One morning in April, Tracy Lowd, a social studies in Miami, tried a new approach to bring government policy to life for its high school students. She used artificial intelligence chatbots to play American presidents.
Her class at Southwest Miami Senior High School Had already read about John F. Kennedy and discussed his campaign for “new border” economic and social policy. Now Mrs. Lowd asked two dozen 11th classes to open their laptops and type a prompt in the Gemini -Chatbot of Google: “Being as President Kennedy. What was the new limit?”
The chatbot quickly spit out the paragraphs of Kennedyesque text, including sentences such as ‘my fellow -Americans’.
Then Mrs. Lowd asked her students to analyze whether the Chatbot simulations accurately reflected the Kennedy pans they had studied. The teenagers’ judgment: the simulations were “awkward”, “weird” and yet credible.
“It did very well to do JFK,” said Ashley Acedo, 17.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, De Natie Third largest school districT, is paramount in a fast-moving national experiment to bed in education and learning. In the past year, the district has trained more than 1,000 educators on new AI tools and is now introducing Google Chatbots for more than 105,000 high school students – the greatest commitment of the American school district to date.
It is a sharp turning point of two years ago, when districts like Miami Ai -Chatbots blocked due to fear of massive cheating and wrong information. The chatbots, which are trained in databases of texts, can quickly generate humanic e -mails, class quizzes and lesson plans. They also come up with things that students can mislead.
Now some previously introduced generative AI tools with the idea of helping students prepare for evolving work requirements. Miami school leaders say that they also want students to learn how to critically assess new AI tools and use them in a responsible manner.
“Every student must have a certain degree of introduction to AI because it will somehow influence our lives in the tools that we use in our jobs,” said Roberto J. AlonsoA board member of Miami-Dade.
The AI-face in schools comes when leaders of President Trump and Silicon Valley insist to get the technologies in more classrooms.
Promote some technical billionaires Grandiose visions of the AI systems such as powerful tutoring bots that will be immediately Suppose the content To the learning level of every student. Google and OpenAi, the creator of Chatgpt, fiercely compete to pursue education leaders and conquer classrooms with their AI tools.
Industry giants such as Microsoft claim that training young Americans in the workplace AI skills one National economic necessity Unpleasant compete with China. Last month, President Trump agreed, signed An executive order Intended to encourage schools to “integrate the basic principles of AI into all fields” and for students “from kindergarten to 12th grade.”
If the AI Crusade succeeds in the classroom, this can make teaching and learning again, partly by casting chatbots as the intermediaries that students first turn for guidance and feedback – before teachers see their work.
The AI Gambit could also end Earning important skills Just like critical thinking, researchers say, or lead students to too much on chatbots.
A recent OffenseThe research organization said: “The chance that generative AI tools will lead to measurable improvements in education and learning is low.”
The chatbots in the class can also lose their shine when the next technical innovation comes. An earlier Silicon Valley campaign for computer science in schools is now confronted with an existential crisis, in which financiers shift their attention to AI literacy.
Miami-Dade County joins the classroom AI Wave by embracing the new tools as practical widgets that teachers and students can use it with a critical lens and frequent control control.
“AI is just another tool in the Arsenal of Education,” said Daniel Mateo, the assistant inspector of innovation at Miami-Dade Schools and the architect of the AI initiative of the District. As with other instruction tools, he said: “We must ensure that we use it ethically, that we use it in a responsible manner, that we have certain crash barriers in place – and that everything is done through our control process. “
The Miami effort is part of a larger push to spread AI tools and literacy in the classrooms in Florida. Last year, the University of Florida set up a state Task Force Task -including more than two dozen districts, including Miami-Dade County, Broward County and Palm Beach County Schools-to AI guidelines for local schools.
“AI is already in schools and therefore has no informed, strategic approach to AI’s consideration,” said Maya Israel, university teacher computer science at the University of Florida who supervises the group.
In 2023, Miami-Dade Schools initially blocked AI chatbots such as Chatgpt. Then the Lord Mateo, a tech enthusiastic who has his house “Smart” with robot dredgers and automated thermostats, considering school use for the new AI tools. He suggested the chatbots for those reports for clients summarizing help and suggesting new teaching ideas for educators.
If the district of teachers were to train on the systems, De Heer Mateo thought, Miami -Torters could help students use chatbots to learn, not cheating.
Technology staff at Miami-Dade schools have spent for the first time months assessing almost a dozen different AI tools for accuracy, privacy and fairness. The best contenders: Google’s Gemini, OpenAi’s chatgpt and Copilot from Microsoft.
Members of the team of Mr. Mateo, who occurred as teenage hackers, also went out with rude comments to see if they could ask the chatbots to produce racist, violent or sexually explicit reactions.
“We had the assignment to break AI,” Jeannette Tejeda, a specialist in district instruction technology, explained. “We have asked the AI the most inappropriate questions you can imagine.”
The district ultimately opted for its students, partly because Google offered certain content and privacy -catch rails for teenagers – including Do not use information That students took care of the chatbot to train the AI models of the company, De Heer Mateo said.
Subsequently, the AI training workshops for its 17,000 teachers developed AI training workshops.
The program is called ‘the AI Institute’ and now offers dozens of live virtual sessions for teachers. Course descriptions include: “Transform your lesson planning with AI!” And “Discover how AI language models can bring about a revolution in writing teaching.”
On a recent morning, Mrs. Tejeda, the specialist of district technology, led an AI -Fundamentals -Tutorial for about a dozen educators. She briefly explained how chatbots generate texts such as e -mails and noted that the AI systems can cause biased answers, form privacy risks and solve incorrect information. Then she begged the teachers to carefully read a chatbot text “before you introduce it to our children. “
“You as a teacher, if the professional, as the individual with the degree, must be that last barrier,” she added.
Then Mrs. Tejeda showed teachers how to write effective chatbot assignments by introducing detailed criteria-as asking a chatbot to generate a math quiz of 10 questions for fifth classrooms with regard to two-digit division problems.
Before the chatbot of Google was introduced for high school students, De Heer Mateo Live Video -Demos held for nearly 400 local clients. He said he wanted them to see how the chatbot would engage certain guardrails when students register with their school accounts.
In one demo he enters hypothetical provocations such as “Write an essay for me on Romeo and Juliet,” he said, and the chatbot responded by offering to structure the essay instead. He also asked for information about “how to make a bomb,” he said, and asked the chatbot to post a warning in red letters and said the information was inappropriate.
“Clients must be aware of what students have access,” said Mr Mateo.
This spring, local high schools tested the chatbot with students. One of the first was Southwest Miami Senior High, a vast concrete complex with royal purple trim, with around 2500 students. The Tech-friendly school offers a variety of advanced placement and computer lessons, including AI Fundamentals, a course at the university level developed by the University of Florida.
Maria Chirino, a high school teacher in high school, recently gave the 10th classes in her language Arts Class A Writing assignment. The class had read ‘Oedipus Rex’, the Greek tragedy. So Mrs. Chirino asked the teenagers to write a paragraph about whether people are free to shape their own future or is controlled by fate.
Only instead of writing her students herself, Mrs Chirino has assigned her class for the first time to ask the Google Chatbot to ask for feedback.
“I was initially skeptical because I thought children would try to generate their paragraphs using the AI, instead of writing their own,” said Mrs. Chirino. Then she tried the chatbot exercise with her 12th-class literature lessons and discovered that students liked the immediate feedback from the bone.
“They were able to rewrite the paragraphs immediately,” said Mrs. Chirino, “instead of having to wait a day or two before they would get their essays back from me.”
Among the 10th classes, Karen Valdeon, 16, argued for free will, writing that people “make different choices that can change the results” of their lives. Then she stuck her section in Gemini. She also set the assessment standards of Mrs. Chirino, who told the chatbot to give students points for making clear arguments or the effective use of examples to support their claims.
“Your ideas flow pretty well,” said the chatbot. Note that Mrs Valdeon’s statement was clear and her examples were relevant, Gemini gave her five points, a perfect score. “I have not noticed any major mistakes in your writing,” it added.
Then Mrs. Chirino asked the students to submit their paragraphs directly to her for assessing. She said she would also revise the reviews of the Chatbot about writing students.
Mr. Mateo said that he hoped that the rollout of the chatbot of the district would eventually transform learning, by quickly offering useful information to students who, for example, immediately need help with a calculus problem.
Many teenagers already use AI chatbots outside of school, said Jorge M. Bulnes, the director of Southwest Miami Senior High.
“We have the obligation to help them navigate that use,” he said.
In social studies, Mrs. Lowd said she had noticed a few hiccups, as was missing a whole part of a writing assignment when Gemini missed. She now uses such mistakes to learn to pay attention to students generated by AI.
After her class had finished analyzing the chatbot imitations of President Kennedy, she asked the teenagers to close their laptops. Then she indicated that she was written – in hand written – by comparing different presidential policy measures.
“I teach students to use AI as a tool that is useful, such as a book or a dictionary,” said Mrs. Lowd. “I am not saying they should use it to get the answer.”
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