- A Georgia high school is going all-out on artificial intelligence.
- Seckinger High School students learn math, science, English and history through the lens of AI.
- Teachers say students are more engaged and better prepared for the jobs of tomorrow.
Before joining the Seckinger High School faculty, art teacher Megan Fowler’s only experience with anything even resembling artificial intelligence was a single graphic design course in college.
But as her teaching career progressed, “I just felt like what I was teaching wasn’t necessarily applicable to students’ future careers,” she told Business Insider .
Today, Fowler, in his 13th year of teaching, uses AI every day. Whether she’s teaching students how to use large language models like ChatGPT as an artistic thinking partner, introducing kids to the ethical considerations of generative art, or leading AI-centered professional development content to her fellow teachers, Fowler fully surrendered to the power of machine learning. .
Seckinger High School, located in Gwinnett County, Georgia, opened in August 2022, just as AI was gaining momentum. The public school, with an enrollment of about 2,000 students, operates like any other public school in Georgia’s largest school district, with one key distinction: Seckinger students learn all standard courses – math, science , English and Social Studies – via an AI-integrated educational experience.
With outside help from technology partners and community collaborators, including Google and Microsoft, as well as higher education experts and school district leaders, Gwinnett County Public Schools created an “AI-ready” framework for Seckinger students, filled with six components ranging from technical proficiency to ethics, said Sallie Holloway, the district’s director of artificial intelligence and computing.
“Our students are making connections to their futures that are not as common at other schools,” Holloway said.
Teachers and school administrators see it as their responsibility to prepare students for jobs of the future, many of which will require advanced knowledge of AI, four Seckinger educators told BI.
And it’s an approach that should pay off, education experts say.
Bree Dusseault, executive director of the Center for Reinventing Education, cited a statistic from the Institute for the Future that says about 85% of the jobs that will be available in 2030 don’t yet exist.
“So how can we build a school system that helps prepare our students for this new future?”
Seckinger students have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the AI journey. Courtesy of Gwinnett County Public Schools
How it works
Seckinger staff members explain the school’s approach to AI using a water-based metaphor. Students can choose to swim, snorkel, or scuba dive in the AI oceans.
“We like to say that all of our kids are swimming in AI,” said teacher Jason Hurd, who leads the AI career and technical education pathway at Seckinger. “They are exposed to it, have access to it, see it integrated into their lessons in all content areas at school.”
Next come the freedivers, students who want to delve a little deeper into the technology. They can take an AI elective course or join the robotics team.
Divers, on the other hand, are the students who choose to enroll in the school’s AI track, which immerses them in the nuanced mechanics of AI via three advanced courses. These students graduate from high school ready to go into a specific field involving AI, Hurd said.
The integration of AI at Seckinger is very different depending on the class, subject and teacher.
For example, social studies teacher Scott Gaffney uses AI to teach students how to solve historical problems. In one case, Gaffney presented students with a cholera outbreak in London in 1854 and asked them to use AI to map the spread via a distribution of points. The students then used AI to analyze the data and identify the link between the outbreak and a specific street, he told BI.
“Generation Z processes information much faster than previous generations,” Gaffney said. “It’s fun to give them a challenge and ask them to use AI to find the solution.”
Hurd’s AI Pathway course covers everything from programming to applied reasoning to ethics.
“I tell students that some days it will be like a math class, some days it will be like a philosophy class, some days it will be like a history class,” Hurd said.
Seckinger teachers say students seem more engaged. Courtesy of Gwinnett County Public Schools
How it’s working so far
The school, currently in its third year of operation, is still in pilot mode as the district waits to see what aspects of Seckinger’s AI approach are ready to be scaled up and shared across the rest of the district. system of 142 schools, Holloway said.
But the anecdotal results so far have been overwhelmingly positive, educators said.
“Kids are skipping class less and there is real interest in how teachers are teaching this content,” Holloway said. “It’s not a silver bullet, but they are definitely seeing an increase in engagement.”
It helps that Seckinger students generally feel like they know Why they learn something and how it might help them in the long run, teachers said.
Although there was initially some skepticism in the community about Seckinger’s AI concept, educators said parents’ attitudes have changed over the past three years.
“Parents want their kids to go here, and the kids want to be here,” Fowler said.
Still in its infancy, the school has yet to graduate a cohort that spent four full years at Seckinger. Hurd, who directs the AI pathway, said he has received great feedback from former students who have gone on to enroll at Georgia Tech. Likewise, Fowler said he has seen some students continue their studies in digital art or user experience after graduating from Seckinger.
Looking to the future
Part of the fun – and challenge – for Seckinger teachers is staying up to date with rapidly changing technology. When the district first began discussing the idea behind Seckinger in 2019, ChatGPT had not yet been released. Today, it has over 180 million users.
“Algebra has always been algebra and forever will be,” Hurd said. “But the field of AI is constantly evolving.
While some schools and districts are taking a tough approach to AI in education – banning tools like ChatGPT or Gemini from school servers – Seckinger staff is excited to see how their students can use AI for a day change the world.
“There used to be things called Google and Wikipedia that people thought would ruin education,” Gaffney said. “That’s not the case. They actually trained our future leaders.”