ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The use of artificial intelligence in schools has become a big topic of conversation across the country and locally as well.<\/p>\n
Orange County Public Schools continued discussions about proposed policies for AI use throughout the district during a workshop Tuesday, as officials hope to have an approved policy ready before the 2026-2027 school year.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the district has been listening to its families and teachers.<\/p>\n
The Popov family wants to ensure that their two sons have all the tools they need to be successful in all of their endeavors.<\/p>\n
That includes preparing them for the advancements in technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have to make our children literate in the AI technology in order for them to be successful in entering the workplace environment because it\u2019s going to demand it at some level,\u201d explained Jessica Popov.<\/p>\n
Popov is a mom of two OCPS students and shares that she knows the importance of AI and its use as it continues to pick up steam in our everyday lives.<\/p>\n
And while she wants her kids to know how to use it, she doesn\u2019t want them to rely on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want my children to be utilizing AI in order to solve their math problems but never fundamentally learning how to solve the math problem,\u201d Popov shared. \u201cI don\u2019t want my children to never learn how to write, yet they can put some bullet points into AI and create a paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the balance that OCPS is trying to find, and admittedly, there are still a lot of concerns the board wants to address.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to figure out how do we solve for why students are using AI, right? Is it that they need help; do they need support or not getting what they need? Or why are teachers using AI,\u201d said OCPS Board Vice-Chair Maria Salamanca. \u201cObviously, we know they\u2019re overworked, they have a lot of busy work and there\u2019s a lot of things there. And so, we\u2019re trying to go deeper into the why that it\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salamanca says they\u2019ve received feedback from hundreds of students and teachers about the issue across the district and various town halls they hosted.<\/p>\n
The policy, as it stands now, only allows district-approved AI platforms, requires staff and students to use their own words and double-check for accuracy, and does not allow the creation of false images or \u201cdeep fakes\u201d.<\/p>\n
These are the main points that make school board members feel that they\u2019re going in the right direction. But they do know that this is a forever-changing topic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something that the school board will definitely come back to probably once a year to say the least,\u201d Salamanca said.<\/p>\n
Popov says she appreciates the board\u2019s work and diligence but is not convinced the policy will be ready before the next school year, which is just three months away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a policy that\u2019s ready to go for the upcoming school year, and it creates so much more tension around an already tumultuous topic,\u201d Popov said.<\/p>\n
The board announced that it plans to have a final vote on the policy by the end of the school year in order to have it ready for the upcoming school year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0The use of artificial intelligence in schools has become a big topic of conversation across the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,70,63,1828,25,23154,76,71,66,6887,1829,65],"class_list":["post-37016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-app-education","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-top-stories","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-brandon-spencer","tag-education","tag-human-interest","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}