Want to learn about A.I.? Long Beach schools will teach you

Artificial Intelligence is making waves everywhere. It’s used in almost all aspects of life to some degree, including education.

The Long Beach School District is no stranger to it, and is working to ensure it’s used properly in classrooms.

“A.I. is a big conversation in education right now,” said Superintendent of School Dr. Jennifer Gallagher in an email, “as we grapple with helping our students to use the tool appropriately.”

A team of Long Beach staff members will be heading over to Hofstra University on Sep. 26 to give a presentation on the topic at a symposium. The event, called “Presidential Symposium, Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Friend or Foe?” will have three days of panels and discussion on the topic at hand. Representatives from Long Beach schools will be leading the fourth session, a panel called “The K-12 Educator and A.I.: First the teacher, then the tool.”

The panel will be led by Matthew Jones, Cristie Tursi and Toni Weiss of Long Beach and Patrick Kiley-Rendon of West Islip Public Schools. The panel was recruited and organized by Dr. Lorraine Radice, an adjunct at Hofstra and the director of literacy for Long Beach.

The release of Chat GPT last year has inspired a new wave of thinking about artificial intelligence in schools and classrooms. It’s been used as a teacher preparation tool and a resource for students to use, for better or for worse. Their presentation showcases ways that teachers can use it in their planning and education.

The presentation also showcases ways artificial intelligence can be a tool for students and how they can use it responsibly. The panel will also address how it may challenge some of the traditional tasks in classrooms and expand on the importance of critical thinking, intentional questioning and metacognition while setting up prompts or programming the software.

The presentation material is contextualized in pre-college education but the ideas can be applicable to many higher education settings as well.

The panel will be Tuesday, Sept. 26 in the Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater at Hoftsta. It will run from 4:25 to 5:45 p.m. It can also be viewed live online at TinyURL.com/AILBNY.