Leadership in light of ChatGPT and Other Tech Tools

How are you supporting staff in navigating the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology? What are the implications for you and your administrative team? These tools and resources can inform your leadership.

This recent blog post—”Planning Professional Development on ChatGPT” from ASCD provides several examples of how you might engage staff in learning about and applying the latest AI.

You might administer a survey like this one (you will be prompted to Use Template, which will add a copy to your own Google Drive so you can edit and administer as fits your context) to determine staff’s current awareness and capacity as related to AI.

You might demonstrate what ChatGPT can do in real time, or make a screencast of your demo (sometimes the ChatGPT server is overloaded). For example, you can ask ChatGPT to write a summary of your district’s mission, vision, and values and then note how it compares with what you might have written! The Teaching Channel provides 50 ChatGPT prompts for teachers.

Create space for staff (and your administrative team) to process their experiences with ChatGPT or other AI and how they feel using the technology. The blog post offers these questions as a follow up to your modeling or demonstration:

• What was your initial reaction to the ChatGPT demo? Curious, frustrated, apprehensive, excited?
• To what extent is ChatGPT similar to and different from earlier technological advancements such as Google Translate, WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, etc.?
• What can AI now do that we still want students to learn and know how to do? How can we ensure students are, in fact, the ones doing the work? 
• What skills will be less important in a world of knowledge work aided by AI? Which skills are uniquely human and will therefore become increasingly rare and valuable? How should we shift our curriculum accordingly?

Avoid lists of Do’s and Don’ts if possible. “Since advances in AI will outpace the frequency with which states update learning standards, teachers must feel empowered to regularly refresh their curriculum while considering:

Do my assessments ensure students are truly engaging in high levels of learning? 

Are the skills and content of this lesson still relevant in a world where AI is readily accessible?”

Find more examples in the full blog post

Additional considerations from the post:

1. Do our academic-integrity policies address work created by AI? Do they address digital art like the work created by DALL-E, an AI technology that creates digital images from natural language prompts?
2. What processes can we put in place to regularly revisit our curriculum and policies to ensure they keep pace with the advancements in AI?
3. How can we help overworked teachers use ChatGPT to lighten their load while avoiding shortsighted missteps?

AI will only be amplified in the coming years, how can we adapt and ensure our students are prepared?