How Georgia schools are adapting to AI in the classroom this school year

Artificial intelligence is primed to disrupt the workplace, and it’s starting to change the way school is taught in Georgia K-12 classrooms, too.

More schools are turning to AI to craft rubrics, design interactive lessons and overhaul curricula, even amid concerns that the technology could cripple students’ critical thinking skills.

Some of Georgia’s largest school districts will also have groups this academic year to determine best practices on implementing AI into curricula, on top of adding coursework or training centered around the technology.

“AI is here to stay,” said Lindsay Linsky, an education professor at the University of North Georgia. Teachers are taking “calculated risks,” she said, navigating unfamiliar terrain as the technology evolves faster than policy can keep pace.

Educators in DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties are integrating AI into curriculums both as a standalone topic and to aid learning in subjects like math and English.

In Fulton, for example, the district uses Edia, an AI-powered math platform in some high school advanced math classes to provide personalized feedback and instruction to students, said Heather Van Looy, who directs use of instructional technology for the school district.

In other grade levels, Van Looy said, teachers might use AI to facilitate brainstorming sessions for science fairs or essays.

“In that case, I’ve set the parameters for, it’s an AI chatbot that my students are going to be interacting with, but it’s for this very specific purpose as opposed to being an open-ended tool like Copilot or ChatGPT,” Van Looy said.

In Gwinnett, which claims the nation’s first “AI-themed high school,” Seckinger High School in Buford, officials have developed a three-course AI career pathway for students looking to “deep dive” into how AI is developed, available at both Seckinger and Maxwell High School of Technology in Lawrenceville.

Many teachers, though, still feel they don’t have the necessary knowledge or training to educate students with AI. President Donald Trump in April signed an executive order pushing technology leaders and others to “to collaboratively develop online resources focused on teaching K-12 students foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills.” Still, more than 7 in 10 teachers said they haven’t received any professional development on using AI in the classroom, according to a EdWeek Research Center survey last year.

Lisa Morgan, who leads the Georgia Association of Educators, said many Georgia teachers haven’t had professional development in AI, either.

“I know that a lot of the districts are providing professional development, and it’s very specific to that district because different districts have different policies about how AI is allowed to be used by students and educators,” Morgan said.

She added that there might be a gap in AI usage between younger, digital-native teachers and older teachers who didn’t grow up with the same technology.

What tools are teachers using?

One of the more popular tools Georgia teachers are employing is MagicSchool AI, an “AI assistant for educators” founded by former KIPP Atlanta teacher Adeel Khan.

MagicSchool’s platform helps teachers provide tailored writing feedback to students and create interactive learning options, among other things. There are currently nearly 90,000 individual MagicSchool users in Georgia, “with users in nearly every public district and many private or charter schools in the state,” the company told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Teachers are already stretched for time,” Khan, who was inspired by his time as both a teacher and principal, told the AJC. “So, any level of convenience you can offer is really powerful for them.”

Lisa Moore, one of Linsky’s colleagues and also a professor at UNG, noted AI could eliminate lots of the grunt work — like rewriting curriculums or crafting activities — that burdens K-12 teachers, who suffer from high burnout.

Moore envisions some teachers creating a chatbot with a character from a novel that students can have a simulated conversation with, or leveling a text that might be for sixth graders so that a second or third grader could understand it, or letting students create images using an AI image generator.

The cost for individual teachers using tools like MagicSchool AI can be free, but companies also offer enterprise packages so that districts can customize platforms to meet their needs.

Fulton County, for example, pays $265,000 annually (or $2.95 per license for 90,000 licenses) for a tool called SchoolAI, which also offers flexible AI solutions in the classroom.

In DeKalb, Kermit Belcher, the district’s chief information officer, said the district is not yet scaled out any enterprise-level AI tools but is considering doing so.

“We are not blocking sites such as ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Grok (X), the web version of CoPilot (Microsoft) or Gemini (Google),” Belcher said. “There are free versions on the web that students and staff have access to, but we have not purchased the paid version.”

Cheating and privacy concerns

Even as leaders in the space vie for the use of AI in the classroom, a recent Pew Research survey found one in four teachers think AI tools could do more harm than good.

There are concerns that students might use AI to complete assignments and hamper students’ ability to think creatively or critically. Teachers also worry that student privacy could be risked if sensitive student information is used to train AI models.

“What our training with teachers is, is that we need to be really thoughtful in our instruction,” Van Looy said.

What does more thoughtful instruction look like? It could mean more oral exams or other sorts of check-ins so that teachers can be sure students are actually absorbing and understanding material themselves, Van Looy said.

It could also mean keeping traditional-style assignments but emphasizing ethical use, said Jimmy Fisher, Seckinger’s principal.

Similar discussions are taking place across Georgia. Gwinnett is working to embed AI literacy into its team that provides digital citizenship training to all students.

“We are starting a group of teacher leaders, like a cohort, this upcoming school year to take a deep dive,” shared Sallie Holloway, who leads AI initiatives for Gwinnett. “What does it mean to use AI responsibly? Again, what do I need to know about it? How do I support other teachers and students?”

Gwinnett also has instructional technology and innovation coaches in all of its schools trained with resources to support teachers, Holloway added. The district doesn’t plan to standardize AI usage in all school, but guidelines will streamline opportunities for what AI can be used for and can’t be used for.

DeKalb will soon have a task force to figure out how to sustainably implement AI across the school system, said Belcher.

In terms of privacy, Khan said that MagicSchool prevents student data from being used to train the AI models that the platform uses.

“Since we partnered with schools and districts, we have to go through these really rigorous procurement processes where they rip apart our privacy policies and those kinds of things,” Khan said.

On the district level, Fulton is blocking several AI tools and curating a select number of trusted resources for students to use that will address administrators’ concerns on privacy. In DeKalb, Belcher said the district has stuck with core vendor partners for tools like Google Classroom and Office 365 where “there’s not data mining” and safety is protected.

How AI is changing the landscape for graduates

The reality for college graduates has been stark — finding a job is harder than ever, and tech executives have stressed the impact that AI will have on the workforce.

As students learn in the age of AI and enter an ever-changing labor market, Technology Association of Georgia President Larry Williams said, “there’s a lot of smart kids out there” who can harness the technology’s power.

Part of TAG’s mission is to promote computer science education in Georgia schools. The organization has already succeeded in making computer science and coding classes an alternative to foreign language requirements in Georgia schools.

“Through partnership programs with leaders in education, business, and government, we’re preparing both existing and emerging workforces for the future,” Emily Johnston, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote to the AJC.

“There are 16-year-olds that are utilizing AI and building businesses from scratch, and so how much can we teach them?” Williams said. “I think we can teach them some basic skills that they need. We can teach them to be curious, and before you know it, you know they’re going to be teaching us.”

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