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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following was submitted by eighth-grade students from the McCall Middle School for their annual civics project. These essays have not been edited by Winchester News for grammar or content. This essay is being presented by Ben Sattarzadeh, Mateo Grillberger, and Jake Bang.
Artificial Intelligence has become a significant issue worldwide, particularly impacting education in schools. Students in middle and high schools are increasingly using AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini for their academic work. According to The New York Times, 54% of students aged 13-17 admitted to using ChatGPT.
There are several reasons why students could be using AI, including the heavy homework load, which can lead to stress with students. This causes students to stress out a lot about homework, relying on AI for quicker completion of assignments. The same report has also revealed that about 50% of the teens use AI for school, and more than 40% using it for math problems, and about one-third use it to edit their writing assignments.
To explore this topic in our community of Winchester, we conducted an anonymous survey of the students at McCall Middle School, receiving 125 responses. We found that out of these 125 responders, 97 of them used AI for schoolwork. Around 9% used AI to write essays, 22% using it for designs or content of project-based assessments, 64% using it to find sources and use it for researching, and 18% using it for standard assignments like homework.
People are very mixed about these large language models. While some argue that AI allows students to access information more quickly and efficiently, there are still concerns that this may hinder actual learning. Additionally, AI systems often have mistakes and exhibit bias, which can lead to misinformation. As experts have said, the output of these large-language models is only as good as the input. It’s essential to learn how to write a prompt that works and helps us learn, not one that does all the work for us.
Many school systems have already taken action to prevent AI misuse in schools. School systems in New York and Seattle have already banned all AI applications on their school networks. A similar solution is creating internet-free classrooms and writing in pencil. Over the past few years, there has been a huge increase in this method. The Wall Street Journal reported a huge increase in blue books purchased in the 2024 school year.
Other schools have taken a different approach to solving this problem. School policymakers recognized that the problem is that it is evolving too rapidly. It’s crucial that these policies are flexible and can be changed quickly if needed. That’s why some schools have adopted more of a framework than a formal AI policy. The school uses the framework as a “living document” on the district’s website that can be easily updated if needed.
Winchester has also addressed the potential misuse of AI among students. To get more details about the situation, we interviewed an eighth-grade English teacher.
She told us that the approach usually depended on the teacher, as there were currently no set AI policies and teachers could establish their own on AI usage.
She gave us some hypothetical and some real examples of how to prevent AI, with some teachers doing assignments completely in class, preventing any work and cheating at home. Others are doing handwriting assignments and essays within time limits.
“I think a lot of students are overwhelmed and have too many obligations like sports and clubs, along with family obligations. It is also new, and there are not a lot of regulations because we do not know how to handle it yet. It would be helpful if we had a policy for the entire school.”
We think that even though measures are being taken, there are still many other issues that we might have to address currently and in the future. As we have seen above, we have seen many examples of these issues from the students and teachers of the Winchester community. As this technology continues to develop, schools will be forced to try to adapt to it as best as they can.
