use that one as well. Okay. That's a good one. All right. How about if students are using this, what's the chances that they're Results are going to be the same as maybe another student who's also giving ChatGPT that prompt, and is there a chance here that they're going to end up with the same content on a project or a paper if they're both using these tools? It's a non zero chance. It's a non zero chance, and especially if you're copying and pasting it in 100%. Yeah. That's where it gets back to. This isn't just a copy and paste tool. It really is to help get your thought process going, get you on the right track so that you can personalize, modify and make it your own. We're singing that anthem all the way this series, which is good. And that also comes down to ethical use, and making sure that you're using it in a way that isn't harmful. Can you speak to that in any way? We've been seeing this ever since the internet was around, there's always new ways to disseminate bad deeds, right? This makes it a little easier to generate images or something, so on and so forth that you shouldn't be doing, right? That just comes down to. There's always going to be malintent in the world, right? How do we make sure that students understand the repercussions of such malintent and such bad actions? And I think that just comes down to going again, which we'll talk to later on, being a good digital citizen. So number eight kind of circles back to one that we touched on a little earlier, but it's just a general over reliance on technology. And we talked about this a little bit in previous episodes, where. When we were talking about writing a paper, there's something beautiful about just putting that pen to paper and watching a piece of writing come together that doesn't include technology or maybe a piece of artwork that doesn't always start with technology. Is there a chance that AI and ChatGPT are going to maybe make students overly dependent on just always going with the tech route when working on projects? The answer is yes, there's always a chance of over reliance on technology, 100%. And how we go about that, and how we make sure that it doesn't become a large issue, now and again to what are the safeguards that we're putting in place, as adults in the room, to ensure that students are still, they still have those light bulb moments. They're still going from a blank white piece of paper to a canvas that they just wrote. I love that. And I love just really holding space for the art of writing or working out your math problems on your own, going through that productive struggle without the assistance of technology can still be extremely valuable and balancing that out with the support of the tech. I think it's a good thing. Extremely valuable. And then at number 10 here is impact on the learning experience. So it's saying that while AI can enhance learning, it can also distract from personal satisfaction and deep understanding. And that is related to that productive struggle, right? When it comes so easily, students aren't necessarily going through that grind of editing an essay or figuring out a math problem or thinking about something scientifically through all the different stages and the methods. How can we make sure that this tool isn't robbing our students in a way of going through that productive struggle. I find this question and topic very interesting, because from the surface level, you would presume automatically. Yes, this would just lead to service level understanding, and I won't really understand what it is that I'm learning because it's giving me the answers. I know for myself, I've used AI to help me understand extremely complex and just onerous financial breakdowns. So I have to learn how a specific report or a specific item works. And AI will help me, if I ask what does this mean, how does this table work, it can help break down those processes for me, which speeds up my learning time a ton, right? If we're going to transfer that anecdote into the education space, the answer is, if we're teaching to a completion model, where it's, if I get my work done, I can just stop thinking about it, and then I'll just think about it again in two weeks when I have a test. Okay, and we're looking at a big problem with deep understanding because these tools will be great. I can just take my phone, snap a picture of a worksheet, and it'll give me the answers, right? If we have education in our schools built so that we have more project based learning, which means I have to have a deep understanding to reach an end goal then have to understand how all those pieces add up to get to that, end that project, end that assignment. And It really, it comes down to that end goal, is our end goal to have something finished or is our end goal to understand something? I've seen it in my own work. I learned so much faster and we've seen these case studies come out of students who don't have a ton of resources. I get these AI tutors one to one on their cellular devices. Their learning cycles and their ability to showcase improvement more than doubles in the course of the school year. It's just all about how we are getting our students equipped to learn and what we are hoping that they learn over the course of an 8- 10 month school year. For sure. And I think that example that you gave was just really powerful because it really demonstrates how this powerful tool is not just a shortcut. If you use it in the right way, it gives you access to concepts and ideas that you wouldn't maybe be able to access so quickly or easily or in a way that you can understand it and consume it at your level. so much. Just example that you said about understanding things that are financial or you could put in there, how do mortgages work or what is, amortization tables and interest rates, like things that are really big concepts that maybe our students just want to have it like a bite sized level. I love the ability to put in something deep and heavy like that and then ask AI to distill that down into something that's bite sized to get our students walking down that path. So smart. It's levels and foundations that we're setting up and AI helps. Bring it down to a level and then help build you up from there. So good. Love that. Okay, so that was the top ten list of things that AI said that our students should be a little bit cautious of. So I'll read through those again. One was the accuracy of the information they're receiving. Two was plagiarism. Three, too much dependence on AI. Four those privacy concerns, number five was the lack of conceptual understanding Number six was having the same work as somebody else who might be using a I Seven was the ethical use. Eight was becoming just overly reliant on technology in general. Number nine was misunderstanding capabilities. That's when you maybe aren't feeding AI that exact prompt to get the results that you are looking for. And we've talked about that. That's an important form of communication now, really feeding the AI, the right prompts. And then number 10 was the impact on the learning experience. And you really shared a great way that actually we can turn this obstacle into a learning opportunity. So I love that. All right, let's dive in now into some of the ways that can really play a critical part when it comes to supporting their students with the use of AI tools. Number one on this list is the importance of parents educating themselves about AI. Speak to me about that a little bit. Parents are likely doing themselves a disservice if they are not at least interacting with these tools to understand how they work and communicate. And the reason why I say that is we are preparing are children today to go into a workforce that we don't even understand yet. And to let adult fear get in the way of their potential success is unacceptable. I got that direct quote from a superintendent in California. It stuck with me ever since. And the sentiment is really, we need to make sure that we're best equipped ourselves to put our kids in the right position to be successful in life. And just on a side note, as an educator and a parent myself, I think it's also okay to be like, Hey! I don't really know how all of this works yet, but I, as a parent who is also involved in your instruction, I'm willing to learn this and go through this with you and figure it out together. And I think it's okay. Our parents don't need to feel like they need to be the experts in the room in order to work with their kids on that. Do you agree with that? Do you think it's okay? I totally agree with that because there's great situations now, even in classrooms where the teachers are teaching the students and the students are teaching the teachers. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, I like that too. Okay, so parents, take a little pressure off yourself. You don't have to do a deep dive in order to be effective in supporting your students with learning and using these tools. Okay. Just go interact with one and just ask it, what's the weather today? I like it. Baby steps. So good. Okay. Number two, this is a good one, is setting some ground rules. So how would you suggest that parents go about setting some ground rules? I think we'd be missing some foundational levels if we just start talking about AI instead of looking at how are you implementing, you know, safe controls at home with smartphone use and device use, and what apps you're able to access, right? Setting those ground rules, I think is a little bit difficult if you don't understand how these tools work or what they are in the first place, right? have fun with those tools yourself so you can understand what they look like and what they can do. And you'll be in a much better position to put ground works and guidelines in place. Yeah, for sure. And that brings us into number three, which was to monitor the use right and making sure that your students aren't, being overly excessively dependent on these tools or spending more time than you feel comfortable using on these tools. That kind of wraps into what we were saying as well. I think we're at a time where it's of utmost importance that parents really look at their households and look at the way that they're monitoring usage right now, and that will blend bleed right into how you're going to be monitoring Ai use For parents that want to monitor the use of these tools by their students, are there places typically within these AI apps where they could go and they could look at the search history or they could go and see some of the work that the student has been doing with the AI? There is, actually. If you share an account on ChatGPT, you can see all the interactions tools like SchoolAI are out there, and you can see all the conversations and chats that happened with the tools that you allowed the students to use. It's probably a good place for some parents to start knowing that if their students are using tools that are either provided by Sage Oak or that they are just finding on their own to use to support them, that parents realize that there is sort of that history feature in most of these tools that it sounds like they could take advantage of to go back and look at some of those conversations. So that might be a good way for them to do that. Okay. Number four is about encouraging critical thinking, which is something that we've been talking about. When it comes to student use, especially at home how can our parents help encourage that critical thinking? There's a lot of good use cases and applications that could happen at the household level, where if these students know how these tools work, they could apply that to some of their critical thinking abilities and the big project outlines. Say, for example all parents have things happening around inside the household, there are projects that might be a little bit daunting, right? And generally, You wouldn't have the kids help on those projects because it's working with contractors But if there are some projects or items that they could be involved with, why not ask the kids to build out like a plan or a potential budget with AI and then they're gonna look at it. They might not have any idea what expenses mean at the time, right? But when they look at it, they're gonna see the word for the first time and see how much this might cost and go, Oh, I might just learn something from being around it and seeing it be printed out. So for critical thinking abilities, I really think that's a good opportunity for parents to look at what is happening in and around the household. Yeah. And what could they involve the students in and then give them a big project that they could not complete without these tools and then see what they're able to do. Yeah, I actually think that's a really fun and creative way to use it. And a great way for parents to maybe get that learning curve in a little bit as well, too, is ask AI a question about maybe Hey, we are planning on taking a RV trip and we want to stop in these four places. What's the best route to go? And you could use something like AI to help you with a trip planning. Or you know, if you wanted to maybe look up a career path. You know that you would be interested in and what would be the best way to do that or you need a new refrigerator what's the best way that you should be looking into that and things that you should be considering before making a a purchase right there's some great like kind of household type of ways that you could use AI, but turn those into real life learning experiences. And that is like the beauty of being an independent charter is that you can maybe capitalize on some of those real life experiences for some of your learning lessons. So good. I really like that idea. Number five, we touched on this already, but this was just about promoting ethical use of this. So making sure that you're using, these AI tools for good and not for harm. And I think again, that's something that, that all parents, want for their kids. Number six, this is about balancing traditional learning. And I think we just, we stumbled upon that really when we talked about some of these really fun ways that you can use AI to generate some project based learning or some critical thinking on a topic that you maybe wouldn't have. So do you see this becoming more of a trend and a natural thing? Okay. You know, for a while there, it was like, Oh, gosh, you know, when we started to Google something that was like really new Oh, we Google the topic. And now then we moved on to YouTubing a topic. Now are we going to let's ChatGPT it. So whether it's ChatGPT or any other mechanism, AI is going to become increasingly embedded into just about everything that we do digitally, I would say because everything is an algorithm with our social medias and even your Amazon purchases, right? And those are all powered by AI too. So when it comes down to search, which is the baseline of it all, Yes, we'll see that happen more. And I think that comes back again to why it's important to understand just a little bit about how these tools work. Yeah, for sure. And the credibility of them and the sourcing of the information. I mean, you know, getting back to that fun little example we were just talking about with, if you're in the market for a new refrigerator and you're using ChatGPT as a family to figure out which one you should get, it still doesn't beat maybe going down to the store. and then using that list to actually make an informed decision as a consumer or to use that to do a little bit more research on other reviews or things like that. So again, I think it, it is this kind of power to get your ideas going, but nothing beats balancing that with some of the other critical thinking strategies that we have. Let me think of a funny example to say you have a Samsung phone and use this AI on a Samsung phone to look for a fridge. Maybe some of those Samsung refrigerators are going to pop up first. Oh, yeah. Good point. Good point. Okay, number seven is encouraging varied sources. So that is, , that do books still have a place? Do documentaries still have a place? Do novels or all those different sources still have a place when it comes to giving students a complete education? I'll make this one short. Okay. Yes. I think so too. One hundred percent. Yeah, I think so too. Those varied resources are really good. And it's good for students to see the way that you can present information in all those different types of medium as well. So I love that one. Okay privacy and security. Again we touched on this one a little bit earlier, but just making sure that privacy is really important. It's very important for them to understand how their data is being used and at the end of the day how the internet kind of works and you as a digital citizen, how valuable your information is. For sure. And number 10 staying informed about updates and changes. I think this is a good one because it feels like this is all happening so fast. There's so many new things to keep up with. What's a best way for for parents to stay on top of this? Most of us have a Facebook account or Instagram account There's always profiles and accounts that you can follow that give you quick pieces of just updates and information about what's changed, what's new, what Google just released, what Microsoft just released. And if follow a couple of those accounts, then you're going to be kept up to date. on a baseline level, right? And then the other way is, why not just ask the, ask your children, right? Ask the kids what they've seen. Just ask them. It's so true. The kids are great teachers. I think those are some really great tips On a macro level, you can hear what are the big thinkers in the world of AI thinking about? Yeah. Yeah. But then on a micro level too, if there's like just a piece of software that your student is interacting with, maybe it's iReady or IXL or Magic School or something like that, you could subscribe to their newsletters as well. And sometimes they'll just send you an email with kind of that little bite size of information that you might need to know as a parent about a new feature they've added to their program. So that might be another way that the parents could also stay informed getting okay, so let's review our top 10 list of ways that parents can support their students at home. Number one is just educating themselves about it and starting to learn and get involved in AI and what AI offers. Number two, setting those ground rules. Number three, monitoring use. Number four, encouraging critical thinking for both educational and those home based projects. Loved that. Number five, promoting ethical use. Number six, making sure that we're balancing the use of the tech with some of those other things. All those other great learning materials. And Encouraging all the varied resources and still getting our hands onto, paper, pencil, crayons, blocks, all those other building tools that are really essential to learning. Number eight is making sure that we're discussing privacy and security, that's always at the forefront of using the tool safely. Number nine is providing this supportive learning environment so that our students are always learning in a place that comfortable and that our parents are supporting them there. And they know that their parents are right there to help them with that. And then number 10 is just staying informed about all of the updates and changes that are happening in the world of AI. Quite a list. Yes. Yes. And I'd like to reiterate one more time. Sure. Of most importance as parents in today's day and age, we want to make sure all of our kids and the youth are wise and knowing digital citizens of the world. Christian, it's been such a great series. I really appreciate all of your insight and your information, your experience, your wealth of knowledge. I could go on and on the topic, but I do really appreciate all that you've shared with us in this series. I think it's been really informative. For our parents, for our students and for our teachers as well. So thank you so much for all that you've contributed to this. Likewise, Tiffiny and a fantastic job to you with the podcast and the questions and the insights that you bring to this for your parent community and fantastic work that you are doing over at Sage Oak to make this a conversation. In the first place, because a lot of times this could be uncomfortable conversations because it's a hot topic and it's beautiful to see that you all are not just unafraid of tackling it, but that you're also excited about looking at where this could potentially help your students. Absolutely. I think we have more to discuss. There could be more podcasts down the road. I don't see why not. This changes every week, doesn't it? All right, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to part three of our three part series on AI. If you didn't get a chance to listen to the other two episodes, you can go back and do that now. Again, episode one is all about implementation and how our teachers are utilizing AI. And episode two is all about best practices for students. All right. Thanks again, Christian, for being here. And I do truly appreciate all of your insight. It's been great to learn with you. Likewise. Talk to you soon.