St. Cloud schools adopting AI program
“We really want to make sure that AI assists, educators are teaching, and students are learning,” said Katie Herrbold, the Executive Director of Innovation, Information Technology and Information Systems for the St. Cloud Area Public Schools.
Before student bodies fill the halls in the district’s high schools, St. Cloud staff are busy getting ready for the new school year.
Wednesday, the district announced that preparation for teachers would include learning a new AI system, a special Open AI model called ChatGPT Edu.
“ChatGPT Edu is a large language model, like a lot of things like Gemini or Claude,” Herrbold said.
“What we most want parents to understand is that student privacy and data privacy comes first,” said Superintendent Laurie Putnam.
The program is entering its second year, but St. Cloud is the first Minnesota district to join it.
“We were one of the first districts in the state to actually provide training and education around generative AI to all students, because we know that it’s a fact of life,” said Putnam.
But before the kids pick up their laptops for the year, Putnam says it’s important to train the teachers on AI technology.
When asked if using ChatGPT Edu was mandatory, Putnam said, “Absolutely not. Some of our teachers are very comfortable with using generative AI tools. Some are just beginning to dip their toes, and some are saying it’s not for me, and that’s absolutely fine with us.”
The program is for teachers only, not the students. The district says it’s designed to help with some of the time-consuming clerical work, giving teachers more time for things like developing their lesson presentations and grading a student’s work.
“There’s a lot of scrutiny around how do students access technology, when do they access it, how often, and what are they using it for,” Putnam explained. “And so at this point, we’re being really thoughtful and slow about how we roll out our technology tools.”
Herrbold is in charge of the rollout of ChatGPT Edu. She says part of the teacher training is about keeping all personal data, teachers’ and the students’, offline. But, as an extra precaution, ChatGPT Edu is also a closed system. No one outside the district will have access to any of that data.
“Even the other cohorts…the other schools in our cohort…from all around the nation, they don’t get access to our data. Only I can access our data, and only our district can,” Herrbold explained.
She said teachers are already starting to use the AI system for things like linking lesson plans to state standards and setting up syllabuses.
“ChatGPT can put it in a great format for the teacher, and then they’re able to go back through and verify to make sure the sources are correct and the standards are correct, but they don’t have to worry about that formatting or that spending time finding that information,” Herrbold said.
After using ChatGPT Edu, teachers have a review to follow the district calls PAUSE It. Stepping back and taking a moment to evaluate the accuracy, neutrality and usefulness of anything that comes out of the program.
“After they go through PAUSE It, we ask them to evaluate further and say, is this something I can use with students? Did it pass PAUSE It? Do I need to make edits? Do I need to make major edits? Or do I just need to stop and start over,” Herrbold said.
“The important thing is for our teachers to bring their professional skills that they spent years learning and developing, to bring that to the output,” Putnam added.
