Little girl concentrating on reading in classroom through an online platform using AI.

Classroom AI Tools Can Do It. But Should They?

There is no question that classroom AI tools are here to stay, It’s been around for years, and will only continue to accelerate from here. In terms of productivity and serving as a thinking partner that can help teachers and school leaders in myriad ways, AI can be an excellent tool. But when the negatives begin to outweigh the positives, it’s time to take pause. And when that tool also starts to blur the line and replace us more than support us, we should do more than take pause.

Popular–and widely used–tools like IXL, iReady, and Amira are designed to support children in their reading by listening to them and giving them feedback. These tools also include some level of comprehension check. They can even sort classwide data, form groups, and provide next steps for instruction. All things that ordinarily take a lot of time for teachers.

Sounds pretty great, right?

After all, every teacher has a classroom full of children with a wide range of differing needs. AI tools seem like the answer to an age old problem–meeting all the needs of students in the short amount of time we have. What teacher wouldn’t want assistance in meeting the needs of their kids?

None.

And yet.

Much like Newton’s law of motion, every action with these classroom AI tools has an equal and opposite reaction.

In the case of AI, the reactions are also major drawbacks, in my book.

For example…

Yes, AI tools can save us a lot of time. But they use a ton of our natural energy resources.

Yes, AI can give targeted feedback. But it can also be wrong. Very wrong. And surface-level.

Yes, AI can help us differentiate our lessons. But it can also lead to de-centered teacher decision-making.

Not to mention the potential privacy violations, high costs incurred to support the subscriptions and equipment needed for using it, and the growing body of research that tells us how detrimental too much screen time can be.

There’s also not much peer-reviewed research to support it.

There are a few white papers floating around the Internet, and certainly research conducted and sponsored by the companies that produce the products, but actual peer-reviewed, scientifically sound research? Little to none.

As Dr. Rachael Gabriel wisely points out, the small number of studies done that point to the benefit of using these types of classroom AI tools for individual support was conducted on secondary level students, where “where people are building on knowledge, not learning something for the first time as an elementary student would be.”

There is a very recent report out of Georgia State University on one very commonly used program, iReady. Neuroscientist and educator Jared Horvath summarized this report in a recent Substack article. What did the researchers find? That after two years of faithful iReady use, students from kindergarten to 9th grade only improved in reading by less than .05%. The researchers themselves are even quoted as saying they weren’t sure if it was iReady or some other intervention that caused this miniscule increase.

In order to achieve the results these programs promise, there are a certain number of minutes the companies that produce these tools recommend in order to see results. Which means we have to make time for that. Many schools mandate that children are on these tools for a certain number of minutes a day or week. Every time you take from Peter to give to Paul, something has to give.

Which begs some big questions.

The biggest? What might have been the result if those kids hadn’t spent two years completing the required amount of time on the computer?

How much time could they have instead spent on reading real books or writing for real purposes?

How much time with the human teacher did they miss out on because they were on the computer, interacting with an AI cartoon figure, spitting out feedback from a pre-programmed menu of options?

How much opportunity to engage in dialogue with peers was missed because they instead sat, headphones on, in front of a computer telling them what to do?

How much more would a teacher know about her kids as readers if they’d sat with them, listened to them read, noted the reading behaviors they saw (and didn’t see), and knew exactly where to scaffold their prompting from there?

For certain tasks, AI can be a great teacher help. And even with these tasks, like creating assignments or building assessments, we must be very careful. When it comes to whether or not we should put kids’ reading in its hands, we need to ask some important questions.

Not “can this tool do this task,” because we already know that it can.

Instead, we might want to ask, “should this tool do this task?”

We must weigh what these tools do for us against what they displace.

Consider what kids would not only gain from using it, but also what they might miss out on. Really think about whether it’s worth it or not. And let those answers guide our decisions.

Sometimes, yes, the tool truly will be a better choice. It really will provide a valuable learning experience. It really will save precious instructional time.

But sometimes, it won’t be worth it. Like when the tool replaces our own thoughtful decision-making. Our own face-to-face time with students. That’s when we can say no to it. That the tradeoff just isn’t worth it.

When it comes to AI in the classroom, the question doesn’t have to be “how many ways can I use it” or “how much time should my students spend with it.”

Instead, we should ask, “what is truly worth allowing AI to do?”

Because at the end of the day, while AI is here to stay, it doesn’t get to dictate what happens in the classroom.

We do.

Coach from the Couch is here to help you through virtual coaching!

Who is Coach from the Couch?I’m Michelle Ruhe, a 25+ year veteran educator, currently a K-5 literacy coach. I continue to learn alongside teachers in classrooms each and every day, and it’s my mission to support as many teachers as I can.