Gray grew up in the 1950s, when children were expected to spend long hours between school and dinner unsupervised. Afternoon games of Double Dutch and Red Rover became a hallmark memory for Baby Boomers, but they were only a few generations removed from the advent of Progressive labor laws that established minimum working ages and redefined childhood in America as a protected phase of life. 

Surveying the restrictions on children’s freedom today, he believes we’ve spent much of the last few decades moving backwards. “We’re basically back in the age of child labor again,” Gray said. “But it’s labor we’re imposing because we believe it’s good for children.”

A research psychologist at Boston College, Gray has spent his career studying the effects of free, unstructured play on young people — and what happens when it is edged out by activities overseen by adults, especially school. that children now spend much less time outside making friends and inventing games, and much more at home, doing homework and absorbing media under the watch of their parents.

The results have been catastrophic for their development and wellbeing, he has found. In in the Journal of Pediatrics, Gray and several co-authors argue that the contraction of kids’ independent activity since the 1960s has made them markedly less resilient and triggered a well-documented rise in mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. He advances many of the same claims in a regularly updated on play and happiness, where he critiques everything from Little League sports to the curtailment of school lunch periods.

Notable is the theory of social harm that Gray dismisses out of hand: the supposedly pernicious effects of smartphones and social media, which have increasingly come under scrutiny as experts complain that they monopolize kids’ time and attention. While some of the same critics share his views on the importance of play, he calls the data implicating addictive technology unpersuasive. 

Indeed, he argues, warnings about excessive screen time are worse than wrong — they’re a deflection from the ways in which adults have re-engineered the world around kids to exclude and control them. 

“It’s really the first time in human history that children have not been free to do a lot of independent things,” Gray said in a conversation with The 74’s Kevin Mahnken. “Children are designed to grow up with independence, so over the last few decades, we’ve been doing things in a way that’s historically abnormal.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

The 74: What is the relationship between unsupervised play and mental health, both in childhood and later life?

Peter Gray: There are certain obvious ways in which play is essential for mental health. First, play makes kids happy, and you really don’t have to do research to know that. If you take play away from kids, they’re a lot less happy, and the lack of happiness is a big part of depression. About this part there should be no mystery.

But play does more than make children immediately happy. It is also the means by which they acquire life skills and learn to make friends. It’s the means by which they learn to direct their own activities. In the process of doing that, they have to learn how to negotiate with their playmates, deal with disagreements and minor bullying, and so forth. If we’re supervising children all the time and not allowing them opportunities to solve their own problems, they grow up without the kinds of character traits and skills needed to deal with the bumps in the road of life.

So that’s the general hypothesis. But what not everybody knows is that, over several decades, there has been a continuous decline in children’s opportunities to play freely. Over the same decades, there has also been an increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among children and adolescents. That doesn’t prove that one thing is caused by the other, but even from a theoretical position, it seems fairly clear that there’s a cause-effect relationship here: Play makes children happy and resilient, we’ve been taking play away from children, and, lo and behold, children are becoming less happy and psychologically resilient. 

What is the evidence that children’s play has declined in recent years? Is it clear in other countries as well as the United States?

It’s declined in the U.S. and some other countries, but it’s not universal by any means. 
Some of the most interesting evidence comes from the sociologist Markella Rutherford, who wrote a book called . Her approach was to analyze articles and letters about children in parenting magazines — Good Housekeeping, for example, has been published almost 150 years — and look at the way people thought about play. What she found was that, through the first half of the 20th century, there was a lot of emphasis on independence. It was recommended that kids walk to their kindergartens and go to the grocery store when milk was running low, and they should be encouraged if they were afraid to do those things.

The advice from those sources was less likely to advocate for independence in the 1960s, and by the ’80s, things were changing quite dramatically. The very things that were previously recognized as important for kids to do independently were now seen as dangerous, and there was much more precaution about danger.

There is also data showing that lots of students used to walk or bicycle to school until the 1980s, . Now we even have situations where people think that letting an eight-year-old walk to school is negligent, so parents send their children out and then . 

This has all been a social experiment that obviously failed. It’s really the first time in human history that children have not been free to do a lot of independent things. Children are designed to grow up with independence, so over the last few decades, we’ve been doing things in a way that’s historically abnormal.

What would you say is normal in the history of human societies? Is it really true that kids have always enjoyed the freedoms of youth?

As part of my research, I have surveyed anthropologists who study hunter-gatherer cultures in seven different cultures across three continents. Even through the 20th century, there were still quite a number of people living that way.

Every one of the researchers told me that children were essentially all the time. Very little work, if any, was expected even of teenagers, and you were basically seen as a child until you had children of your own. Children explored, they tended to play at the things important to their cultures, the older kids looked after the younger ones, and the adults understood that this is how kids learn. In my mind, that’s the biologically natural way that children grew up across history. For 99 percent of our history, we were hunter-gatherers.

The anthropologist David Lancy, who co-authored about mental health and the decline in play, is around the world. He has found that certain cultures, more so than hunter-gatherers, do expect some work from children. But that work is independent activity; there isn’t an adult running alongside them and telling them what to do. If it’s a farming culture, kids help with the farming, or they haul and chop wood. And even in the context of those chores, they’re doing it with other kids, and there is play as well. The idea of parents following children around and micromanaging their activities is just not something that happens in many cultures.

You refer to historian that the early 20th century was a “golden age of unstructured play.” But what about the 19th century, when lots of very young kids had to work outside of their homes? I’ve read enough Dickens to know that wasn’t a terrific time to be a kid.

You bring up a terrible time in history, the Industrial Age, where many children worked in factories amid tremendous poverty. But although it’s not a life we would want for our kids, I think those Dickens characters do play. In a Dickens novel, they have to be incredibly independent — to pick pockets, God forbid — and take risks and collaborate with other kids to figure out how to survive. So it’s a very different situation than what we have now, even if it is not the ideal. 

The way I’d put it is that our children are now less free to engage in independent activities than they have ever been, except in times of childhood slavery and the sort of sweatshop work that was fairly common in this country until about a century ago. The golden age of play in America came from our decision to for children , in a way, more like children in hunter-gatherer cultures; they could explore and play in age-mixed groups around their neighborhoods. It was a sort of return to what a normal childhood looks like.

But Chudacoff, who wrote a great , points out that we gradually took those freedoms away. When you count school and homework, kids are basically doing the equivalent of a full-time job. We’re basically back in the age of child labor again, but this time, it’s labor we’re imposing because we believe it’s good for children.

Don’t you think a lot of parents, while perhaps agreeing that kids are over-scheduled these days, would also point out that they really are and grow into adulthood in 2024 than in 1924? Maybe that’s a price we should be willing to pay.

Well, we’ve got vaccines and modern medicine now, and we’ve cleaned up the environment to a degree. We have much less desperate poverty than we once did, so that helps as well. Those are the main reasons why more children grow into adulthood.

Here’s another way of looking at it. Despite the fact that the first half of the 20th century was not an easy time — you’ve got world wars, the Great Depression, a lot of other problems — children seem to have been much happier then than they are now. We don’t have perfect evidence for all these outcomes, but we know the suicide rate for kids and teenagers then than it is now. Life was pretty rough, but they didn’t seem to suffer then as they do now. 

So what changed?

Between 1950 and 1990, school added more hours. By 1990, the school year was five weeks longer than it had been, and the school day was generally longer. You started seeing , who mostly hadn’t had it before. There was far less competition and worrying about grades back then. The combined result is that we’ve gradually increased what I call the “weight” of school, and the amount of time children spend on it.

We also began to believe that children were better off playing adult-directed sports than going out and making up their own games. We started Little League and all these other sports, and parents started thinking, “Better to get my kid into that than just have them go out and play.” But when you’re just making up your own games, as I did in the 1950s, you learn a lot more than you do when there’s an adult to take charge. You’re learning to create rules and keep everybody happy — particularly the people on the other team, who will go home if they’re not happy. All that is lost in a more organized setting. Little League is a great place to learn to bunt, or slide into second base, or throw a curveball, but it’s not a great place to learn anything else. 

Television would be another example. My family got a TV in 1954 or so, right when the Mickey Mouse Club started up. Before that, my friends and I would hang out after school or go fishing. But after, a lot of us would go home and watch whatever was on. It drew kids indoors, where they weren’t playing or exploring.

It seems like parents have become more worried about their kids’ safety as well.

A couple things occurred in the 1980s that played a big role in that. 

In and , there were two highly publicized cases of young boys being kidnapped and murdered. Of course, those cases made news precisely because they were so rare. But they had a huge effect, and I still remember seeing pictures of kids on the sides of milk cartons in those years. As it turns out, the vast majority of those cases were runaways, and when kids are snatched away, it’s almost never by strangers. But the term “stranger danger” came into use, and they wouldn’t send their kids out, they would cite fear of strangers. 

We talk a lot about helicopter parenting, but I don’t blame parents for this. The society has evolved in a way that changed cultural norms, and parents who try to resist those norms find it very hard to do so. 

I notice you tallied a huge list of factors without mentioning the ascendant thesis for youth behavior and mental health problems: the emergence of smartphones and social media. Do you believe they’ve been overhyped as an explanation?

I’ve looked at the papers in this area, especially the review papers. And if you want to dig out the research supporting the theory that technology is the main driver of our youth mental health problems, you can make a pretty compelling case. But you’d be cherry-picking.

There are so many studies trying to find a link between social media use and anxieties in girls, boys, people of different ages. People have tried to find a simple correlation: Are people who use social media a lot also more likely to be depressed? Some studies show a positive correlation with measures of anxiety, and some studies show a negative correlation. In a lot of studies, it kind of washes out. To me, there’s no really compelling evidence based on the correlational data.

In something of an acknowledgment of this, there’s been a search for other kinds of evidence. People point to experiments where people who say they’re anxious will for a period of time. They rate their anxiety levels at the beginning and the end, and what is often found is that those who stopped social media say they’re a bit less anxious. 

But there are two things wrong with these kinds of studies that anyone involved with research should know. The first is that when subjects involved in an experiment know what the purpose of that experiment is, most of them will be motivated to confirm the hypothesis. In this experiment, the hypothesis was very clear and couldn’t have been hidden. Countless social-psychological studies show that when subjects in an experiment believe something is going to happen, they make it happen. This is called the demand effect.

Second is . One of the reasons drug companies have such difficulty getting drugs approved for anxiety or depression is that these are extraordinarily subjective conditions. How anxious does a person feel? Well, if you believe you’re doing something good for you — like taking a drug — . In this case, college kids had undoubtedly heard that social media makes people anxious, and as part of their desire to be part of the experiment, they undoubtedly felt that it would be a good way to reduce their anxiety. 

The proponents of the social media theory have also found a few other countries where anxiety and depression increased over the same period that kids started using smartphones and social media. Apparently this is true in the U.K., Australia and a few other places. But I’ve looked at data from the European Union, who are not deprived of technology or the internet, and if you take all the countries of the EU together, there has not been an increase in anxiety, depression, or suicide over the same years. 

Taken together, I think this is just not compelling evidence.

But the more time kids spend on devices, the less they spend in the kind of unstructured, in-person play that you argue is crucial. Isn’t this just the modern equivalent of the television example you mentioned earlier?

There’s a difference between television and what kids today are using. The technology they’re using is far more interactive than TV, and a lot of it is essentially play. They’re not just doing social media, they’re communicating with one another.

There was a systematic study done near the beginning of the social media stage of teen life. The authors surveyed teens across the country about why they spent so much time on social media instead of getting together in person. Across the country, teen after teen said, “I’d love to get together, but I’m not allowed to go out.” Or: “My friend isn’t allowed to go out. This is the only way we can communicate.” That was already true in the early 2010s.

Teens, especially, need to hang out together away from adults. Thinking about when my son was a teenager, you’d see gangs of teens hanging out in malls. That’s what teens need to do! They need to get away from adults, to talk to one another in ways they don’t want their parents to hear. But we’ve created a world where they can’t really do that, except by way of the internet. In other words, I don’t think they’re on social media instead of getting together; they’re on social media because they can’t get together.

I will admit to being concerned that we’re raising kids who don’t even know about the possibilities for getting together because no one else is doing it. By this point, even some young parents didn’t have much chance themselves to socialize independently when they were kids, so they grew up thinking the only way to communicate with your friends is on a smartphone.

Do you think that can be even partially reversed?

I’m involved with a group called , and we help organize play clubs at schools. It’s an hour of mixed-age free play for all the kids in an elementary school. Everyone plays at once. There are lots of different ways of playing, but there are two rules: no hurting anybody, and no phones. It’s been extraordinarily successful, as are summer camps when phones are removed. In places like these, where kids can interact with one another freely, it’s not a bad idea to ban phones. 

Instead of speculating about what makes kids anxious, you can look at surveys that ask them directly about what makes them anxious. The great majority say school, and nothing else comes close. The American Psychological Association did in 2013 that surveyed teens about their anxiety levels, which were very high. But they were much higher during the school year than the summer, and when asked what the source of their anxiety was, something like 83 percent listed school. The thing that came in second, among high schoolers, was fear about getting into a good college and having a decent future.

The reality is, we’ve frightened children by imposing this pressure and telling them that they’ve got to perform so well academically or else their life will be worthless.

You’ve written a bit about the changing structure of the school day. Can you go into more detail about how you believe the experience of school has evolved in a way that’s unhealthy to kids’ development and wellbeing?

In , I asked my readers when they attended K–12 schools and how long the lunch period was when they attended. I believe historical data would confirm this, but just based on the information I collected, lunchtime ran about 60 minutes from the 1950s to the 1980s. Then it suddenly went down, to around 35 minutes in the ’90s. Nowadays, the average that I’m seeing is about 30 minutes, though it appears there are schools that . 

Twenty minutes isn’t a lot of time to wash your hands, stand in line for food, find a seat, and eat. Lunch hour used to be a time to hang out with friends, and now it’s not even a time to eat your lunch. Studies show that a lot of the federally mandated meals we provide to students because kids don’t have time to eat them. Would we, as adults, stand for it if we were being treated this way? 

In some schools, recess has been cut out entirely, and in many, it’s only 15 minutes long. This certainly wasn’t a rule, but I remember having a half-hour of recess in the morning and afternoon in the fifth and sixth grade, along with a whole hour for lunch. So of our six hours of school each day, two were spent playing or socializing in whatever way we wanted. It’s now so strictly controlled in some schools, it’s really wrong to call it play.

In many schools, we have also taken away the things that were thought of as fun because of the concern over standardized test scores. Music and art classes have often been reduced so that more time could be devoted to subjects that are measured by the tests. It’s really time to evaluate the effects of No Child Left Behind and Common Core not just on test scores, but also on children’s emotions. I think the whole push around social media and smartphones is a distraction from the real problem. 

What is your advice for families trying to swim against these currents? I know you’re working with people like to develop strategies for fostering more independence and resilience in kids, but so many parents complain that their communities just aren’t that kid-friendly.

It’s true that lots of people don’t feel they can, like parents in the past, just send their kids out to play. Among other reasons, there aren’t as many kids to play with.

Still, one of the things I advise parents is to get together with others in their neighborhood — granted, this works more for little kids than teens — and talk to them about the importance of real, physical play. Every Saturday afternoon, and maybe certain hours each weekday, everyone in the neighborhood should send their kids outdoors and not intervene unless it’s absolutely necessary for safety. And you have to keep the phones at home because many of the kids never had the opportunity to learn how to play without them.

If there’s a PTA or some venue where you can influence your school, get the school to start after-school or before-school play clubs through . It’s still a small minority of schools doing this, but I’d like to see it at every school. It’s safe because there are adults there, but they’re trained not to intervene while kids play. It’s working beautifully where it’s being done.

And it’s possible to encourage this in other settings. More and more , including even outdoor play. One in Austin hangs out a sign saying, “Joyful noise welcome!” They have kids playing inside and outside the library, and if adults bring kids, the librarians just let them know that play is for kids, and there’s a separate space for parents. Kids gather there, sometimes a hundred at once, from the ages of three or four to the early teen years. I would love to see more of that, and parents can simply go to their local library to ask about it.

There are lots of things that used to be much more common because American society as it used to be. In one of the towns I grew up in, there was a public park that essentially ran a free day camp all through the summer. A supervisor worked there who was probably just a teenager, and he would hand out equipment for games or crafts or whatever you wanted to do. It was free, and parents felt comfortable about their kids spending all day there because there was an adult around.

We could do all this easily. In terms of budgets, the cost of it would be a drop in the bucket compared with what we spend on schools. Unfortunately, we’re not going back to a situation where parents can just send their kids out with, more or less, total freedom. But we might get to a place where they feel comfortable not being there while their kids are playing — if there is a responsible adult there who can contact them and who knows how to handle emergencies. 

I believe we could get there if parents are willing to lobby for it.

The research, led by a prominent expert in , is attracting attention as authorities in the United States and several other countries voice louder concerns about the influence of technology on kids. Its conclusions could add to the calls for more strict regulation of their access to social media, which have already led to in classrooms and contentious hearings in Congress about the fate of TikTok. 

In February, Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower released that used survey evidence to show a pronounced increase in sadness and hopelessness over the past 15 years affecting people between the ages of 14 and 24. That trend mirrored a similar and dramatic rise in the time that young people, and especially young women, spent in front of a television, computer, smartphone, or gaming console over the same years.

All told, in 2022, more than 10 percent of young women said that they had a “bad mental health day” every day of the preceding month, a threefold uptick from the levels measured in 1993. Meanwhile, the proportion of young women absorbing four or more hours of screen time each day climbed from 8 percent in 2003 to 61 percent in 2022. 

In an interview, Blanchflower called the twin developments “a crisis of our kids” that would harm their ability to lead worthwhile lives and hamper social progress in the long run. While the tight correlation between rising unhappiness and the growth of screen time isn’t enough to decide the question of whether one causes the other, he added, the relationship was too obvious, and too dangerous, to ignore.

“You need a variable that starts in 2011 and is especially true for women, and you get screen time,” he said. “I don’t know of anything else, so if that’s not it, what is it?”

Blanchflower is hardly the first to offer this hypothesis. In the mid-2010s, just as American children’s declining mental health began to be noticed by both experts and the public, psychologist Jean Twenge accused smartphones of “” of kids. More recently, she has been joined by social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt, whose new book, , levels a similar indictment. 

But with the arrival of Blanchflower’s critique, one of the world’s leading economists has entered the chat. And while pointing to similar data and results, his conclusions paint a distinctly new picture of the emotional trajectory experienced by much of the world’s population. Hundreds of studies a consistent pattern to people’s long-term moods — one in which most start off relatively happy, become somewhat less so in their 40s and 50s, and then rebound later — but those rhythms have, for the moment, been upended.

Still, not all observers are as convinced as Blanchflower that technological shocks lie at the heart of the problem. While conceding that an excess of social media very likely leads to harmful consequences, researcher and commentator Will Rinehart said it would be exceedingly difficult to identify their exact effects, let alone change them for the better.

“The technology itself brings new social opportunities and new ways of interacting with your peers,” said Rinehart, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “When that box is open, it’s kind of impossible to shut it again.”

The shape of happiness

Blanchflower, a labor economist who gained public recognition by accurately as an advisor to the Bank of England, has spent much of his career — essentially an inquiry into the welfare and life satisfaction of people around the world. 

Such questions have often been left to psychologists, who traditionally take a broader view than social scientists of human motivation and behavior. As more economists expanded the sub-field, however, they generated new insights about of African Americans compared to whites and to the experience of the pandemic.

Perhaps the most noteworthy finding has been that people tend to experience their greatest happiness in both childhood and old age, while enduring a trough during midlife. That consistent dropoff, usually coincident with the growing responsibilities of career and parenthood, is referred to as — high on either side, low in the middle. Its reverse, a depiction of negative emotion, would be conceived as a “hump shape.”

But according to , released by Blanchflower and his co-authors earlier this month, those descriptions are no longer accurate. In an analysis of over 1.4 million survey responses across 34 countries, Blanchflower and his collaborators discovered that young adults’ widely-reported increase in fear, depression, and anxiety in recent years has contorted the hump shape of unhappiness; instead, people appear to be most unhappy around age 18 and become less so as time goes on.

Blanchflower said that reports of freefalling indicators of mental health for teenagers and young adults, including increased hospitalizations for self-harm and greater suicidality, led him to check on the latest data from benchmark surveys such as the Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which conducts health-related interviews with 400,000 adults every year. The results from the past half-decade were eye-opening, he recalled, and were equally present in figures from the United Kingdom as well as the United States.

“I got in there early and said, ‘I’d better take a look at this because I’ve got endless research saying there’s a happiness U-shape,’” he said. “And I started to look and said, ‘Holy moly, it’s gone!’” People in their late teens and early 20s are now the most likely to report experiencing despair, with people in their late 60s and early 70s substantially less apt to say the same.

An additional overview of findings from , which polls a vast swath of international respondents, also demonstrated a steep rise in fear, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts among adults in dozens of countries (again including the U.K. and the U.S.).

COVID has often been cited as a major force playing on the anxieties of young people. But the survey responses strongly indicate that the pandemic actually accelerated pre-existing trends, Blanchflower and his co-authors noted. The sense of displacement brought on by online instruction in the early 2020s may have only intensified the same alienation triggered by online interaction in the 2010s. 

Devorah Heitner is a parent and author who has personally canvassed children around the country to learn how they and their peers navigate a world mediated by screens and social networks. While intermittently skeptical of the most vocal critics of smartphones and social media, including Twenge, she said many young people express a desire to limit their interactions with technology.

“Kids are very aware of their relationships with their phones,” said Heitner, whose book on the virtual lives of kids, , became a bestseller last year. “They wish they could take a break from it, or that they could get their friends to use them less.”

The ‘cost of not doing something’

Educators, parents, and politicians are increasingly open to considering restrictions on how children can engage with the internet and social media.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a law banning social media accounts for children younger than 14 and requiring 14- and 15-year-olds to obtain parental permission. Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the sale of the Chinese-owned platform TikTok, citing concerns both about users’ data security and the app’s effects on its youngest users. (The proposal has to a comprehensive package of foreign aid that is expected to win approval in the Senate.)

Heitner said that social media companies should curb their most “manipulative” features, including location sharing, which allows users to at a given time. Yet she also believes that full-on bans risk curtailing some of the constructive ways that adolescents use technology. While many are bullied or harassed online, for example, others find outlets for their stress and connections with new friends.

“Many of the girls I’ve talked to are using social media in really positive ways: to stay connected to friends, to do activism, to do creative work,” Heitner said. “It really does vary.”

Mitch Prinstein, a neuroscience professor at the University of North Carolina and the chief science officer of the American Psychological Association, struck a similar note. The existing research revealed a correlation between the introduction of mass smartphone use and the decline of youth mental health, but not a firm causal connection, he argued. While some studies offered more suggestive evidence — including that paid students to deactivate Facebook, which left them happier and less polarized than before — potential contributors to the well-being crisis could also include a worsening political climate, along with the frequently circulated fears of environmental disaster and school shootings.

“We can certainly demonstrate that some features of social media are bad for kids,” Prinstein said. “They don’t fit kids’ brain development, they’re depriving kids of alternative experiences — absolutely. I just bristle at the idea of saying this is the singular cause of the youth mental health crisis.”

In both of the new papers, Blanchflower and his co-authors identified additional factors that may have contributed to rising rates of depression and dismay. In particular, the after-effects of the Great Recession may have altered the family lives of huge numbers of children by putting their parents out of work. A significant majority of the young women feeling despair between 2020 and 2022 also reported having suffered one or more adverse child experiences, such as cohabitating with a mentally ill person, living through their parents’ divorce, or being physically or sexually abused.

But the mounting data pointed to a clear role played by the shift of socialization to the internet, he remarked. While adding that it could take 50 years or more to establish the relationship conclusively, Blanchflower said that all the existing evidence argued in favor of enacting hard limits to the exposure of young people to social media and smartphones. Acting decisively could save lives, he said.

“We could fart around about causality, but the potential cost of not doing something is so much greater than the cost of doing something and being wrong. It doesn’t look to me like there are actually detrimental consequences of acting.”

Ohio senators have passed a bill to limit cell phone use in schools, but it allows local districts to decide on the best practices for their students.

“Being a parent in the age of smartphones is — my mom would say is harder than she had it,” Natalie Hastings, mom-of-two, said.

Hastings believes boundaries with technology are important, but there are struggles when it comes to school.

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“There was some bullying in the restrooms and people were taking videos,” she said. “There is now a policy in place at the building level where kids can bring their phones to school and power them off, put them in their backpacks.”

Starting in the fall of 2023, a new policy at Akron Public Schools requires all secondary students to keep their cell phones in magnetically locking “Yondr” bags. Students are allowed to use their phones in the lunchroom and between classes but must silence and stow them away.

 around the state have started cracking down on phone usage, and state lawmakers are joining in.

“I thought the idea of eliminating use of smartphones during the school day is a great idea,” Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said.

Huffman and his members just passed , legislation that added a provision to require each public school district to create a cell phone policy, emphasizing that phone use should be as limited as possible during the school day.

The legislation would also require the Department of Education and Workforce to adopt a model policy on student phone use that public schools could utilize. These policies come at a request of Gov. Mike DeWine, who said in his State of the State Address that phones are “detrimental to our kids’ mental health and they need to be removed from the classroom.”

Hastings is mainly supportive of the Senate’s bill.

“I would advocate that every building principal is the one who can make the best decision for their specific kids,” Hastings said.

She is worried about a competing version of policy — , which would ban personal devices like cell phones, computers, headphones and smartwatches unless a teacher specifically allows it, there is an emergency, it is needed for healthcare or if a student has a learning disability and it is part of their accommodations.

The bill would require public schools to create an internet safety policy. The legislation also mandates grades 6-12 to have courses on the negative side of social media.

But it isn’t clear if House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) is on board with the Senate.

There were some questions in our caucus on what the details were on the cell phone language and we had several members who wanted to read those languages,” Stephens said.

State Rep. Tom Young (R-Washington Township), the sponsor of H.B. 485, wasn’t thrilled with the Senate’s actions.

“They have every right to do that, of course, however, we will have hearings on my bill because it’s important that we get feedback from the districts and those interested parties so that we can have best practices and that’s really important.” Young said. “Citizens should have a right to speak about a piece of legislation — period — especially one that’s important. If we’re going to do this then we’re going to do it right.”

Hastings said Ohio should start small before major mandates.

“It’s a level of distraction that we are still figuring out in real time,” she said.

The Senate’s version goes back to the House for a concurrence vote.

This article was  on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.

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Naya, a freshman at John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans, was inspired to create the watch through a program called , where K-12 students learn and participate in hands-on science, technology, engineering and math projects. The organization offers an eight-month-long STEM fellowship to low-income high school students of color who show an interest in solving real-world problems and gives them training, career and networking opportunities.

She signed up for the fellowship because she wanted to keep herself busy. Little did she know the opportunities the program would allow her.

The organization also hosts STEM Saturday, a free weekend program where K-12 students can create inventions. When Naya attended her first STEM Saturday in October, she thought designing a watch that detects seizures would be a great idea. But the following weekend — the last weekend to complete her project — she changed her plan entirely and instead created a watch for stroke detection, since her grandmother had suffered a stroke. She named her invention WingItt, a fitting title for an idea that sprouted at the last second.

The watch works by detecting nerve impulses and heartbeats. Naya says that many stroke victims may develop noticeable signs such as a droopy face or strange taste in their mouth, but she wanted to create something that can detect internal symptoms. As she researched, she found that strokes were more common in people 55 and older than in younger people, so she wanted to cater to this demographic. As she works out the kinks in her prototype, she wants to ensure that it is detecting only strokes and not picking up on other issues, such as those involving the heart.

A huge priority for Naya is making sure her watch is affordable for older adults who may not have the money for expensive technology, like iPhones and Apple Watches, that have health-monitoring features.

“I want to do something I’m interested in, that will also change the world,” she says.

Naya’s invention could well be on its way to doing just that, as she is one of 126 students out of over 2,500 nationwide to be selected as champions in the . The competition for grades 6 to 12, presented by the U.S. Department of Education and , will host its inaugural festival next month in Washington, D.C., where the champions will showcase their creations. The students are also receiving two months of and four months of master classes with STEM experts like astronauts and sports statisticians. 

“I never thought that I would win,” Naya says. She says she looks forward to presenting her watch and seeing the other inventions at the festival. 

Naya thinks younger students who may have an interest in science should give STEM a try because it has given her experiences she never thought she would have. She says students in her area specifically should give STEM NOLA a chance because it has allowed her to go to new places and learn new things.

As a freshman, Naya still has plenty of time to do more in the world of STEM. Her other plans include playing softball and getting a college scholarship, and longer-term, becoming an obstetrician-gynecologist.

“I love the fact that you’re bringing new life into the world, that’s the coolest thing ever to me. I’m a woman helping women. It can’t get any better than that!”
Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation and Overdeck Family Foundation provide financial support to the and The 74.

Inside a classroom at the , a group of small children sit in a circle with their teacher to learn about the alphabet, but how they go about learning their letters is what makes this lesson unique — and fun.

These children have , small touchpads loaded with learning games. Distributing the Seedlings to schools, care centers, state and local agencies, and families is the mission of , a nonprofit founded by former State Board of Education member that seeks to prepare underserved children ages 3 and 4 for kindergarten through interactive games teaching letters, numbers, shapes, and colors.

For this classroom game, a child holds a Seedling displaying a letter over their head, and asks their classmate and teacher questions about the letter like, “does my letter make the ‘W-uh’ sound?” or “does my letter come after ‘V’ in the alphabet?”

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The child can then use the answers as clues to determine the mystery letter. Once the letter is correctly guessed, they can trace the letter on the Seedling tablet, successfully learning a portion of the alphabet while using visual, auditory, and tactile skills.

What makes this game and these Seedling touchpads even more special is that the devices were given to Ashe County Schools, and many other locations across North Carolina and beyond, at no cost.

Over 22,000 Seedlings have been distributed to children since 2016, according to ApSeed. The nonprofit distributes them for free to families and locations such as Head Starts, pre-K programs, child care services, at special events, health care practices, or WIC centers.

ApSeed currently serves 16 counties in North Carolina, four counties in South Carolina, and other locations in California, New York, Liberia, and Zimbabwe.

Funding for ApSeed comes from grants and private donations as well as from government appropriations. In 2022, the General Assembly allocated $2.5 million to ApSeed, which in turn provided service for about 12,000 children.

Making a ‘big hairy audacious goal’

ApSeed is part of what Alcorn calls a “big hairy audacious goal,” or “BHAG.” Alcorn said a BHAG is something to achieve on the macro-level at least 10 years out that requires leadership and helps to create a future that would otherwise be impossible.

A BHAG for ApSeed is to promote higher graduation rates to create a well-educated workforce for the future of the state and elsewhere by starting early with a community’s youngest learners. Alcorn emphasized that those who graduate high school are more likely to have higher wages once entering the workforce.

Alcorn said when a student is able to succeed academically early on, the success continues to have a ripple effect throughout the child’s educational journey.

“If you’re pretty good at pre-K you’ve got a good chance of being a good kindergartener, right? And then if you’re good at kindergarten, you’ve got a pretty good chance at first grade,” Alcorn said.

Helping children succeed is a priority for ApSeed, Alcorn said, but helping communities succeed is an additional priority, he said. When schools have success, that encourages others to reside in that area, he said, benefiting that community.

Alcorn is working toward a return on investment, hoping to see long term-results that start with a child first beginning to learn.

Dr. Eisa Cox, superintendent of , said increasing the area’s graduation rates is part of her district’s strategic plan, and that effort is a dedication that begins with early learning. Cox said if a child is unprepared for kindergarten, they will be less likely to graduate.

“It’s a long-term commitment to how we support families and how we support learning, from the time they begin learning clear through postsecondary education,” Cox said. “We want kids to graduate ready with skills and the knowledge and the confidence that they can do whatever they want.”

Planting a Seedling

Terry Richardson, director of exceptional children and pre-k programs for Ashe County Schools, said the opportunity for multi-sensory learning on the Seedlings is important as children develop their unique learning styles.

“It’s auditory, tactile, and visual. Every child learns in a different way. We don’t know what their learning style is until we get them and we are teaching, and to see what their learning style is,” Richardson said. “They can learn every area of literacy and math on the ApSeed tool through the visual, the tactile, or the auditorial because it’s integrated within each app.”

The Seedlings come preloaded with games and have no Wi-Fi or camera capabilities to ensure safety and promote the age-appropriate learning of the child using it.

Each Seedling comes with headphones, a charger, information for families on kindergarten readiness, and a protective case with a handle.

The touchpads have a variety of games that range in difficulty levels from “baby games” all the way to multiplication for those children seeking to explore extra challenges. Colorful and happy cartoon animals serve as the mascots for the games and cheer the students on when a question is answered correctly.

Richardson recalled getting goosebumps during an ApSeed distribution event that brought out over 500 families, and said she has seen children with Seedlings around her community.

“I’ve gone to different activities in the community and you’ll see kids carrying little ApSeed around and things like that because it’s such an engaging, appropriate learning tool for literacy and math that are developmentally appropriate for their ages,” Richardson said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Two performers are seated in the middle of the stage, shooting the breeze as they pretend to get ready for an upcoming performance.

“We never know what the future holds,” one actor laments to his friend. “I mean, they thought computers can’t write poetry or compose music, but now they can.”

“There are AI-generated characters in some places, but nothing can replace the magic of live performance,” the other performer replies.

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This one-act, titled “Theatre Kids At The End of the World,” is one of 16 recently performed by Bismarck State College as part of “The AI Plays,” a production reflecting on recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and its implications for ordinary life.

The works are purposely self-referential and introspective, with the actors often playing the role of students, performers or both.

And the whole thing was written by ChatGPT, the famous chatbot by OpenAI.

ChatGPT is primarily a text tool; you tell it to write something, and it whips up an answer. Its ability to handle sophisticated instructions has attracted a level of attention unlike any AI before it.

A study by the Union Bank of Switzerland named ChatGPT the fastest-growing consumer app in history, Reuters .

But that’s also inspired widespread anxiety, even existential fear, about the future of creative work.

The recent strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, for instance, were spurred in part by concerns that generative AI would sideline creative workers. Both successfully bargained for regulations on how the technology can be used by film and television producers.

In “The AI Plays,” students at Bismarck State College Theatre throw their two cents into the debate.

“I think we, as artists, need to get in front of this,” said Director Dean Bellin, associate professor of technical theater at the Bismarck State College.

The group decided to have ChatGPT write the scripts as an interesting way to show people just how far the technology has come.

He and his students wrote the general outline of each scene. They fed ChatGPT writing prompts based on their real feelings toward AI — from reverent, to skeptical, to indifferent.

Then, they performed the scripts completely unedited – quirks and all.

In one scene, a woman chopping vegetables bemoans the constant frustration of living in a world where technology is advancing so quickly. (ChatGPT did not feel it necessary to explain who the woman is or why she was chopping vegetables.)

“I have seen the rise and fall of Tamagotchi, lived through Y2K, and even managed to scan a QR code” — she pauses, still bent over her cutting board — “ … once.”

“At the rate we’re going, I’m afraid I’ll blink, and then my toaster is giving me life advice,” she continues.

Government oversight

Lawmakers in 2023 grappled with definitions, standards and regulation of artificial intelligence, and Congress and more. Senators from both sides of the aisle agree there’s a need . Legislators and officials in many states are studying the issue and weighing AI legislation in upcoming sessions.

The North Dakota Legislature is also on the bandwagon; this interim session, the Information Technology Committee is researching potential paths for AI investment and regulation.

At its next meeting on Dec. 14, lawmakers will hear from the Department of Public Instruction, the university system, the attorney general’s office and other groups about the future of AI in the state.

Earlier this year, the statehouse passed a law preventing AI from gaining human rights. (The law extends the same ban to animals, the environment, and inanimate objects.)

Sponsor Rep. Cole Christensen, R-Rogers, told fellow lawmakers during the session the legislation was intended “to define personhood and to retain its exclusive rights to human beings.”

Several acts explore the concept of AI sentience. In one scene, a medieval court goes on a witch hunt for a robot masquerading among them as a human. The village ultimately accepts the machine with open arms.

Even though the work it produces can be uncannily similar to human writing, tools like ChatGPT don’t think like people.

ChatGPT and other so-called “generative” AI — like DALL-E, which makes images — are trained on massive hordes of data that help them approximate human language, photography, art and so on.

But it’s only an approximation. When ChatGPT asked to write creatively, it’s often choppy, repetitive and lacking depth.

The dialogue became circular in several scenes of “The AI Plays,” with characters making the same two or three points over and over again until a scene ended.

Bellin said he and his students learned a lot about scriptwriting by studying where ChatGPT’s writing missed the mark.

Bismarck State College isn’t the first higher ed institution to experiment with AI theater.

This summer, students at University of Wollongong in Australia performed a three-act drama written by ChatGPT, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation .

In that case, the performers may have been a little more involved in the writing process. The show’s director said he and his students had to tinker with the app quite a bit before it spit out something they liked.

Earthquakes in academia

There are plenty of other reasons why AI may be front-of-mind for colleges and universities — say, how it makes it easier for students to cheat on homework.

AI may not be good enough to write a flawless essay, but a student might be able to pass ChatGPT-generated work off as their own if they proofread it and introduce a few minor tweaks, Bellin said.

Many higher ed institutions have already adopted policies regulating AI. One survey published in June by UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — estimated that globally, about 13% of universities have issued official guidance on the technology.

For the moment, the North Dakota University System, of which Bismarck State College is a member, isn’t one of them.

Not that it isn’t giving the subject any attention.

In the wake of ChatGPT’s release, the university system convened a task force to help it navigate the many opportunities and obstacles AI presents to higher ed.

At a Dec. 7 State Board of Higher Education meeting, Chancellor Mark Hagerott urged the University System to invest in AI technology.

He pointed to a handful of other higher ed institutions scrambling to get ahead in what he likened to an “arms race.”

“We have to be able to adapt and move and change to the landscape that’s in front of us,” said Hagerott, who has a background in cyber security. “And we have to plan for the unknown.”

In 2020, the University of Florida hired 100 new faculty members to study artificial intelligence. The University of Albany announced this year it would set aside $200 million toward AI. It says it wants to integrate the technology in all of its academic programs. Meanwhile, Arizona State University formed a schoolwide community of practice this fall to figure out how to integrate AI into its classrooms.

“This is an earthquake,” Hagerott said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com. Follow North Dakota Monitor on and .

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma State University plans to increase its STEM education opportunities statewide through a new polytechnic initiative.

The university will reimagine its hands-on science, technology, engineering and math education to meet industry needs through OSU Polytech, President Kayse Shrum announced Tuesday.

Through the initiative, the university will take steps to expand its STEM and technology-driven programs and degree offerings at the OSU Institute of Technology in Okmulgee to campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

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OSU also plans to make academic programs more flexible and accessible to Oklahomans in all stages of their lives.

The announcement comes as Oklahoma’s colleges and universities are shifting gears to try and meet workforce needs as demand grows for worker trained in STEM fields.

“As Oklahoma’s largest university system, we must ensure Oklahoma is open for business when it comes to science and technology,” Shrum said in a news conference on the OSU-Tulsa campus.

The University of Oklahoma announced plans last year in Tulsa to meet workforce demands.

OSU Polytech will offer innovative STEM-based curriculum that is closely aligned with the workforce needs of industry leaders. Academic programs will be flexible, allowing students to pursue everything from a certificate to a doctoral degree on their own schedule, Shrum said.

“OSU Polytech graduates will be able to hit the ground running on day one and add value immediately to their employers,” she said.

To ensure OSU Polytech academic offerings continue to align with workforce demands, the university will launch an advisory council made up of representatives from key workforce sectors. The council will include representatives from the aerospace, energy, advanced manufacturing, health care, supply chain and information technology industries.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues its rapid growth throughout industries and culture, educators and leaders in AI gathered at the , part of the College of Education at North Carolina State University, on Nov. 15 for its AI in K-12 Convening to discuss the implementations and potentials of AI in classrooms.

“The things that we are able to do now because of AI is amazing,” said Amanda Moore, district innovation coach for . “And if we can help our students and our teachers envision the things that are possible and use those ideas in classrooms now, just imagine what our classrooms could look like.”

AI relates to technology that can learn and perform intelligent tasks such as data analysis, machine learning, problem solving, and more. Generative AI involves content creation such as language, graphics, or audio.

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AI adoption has grown quickly in schools and across various industries, especially since the launch of ChatGPT, a popular AI language chatbot, in late 2022. Schools have frequently grappled with finding the best course of action with AI, which presenters at the convening agreed is here to stay.

AI carries the potential of many benefits for educators, said Pati Ruiz, senior learning sciences and emerging technologies researcher at . AI can reduce educators’ workloads and cognitive effort, and it allows educators to create interactive and responsive learning material to meet individual students’ needs, she said.

Students may also see benefits, Ruiz said, with features like assisted learning frameworks and personalized learning, though she added it’s important for teachers to maintain control of the automation their students use, remembering they ultimately know what is best for their students.

“We should integrate AI and there are a lot of opportunities for us there, but again, it’s the educator’s professional judgment that needs to be centered and the student and family voices that also need to be considered when we’re making these decisions,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz said it can be helpful to envision AI like an electric bicycle — the human riding the bike maintains control, but they receive technical support from the machine to lessen the burden.

Educators, students, and their families can benefit from promotion of AI literacy, which will help users engage with AI in a productive and responsible manner, Ruiz said.

AI in action in the classroom

AI in the classroom goes so much further than ChatGPT, with many more possibilities for students to learn and grow and explore future career opportunities as well, Moore said.

Moore helped co-create , a game-based curriculum for upper elementary students featuring AI and robotics. The game centers around the task of solving problems related to a decreased population of a penguin species in New Zealand. Moore said using the game, students employ AI to collect and analyze data.

“In that unit, students are not only learning about science, but they’re also learning about how AI works and they’re also building AI models,” Moore said. “So I think what’s really powerful about that is that they’re not just using AI tools, they’re building that AI literacy.”

Moore said lots of advancements in AI are being made in various disciplines, such as utilizing the technology to identify cancer or to identify endangered species. Moore said these strides should excite teachers as they encourage students toward their futures.

“The potential to inspire our students for what they can do — every student should have the ability to imagine their potential and their place in the AI landscape,” Moore said. “They should have that opportunity. And it’s our responsibility to give them that opportunity.”

Ethics as a part of AI literacy

Ruiz discussed the importance of the human using AI maintaining control of what is produced through AI tools, keeping in mind that AI content is synthetic.

“We need to continue valuing the human aspect and the human input that go into the development of this content,” Ruiz said.

Valuing ethics and accessibility remain important parts of developing AI literacy, Ruiz said. Those without access to technology like AI may get left behind. It’s also essential to ensure AI can be accessible to students with disabilities, she said.

Considering biases is important when developing AI literacy for students and educators, as Ruiz said many may view machines as neutral, though the data machines have access to is man-made and may contain biases. It’s important to consider who the technology was made by and why, she said.

“There is bias in the data inherently, and we need to be aware of those biases,” Ruiz said.

Ethics and consideration of who is impacted by technology is also a big player in AI literacy, Ruiz said, as the technology can cause environmental effects from the energy required to run the systems. Human labor is also something for educators and students to consider when using AI as well, Ruiz said, such as those responsible for maintaining data sets.

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Five years ago, California embarked on an ambitious plan to bring computer science to all K-12 students, bolstering the state economy and opening doors to promising careers — especially for low-income students and students of color.

But a lack of qualified teachers has stalled these efforts, and left California — a global hub for the technological industry — ranked  of states nationally in the percentage of high schools offering computer science classes. 

“I truly believe that California’s future is dependent on preparing students for the tech-driven global economy. You see where the world is going, and it’s urgent that we make this happen,” said Allison Scott, chief executive officer of the Kapor Foundation, an Oakland-based organization that advocates for equity in the technology sector.

Scott was among those at a  in Oakland this week aimed at expanding computer science education nationally. While some states — such as Arkansas, Maryland and South Carolina — are well on their way to offering computer science to all students, California lags far behind. According to a , only 40% of California high schools offer computer science classes, well below the national average of 53%. 

California’s low-income students, rural students and students of color were significantly less likely to have access to computer science classes, putting them at a disadvantage in the job market,  by the Kapor Center and Computer Science for California.

Slow signs of progress 

The state has made some progress in the past few years, since adopting its sweeping  and  in 2018. More students are taking and passing the Advanced Placement computer science exams, and schools are gradually adding computer science curriculum either as a stand-alone class or integrated into math, science or other courses. The University of California now accepts computer science as satisfying a third or fourth year of math or science, instead of just as an elective. And some districts, such as Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified, have greatly expanded their computer science offerings, thanks in part to a grant from the Salesforce Foundation.

To help solve the computer science teacher shortage, Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed , which creates a commission that will look at ways to streamline the process to become a computer science teacher. The current process is so arduous, some say, it’s keeping high-quality teachers from the classroom, especially in rural and low-income areas.

Currently, there are three ways to teach computer science in California. One is to earn a career and technical education credential, which requires work experience but no post-graduate coursework. Another is to hold a math, business or industrial technology credential. The third is to obtain a credential in any subject and then add an extra 20 units of computer science. Because of confusion over requirements, funding and curriculum, schools have a hard time finding the right teachers to teach specific classes.

“The goal is to ensure we have well-prepared computer science teachers for all students, so they can engage in the world around them. We’re making progress, but we have a ways to go,” said Julie Flapan, director of the Computer Science Equity Project at UCLA. The new law should help eliminate that confusion, possibly leading to the creation of a computer science credential.

Due in part to the lack of teachers,  all California high schools to offer computer science stalled in the Senate this year. It’s also a reason California is among the states that doesn’t require computer science to graduate, although State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said Wednesday that he might propose such legislation next year.

A lack of teachers isn’t the only roadblock to expanding computer science. School administrators and counselors also must prioritize the subject, Flapan said, making sure it’s offered and that students in underrepresented groups understand the benefits and have access to classes.

Computer science has evolved to include more than basic coding. A good class now includes lessons on artificial intelligence, media literacy, data science, ethics and biased algorithms, so “students know how to think critically to solve problems using technology,” Flapan said.

Easier paths to teach computer science

Becoming a computer science teacher can be a long and expensive process, but San Francisco State University has found a way to make the pathway more enticing. Using grant money from the National Science Foundation, the university is offering online courses for teachers who want to gain the extra 20 units in computer science, enabling them to teach at the high school level.

Since it launched the program in 2018, San Francisco State has trained more than 150 computer science teachers and is helping other universities start similar programs. Every year it’s flooded with applications from throughout California, said Hao Yue, assistant chair of the computer science department at San Francisco State and a leader of the computer science education program.

Some of the participants are current teachers who want to broaden their qualifications, in some cases for a bump in pay, while others are referred by their districts. The university is trying to broaden the pool further by luring undergraduates.

“When you’re majoring in computer science, all you hear about is becoming a software engineer. They don’t know that teaching is an option. But some of them love working with kids, love teaching, and we’re able to help them become teachers,” Yue said.

Two years ago, Newsom  to help teachers of other subjects obtain their 20 extra units of computer science. The state Department of Education has also made  to train teachers, counselors and administrators in computer science.

UC Berkeley also runs a free program to help teachers qualify to teach computer science. Funded in part through a grant from Google, the program gives teachers the credits they need to teach computer science, as well as guidance on how to make computer science more accessible to students of color, students with disabilities and low-income students.

Shana V. White, director of computer science equity at the Kapor Center, said making computer science available to students who are underrepresented in the technology field must be a priority as California rolls out its program.

“We know that if you focus on the most marginalized, the most vulnerable students, everyone benefits,” White said. “That’s true everywhere, but especially in tech.” 

The program was introduced after LAUSD’s chronic absenteeism rate skyrocketed to 40% for the 2021-22 school year after students returned to in-person classes following remote instruction during the pandemic, according to the California Department of Education. In the 2022-23 school year, the district has been able to decrease that number to 30%, Carvalho said.

“We are here to give resources and make parents aware of all of the benefits of ensuring their [children] are at school everyday,” said Andre Spicer, LAUSD regional superintendent, who oversees 200 schools.

Carvalho visited Daisy Morales, mother of four attending LAUSD schools who have been attending classes sporadically. 

Last year, Morales’s children averaged 64 absences.

After working with district officials, that number has been brought down to only two to three absences. Morales said the biggest challenge to getting her kids to school had been transportation issues.

“They don’t like to catch the bus in the morning because of their anxiety,” said Morales, adding she struggled to get her kids to school once they missed the bus. 

But after the district arranged for the bus to pick up her kids as close to their home as possible in what the district calls “concierge transportation,” they began attending school more regularly. 

Carvalho also met with families who hadn’t enrolled their children in the school system, adding many of them didn’t even know they were legally required to sign them up for classes.

For the current school year, LAUSD increased enrollment with 20,000 new students, most of whom were 4-year-olds, an increase driven largely by the district’s new pre-K program.

 “After a decade of 6% to 7% of declining enrollment, we have stabilized to 1.9%,” said Carvalho. 

Sherree Lewis-DeVaugh, principal of 135 Street Elementary, said the school had begun hosting interventions with families who struggle to get their kids in school; bringing chronic absences down from 36% to just 10%. 

“If a student is not in school, how can they learn?” said Lewis-DeVaugh. “We need to make sure the students are educated, and to make sure that we provide support to our parents as well.”

The school has begun hosting interventions directly with family members who struggle to get their kids in school; bringing chronic absences down from 36% to just 10%.

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The world is dependent on innovations, systems and equipment that are designed and sustained using science, engineering, technology and mathematics. This means the nurturing of STEM talent cannot be reserved for a slice of our student population but, instead, an essential component of every student’s educational journey.

It turns out, industry agrees.

Our colleagues in the community report the need for curious and creative professionals who can work in teams to solve the toughest problems encountered in the fabs and labs of our most advanced workplaces.

Because innovation is happening at a quickening pace, readying students through the curriculum for every workplace scenario will be impossible. The ability to design solutions from scratch, in real time, is necessary to the innovation enterprise.

Whether this is perceived as an issue of equity or economics, the goal is the same: To value STEM knowledge in the same way we value reading.

K-12 needs to be rethought and redesigned or it will not only fail to meet the needs of a STEM-dependent world, it will fail to meet the needs of a unique generation of students who learns, thinks and engages with the world around them differently than any before.

Millennial and Gen Z parents are tech-integrated and experience-driven. Their children are hard-wired to be the same. Practically, this means they innately use technology to learn anytime, anywhere. But it also means they want to learn by doing. They consider technology their guide but want in-person engagement for connection, collaboration and support.

These were the trends and challenges we had to consider when designing . ASU Prep is a P-20 system of schools and educational services embedded in a larger learning enterprise at Arizona State University. The needs and preferences of our student body is what drives our iterative design. Students become masters in various learning domains from home, at a K-12 campus, on a university campus, at their parent’s workplace or even with peers at a coffee shop.

Thanks to the innovative K-12 policy environment in Arizona, students who can do a day’s worth of school work in less time can fill the remaining hours getting ahead in courses, catching up on concepts where they struggle, working, pursuing an interest in music, theater, Olympic sport or even launching their own small business.

Online learning should not be remote from people. We pair students with Learning Success Coaches to help students build personalized educational pathways into their desired future career. From kindergarten on, ASU Prep students build their own learning plans in concert with a guide and present it to their parents.

Our students are exposed to ASU courses as soon as they are ready and can take any of the 4,000-plus courses on the ASU catalog: in person, online or through our . High school students at ASU Prep are applying their learning via paid internships and hybrid high school/university schedules.

It’s working. With graduation and college-going rates that exceed the averages and large numbers of students matriculating to STEM careers, we believe that we are the school system of the future. As part of , ASU Prep is wired like no other K12 system in the country and is poised to design and open access to a K12 model fit for the future of work. 

We do all these things not to simply grow enrollment but to develop a knowledge base of what works to share with the broader community and the ASU teams that are increasing university enrollment in underrepresented communities.

Stakes are high for both our country and the families striving within. We embrace the efforts laid out in the New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act to evaluate what is happening right now in the most innovative systems in the United States and apply those lessons rapidly for the benefit of all students.

There is brilliance in every household. We believe it’s our job to design new educational models that value curiosity and show every student that they do, in fact, have a path to a successful future.

Several parents and bus drivers told LA School Report the feature is often inaccurate, creating confusion in what can already be tough pick up and drop off schedules. 

“I was looking yesterday and my daughter managed to get on the wrong bus so I was able to track her from my own air tag,” said a parent of an elementary school child who has a daily bus ride of up to an hour and 45 minutes. The parent asked to remain anonymous because speaking out about education issues in the past led to a confrontation with school officials.

“However when I looked on the app just to see where her bus was, before I learned she got on the wrong bus, the app showed it was in Hollywood near Sunset, which was totally wrong,” the parent said. 

Parents and guardians use several means to track students on the bus, including Apple air tags, cell phones, as well as the district’s GPS.  

“It’s definitely helpful,” said the parent of the LAUSD GPS, “but with today’s technology and with the school district’s budget, they can do better.”

Parents discussed bus delays on a LAUSD parent as the school year started amid Tropical Storm Hilary, voicing their frustration with the GPS’ inaccuracies. 

“Real time tracking was not working on the app while my kids were riding the bus this past week, hoping it starts working at some point,” one parent wrote. 

“I used the tracking system when it began last semester. It was 50% accurate. I’m not counting on it being any better this year,” another commented. 

Los Angeles Unified handles an estimated 2,700 bus routes daily across 70,000 miles, carrying an estimated 43,000 students, a district spokesperson said. 

The new bus tracking feature was unveiled as part of a slew of updates with the latest version of the , available in English or Spanish, including viewing the school menu, and reporting criminal or suspicious activity anonymously. 

“I don’t know anyone whose GPS is running correctly,” said John Lewis, who has been driving an LAUSD bus for 30 years.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Lewis, who has been driving about 50 students on his current route from the San Fernando Valley to middle and high schools in Central LA for the last seven years. “I have a new bus and it doesn’t work. But the thought is a great thought.” 

Lynniere Boyd-Peterson, an LAUSD bus driver of 33 years, said the GPS is a good tool in theory, but also has not seen it work accurately. 

She said sometimes parents blame drivers for delays in getting their children home by not sticking to the bus route.   

“We have a lot of parents that sometimes will say things that are incorrect,” Boyd-Peterson said. “And when they do that, the GPS can prove where we’ve been. But if the GPS is not working properly, it’s really not proving the case.” 

Los Angeles is known for heavy traffic, and the district has a system where if drivers are running 10 to 15 minutes behind, they will call and alert a dispatcher who will send out a text to parents and families. 

But some parents said those texts can also be delayed and inaccurate.

“I have received texts about delays but it’s generally after I get my kids to the bus or after the bus has already picked them up,” said the parent whose daughter carries an air tag. 

In an email to the LA School Report, a district spokesperson refuted the claims of problems with the new GPS feature.  

“Our systems currently indicate that the bus GPS functionality in the LAUSD App is operating at full capacity with no disruptions,” the spokesperson said. “The LAUSD App simply takes the GPS data from our buses and conveys that information through the Parent Portal.”

The spokesperson added if families are having issues with the app, to contact the district at transportation.division@lausd.net.

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Should smartphones be allowed in classrooms? A from , the education arm of the United Nations, raises questions about the practice. Though smartphones can be used for educational purposes, the report says the devices also disrupt classroom learning, expose students to cyberbullying and can compromise students’ privacy.

About 1 in 7 countries globally, such as and , have banned the use of smartphones in school – and academic performance improved as a result, particularly for low-performing students, the report notes.

As school leaders in the U.S. wrestle with , The Conversation has invited four scholars to weigh in on the issue.

Daniel G. Krutka: Use smartphones to encourage ‘technoskepticism’

While the issue of smartphone use in schools is complicated, evidence suggests that spending more time on smartphones is .

Technology scholars have long argued that the is in finding limits. However, in banning smartphones, I worry educators might be missing opportunities to use smartphones to encourage what I and other researchers refer to as ; that is, questioning our relationship with technology.

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For example, students might be encouraged to consider the benefits and drawbacks of using navigational apps to travel from one place to another, as opposed to old-fashioned paper maps. Or, students might explore their social media feeds to critique what algorithms feed them, or how notifications get their attention.

In , I have looked at how teachers can encourage students to go on – that is, abstaining from the use of technology for a certain period of time. This, I argue, will give students time to reflect on the time they spend .

Policy debates often focus on whether or not to put smartphones out of reach during the school day. But I believe educators might find it more beneficial to make the phones an object of inquiry.

Sarah Rose: Consult parents, teachers and students

While there is evidence that classroom phone usage , it can also promote . While research about the potential positive and negative consequences of classroom phones can be used to inform school phone policies, the who are most directly impacted by the policies should also be taken into account.

The views of parents matter because their views the extent to which their children follow the policy. The views of children matter because they are the ones being expected to follow the policy and to benefit from it. The views of teachers matter because they are often the ones that have to enforce the policies. Research shows that enforcing cellphone policies is .

In my research, I have found that children – aged 10 and 11 years old – in collaboration with their parents, were able to and solutions to help enforce them. For example, one parent-child pair suggested mobile phone use in school could be banned but that a role of “telephone monitor” could be given to an older pupil. This “telephone monitor” would have a class mobile phone that children and parents could use to contact each other during the school day when necessary.

This recommendation reflected how parents and middle and high school students – whether from rural and urban areas – felt cellphones were important to keep in touch with each other during the school day. Beyond safety, children and parents also told us that phones were important for keeping in touch about changing plans and for emotional support during the school day.

I believe policies that simply ban phones in schools may be missing an opportunity to educate children about responsible mobile device use. When parents and children are involved in policy development, it has the potential to increase the extent to which these policies are followed and enforced.

Arnold L. Glass: Cellphone use in college lectures hurts performance in ways that are hard to see

The intrusion of internet-enabled electronic devices, such as laptops, tablets and cellphones, has transformed the modern college lecture. Students now divide their attention between the lecture and their devices. Classroom studies reveal that when college students use an electronic device for a nonacademic purpose during class, .

When attention is divided between an electronic device and the classroom lecture, it does not reduce comprehension of the lecture – at least, not when measured by within-class quizzes. Instead, divided attention reduces long-term retention of the classroom lecture, which hurts performance on unit exams and final exams.

When some students open electronic devices, it also negatively affects the performance of all the . Research has shown that when electronic devices were permitted during classes that covered exam material versus when the devices were not.

Many students won’t think their divided attention is affecting their retention of new information. It may not be for the moment, but a couple of weeks later or down the line, , it does.

Louis-Philippe Beland: Bans help low-achieving students the most

Numerous studies indicate that low-achieving students stand to benefit the most from the implementation of mobile phone bans in schools.

In a 2015 study, my co-author, , and I in high schools, using data from England. By comparing schools with phone bans to similar schools without the bans, we isolated the effect of mobile phones on performance. Our study found that banning mobile phones significantly increased test scores among 16-year-old students. The effect is equivalent to adding five days to the school year or an extra hour per week. Low-achieving students benefited more, while high-achieving students remained unaffected.

Similar and using a similar approach demonstrated compelling evidence supporting the benefits of banning mobile phones. In Spain, grades improved and bullying incidents decreased. In Norway, the ban raised middle school students’ grade-point averages and their likelihood of attending academic high schools while reducing bullying. Evidence from suggests banning mobile phones can be beneficial for college student performance.

Psychological research sheds light on potential mechanisms behind the impact of mobile phones and technology on student performance. Multitasking, common with mobile phone use, has been found to hinder . Taking notes by hand has been shown to compared to typing on a computer.

In sum, banning mobile phones in schools can yield positive effects, improve academic performance and narrow the achievement gap between high- and low-achieving students. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that mobile phones and technology can also be valuable educational tools when used appropriately.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The top priority of many Missouri parents and educators is school safety, .

But statewide safety improvements for schools didn’t garner much traction during the legislative session that ended in May, with most proposals dying without ever making it to the full House or Senate for debate.

Action has largely come through the budget, with lawmakers approving recommendations from the governor’s office giving school districts access to grant money for physical security upgrades and emergency supplies. The state funded a new app for school lockdowns for all districts to access.

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The result is a few changes for the 2023-2024 school year, likely at levels unnoticeable to students.

In May, Gov. Mike Parson announced that funding was available for school districts to sign up for a mobile application to assist in emergencies. The app, , will allow school staff to silently trigger alarms and communicate with emergency responders.

Missouri school districts are being trained on the software, and those who signed up prior to the end of June should have the technology ready before the school year begins.

“We want all students across Missouri to have the opportunity to learn in safe and secure schools,” Parson said at the time. “That’s why our administration included funding for this school safety app.”

Parson set aside $20 million in school safety grants in his 2023 early supplemental budget request, which legislators approved. Almost 170 districts claimed a portion of the funds, with grants ranging from $7,100 to $450,000.

Northwest R-1 School District in Jefferson County, the recipient of the $450,000 grant, is using the money to install a surveillance system throughout its elementary schools, Mark Janiesch, the district’s chief operating officer, told The Independent.

Janiesch said DESE decided the amount of the  award to the district through a questionnaire that assessed buildings’ age and current surveillance coverage.

“This grant is going to greatly help make our schools safer and more secure,” he said. “If the state could offer grants similar to this one within future budgets, they could help ensure that more schools across the state have an opportunity to incorporate ongoing and up-to-date safety measures over the years.”

Parson plans to increase the grant fund to $50 million next year, if approved by lawmakers.

In April, a research firm hired by the state school board . “​​Ensuring schools and classrooms remain the safest places for students and teachers” resonated most with survey participants, which included school staff and parents. Those surveyed listed funding as the top barrier to success.

Carol Hallquist, the board’s vice president, presented the data at the meeting,  saying she asked the researchers to look at groups other than parents and educators that took the survey, like community leaders and staff from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“No matter how they cut the data, pretty much these were the priorities for the other groups as well,” she said during the board’s June meeting.

The data will inform the board’s recommendations to lawmakers for 2024’s legislative session.

During this year’s session, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle filed 18 bills related to school safety. Some focused on school resource officers, others on mental health.

Although the topic is bipartisan, the parties took different approaches to the legislation, with Democrats filing bills to and Republicans looking to .

In late February, students from Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, who lost a classmate and a teacher in a school shooting in October, visited the State Capitol.

They held a rally, where they showed art they created to express their grief, and spoke to lawmakers.

“We, all of us, deserve more than empty promises,” then-high-school senior Bryanna Love said during the rally, .

Just one was signed into law, a bill by Scott City Republican Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder that expands background checks to include adults taking classes in facilities with K-12 students on site. The law exempts adults that are part of a school’s average daily attendance, like high school seniors who are 18.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

CRPE sought to catalog initial responses about AI and its future in education by searching all U.S. websites for related policy guidance or key mentions of AI developments. This presents an early picture of the AI education landscape and issues states and districts may face in 2023-24.

In May, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology released its first , which presented the “opportunities and risks for AI in teaching, learning, research and assessment based on public input.” Since then, , , , , and even have discussed AI and ChatGPT. But few state education agencies have offered  information on their websites about artificial intelligence and its implications. 

Apart from the calling for a working group to recommend uses of artificial intelligence and assistive technology in the upcoming school year, none of the other 58 departments appear to have mentioned AI in a policy context, according to our search of publicly available information. 

Seven states have explained how they are, or are not, planning to weigh in on AI-related education issues. The remaining 51 education departments do not appear to have published any details on plans for setting policy guidance around AI.

At least four states said they’d leave the matter up to individual districts. A spokesperson for the said decisions about academic expectations, honesty and whether to block certain websites or tools are made on the local level. Officials from , and spoke of similar approaches.

At least two other state education departments have discussed AI with their respective boards. Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Jeffrey Riley said to the governing body “about the impact of technology, cellphones and other devices and artificial intelligence on education.” But he did not indicate whether he wishes to propose regulations governing the use of AI in schools. Frank Edelblut, New Hampshire’s education commissioner, to the state board of education and for the 21st century.”

In , state officials indicated in May that they were starting to talk with districts about AI in schools. 

About half of the departments, 30 of 59, have made at least a key reference to AI on their websites since last August. But just Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas have posted curriculum standards and/or courses that would teach pertinent concepts. All four states started that work ahead of the last school year.

In 2021, the Georgia Department of Education to include an AI pathway. The state now has a sequence of three courses that study AI , and . One district, Gwinnett County Public Schools, opened a high school last year that aims to provide students with a college preparatory curriculum .

In March 2022, Florida’s State Board of Education and partnered with the University of Florida to develop and provide districts with professional development, coaching and resources. This includes a new, three-year “” course of study in its career and technical education program. Last summer, university students and faculty led free workshops for teachers from 11 districts and the Florida Virtual School to prepare them to teach AI. Training will occur , with four new districts added each year.

In April, South Carolina’s education department sent a to superintendents, administrators, instructional leaders and teachers about plans to adopt a . Officials are on the draft standards. 

adopted a three-course artificial intelligence and machine learning pathway in 2020 as part of a to its computer science standards and courses. Unlike other states, it has not recently updated those courses, but it’s providing six days of professional development on them this summer for high school teachers.

AI’s potential to reshape and disrupt longstanding habits in teaching, learning, assessment and management has yet to fully develop. CRPE’s reviews over three years of pandemic-era schooling have found that in moments of crisis or ambiguity, states often refrain from providing critical, proactive guidance that can help districts navigate uncertainty. Similarly, large school systems can delay their responses in critical moments, which can have detrimental consequences for students. We’ve seen beneficial results when states offer early guidance. For example, a handful toward practices that advance equity. Connecticut was one of those states, and its subsequent spending on evidence-based strategies helped .

The few states that moved early on AI training, curricular guidance or new course options — even before the advent of ChatGPT — may be better positioned to support districts addressing concerns and opportunities sparked by the technology in more accessible, equitable ways. 

If states can prepare guidance or policy suggestions ahead of the 2023-24 school year, they can better safeguard and more equitably prepare students to learn, live and work in an increasingly technology-driven society. They can also assist districts that have not yet focused on AI because they are prioritizing pandemic student recovery needs and/or workforce shortages instead.  

Departments could consider: 1) establishing guardrails to protect against inherent bias in AI; 2) providing guidance that anticipates inequitable or inconsistent student access; 3) offering professional development that helps teachers and school leaders adapt to new tools and practices, 4) establishing plans to measure and track the effectiveness of AI-enabled supports for student learning; and 5) examining the pros and cons of tools that could reduce teacher workloads by automating mundane tasks. Districts would benefit from state leaders looking further down the road and evaluating curricular options, examining the quality of AI products and assessing the opportunities and risks to widespread integration of artificial intelligence in schools.

The state known for its traditions of coal and cattle will be advancing a new tech sector this fall: computing. The University of Wyoming’s School of Computing will be opening as a centerpiece of the Wyoming Innovation Partnership, an initiative intended to build workforce resilience and boost the state’s economy. 

The initiative is not a move away from the state’s bread and butter industries, said former state Rep. Tyler Lindholm, who is now the Wyoming director for the Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group. 

“They’re the ones that have kept us alive for decades and decades, they’re our stalwart champions,” Lindholm said. “But it also comes down to the fact that Wyoming exports our most natural precious resource, and that’s kids.”

After graduating from high school and college,  their homes at some of the highest rates of out-of-state migration in the nation, although that slowed during the pandemic. Between 2014 and 2020, Wyoming’s millennial population — people ages 24 to 39 — decreased by 6%, according to a . 

“So a lot of the ideology behind being tech forward, and figuring out a way to attract these businesses, is honestly [about] keeping our kids,” Lindholm said.

Gov. Mark Gordon acted on this issue in 2021 by ordering the innovation parternship’s implementation using American Rescue Plan funds. The program focuses on driving statewide development through digital infrastructure and entrepreneurship. The efforts emphasize coordination between the state government, community colleges and UW. 

Teaching tech

The School of Computing, as a key component of the initiative, is billed as “a hub of innovation and knowledge exchange providing UW students, faculty, and Wyoming businesses and citizens with a ‘backpack’ of computational tools and approaches to drive transformation.” 

While the initiative is recent, Wyoming’s tech-forward movement began around 2016 while Lindholm was still in office. The state became the first in the nation to implement K-12 computer science education and led in pro-blockchain law. It remains 

The state also took a stride in computing efforts by bringing the  to Cheyenne in 2012. 

“Wyoming has really innovated in computing,” said Gabrielle Allen, the computing school’s director. “I think what we haven’t had is the ability to kind of pull that together to be really strategic in how that impacts the university and the state.”

The way the state has coordinated the innovation partnership has garnered national attention, said UW President Ed Seidel, who is married to Allen. Seidel serves on the advanced scientific computing advisory committee for the Department of Energy. 

“We had people there from the White House talking particularly about the importance of all of these digital areas and artificial intelligence and how we have a national crisis and must invest,” Seidel said at the June Board of Trustees meeting. “I’m able to hold up the fact that in Wyoming we have the whole state organized around this. It’s really getting a lot of attention on the national level.” 

Top priority is deploying “new computing tools that are particularly relevant to solve the problems and the challenges and opportunities that we have in the state,” Allen said. “We have a lot of cool applications … that relate to the environment, the climate, weather, animal migration, controlled environment, agriculture, ranching.” 

The school is designed as an interdisciplinary hub to reach the state’s varied markets and students in all academic areas through applied computing skills, the practice of integrating computer science with another discipline. 

Bryan Shader, a professor of mathematics selected by Seidel to organize UW faculty behind the school, said the academic unit is also focused on reaching students at different academic stages and interests. 

By providing an applied computing degree, “that allows a larger swath of students to be part of the computing field,” Shader said. “So computing is no longer just the purview of the people that want to be a computer scientist.” 

Cashing in on education

Despite the school’s inclusive aspirations, Shader said it’s been a long process of getting people interested and invested in the school’s mission. 

“It’s partially a social and economic question,” Shader said. “And it’s dealing with change. I think you have to be really careful not to mandate anything or shove things down people’s throats. I’m a really strong believer that if people have an opportunity to see value added, and are welcomed to sit at the table, most people will find ways to seize opportunities.”

With transferable computing skills, students can become entrepreneurs and business owners in the state, whether they’re from Sheridan, or Cody, or Jackson, Allen said. “We want to show them that there are modern opportunities. But we need to build up that infrastructure.” 

“I think that’s the importance of things like the Wyoming Innovation Partnership and the aims there, because we need a whole ecosystem,” Allen said. “I’ve spoken to small tech companies in the area who, who kind of have to maintain a part of their business in Colorado, for example, purely for workforce needs, and they would like to expand in Wyoming.” 

Shader said he could name 15-20 Wyoming businesses looking to hire UW students with data science, AI and software development backgrounds. 

This fall, the school is gearing up to infuse Wyoming with a more computing-savvy workforce. During this inaugural year, undergraduate students will be able to pursue a minor in computing. Some 16 graduate computing scholars will interface with the school to help guide its growth and design. 

Right now, the school is implementing a Bachelor of Science in an applied software development degree as a program where students will begin their degree at one of the state’s community colleges and finish the program at the university. There are already 15 participating students at Sheridan Community College. 

Also in the works is a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts in applied computing. Eventually the school also hopes to offer a master’s in computing around AI and certificate course options. 

Aside from the formal programs, this fall the university will see the largest group of students — 220 — take the school’s intro to computer science course, Shader said. 

“I do think that there’s a beginning sense amongst the students, that, hey, having some computing can benefit them, regardless of what their major is,” Shader said. 

But developing a young tech workforce must be reinforced by a strong post grad market, Lindholm said. 

“My concern is, can we maintain this momentum, stay on top of our laws and stay hungry on this?” Lindholm asked. “If we can do that, if we can stay hungry, and stay on top of these laws and find new ways to advance our state economically, then really, Wyoming’s future is exceptionally bright.”

 is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

Three professors from Iowa’s public universities are working to raise awareness of the importance and contradictory nature of artificial intelligence in higher education, pointing to concerns about privacy, bias and academic integrity.

The professors, speaking to the Board of Regents on June 14, pointed to the benefits and detriments of AI use in classrooms, as it is necessary for the workforce in some occupations and hinders others.

“It’s important that we are, in all cases, educating our faculty, staff and students on the use of these technologies, both from the perspective of the opportunity they offer, but also the challenges and concerns that they present,” Barrett Thomas, professor and senior associate dean of the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, said.

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Abram Anders, an associate professor of English and the interim associate director of the Student Innovation Center at Iowa State University, said the impact of AI is being witnessed by “pioneers” at higher education institutions across the world. He said the large language model technology, in which computers can learn and generate human languages, is raising the bar for what’s possible in the classroom, but it does come with limitations.

“Even though we can see magical-like performances of these tools, it’s really important to know they have limitations,” Anders said. “It’s not like they’re sentient; they don’t think and feel like a human does. They’re not objective, they are likely to have some of the same biases of the human language that they’re trained on. They are not authoritative. Like a human author, they cannot be responsible for the consequences of their texts and they are not ethical.”

Thomas agreed with Anders about the detriments of the newer AI generator technology, including bias.

“More broadly, all AI technologies have questions of bias and that bias comes in algorithmic design, it comes in how we sample the data that is used to train these models,” he said. “It comes from the way the data is generated. This is, in these cases, human-generated data and so the data you get depends on who has access to that human generation.”

He also pointed to AI responses that simply aren’t true when asking questions, which spreads misinformation and impacts individual users. Thomas pointed to a “now infamous case” of and citing case law that doesn’t exist.

Academic integrity questions and classroom needs

Jim O’Loughlin, professor and head of the University of Northern Iowa’s Languages and Literature Department, showed the regents several headlines about academic integrity and the use of ChatGPT. He said questions of plagiarism are not new and the universities in Iowa have policies on academic infringements.

“There’s already some mechanism for dealing with electronic text,” he said while showing the regents a copy of UNI’s Academi Ethics Violation policy. “But we are — in the section in red — working on what modest changes may need to be made to account for generative AI.”

O’Loughlin said that these policies must remain flexible to see proper use in different classroom settings, as some may encourage understanding AI for future occupational application. Some students will need extensive understanding of generative AI, he said, while others may just need a little knowledge on it.

He pointed to the job of prompt engineers, who develop, refine and optimize AI text prompts for accuracy and relevant responses. Some current students at Iowa’s universities will go into these jobs, he said, who will need several classes on how to use and better AI.

Those aren’t the only cases, though, O’Loughlin told the board.

“Clearly, there are going to be some circumstances and some classes where the use of AI would be detrimental and would need to be prohibited and faculty would need to have the leeway for that,” he said.

Another issue is the current infrastructure professors have to determine if student work is plagiarized or not, O’Loughlin said.

“There are some concerns that a lot of faculty have right now,” he said. “Electronic plagiarism checkers that are already in place, they’ve actually struggled to accurately identify AI-produced text, particularly a lot of false positives come up for students for whom English is not their first language.”

Needing new assignments

O’Loughlin said the assignments the regents and some current professors at UNI, ISU and the University of Iowa would have experienced in their educational journeys will likely be nullified because of generative AI.

“We are also finding, now, that some standard forms of assessments, things that we all would’ve done — the take-home exam, the annotated bibliography, the research paper — these are going to become less reliable indicators of student performance because ChatGPT can be used with them so easily,” he said.

Written communication, argumentation and basic computer coding skills are easily assisted or even fully written by generative AI, he said. Discernment and understanding if something is good, bad or argumentative is becoming more important in higher education, he said, which is taught in more humanities courses.

New courses are also being offered surrounding AI, Anders said, pointing to a class he’s teaching at ISU entitled “Artificial Intelligence and Writing.” He will teach literacy tools for students to understand and develop effective prompts and find accurate information using AI.

O’Loughlin pointed to an epidemiology class at UNI where students analyze what ChatGPT has to say on public health issues for accuracy. There are also creative writing courses that use AI to understand original story ideas.

Opportunities for AI use are everywhere and in every discipline, Thomas said, including classes at the UI in entrepreneurship and AI as well as providing hands-on experiences in the Commercializing New Technology Academy.

“It’s going to impact all of the research across campus and then also all of our students as they go into the workforce,” he said. “And it’s important that we’re preparing them for that space.”

Privacy concerns

Thomas said one of the major issues with using ChatGPT and similar software is that students may not realize it stores data.

Generative AI holds onto the information input by people to train its next version, which includes any sensitive data.

“There are changes that are coming, particularly in ChatGPT, to allow you to keep your data private but I think there are still concerns and it requires education to make sure that people understand these and, probably in certain circumstances, prohibition against using these technologies with certain data,” he said.”

The time is now

Anders said the disruption of AI is happening now.

“These technologies, unlike other technologies, are not emergent in the sense that we don’t have to wait five years to see what they can do,” he said. “They can already do it now and if we had no further progress they would already be transforming our world.”

AI won’t replace jobs, he said, but a human using AI will as the technology is focused on “ramping up” human talent.

“The last point, that I think we all three agree on, is the question is not to ban or not to ban,” Andes said. “That’s already gone. This is here for good. But how can we assume leadership for inventing ethical features, ones that mitigate harms in our learning communities and prepare our students to use these tools moving forward.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

Effects of COVID-19 continue to be felt in classrooms throughout the community as veteran teachers deal with students who are more disruptive, destructive and disrespectful than in past years, and teachers attribute the lack of civility – at least in part – to the pandemic.

A district administrator and teachers union representatives said that this difficult behavior is going on throughout K-12, but for this story El Paso Matters focused on kindergarten, a foundational grade where students learn the basics from sounds, shapes, letters, colors and numbers, to counting, simple science, and how to function in a classroom to include respect for others and their space, and basic hygiene such as hand washing and covering coughs and sneezes.

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This is an important issue for educators who must prepare these young minds with a proper base from which they will tackle future social and academic requirements to include state-mandated tests in third grade and beyond.

Leah Miller, owner of the Counseling Center of Expressive Arts in El Paso, said she regularly sees young clients who exhibit similar behavior and added that it often stems from anxiety, and misbehaving is how they cope and communicate.

“A lot of times when kids have anxiety, they act out in ways that we don’t typically understand because they can’t articulate to us that they’re anxious,” said Miller, a licensed professional counselor who specializes in play therapy. “That’s when you see impulsive behavior.”

Kindergarten teachers and staffers from area districts shared similar stories of students who are unprepared for a structured learning environment and unwilling to conform despite the teachers’ best efforts. Congratulatory stickers, positive reinforcement and meetings with parents, counselors and campus administrators have not affected most of these children who continue to act up well into the spring semester.

The teachers, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said they noticed early in the fall 2022 semester that more students than usual were having a hard time adjusting to school. A teacher education leader at the University of Texas at El Paso said that she was aware of the issue and suggested to one district a way to help, but her offer was rebuffed.

Instructors described students – mostly 5-year-olds – who cursed, overturned chairs, disrespected others and their property, and delighted in ripping down learning charts and decorations in the classroom and along the hallways. They also depicted others who exhibited moodiness and such dangerous tendencies as biting, using scissors to cut the clothes of other students, and running out of their classrooms or cafeterias and into the campus parking lots.

The frustrated teachers acknowledged that they have used every tool in their instructional arsenal, but have made little to no headway in many cases. They lamented a lack of support from campus leaders, who ask teachers to be more understanding of the youngsters, and parents, who do not deliver on promises to change a child’s behavior or deny their child has a problem in the first place.

“Sarah,” a teacher for more than 10 years, said she had previously experienced an occasional student with anger issues, but was surprised to find three disruptive students in her class for the fall 2022 semester. By February, that number had grown to seven, almost a third of her students.

“I’m constantly putting out fires,” she said figuratively. “It’s very draining. The whole situation just makes me sad.”

While some teachers said this year’s circumstances have made them consider changing the grade level they teach, the campus or their professions, others talked about going home after a tough day and researching other ways they might be able to connect with their students “who need extra love.”

The teachers did not want to say how many student referrals (reprimands) they had written this year. Each referral involves a lot of documentation of who did what and when. At that grade level, the consequences for referrals range from lunchtime detention, loss of privileges such as participation in a class party, and in-school suspension.

One teacher suggested that districts needed to do more to address student mental health like hiring behavioral therapists on every campus.

Miller, the professional counselor, said that it is possible that the parent/caregiver gave the child technology during COVID isolation because the adult needed to work, and they wanted to keep the child quiet. She said the abundance of screentime meant that children did not have enough time for unstructured play, where they learn social behavior and how to solve problems. Some examples of unstructured play are artistic or musical games, construction of clubhouses with boxes and blankets, and the exploration of the kitchen cupboards.

In “Screen Time and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” an article in the March 2023 edition of PlayTherapy Magazine, Sara Loftin, a licensed professional counselor, echoed much of Miller’s theory in regard to adults using technology as a babysitter. The article, which cited numerous studies, pointed out that long periods of screen time will negatively affect a young child’s development of language and social skills as well as their abilities to solve problems, think creatively, or learn to deal with their boredom. The article goes on to state that as screen time often is an individual activity, the child user does not learn about impulse control or empathy in social settings.

While it is late in the academic year, Miller said it was important for teachers to build relationships with their students. It is her experience that good relationships deter poor behavior. She also suggested two ways the teachers could work with the students with issues. They included situations where the teacher will acknowledge the students’ feelings, communicate the limit to the bad behavior, and then offer an acceptable alternative. There also is a 30-second burst of attention where the teacher focuses on the child for 30 seconds and then tells the student that he/she needs to get back to work.

“Maria,” another established teacher, lamented her students’ lack of relationship skills. She said one of the main differences between her current and past classes is that this group likes to bicker with no interest in resolutions. She has 20 students in her class and about half have “issues.”

“I can’t teach,” she said. “I just try to manage their behavior.”

Maria has called numerous parent meetings, but each parent seems dismissive of the problem. In one case, a student began to tear down educational materials from a classroom wall and the mother just watched passively.

Maria said she has asked her school’s counselor and administrators for help, but they are always busy.

El Paso Matters reached out to representatives from the region’s big four school districts regarding this issue, but the only response came from Diana Mooy, Ysleta Independent School District director of the Department of Student Services.

Mooy, a former teacher and school administrator, said that the concerns raised are common among kindergarten and first-grade teachers, and that YISD was aware of the concern. She said her district trains teachers to learn what in-school or out-of-school factors trigger the negative behavior. The district director reasoned that COVID-19 eliminated many opportunities for this generation of kindergarten students to socialize with peers on play dates, or learn how to behave outside the home.

She said the district provides its teachers – and parents – with various support programs, and social emotional learning curriculum and discipline management techniques to help the child before things escalate. She added that YISD’s K-12 teachers are supposed to set aside 30 minutes per week to talk with students about self-regulation and relationship building to give them the necessary tools to manage their emotions in a healthy way.

Mooy said that district kindergarten teachers had submitted about 200 referrals as of February, which is a number consistent with past years. The district registered 2,309 kindergarten students during the 2022-23 academic year.

She encouraged any teacher in her district to contact her to discuss strategies and interventions, and added that she would be willing to talk with campus administrators to get the teachers the support they need.

Norma de la Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Association, was among the union representatives who acknowledged that they had received more calls this academic year from teachers who requested guidance on how to handle students who are more unruly than usual. They tell the teachers to follow their districts’ protocols and to document incidents as much as possible. In worst-case scenarios, she tells teachers to file a Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code that allows them to remove disruptive students from their classrooms.

“I tell them to do what they need to do,” de la Rosa said. “You’re not to be a punching bag.”

The union leader knows that campus administrators do not want teachers to file charges against students, but they should be ready to go up the chain of command if necessary to the district and the Texas Education Agency. She said the district’s attitude is that if a teacher needs to write a referral, they should write the referral.

“Right now the kids know there are no consequences,” de la Rosa said. “The districts need to change that mentality.”

Teachers want parents to take a more active role in eliminating their children’s misbehavior, as opposed to a concept that they hear more than they would like, the children are the schools’ problem from the day’s first bell to the last.

“Savannah,” a parent who works in the schools, said she noticed misbehavior in her child’s class but was not as concerned because the class had a veteran teacher, and her son continued to do well academically. Early in the school year, campus leaders assigned a teacher’s aide to the classroom and brought in one of the district’s behavioral therapists to work with the disruptive students, who eventually were separated into different homerooms. One of the students left the school.

“I thought (the teacher) was as effective as she could be,” said Savannah, who added that the teacher assured her recently that the rest of the class had caught up to where it should be academically. “I’m happy to know at this point of the year that all things are straightened out and that the class is in a better place than where it was at the beginning of the year.”

Alyse C. Hachey, co-chair of UTEP’s Department of Teacher Education, said last September that the college offered the services of its award-winning early childhood education faculty expert to provide special professional development to all El Paso Independent School District teachers and administrators who served pre-K and kindergarten students.

“The district refused to have administrators trained and so turned down help from UTEP faculty,” Hachey wrote in an email. “We stand willing to help. The districts’ need to let us.”

In a February email, Hachey said she had not pursued the matter.

Sarah said one possible solution would be for the state to put less focus on academics at that level and focus more on social emotional learning.

“At their age, it’s not hard to be overstimulated,” Sarah said. “We need to teach them how to share and play together.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Digital equity has gained much attention over the last three years of the pandemic. But it’s more than setting a device in front of a child or improving access to broadband. Though skilled educators are the key to unlocking the potential of technology in the classroom, 50% of schools say the for teachers regarding the use of technology is a moderate or large challenge, and half of teachers say a lack of training is a huge obstacle.

Truly means equipping teachers with the tools and training to confidently and effectively use technology. Here’s a roadmap to achieving that, based on what we at Digital Promise have learned through our research and close work with school and district leaders.

School staff need support in using available technology effectively. Leaders set the vision for their school, and that includes how technology is used to enhance teaching and learning. Long before the pandemic, there was a need to better integrate technology into education, especially for students in underserved communities; the pandemic only accelerated that shift. Now, principals must be able to set a vision for their school’s use of technology, identify gaps in digital skills among their faculty and work with teachers to close those gaps. 

At Brooks College Prep, my team and I communicated the rationale behind the focus on technology and created a committee to give teachers an opportunity to learn from and with their peers. Once the vision and expectation around technology were set, and teachers successfully deployed technology in their classrooms, student outcomes soared. Not only did we see a 21% increase in students reaching all four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, we were also recognized for having the highest year-to-year growth on the average ACT composite score (21.8 to 23.2) in the city of Chicago. In 2018, the school was given Blue Ribbon distinction by the U.S. Department of Education, the first high school on the South Side to earn such an award.

School and district leaders must provide high-quality professional development. Strategies for designing personalized professional development can include micro credentials — digital badges that teachers can earn to demonstrate their abilities in a particular digital skill, such as . Micro-credentialing allows educators to focus their professional development on the skills they need or want to improve and then validates their growth in that area.

Digital Promise worked with the Kettle Moraine School District in Wisconsin to reframe how professional learning happens in the district. Teachers assessed their own strengths and gaps in their technology proficiency, using the results to set goals and benchmarks for their learning. They then demonstrated their competencies through samples of their own work, student assignments and personal reflection, all evaluated by their peers. This kind of district-level commitment to high-quality professional development can help educators at any level of proficiency feel supported through personalized, meaningful learning.

School and district leaders can share with teacher preparation programs what they need from graduates. Here’s an ideal scenario: A teacher enters the classroom on Day 1 having already experienced how technology can be used effectively for learning. The teacher has prepared a clear plan for implementing those practices with students and can hit the ground running. Educator prep programs can make that a reality for their graduates. This matters particularly for schools that struggle to attract and retain teachers, such as those with high numbers of children of color and students living in poverty, and schools in rural districts. 

School and district leaders can advocate for educator prep programs to redesign their curriculum to meet the needs of students and districts in the digital age and to consider adopting . The University of Michigan, for example, now uses a that reflects the International Society for Technology in Education’s standards for teachers. To receive the certification, teachers must demonstrate mastery of digital skills through projects such as planning and executing a 30-minute webinar for parents and students. The university’s graduates have skills and practice in engaging students and school communities using technology even before they enter the classroom. 

Prepare students to be the workforce of the future. When students are taught effectively using technology and their teachers model how to leverage it in meaningful and impactful ways, they are better prepared to deploy it themselves. This matters because there is a strong correlation between digital skills and earnings. The National Skills Coalition that only 10% of workers with limited to no digital skills are in the top 20% of earnings. Future job opportunities, economic mobility and, perhaps most importantly, personal fulfillment are on the line here when it comes to helping students become digitally proficient.Teachers are key to getting them there. As I learned when I was a principal, an investment in teachers’ powerful use of technology is just as much of an investment in student learning as providing them with the latest technology. From prep programs to the classroom to the district office, there are opportunities at multiple points in teachers’ careers where they can gain the training and professional development needed to equip them with the knowledge, ability, and confidence to create technology-supported, personalized learning for all their students.

O.K., you’ve probably figured out by now that ChatGPT wrote that self-congratulatory opening. But it raises a question: If AI can produce a journalistic lede on command, what mischief could it unleash in high school English?

Actually, the chatbot, by the San Francisco-based R&D company Open AI, is not intended to make high school English teachers obsolete. Instead, it is designed to assist teachers in their work and help them to provide better instruction and support to their students.

O.K., ChatGPT wrote most of that too. But you see the problem here, right?

English teachers, whose job is to get young students to read and think deeply and write clearly, are this winter coming up against a formidable, free-to-use foe that can do it all: With just a short prompt, it , , , song lyrics, short stories, , , even outlines and analyses of other writings. 

One user asked it to explaining that “Santa isn’t real and we make up stories out of love.” In five trim paragraphs, it broke the bad news from Santa himself and told the boy, “I want you to know that the love and care that your parents have for you is real. They have created special memories and traditions for you out of love and a desire to make your childhood special.”

One TikToker noted recently that users can upload a podcast, lecture, or YouTube video transcript and ask ChatGPT to take complete notes.

ChatGPT Taking Notes From YouTube

Many educators are alarmed. One high school computer science teacher last week, “I am having an existential crisis.” Many of those who have played with the tool over the past few weeks fear it could tempt millions of students to outsource their assignments and basically give up on learning to listen, think, read, or write.

Others, however, see potential in the new tool. Upon ChatGPT’s release, The 74 queried high school teachers and other educators, as well as thinkers in the tech and AI fields, to help us make sense of this development.

Here are seven ideas, only one of which was written by ChatGPT itself:

1. By its own admission, it messes up.

When we asked ChatGPT, “What’s the most important thing teachers need to know about you?” it offered that it’s “not a tool for teaching or providing educational content, and should not be used as a substitute for a teacher or educational resource.” It also admitted that it’s “not perfect and may generate responses that are inappropriate or incorrect. It is important to use ChatGPT with caution and to always fact-check any information it provides.”

2. It’s going to force teachers to rethink their practice — whether they like it or not. 

Josh Thompson, a former Virginia high school English teacher working on these issues for the National Council of Teachers of English, said it’s naïve to think that students won’t find ChatGPT very, very soon, and start using it for assignments. “Students have probably already seen that it’s out there,” he said. “So we kind of have to just think, ‘O.K., well, how is this going to affect us?’”

In a word, Thompson said, it’s going to upend conventional wisdom about what’s important in the classroom, putting more emphasis on the writing process than the product. Teachers will need to refocus, perhaps even using ChatGPT to help students draft and revise. Students “might turn in this robotic draft, and then we have a conference about it and we talk,” he said.

The tool will force a painful conversation, Thompson and others said, about the utility of teaching the standard five-paragraph essay, which he joked “should be thrown out the window anyway.” While it’s a good template for developing ideas, it’s really just a starting point. Even now, Thompson tells students to think of each of the paragraphs not as complete writing, but as the starting point for sections of a larger essay that only they can write.

3. It’s going to refocus teachers on helping students find their authentic voice.

In that sense, said Sawsan Jaber, a longtime English teacher at East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Ill., this may be a positive development. “I really think that a key to education in general is we’re missing authenticity.”

Technology like ChatGPT may force teachers to focus less on standard forms and more on student voice and identity. It may also force students to think more deeply about the audience for their writing, which an AI likely will never be able to do effectively.

“I think education in general just needs a facelift,” she said, one that helps teachers focus more closely on students’ needs. Actually, Jaber said, the benefits of a free tool like ChatGPT might most readily benefit students like hers from low-income households in areas like Franklin Park, near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “The world is changing, and instead of fighting it, we have to ask ourselves: ‘Are the skills that we’ve historically taught kids the skills that they still need in order to be successful in the current context? And I’m not sure that they are.”

Jaber noted that universities are asking students to do more project-based and “unconventional” work that requires imagination. “So why are we so stuck on getting kids to write the five-paragraph essay and worrying if they’re using an AI generator or something else to really come up with it?”

4. It could upend more than just classroom practice, calling into question everything from Advanced Placement assignments to college essays.

Shelley Rodrigo, senior director of the Writing Program at the University of Arizona, said the need for writing instruction won’t go away. But what may soon disappear is the “simplistic display of knowledge” schools have valued for decades.

“If it’s, ‘Compare and contrast these two novels,’ O.K., that’s a really generic assignment that AI can pull stuff from the Internet really easily,” she said. But if an assignment asks students to bring their life experience to the discussion of a novel, students can’t rely on AI for help.

“If you don’t want generic answers,” she said, “don’t ask generic questions.”

In looking at coverage of the kinds of writing uploaded from ChatGPT, Rodrigo, also present-elect of NCTE, said it’s easy to see a pattern that others have commented on: Most of it looks like something that would score well on an AP exam. “Part of me is like, ‘O.K., so that potentially is a sign that that system is broken.’”

5. Students: Your teachers may already be able to spot AI-assisted writing.

While one of the advantages of relying on ChatGPT may be that it’s not technically plagiarism or even the product of an essay mill, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% foolproof.

Eric Wang, a statistician and vice president of AI at Turnitin.com, the plagiarism-detection firm, noted that engineers there can already detect writing created by large-language “fill-in-the-next-word” processes, which is what most AI models use.

How? It tends to follow predictable patterns. For one thing, it uses fewer sophisticated words than humans do: “Words that are less frequent, maybe a little more esoteric — like the word ‘esoteric,’” he said. “Our use of rare words is more common.”

AI applications tend to use more high-probability words in expected places and “favor those more probable words,” Wang said. “So we can detect it.”

Kids: Your untraceable essay may in fact be untraceable — but it’s not undetectable. 

6. Like most technological breakthroughs, ChatGPT should be understood, not limited or banned — but that takes commitment.

L.M. Sacasas, a writer who publishes, a newsletter on technology and culture, likened the response to ChatGPT to the early days of Wikipedia: While many teachers saw that research tool as radioactive, a few tried to help students understand “what it did well, what its limitations were, what might be some good ways of using Wikipedia in their research.”

In 2022, most educators — as well as most students — now see that Wikipedia has its place. A well-constructed page not only helps orient a reader; it’s also “kind of a launching pad to other sources,” Sacasas said. “So you know both what it can do for you and what it can’t. And you treat it accordingly.” 

Sacasas hopes teachers use the same logic with ChatGPT.

More broadly, he said, teachers must do a better job helping students see how what they’re learning has value. So far, “I think we haven’t done a very good job of that, so that it’s easier for students to just take the shortcut” and ask software to fill in rather meaningless blanks.

If even competent students are simply going through the motions, he said, “that will encourage students to make the worst use of these tools. And so the real project for us, I’m convinced, is just to instill a sense of the value of learning, the value of engaging texts deeply, the value of aesthetic pleasure that cannot be instrumentalized. That’s very hard work.”

7. Underestimate it at your peril.

Open AI’s Sam Altman earlier this month tried to lower expectations, that the tool “is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.”

Ask ChatGPT to write a , for example, and … well, it’s not very good or very Dylanesque at the moment. The chorus:

Baltimore, Baltimore

My home away from home

The people are friendly

And the crab cakes are to die for.

Altman added, “It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now.” 

The tool’s capabilities in many ways may not be very sophisticated now, said , an English teacher in northern California. “But we’re fooling ourselves if we think something like ChatGPT isn’t only going to get better.”

Carr asked the tool to write a short story about “kids who ride flying narwhals” and got a rudimentary “Golden Books” sort of tale. But then he got an idea: Could it produce an outline of such a story using Joseph Campbell’s “” template?

It could and it did, producing “a pretty darn good outline” that used all of the storytelling elements typically present in popular fiction and screenplays.

He also cut-and-pasted several of his students’ essay drafts into the tool and asked it to grade each one based on a rubric he provided.

Revolutionizing the English classroom with AI—how can we use technology to enhance student learning and engagement?

“I tell you what: It’s not bad,” he said. The tool even isolated each essay’s thesis statement.

Carr, who frequently posts TikToks about tech, admitted that ChatGPT is scary for many teachers, but that they should play with it and consider how it forces them to think more deeply about their work. “If we don’t talk about it, if we don’t begin the conversation, it’s going to happen anyways and we just won’t get to be part of the conversation,” he said. “We just have to be forward thinking and not fear change.”

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too sanguine. Asked to write a haiku about is own potential for mayhem, ChatGPT didn’t mince words:

Artificial intelligence

Powerful and dangerous

Beware, for I am here

More and more colleges are becoming “,” taking their physical campuses into a virtual online world, often called the “metaverse.” One initiative has working with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and virtual reality company VictoryXR to create 3D online replicas – sometimes called “” – of their campuses that are updated live as people and items move through the real-world spaces.

Some classes are . And VictoryXR says that by 2023, it plans to , which allow for a group setting with live instructors and real-time class interactions.

One metaversity builder, New Mexico State University, says it wants to offer degrees in which students can take all their classes in virtual reality, .

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There are many , such as 3D visual learning, more realistic interactivity and easier access for faraway students. But there are also potential problems. My recent has focused on aspects of the metaverse and risks such as . I see five challenges:

1. Significant costs and time

The metaverse . For instance, building a cadaver laboratory costs and maintenance. A virtual cadaver lab has made scientific .

However, licenses for virtual reality content, construction of digital twin campuses, virtual reality headsets and other investment expenses do .

A metaverse course license can cost universities . VictoryXR also charges a per student to access its metaverse.

Additional costs are incurred for virtual reality headsets. While Meta is providing a for metaversities launched by Meta and VictoryXR, that’s only a few of what may be needed. The low-end 128GB version of the Meta Quest 2 . Managing and maintaining a large number of headsets, , involves additional operational costs and time.

Colleges also need to spend significant time and resources to . Even more time will be required to deliver metaverse courses, many of which will need .

Most educators don’t have the , which can involve merging videos, still images and audio with text and interactivity elements into an .

2. Data privacy, security and safety concerns

Business models of companies developing metaverse technologies . For instance, people who want to use Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headsets must have Facebook accounts.

The headsets can collect highly personal and sensitive data . Meta has that advertisers might have to it.

Meta is also working on a high-end virtual reality headset called , with more advanced capabilities. Sensors in the device will allow a virtual avatar to maintain eye contact and make facial expressions that mirror the user’s eye movements and face. That data information and target them with personalized advertising.

Professors and students may not freely participate in class discussions if they know that all their moves, their speech and even their facial expressions are .

The virtual environment and its equipment can also collect a wide range of user data, such as , and even signals of emotions.

Cyberattacks in the metaverse could even cause physical harm. Metaverse interfaces , so they effectively trick the user’s brain into believing the user is in a different environment. can influence the activities of immersed users, even inducing them to , such as to the top of a staircase.

The metaverse can also . For instance, Roblox has launched to bring 3D, interactive, virtual environments into physical and online classrooms. Roblox says it has , but no protections are perfect, and its metaverse involves user-generated content and a chat feature, which could be or people or other .

3. Lack of rural access to advanced infrastructure

Many metaverse applications such as . They require high-speed data networks to handle all of the across the virtual and physical space.

Many users, especially in rural areas, . For instance, 97% of the population living in urban areas in the U.S. has in tribal lands.

4. Adapting challenges to a new environment

Building and launching a metaversity requires drastic changes in a school’s approach to and learning.
For instance, metaverse but active participants in virtual reality games and other activities.

The combination of advanced technologies such as can create personalized learning experiences that are not in real time but still experienced through the metaverse. Automatic systems that tailor the content and pace of learning to the ability and interest of the student can make learning in the metaverse , with fewer set rules.

Those differences require significant , such as quizzes and tests. Traditional measures such as individualized and unstructured learning experiences offered by the metaverse.

5. Amplifying biases

Gender, racial and ideological biases are common in textbooks of and , which influence how students understand certain events and topics. In some cases, those biases prevent the achievement of justice and other goals, such as .

Biases’ effects can be even more powerful in rich media environments. are at views than textbooks. has the potential to be .

To maximize the benefits of the metaverse for teaching and learning, universities – and their students – will have to wrestle with protecting users’ privacy, training teachers and the level of national investment in broadband networks.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Lim, an education technology entrepreneur and TED Fellow, watched as her mother would answer questions every day about how to support their child’s learning, parent-teacher conferences and cultural barriers around school jargon.

Growing up in an immigrant family, Lim resonated with their struggles and later explored solutions to family-school partnerships as the founder and CEO of , a communication app that helps multilingual and underserved families connect with their child’s teachers.

“Education is one of the biggest issues we need to solve in this country,” Lim tells The 74. “And how can we solve this through technology?”

TalkingPoints has supported more than 600 schools and districts – over 3 million families and teachers, where 70% of students served are students of color and 89% come from Title I schools.

Lim delved into this further at the conference during her TED Talk: “.”

“We’re playing the role my mom had for the school and my friends’ families — the communicator, the explainer, the coach, the translator and the go-between,” Lim said in her TED Talk. “When teachers and families work together everyone wins.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: What key takeaways would you want someone watching your TED Talk to understand about you and TalkingPoints?

I think the biggest takeaway about me is that my personal background drives a lot of the talking points in my TED Talk. I’m Korean and moved to England when I was eight. My mom became that communicator, translator and go-between in the public elementary school I went to. I saw the impact that had on me and my sister’s education, so I think a lot about that when it comes to family-school partnerships as the central driver of student success. 

But it’s not just the experience of myself. Research really shows that when families and schools partner with each other and build relationships that are meaningful and collaborative, that really drives student learning and well being. 

The 74: How does it feel to be the only education leader selected as part of the class of 2022 TED Fellows Program?

I’m really excited and inspired to be part of this program and to talk about the state of education in the U.S., especially when it comes to highlighting the mass media’s view around education, the achievement gap and the potential of families driving student success. I’m also excited to have this platform to bring to life the research we have at TalkingPoints. You might have seen in my TED Talk about the 40 million children that come from under-resourced and/or immigrant families. People gasped at that number as well as the two year achievement gap and the trillion dollars lost in the economy.

I think education is one of the biggest issues we need to solve in this country, and we haven’t found the silver bullet to the learning and opportunity gap. COVID-19 really exacerbated it and there’s a long way to go. With the leaders in the TED community, we’re able to connect with others also trying to solve these complex social problems.

The 74: You mentioned how COVID-19 exacerbated the learning and opportunity gap for students. Did COVID-19 have an impact on TalkingPoints ability to tackle this?

When COVID-19 hit us in March 2020, we actually saw a 20x increase in communication volume. Within the span of three to six months, we saw a fixed increase in the number of families that we were reaching. And all the school districts that we were partnering with started reaching out saying that they needed TalkingPoints for the entire school district instead of just a subset of students. 

We also did a research report that said family-school partnerships was more important than ever during COVID-19 to drive student learning and well being. It was a silver lining moment for us in terms of how we can serve these communities and really get TalkingPoints in the hands of many more school districts and families who need it. But more importantly, it highlights how family-school partnerships continue to be a critical component to student learning.

The 74: Tell me more about TalkingPoints growth. How have languages expanded since the organization was founded?

In terms of languages, we started off with around 20. Now we’re offering translations in more than 125 languages with support from real human translators for instant translations. We also include dialects that are not supported by other apps, like Dari which is a language spoken in Afghanistan, Odia which is an Indian dialect, Kata which is a Russian dialect and Uyghur which is spoken in a region of China. 

We have also piloted a language for Cape Verdean Creole. We’re the only organization to support a language like that. Boston Public Schools were really excited about it because they have a significant Cape Verdean population and have been really struggling to support that set of families and students in the past. We’ve really expanded and plan to expand even further down the line.

The 74: What would you say has been the most impactful story you’ve heard from someone that uses TalkingPoints?

So we had a teacher based in Georgia. She’s an elementary school teacher and she’s taught in the same elementary school for more than 10 years. She used to teach kindergarten three years ago, but last year she started teaching third grade. Because of this, she ended up teaching the same kid that she used to teach in kindergarten. She wrote to us specifically to say that the mother of the student, who is a Spanish speaking student, has never felt so included in their school community after using TalkingPoints. 

If you think about it, this is a natural A/B experiment so to speak. It’s the same school, the same teacher, the same student and the same family. This is a really special story because we can attribute the impact of TalkingPoints specifically to this before and after story. It’s really, really touching and amazing. And the fact that the teacher specifically wrote to us to tell us that at the request of the mother is also special. That’s one story I love sharing.

The 74: What does the future look like for TalkingPoints? For instance, do you see TalkingPoints delving into other ways to engage and connect families?

I think there’s a couple of things to know. We’re already working on a lot of exciting things around in-house research to see what the impact of TalkingPoints has on student outcomes. For example, we have research coming up that actually shows a direct-causal relationship to engage families around improving student achievement, grades across subjects, attendance and student discipline. I’m really excited to share that. 

We’ve also been working on making sure that the family-school connections are equitable and accessible to all. TalkingPoints is open to all adults who support student learning within a school system – including teachers, counselors, bus drivers, coaches and psychologists, so a student’s full learning team can engage with families regularly. 

We also have reading flags whenever a teacher is writing above a fifth grade reading level. We offer suggestions to simplify so parents can understand them better. We also have tools for families to demystify education terms, like Individualized Education Program (IEP) or parent-teacher conferences. Like what are they and why are they important? As well as allowing families to engage with their teachers via video with closed captions translated. 

So I guess the reason I bring this all up relates directly to the future of TalkingPoints. We are on a mission to systematically remove the barriers to family-school partnerships. We are looking to develop a next generation platform that gives coaching and support to teachers, school administrators and families to talk to each other in a positive, connecting way.

The 74: As a Korean immigrant, what does it mean to you to be a part of the education technology space?

My personal experience and identity really drives the way that I think about the role of education technology as a tool. It can really unlock behaviors and thoughts that schools and families can have to drive student success. But it has to come from an inclusive, accessible and equitable lens. The way that education technology is designed, thought about, used and implemented can be a make or break moment. If done well, there’s incredible potential to improve student success. But if not, it can further widen the learning loss gap we’ve seen from COVID-19. 

As a Korean immigrant, I think a lot about product development and education technology that is inclusive, accessible and caters to the needs of under-resourced and immigrant students and families. That goes not just for me but a lot of our TalkingPoints team. They’ve grown up as English language learners, come from immigrant families, are first generation college goers and have taught in the classroom. Our team really understands the communities we serve and how we think about our vision to further support them.

“I feel like the most expensive thing is literally clothing, new backpacks and lunchboxes,” Aguião said of her search for supplies this month.

Aguião is not alone in feeling the pinch.  

As prices have surged on everything from technology to clothing to backpacks, parents and teachers nationwide are scrambling to afford classroom necessities for kids.

A found 57% of back-to-school shoppers are concerned about inflation anticipating spending surges to reach a new high of $661 per student – an increase of $53, or 8%, from the 2021-22 school year.

The Deloitte survey also found K-12 spending is expected to focus on clothing and accessories compared to last year’s pandemic-fueled technology spree.

According to the , clothing prices are expected to grow 2.9% for girls’ apparel and 3.4% for boys’ apparel compared to 2019. In addition, technology-related items will grow 2.2% and educational books and supplies will grow 4.5%.

But experts say parents are willing to spend the extra funds for their children.

“Even as economic and inflationary pressures sit top of mind, parents seem resilient and determined to ensure their children get the school supplies needed to succeed this coming year,” said Nick Handrinos, Deloitte vice chair and U.S. retail and consumer products leader. 

To ease costs, many parents plan to reuse school supplies, skip travel plans or dip into savings, according to .

“Generally speaking, American shoppers are still spending a lot on back-to-school supplies — certainly more than before the pandemic,” NPR found. “But financial anxiety is now a common part of the experience.” 

This rings true for Sabrina Ortiz-Santos, an incoming 1st grade Spanish and math teacher at Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C., who, like many teachers across the country, has often drawn from her own salary to purchase classroom essentials.

The bulk of Ortiz-Santos’s back-to-school spending has been cleaning supplies and other COVID-19- related items.

“The school I was previously at was very helpful in the beginning, but as the weeks went on I found myself having to repurchase a lot of the things that were running out,” Ortiz-Santos said. “To get the classroom ready and prepared for the first day, I’ve definitely spent more than $500.”

However, this experience does not always resonate with families in her community.

Ortiz-Santos also works as a teacher at D.C.’s Theodore Roosevelt High School and often supports newcomer students.

“It gets progressively harder each year for these families to provide the resources their kids need,” she said. “But schools like [Theodore Roosevelt High School] are mindful of the economic circumstances their students face and go to great lengths to provide them with things like a hotspot and a tablet.”

Aguião said parents in her community are not always eager to accept help from their school.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Aguião said. “So I always tell my son’s friends that if they can’t get supplies let me know and I’ll get supplies for them too.”

Although the Deloitte survey found technology-related purchases have reached a saturation point, , a project-based website for teachers, technology-related items continue to be a high priority request, said organization spokesman Juan Brizuela. 

According to Brizuela, DonorsChoose fully funded 342,108 projects in the 2021-22 school year — a significant hike compared to the 261,282 projects in the 2020-21 school year and the 262,959 projects in the 2019-20 school year.

“Since the pandemic hit, we saw quite a big jump in instructional technology,” Brizuela said, adding that included requests for items such as digital software for the classroom, and headphones for students while they’re at home doing school work and hoping to avoid distractions.

But as much as Arthur is concerned about the heightened amount of time students spend in the digital world since the start of the pandemic, he knows screen time is here to stay.

“It’s an unusual problem because we can’t take it away from them,” said Arthur, who teaches sixth grade at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City. “The world just doesn’t work like that anymore. They have to use technology.”

Arthur isn’t the only one who sees it this way. Researchers, parents and teachers are finding that even as youth screen time has shot up as a result of the pandemic, it’s time to reframe how we think about it.

Teachers like Arthur are finding ways to deliberately and innovatively embrace technology in their lessons, knowing students will find it more engaging.

Arthur said that he utilizes simulations on Minecraft, a popular video game for youth, as a way for students to learn about ancient civilizations. But he also emphasizes balance and makes sure all math instruction is on paper. That way, children can have a tactile learning experience, as well as a break from screens, he said.

Managing screen time should be guided by whether technology is displacing time that should be spent in other areas, such as exercising, play dates with friends or sleeping, said Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City.

“Making technology into some sort of boogeyman” should be left in 2018, Anderson said. The focus now should be on helping children and adolescents healthily engage with technology.

“This idea that it’s hard for kids to get off screens, it’s true of the entire human population,” he said. “What we try to do is put in the same behavioral safeguards with children as we do with adults.”

He suggested rewarding children who are able to get off of screens quickly, and putting time limits on technology that include warnings when time is almost up.

Prior to the pandemic, children were more comfortable in traditional classroom settings with pencils and paper, teacher Arthur said, adding that now, there’s a noticeable ease that falls on the room when children are able to use devices in lessons.

There’s a “chill familiarity,” he said, where they sit back, loosen up, and have an easier time talking to each other. Not only do they comfortably utilize chat functions, he said, but they also seem more free to make in-person conversations because holding the device puts them at ease.

“When they had to leave school, school became a more foreign place and even in some ways a scary place because it was synonymous with sickness and risk, so they understand ‘I’m not 100% safe in this place, but I’m super comfortable on this device because I’ve been using it nonstop,’” Arthur said. “It’s familiar. It’s the one thing that transcended through the pandemic. It brought the whole world to them when they were stuck at home.”

With children exhibiting so much more comfort in digital spaces, and skyrocketing screen time (one study found kids and adolescents doubled their recreational screen time during the pandemic), experts have also been raising the alarm on how this might impact child development, especially when it comes to in-person socialization skills, such as facial expression control, polite conversation and active listening.

But there’s another side, said Anderson.

“To act as if kids are not developing social skills online is fallacy because what we all know is that email voice, text voice, the ability to interact effectively over Zoom or chat are integral to the modern workplace,” Anderson said. “You need both.”

Anderson said some behavioral issues, such as shorter attention spans, are not an irreversible side effect of too much screen time—the screen itself has not inherently decreased attention spans.

“It’s because the screen itself is so interesting and vibrant in the stimuli that it’s presenting. It can be difficult for kids who are spending a lot of time on screens to then have the practice of being in the real world, paying attention to stimuli that are much less fast paced,” Anderson said.

Arthur knows the problem of demonizing screens, instead of working with them, all too well.

When classes were online, he had a student who didn’t log on for two days. When he called the student’s parents to check in, he discovered the student had his laptop taken away as a punishment.

Taking the laptop away may have solved one problem, but it created another, forcing the student to miss out on essential learning.

“They said ‘we don’t know how to keep him on just the school stuff because he keeps going on the other stuff, so our only answer is to take the whole thing away,” Arthur said. “And that’s our dilemma. We have to understand the technology enough as adults to figure out how to let in the good and keep out the bad.”