Teachers using AI for so many tasks (secondary school)

[inneedofteaandbiccies]

Was wondering what people think of secondary teachers using AI for presentations (Powerpoint style), worksheets, tasks (such as written tasks - information provided created by AI, history info sheets, history image creation for presentations, even Art department posters or example worksheets for art lessons etc using generated AI example images.

What do others think about this? Whilst I understand teachers only have limited time available, they managed without until a year or two ago, and my year 9 child is moaning about the excessive use and to be honest I am inclined to agree that it's not appropriate in all instances.

Just interested if you think this should be a part of school to such an extent that it's everywhere (just a state school, by the way!).

I work in the leadership team of a MAT. Our teachers are encouraged to use AI as a valuable tool. Like many MATs we have our own AI products to help with things like adaptive teaching and analysing data.

Reflecting on my own teaching experience I’m not sure it would have suited the style of my lessons, but it seems to be working for lots of current teachers.

Whilst I understand teachers only have limited time available, they managed without until a year or two ago

Some managed a lot didn't and left.

The last of my kids left school this summer but I’m currently doing a diploma in a subject I’m interested in. The (small adult) college explicitly does not use AI in its teaching materials.

If teachers very obviously use they cannot complain if students use it too.

AI is used in all sorts of ways in schools. Some good and some bad.

All teachers that I know use it for report writing

Most teachers use it for writing schemes of work and enhancing resources.

Some use it for nearly everything.

The quality of the AI produced resources depends a lot on the quality of the teacher using it.

Most teachers realise that unless children do something when supervised in a classroom then most of it will be produced by AI, whether that is typed or handwritten. Even the mistakes will be deliberately put in by AI to make it look authentic.

A colleague of mine joked about a homework they set saying that 'children used AI to write it and I used AI to mark it, so no human eyes ever had to look at it'.

Long term, I think it will have to change the way we teach and what our curriculum includes. It isn't going away, so we will all have to evolve.

The up side is that no one ever has to write a policy document ever again.

I have been looking around schools this week and have been so depressed by the AI everywhere. Posters, classroom signs, room names... I think it is such a tragic shame that things that could have easily been painted or drawn by the children is now done by a robot.

Beyond stifling creativity, I also personally think it looks awful, and sets a really bad example of disregarding the environment for five minutes of efficiency.

Finally, AI is built on basically stealing other people's intellectual work and creativity. I worry that we're all fine with its ubiquitous presence in our lives, particularly for our children

It has happened so quickly that no-one in education has been able to give it sufficient thought and there are no proper policies.

It certainly is depressing (although useful often in a practical way).

Those posters, signs and room name signs are all parts that teachers used to spend time on that they could have spent actually preparing half-decent lessons.

Prime example in our school is that we have all been told on 1st October that we now all have to have a poster in our rooms on one black person relevant to our subject relevant to black history month, which needed to also engage students. Promoting diversity is all nice and well, but this would have taken an hour to do in the past. Research, get an image, write the text in a way students understood, design a poster. It took me 5min with the help of a website and AI to summarise and generate a text that could be read by someone with a reading age of below 10.

And kids? Honey, we don't have time for kids to spend on making room signs any more. My form group needed a form board done for them. But on Mondays we have to do prescribed reading, on Tuesdays we have to do PSHE, on Wednesdays we have assembly, on Thursdays we have to discuss the news and on Fridays we have to go over rewards, attendance and behaviour data as well as club updates and whatever other bits - like charity calls - are dropped on us. So there is no time to actually get the kids to make their form board and like hell am I spending even more time in school when I already work 12 hours a day and get paid for 7.5 of them. We actually raised the time issue and got told to do this in our lunch time (which is unpaid) or in our PPA time (which we need to actually mark work). AI did a cracking job in about 30min including printing the stuff and pinning it up.

Some old school teachers spent their own money on websites like Temu to get bits for their form board. They spent their personal money on something required of them for work. Let that sink in. Dedicated? Perhaps. Or desperate, because if it's not all WOW in your face, you get disciplined for it. So AI does the work.

Until requirements for teachers become more reasonable, you will see more and more of this.

I use it to plan lessons when I'm teaching outside my subject. I know bugger all about drama, so I use copilot to make lesson plans. Resources are a mixed bag. It can save time, but you need to check them carefully for daft mistakes.

This is real about teachers quitting early. Im one of them. No buffer of money to shield me. No job to go to. I just knew I couldn't do it anymore

Kids and teachers urgently need AI usage lessons, guidelines and, yay, more policies.

Fact-checking AI is time-consuming, so most teachers won't bother.

Making it up as we go along is just going to dramatically lower standards.

I don't trust anyone in authority to implement proper AI regulations so I predict wrong answers to questions and exam scandals.

@Lhori A colleague of mine joked about a homework they set saying that 'children used AI to write it and I used AI to mark it, so no human eyes ever had to look at it'.

Idk why that would he funny, it’s deeply concerning. The impact on education and children’s learning will be devastating.

My friend is a teacher and has a Principal who is demanding that all staff use AI to reduce workload. Except it DOESN'T reduce workload, it just adds to it because it's rubbish!

It's often very hard to get non copyright protected images and can take hours of searching when you need something specific. That one I think it is fine if well used.

The history one it depends on how well it is used again. If there are mistakes then there is a problem. Again images can be extremely difficult to source legitimately. Some teachers copy even when they aren't meant to but schools are under pressure not to do this.

AI allows for more tailored lessons. Whereas before teachers would be limited to what resources they could find or were willing to spend the hours to make. For some 'simple resources' that the children would use for maybe half an hour. It could take 1 or 2 hours to produce.

It is funny because it reveals how obsolete a lot of what we do has already become. AI will change education and the workplace completely.

There was a time when we all lived in caves and hunted with spears but we don't teach children to hunt any more because we have developed different ways to obtain food.

You might find it depressing rather than funny. It depends which way you look at it.

I'm a primary teacher. This is my experience and these are my thoughts.
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I am happy to use AI for certain tasks. Eg planning a scheme of work on very specific local history that was expected to be in depth but for which there was very little available information. AI was able to give me an overview with links to specific local resources and things I would never have found on my own without dedicating a lot of time (that I didn't have) to local historical research.

Great.

I left my school this summer but the HT is a huge fan of AI and using AI to create resources and lesson presentations. It was sold as a labour saving device to free up our time. Some teachers thought that was great and would create a better work/life balance. I suspected that leadership would just use it as an excuse to pile on more work now that we had so much more time. Can you guess who was right?

We weren't 'directed' to use AI as such and were told that it was our choice to begin with. But the other increased work expectations were still in place and learning walks and lesson observations always came with criticism of your resources and the presentations with the suggestion that 'you might want to try utilising AI'... presentations and resources that had been considered excellent 6 months to a year ago.

So it wasn't a true choice. And it wasn't actually anything to do with improving learning or outcomes for children.

Schools talk a lot about consistency. And consistency is important but so is creativity and individuality. Playing to teacher strengths ad responding to children's prior experiences, prior learning and what interests them. And all classes are different. Even two classes in the same year group can be wildly different purely because children are individuals and a class is made up of individuals.

We are controlled in a lot of that by a very narrow curriculum but a bit of interest could be created by personalising presentations.

Then the HT decided that consistency also applied to presentations and appearance. It was no long sufficient for the quality of the content and teaching and learning to be consistent but all presentations across all subjects in the curriculum must be consistent. And this meant uniformity.

So now, all presentations in all lessons look the same. The children are bored. It looks very corporate, which is great if you are developing a 'brand' but not so great if you are trying to appeal to, inspire and engage 7 year olds.

The extra time created by using AI and by the time you've developed an appropriate prompt and remembered that 'AI can make mistakes' so have fact checked everything. And adapted for the actual children in your class because even when you instruct AI to meet even very specific needs, you still know your childen better than it does, is very little and so you don't have a lot of extra time at all.

But someone has decided that it now only takes 10 mins to create a presentation so you have a lot of extra time to do a lot of extra tasks.

None of which actually impact on learning or benefit the children but are compulsory glorified admin tasks.

Pretty much everyone in that school has had no choice but to use AI. But they also have higher workloads now, more responsibility now and longer working days.

Thats why teachers had the time a year ago and don't now.

This sounds like a spectacularly badly implemented AI policy, and further proof that schools have not thought it through.

I hope you raise it with your head teacher, as a group!

yep! agree with you. All those saying it saves them time, I appreciate it does sometimes, but other times it adds work, so on balance, I'm way less convinced

Yeah, learning is obsolete now. Oh sorry - what?

Don't be silly. Learning isn't obsolete. How we learn and what we learn might have to change though

If children use AI for homework what are they actually learning?

Seriously? You don't teach but think it's OK to tell teaching staff what their resources shouldn't look like? I use AI in my teaching. Mainly, it saves me time. That you think I'm not deserving of that time is one thing, it's quite another to assume when using AI I don't consider accuracy or usefulness of the resource. It's a tool many of us dip in and out of. Who are you to say we shouldn't? I mean, I can waste an hour coming up with 20 multiple choice questions....or I can feed AI my scheme of work and ask it to help. What the actual fuck is wrong with that,,?

Nothing.That was the point my colleague was making. Our current way of doing things is a bit pointless.

Where exactly did I tell you not to do it?

You seem to have misread my OP and projected a lot.

I was just curious on the debate it would bring up.

I'm allowed an opinion.

You seem very triggered. It wasn't a critique of you personally. Why are you swearing and being aggressive?

I just personally think in certain circumstances (such as history images, or art, as per the examples I gave above, for reasons I gave above) that it's not always the right approach.

You can agree or disagree. Feel free to get ragey if you like. Free country!

It’s just another place to get information. What’s the difference if it’s from a book or website?!! And surely getting Ai to make a worksheet frees teachers time up for other tasks. I’m a teacher. I get outstanding results , I use Ai and so do most teachers I know. We already have a teacher shortage. Work smarter is my motto. As long as students are being taught correctly what on earth is your issue?! Rather Luddite in opinion. It’s not cheating it’s just another way to gather/ research information