Interviewer:
For a closer look at how students here are using AI and how it’s impacting them, we’re joined by Christina Walker. She is the Vancouver School Board’s digital literacy mentor. Thanks for being here, Christina.

Christina Walker:
Thanks for having me.

Interviewer:
How is AI typically being used by students in school and anything in particular with the VSB?

Christina Walker:
Yeah, it’s a great question. Currently, we don’t have any tools that are being used by kids that are supported by the district.

However, in the spring, we are planning to release tools available to secondary students. So first to say, elementary students will not have access to AI tools. Instead, we’re actually going to be focusing on really strengthening early digital literacy skills.

So whether that is using digital tools to help enhance literacy, so that could be reading in the classroom on an iPad or something along those lines.

But really, we want to hone in on those critical thinking skills and those creative thinking skills, and of course, the collaborative and working together.

But for secondary, we are going to be rolling out Copilot 13+, which is a tool that actually has really strong guardrails in place.

And it has incredible filtering capabilities to be able to make sure that we are protecting kids in terms of the content that’s going in there.

It has signals to help support admin who are in charge of these tools.

So we are with older students when they are developmentally ready.

So this is in high school, of course, we’ll be bringing out tools that are really carefully selected so that they have tools…

Interviewer:
-that are appropriate, I guess.

Christina Walker:
Exactly. Yeah.

And that will, of course, be paired with, again, continuing to build up those critical thinking skills and that AI literacy.

Interviewer:
You mentioned guardrails. What are some of these challenges that students as well as teachers and other instructors are running into when it comes to AI?

Christina Walker:
So technology and education, it’s not like this is a new thing, right? So you think about the one that is often referred to when we’re talking about AI, of course, is we’re talking about the calculator, right? That one was a huge rupture to education.

Everybody thought “nobody’s going to learn how to do math”. Also, you think about the internet, you think about smartphones, right?

So these are all tools that kids are able to use. Kids are really smart and they’re able to try and bypass, push those boundaries, we’ll say, and using technology, right?

But what is most important is looking at how teachers are adapting, how students are being supported.

And ultimately, with this particular tool being generative AI, that we are providing opportunities for kids that are guided in that learning, right?

We’re developing those critical thinking skills. We’re still providing those opportunities to be challenged.

And this is being done by the caring adults in kids’ lives, right? So whether that’s teachers, whether that’s parents, family members, so on and so forth.

Interviewer:
Have you noticed, and this may be more of a data question, but have you noticed a decline in students when they’re using AI, whether it’s those critical thinking skills, whether their grades are going down? Is there any metric for that?

Christina Walker:
I wouldn’t say that there’s a metric. There isn’t really a metric just yet, other than, of course, having conversations and of course, as teachers, we are working in the classrooms, we are seeing what’s happening there.

But it’s not so much that because, you know, within the Vancouver School Board, we’ve been working really hard now, my role specifically as a digital literacy mentor, we’ve been working really hard to build up that capacity in teachers, right? And part of that is, of course, they’re learning how to use the tool, but then also supporting that big first step with kids, not using those tools, but developing those critical thinking skills, because that cognitive offloading that a lot of people are really concerned about is counteracted through critical thinking, right?

Creative and critical thinking skills.

That’s where we have to support kids best, right?

Interviewer:
Christina Walker with the VSB. We appreciate your time. Thanks very much.