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As we enter another school year, the debate over AI’s role in education is intensifying. There’s a sharp divide between those urging us to take advantage of these tools and others who support a more cautious approach. Educators want guidance on the best ways to use emerging technologies without compromising privacy, encouraging plagiarism or making learning less authentic. And yet, AI technology is evolving so quickly that it seems like we’ll always be playing catchup.
Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology (OET) released new guidelines for EdTech companies earlier this year called “Designing for Education with Artificial Intelligence.” The report underscores the need for “responsible innovation,” adding, “educator and student feedback should be incorporated into all aspects of product development, testing, and refinement to ensure student needs are fully addressed.” As Dan Fitzpatrick observed in Forbes, “The era of tech-first solutions is over. Developers must collaborate meaningfully with educators from day one. Understanding pedagogy is as crucial as coding skills.”
The XQ Institute shares this mindset as part of our mission to reimagine the high school learning experience so it’s more relevant and engaging for today’s learners, while better preparing them for the future. We see AI as a tool with transformative potential for educators and makers to leverage — but only if it’s developed and implemented with ethics, transparency and equity at the forefront. That’s why we’re building partnerships between educators and AI developers to ensure that products are shaped by the real needs and challenges of students, teachers and schools. Here’s how we believe all stakeholders can embrace the Department’s recommendations through ongoing collaborations with tech leaders, educators and students alike.
Keeping Tech and Learning Student-Centric
XQ’s approach to high school redesign is always student-centric. In that spirit, we must shift from the mindset that AI and other tech tools are solely for educators; they also exist to improve students’ learning. Rather than focusing exclusively on improving output (such as lesson plans and assessment materials), makers should also emphasize improving outcomes, such as student proficiency and engagement. Ann-Katherine Kimble, XQ’s Director of School Success, said that’s why it’s wrong to focus only on how AI can save teachers time and make their jobs easier. “Our young people, teachers and classrooms don’t deserve that,” she explained. “They deserve a point of view that believes that AI can enhance your practice and knowledge, deepen your creative and responsive approaches and help educators capitalize on the sweet spot where the art of teaching and the science of learning meet.”
At Crosstown High, an XQ school in Memphis, Tennessee, computer science teacher Mohammed Al harthy sees AI as a partner in the classroom — something students engage with during the learning process but never rely on for the finished product.
For instance, in one project his students explored how to build AI applications to track hand movements for American Sign Language, highlighting the value of learning how AI works, writing code in Python and experimenting with tools like Google’s MediaPipe. Al harthy isn’t so worried that his students will simply copy and paste as they learn. “Artificial intelligence never sounds like a high school student, so the concerns about cheating are kind of silly,” he explained. “If you’re concerned about that, you should step back and reassess what your students are doing from the start.” This approach aligns with a national shift toward focusing on competencies and collaboration rather than rote answers, allowing students to use AI as a tool to enhance their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
AI is just one of many topics covered by the XQ Xtra, a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers. Check it out and subscribe now.
Ensuring Equitable Learning Opportunities
At XQ, we believe that ensuring equitable access means creating AI-driven learning experiences that are flexible, adaptive and tailored to the unique needs of diverse student populations, especially neurodivergent students and multi-language learners. AI can help by creating tools designed to serve all learners fairly and effectively without stripping away our students’ individuality.
One of the technology’s most promising capabilities is its ability to provide real-time, actionable feedback to students and educators. Tim Brodsky, a thought leader on AI who taught social studies at the XQ high school Círculos in Santa Ana, California, was recently recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for his innovative use of generative AI to support multilingual learners in his AP courses. With automated feedback occurring in real-time, Brodsky said systems can analyze data and provide immediate insights about student engagement, attendance and other factors to predict risk factors. “This takes the load off teachers, who often have to sift through spreadsheets to find trends and nuances,” he said. “AI provides a better method for holistic data collection and a more effective way of measuring it.”
However, student data always comes with caveats. Too often, algorithms mirror the biases in the data on which they’re trained. Stanford researchers found this can result in mischaracterizing the writing of non-native English speakers as AI-generated, and experts at MIT found language models that classified certain jobs, like secretary or flight attendant, as feminine. XQ addresses this problem by working closely with developers to ensure their products are more culturally responsive to the needs and outcomes educators are looking to provide for their students.
For example, teachers at Crosstown worked with the EdTech company Inkwire to develop project-based learning (PBL) experiences. The company’s CEO and co-founder Aatash Parikh said this collaboration was helpful for both sides and influenced the evolution of the company’s AI products. “Having educators at Crosstown High School walk us through their workflow designing project-based learning experiences helped us realize what would make Inkwire a more complete solution for schools,” he said.
A former PBL teacher himself, Parikh wanted to ensure that Inkwire’s generative AI tools don’t just stop at creating PBL plans, but also incorporate deeper pedagogical layers to be more responsive for educators and schools. At Crosstown High, educators, including science teacher and Head of Innovation and Research Nikki Wallace, showed the Inkwire team what they were learning from each other, and how to integrate that professional feedback into their platform. “We’re helping these makers understand how equity is created in the classroom, helping them make more responsive products,” Wallace said. “Teachers learn best from other teachers.”
Fostering Ethical Collaboration Between Educators and Developers
The days of tech-first solutions are over; what’s needed now is a deep partnership where developers and educators work hand-in-hand to ensure AI tools are technologically sound and pedagogically effective. The DOE’s new guidelines for EdTech refer to this as a “dual stack” approach—a framework that combines the “development stack” applied to product creation alongside a “responsibility stack” to ensure these products are built with ethics, transparency and public trust for classroom use.
While many AI tools help create engaging projects and lessons, Wallace wanted a tool to better support personalized learning. While working alongside Inkwire, she said XQ connected her with other AI makers, such as Playlab, to build an AI Chatbot that would support an interdisciplinary, community-centered project for her students.
“We frontloaded the bot with all the information I need to build a successful learning experience in my classroom,” Wallace explained. Her students looked at statistics for infectious diseases that impact Memphis. Their chatbot then served as what Wallace called a “cognitive partner.” It helped them progress through the science project by unpacking and generating complex questions such as “What community partners in Memphis can I reach out to?” and “What information in the research might I have overlooked?” and “What governmental systems are in place?” From there, Wallace said, students figured out which learning competencies were associated with the project.
“We wanted the students to be able to identify, build and then reflect on the project benchmarks, learning outcomes and pathways they would need in order to progress at their own pace.”
Wallace said this experience was grounded in two of the XQ Design Principles: Meaningful, Engaged Learning and Youth Voice and Choice. The chatbot helped make learning more personalized and rigorous.
Betsey Schmidt, founder and CEO of MeshEd and a veteran curriculum designer, said customizable large language models (LLMs) like PlayLab and Inkwire can transform lesson planning. “By understanding what excites and motivates students, educators can more easily adapt core curricula to resonate on a deeper level with learners, incorporating their passions, hobbies, strengths and growth areas — and making real-world connections to learners’ profiles,” she explained. Schmidt has been collaborating with XQ to bring teachers and high school leaders into the AI-for-learning product design cycle
Looking Ahead
By this time next year, generative AI will likely move from niche applications to widespread use, whether we’re ready or not. However, education systems and policies are incredibly resilient to change. The recent pandemic made that painfully clear as schools often went back to business as usual rather than embracing new learning models, such as awarding credit for content mastery instead of seat time (Carnegie units), a rigid system that’s been used for more than a century and is ripe for change. (XQ and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have joined forces to address this problem.)
AI is already showing us how to make education more individualized and equitable. By encouraging tech leaders and makers to continue collaborating with educators, at events like EdTechWeek in New York City next month, we can work toward a future in which all students can reach their potential — and where teachers can make the most of their talent.
Want to learn more about how to create innovative teaching and learning in high schools? Subscribe to the XQ Xtra, a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.
Disclosure: The XQ Institute is a financial supporter of The 74.
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