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MARTIN COUNTY - As technology continues to evolve rapidly, area school districts have reached different conclusions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), cell phones in school and whether students should have their own school computer/iPad.
AI has swept the nation in a myriad of different forms, and its effect on education cannot be ignored. At Fairmont High School, a new communications tool was released this year for student expectations regarding AI use on school assignments.
At the teacher’s discretion, assignments fall under green, yellow or red designations.
Green opens more usage in the ways of brainstorming topics or questions, locating sources and practicing with AI-generated quizzes. Students still need to follow the teacher's instructions and AI use must relate to class content and focus on learning.
Yellow allows for some use in ways like designing visuals or infographics, developing questions for audience engagement and writing assignment drafts such as spelling checks and sentence rephrasing. AI use must be marked, and submitting AI use as original work or copying full AI-generated essays or responses is prohibited.
Red means use is only allowed if clearly allowed by the teacher, and using AI to search for or generate answers is prohibited. This is often for tests, essays and major projects.
"We have very appropriate parameters in place that ultimately support learning and do everything that we can in our power to protect our students and help them develop positive digital citizenship skills that they can use at school and in their future," Fairmont Superintendent Andy Traetow said.
As an example, Fairmont High School Principal Chad Brusky said during a classroom observation, a teacher had a rubric for a written story and asked students to prompt AI to write a gothic story. From there, the students saw the capabilities and limitations of AI, as AI didn't meet all the rubric requirements, and across several students, similar names, settings and overall stories kept popping up.
At Granada-Huntley-East Chain, High School Principal Andy Walden said students are not allowed to submit AI work as their own, but the full situation around AI will evolve as technology does.
"We want our students to think for themselves," he said. "We want our students’ thoughts to be their thoughts. We understand maybe they go to AI to get that process started in their brain, but ultimately we want our kids to do their own critical thinking and reasoning. I think sometimes, by going to AI, students might lose that opportunity to think for themselves and challenge their thought processes."
Another concern, from Superintendent Doug Storbeck, is AI being used by young individuals who have not established their foundational learning and understanding skills.
"A student putting in a question that they have no idea what it is," he said. "The computer will spit out a perfectly fine answer. They didn’t enhance their education at all or their knowledge base."
At Martin County West, Technology Coordinator Jake Helmstetter said there is a full system for teachers to be clear about whether it can or cannot be used in a given situation, and in speaking with other directors, it's been advised to not totally ban AI.
"It’s here," he said. "It’s existing. Students need to know what it is because that’s part of our responsibility as a school, preparing them for what exists in the real world. It’s out there. Teaching them what it is useful for, what it shouldn’t be used for, and then being really clear as to when they can and cannot use it."
While students have sought to push the boundaries with AI, Helmstetter said reports from teachers have gone down so far this school year. Thus far, he said there have been only two reports from concerned teachers, while last year there would be at least one a week.
On cell phones, Fairmont does not allow cell phones in learning spaces at all. Students in 10th grade to 12th grade can have them in their lockers and check them between periods, but from ninth grade down, cell phones are not allowed at school. Students are also not allowed to have them at lunch, which is a change from last year.
The state released a cell phone toolkit in 2024 that recommended no cell phones allowed during the academic day. Fairmont's current policy was actually ahead of the curve, implemented multiple years before the state released its recommendation to all school districts.
"It was backed by research that was done outside of our school system," Traetow said. "It was supported by trends, patterns and observations we were seeing within our school system. It was in an effort to minimize distractions in the learning environment to put kids in the best possible situation to be able to learn."
GHEC's policy is slightly different, allowing all middle and high school students to have their cell phones in their lockers and at lunch, but forbidding them in the classroom. Walden said with landing point for the policy, they are trying to find a balance.
"We understand phones and technology are part of student life," he said. "We want them to have exposure and understanding, and be able to take the next step into college or wherever they go. We also have to have an understanding too that we need your attention so we can teach you the best that we can."
Like GHEC and Fairmont, Helmstetter said the Minnesota Department of Education makes it pretty clear cell phones cannot be a learning device in the classroom. Where MCW has chosen to go is the door pouch direction.
"Students put their cell phones in their numbered pouch," he said. "They stay in there until the bell rings, and then they grab the phone, and they’re out the hallway into the next class where then again they’ll put it in that pouch."
With this kind of system, Helmstetter said it is a group effort school-wide to enforce and respect the policy.
"Teachers, as far as what I’ve seen, have been really responsive to that and understand everybody has to work together to make sure that that policy works," he said.
On technology in the classroom, Fairmont students in third grade through 12th grade have Chromebooks, with third grade through sixth grade being cart-based and seventh grade through 12th grade having their own Chromebooks they can take home, which are monitored to ensure students are safe and following school policies.
While it is available, Brusky said he has seen Chromebook usage in the classroom as a pendulum swing.
"When things first come out, you tend to see a lot more of that use," he said. "Then it swings back, and we’re seeing more of the paper-based in the classrooms, not relying as much on the computers to be an assessment tool. I think AI helps with that because of the availability of a resource to cheat, and so we see a lot more paper and pen."
Technology usage in the classroom has also been a shift for GHEC. This year, they have sought to focus on direct instruction over Chromebook and iPad usage at the elementary level. They have also moved away from giving students their own Chromebooks, encouraging limited use of Chromebooks at the middle and high school and being more intentional about when they are used and why.
"We were noticing some negatives with giving students one-to-one access and the inability for some students to be able to regulate that access," Walden said. "I think that’s maybe what drove our shift; we’re seeing some negatives as a result of the former policy, which was a result of COVID, and we wanted to try to be intentional about our changes with the hopes that it improves student learning.
As to how they will measure how this change works moving forward, Storbeck said there are Minnesota comprehensive assessments, internal assessments through the FastBridge Program and student interventions.
While MCW does give students their own device, they have opted for iPads instead of Chromebooks across all grades. Students in seventh and eighth grade can take an iPad home on request, while students in grades nine and above have their own iPad they can take home. All students in grades three and up have a keyboard as well, which makes the iPad a functional laptop.
"One of the best benefits to iPads is the management system and the longevity and stability of an iPad," Helmstetter said. "When you run updates, when you do a lot of different tasks on an iPad system, they all act the same. An iPad lasts a lot longer than a Chromebook, depending on the type that you get, and so the longevity, the fiscal responsibility of it, there’s a little bit more there."
While it's not the traditional method, Helmstetter said most everything they do in education is browser-based anyway.
"When you have a keyboard on it, and the newer devices we’re getting now even have a trackpad, it acts as a laptop would," he said. "If it’s all browser-based, you don’t run into a lot of those limitations. Sometimes, if it’s application based, an iPad app is designed for iOS so it’s actually a benefit."