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NewsTranscript
00:00The representative from Illinois, Ms. Miller, is recognized for five minutes.
00:06Thank you, and thank you to all the witnesses who have come.
00:09This is a very interesting conversation.
00:11And Mr. Chisholm, we've heard a lot about the potential benefits of AI in schools, but
00:17one of the longstanding priorities of this committee has been student privacy.
00:23And so there's a lot that people don't understand or were rightly concerned about when it comes
00:30to AI's impact on student privacy.
00:33You mentioned this a bit in your testimony, but what student privacy pitfalls do you think
00:39districts should be aware of, and how has your district handled this?
00:44That's a great question, and again, student privacy, we have to follow under FERPA laws,
00:48so we've got to make sure we're in compliance with that.
00:50It's real simple.
00:52I don't want to make this, oversimplify this, but it really is simple.
00:55If you're using a public entity, I don't care if it's OpenAI, GROC, any of these others,
00:59you can't put student identifiable information on it, or teacher identifiable information.
01:04So really teaching people to scrub files, that's the biggest thing.
01:08If you're going to use an Excel file that has this information, knowing what you need
01:12to take out, so that's a way that we handle that if you're using something like OpenAI.
01:18However, we alleviate that by using our own server.
01:22So I don't have to worry about FERPA laws, because it does not face the internet in any
01:25way, shape, or form.
01:26So again, we've done trainings with teachers and administrators.
01:29We can put any file that we want on our own server, and we don't ever have to worry about
01:33student privacy there, because it's housed on our own campuses, so we don't have to worry
01:38about that.
01:39So I think that's a way to do that, and again, it's a pretty expensive way to do it.
01:43However, on the flip side, if you're using this as a district, such as with OpenAI, you're
01:49eventually going to start having to pay for tokens.
01:51So in the end, we as a district have decided that it's going to be more cost effective
01:55to just go ahead and pay for our own server, than try to pay for tokens with one of those
01:59as well.
02:00So I hope that answers your question.
02:01That is the crux of what we do.
02:04It is good training first, if you're using a public server, and then on the other side,
02:09we just create our own, so we alleviate the problem altogether.
02:12Thank you, and I appreciate how you're leading the way there.
02:15Mr. Chisholm, I have another question.
02:17One of the most frequent concerns we hear about AI in schools is that students will
02:21use AI as a crutch.
02:23For example, students will ask AI to write their essays or answer their homework questions.
02:28I know there's limits to how much a school district can do, especially once a student
02:33goes home for the day, but how are you thinking through these challenges?
02:38That's probably my favorite question, and really, we have to rethink what we do in
02:42education.
02:43I have told our teachers in all of the presentations that I do, that we've got to rethink what
02:48we do in the classroom.
02:49Basically, we have to control the eight hours that we have.
02:52We can't worry about other things outside of school, because understand, they're going
02:56to use it.
02:57So really, we need a heavier focus on what we do in the classroom and control the eight
03:01hours that we have, and that means heavier waiting on grades for the things that we do
03:06in classrooms.
03:07It means that, again, we have to shift, instead of sending things home for kids to write,
03:12we need to take care of those things within the classroom and worry about the controllables.
03:16Again, we can't worry about what happens outside.
03:19We just have to shift our focus to things like having projects done in class or having
03:25students explain their work.
03:26Why do I care where the information came from if the student can actually give that information
03:31back and teach someone else?
03:32They know the material.
03:34That's the ultimate thing that we're trying to do within the district.
03:36So control the eight hours that we have.
03:40And Dr. Dobrin, one especially exciting aspect of AI adoption is the potential that this
03:46technology can transform education for special needs students.
03:50And I have two grandsons with special needs.
03:54For instance, AI-powered programs can facilitate speech-to-text software or help visually impaired
04:00students participate more fully in class.
04:03Can you talk more about how AI is being used to practically enhance special ed?
04:09Yeah, thank you for that question.
04:11And the first thing I need to say is that I do not have experience in special education
04:16specifically.
04:17And Ms. Mote earlier had addressed some of this, and so I defer to her on that.
04:22What you're talking about specifically are assistive technologies.
04:26For me, in terms of special needs students, and also really for any student, one of the
04:32most enriching possibilities that we're seeing with AI right now is in customized learning
04:38pathways.
04:39The ability for a student to move through information and content and all the things
04:46associated with education in a way that is more effective for that learner.
04:50Now I tend to also put a stopgap on where that becomes beneficial once we get past higher
04:56ed into credentialing, but I think that customized learning pathways right now are one of the
05:01most important things we're developing, particularly in terms of real-time assessment and the ability
05:07for students in that moment of assessment to adjust their learning path to see, I did
05:12not understand this concept, I now have this other way of learning about it.
05:16That to me is one of the most important things we're doing.
05:19Thank you, and I yield back.