How to Start Changing the AI Dynamics in School This Fall

A simple way to make AI a student's partner instead of their secret cheat

“The kids who don’t use AI have no chance.” — 14-year-old student

AI use in classrooms has reached a tipping point

The fear of falling behind now outweighs the fear of getting caught. The above quote paraphrases the most eye-opening segment of my 7-min interview with my teen daughter about AI use in school.

It’s time to make AI an official team member in class project work.

I started this newsletter to not just raise issues but also to test solutions. Here’s one idea that I would love to see teachers implement this fall with my kids. This idea could be implemented as a learning experiment without major changes to curriculum.

AI as an official partner in group projects (with conditions)

Group projects are a pillar of classroom learning across nearly all subjects. I would love for teachers to choose one group project in the first two months of fall semester and ask that students make AI an explicit part of their project team.

Three Conditions for Groups to Use AI

• Define AI’s role: Create a role description for AI on the team including job title, tasks, and boundaries. Act like you are hiring AI to the team.

• Log AI’s use: Document what work the humans on your team did alone and how they leveraged AI including prompts, drafts, and tool names.

• Review AI’s performance: Evaluate AI as a member of the project team. What did AI do well? In what areas was using AI a struggle? What surprised you most?

Benefits of this Approach

By making AI an official team partner with conditions, we bring it out of the shadows and train students to use AI in similar ways to what’s happening in the working world.

• Intention → Define AI’s role gets students to make intentional choices about what tasks AI will do. Instead of AI creeping everywhere, students declare a path.

• Transparency → Log AI’s work brings previously hidden actions to the surface. Teachers can see how students are prompting and what AI tools they are using.

• Evaluation → Review AI’s performance starts to build the habit of students viewing AI not as perfect, but as both helpful and potentially flawed.

An Example Group Assignment - Designing a Business

In the interview, my daughter described a social studies project where she paired up with a classmate to create a new business. Under this approach, instead of having one partner, the teams would explicitly be allowed to bring on AI as their third team member. For this business project, my daughter’s team would have done the following:

• Created a role description for AI as the team’s design lead. They used AI to create the visual concept for their bakery to better convey their vision.

• Recorded exactly what prompts they used with AI and what models. They would have also submitted interim outputs to show their iterative design process.

• At the end of the project, they would have submitted a brief assessment of AI as a design lead including how well AI translated the vision they wrote to an image.

Help change the AI conversation in schools this fall

I shared one idea that teachers could implement without radically changing their curriculum or needing to be AI experts. I have other ideas for future posts, but first:

I want to hear from you.

• What ideas do you have for changing the AI dynamic in school?

• What have you seen work well in your schools?

• What help do teachers need so this doesn’t become just another burden?

Share this post with another parent or educator to keep building the conversation.